I'm not good with children," the god confessed. "Or people. Well, any organic life forms, really.

Brother,” Artemis chided. “You do not help my Hunters. You do not look at, talk to, or flirt with my Hunters. And you do not call them sweetheart.

Kids, if anything, are harder to write for because they are a more discerning audience. They will not stay with you if you go off on a tangent or if you give them extraneous information that doesn't serve the story. You really have to tell a tight story. You have to give them humor and suspense and believable characters. All those things that adults want too, but you have to be really on your game when you're writing for kids.

Akhlys lunged at Percy, and for a split second he thought: Well, hey, I’m just smoke. She can’t touch me, right? He imagined the Fates up in Olympus, laughing at his wishful thinking: LOL, NOOB!

You wrote this right?” he said. “It tells how to defeat Set.” Thoth unfolded the papyrus pages. “Oh, dear. I hate reading my old work. Look at this sentence. I’d never write it that way now.” He patted his lab coat pockets. “Red pen—does anyone have one?” Isis chafed against my willpower, insisting that we blast some sense into Thoth. One fireball, she pleaded. Just one enormous magical fireball? I couldn’t say I was tempted, but I kept her under control. “Since when does drool make you powerful?

And if I was humming "Happy Birthday" and smiling stupidly as I fled for my life—well, that was nobody's business, was it?

My resolve, my anger, even my grief gave me confidence