About The Author

Riordan was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. He graduated from Alamo Heights High School, and first attended the music program at North Texas State, wanting to be a guitarist. He transferred to the University of Texas in Austin and studied English and History; he received his teaching certification in those subjects from the University of Texas in San Antonio. He taught English and Social Studies for eight years at Presidio Hill School in San Francisco.[citation needed]Rick married Becky Riordan, originally from the East Coast, in 1985 on the couple’s shared birthday. They moved from San Antonio to Boston in June 2013, in conjunction with older son Patrick starting college in Boston. Haley Riordan inspired the Percy Jackson series as a bedtime story.Riordan has created several successful book series. Tres Navarre, an adult mystery series about a Texan private eye, won the Shamus, Anthony, and Edgar Awards.He conceived the idea for the Percy Jackson series as bedtime stories about ancient Greek heroes for his son Haley. Haley had been diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia, inspiring Riordan to make the titular protagonist ADHD and dyslexic. Riordan published the first novel in the series, The Lightning Thief , in 2005. Four sequels followed, with the last, The Last Olympian in 2009. Prior to Percy Jackson, Riordan had written the Tres Navarres series, a series of mystery novels for adult readers.His Percy Jackson and the Olympians series features the titular twelve-year-old who discovers he is the modern-day son of the ancient Greek god Poseidon. Twentieth Century Fox purchased the film rights and released a feature film in 2010. Following the success of Percy Jackson, Riordan created The Kane Chronicles, which features a modern-day Egyptian pantheon and two new sibling protagonists, Sadie and Carter Kane. Riordan also created a sequel series to Percy Jackson, The Heroes of Olympus. Riordan also helped create the children’s book series The 39 Clues; he authored several of its books, including The Maze of Bones, which topped The New York Times Best Seller list on September 28, 2008. He also wrote the introduction to the Puffin Classics edition of Roger Lancelyn Green’s Tales of the Greek Heroes, in which he states that the book influenced him to write his Greek mythology series.Today, he is an acclaimed author and is best known for the Percy Jackson & The Olympians series. Riordan has also written the The Kane Chronicles, Heroes of Olympus and The Maze of Bones, among others.