By now you must be good at plotting the overall arc for a storyline. Do you have all three Kane Chronicles mapped out?
It's a combination of planning it in advance and letting it unfold organically. I have the broad strokes figured out, I know the ending, but then I plan each book and the details always surprise me. Hopefully it's like alchemy, more than the sum of the parts.
Did you do a lot of research on where Egyptian artifacts are located around the globe?
Egypt is in the public consciousness; everyone knows about the pyramids and mummies, and central to the book is magic. For the Egyptians, magic can be summoned by these artifacts that are now spread all around the world. Everyone wants a piece of ancient Egypt, their obelisks and hieroglyphs. The idea of making this a global story--not just in the U.S. like Percy Jackson--was very appealing and emphasizes how huge Egypt really is in the modern imagination.
Did you begin with a character, a setting or, in this case, a period in history?
[This project] is something that had been brewing for a long time, even as early as when I was doing Sea of Monsters. As I talked to kids across the country, the one area they were all interested in and that fired their imaginations was ancient Egypt. Part of my philosophy as a teacher and writer is to pay attention to them. I took their ideas seriously. Then it was a matter of figuring out the premise, to make it funny, modern and relevant for kids. That's the challenge I'd had as a teacher: this happened 3,000 years ago, why should I care? How is it relevant to me? How can I make kids part of it and make it matter in a meaningful way--and not feel like you're in school.
The dynamic between Carter and Sadie nicely allows them to "show off" what they know and also impart information to readers.
It was important to me that the book have two narrators, one boy and one girl. I wanted each gender to have a touchstone in the series. Although the Percy Jackson books have been touted as boy books, that's not what you see at events; the audience is usually about half and half, boys and girls. It made sense that [Carter and Sadie] would be brother and sister. Having them alternate, they could contradict each other.
What prompted the idea to feature a mixed-race family?
On a very pragmatic level, they are loosely based on a brother and sister I'd taught in San Francisco. The way they self-identified was very interesting, and the way they interacted was interesting because they didn't see their heritage in the same way. On a broader level, I thought it was important to put Egypt in its context as not just a root of Western civilization. I think it's been appropriated by the European culture. It's an African heritage, and Egypt for hundreds of years had been a crossroads of cultures. A mixed-race family would have the same issues today that they had hundreds of years ago.
One especially poignant moment in the book is when his father tells Carter that "[f]airness does not mean everyone gets the same. Fairness means everyone gets what they need."
Carter's relationship with his dad is like mine with my son. I made Carter home-schooled because Haley was home-schooled with us during sixth and seventh grades. We were making sure he wasn't being isolated, that he was not too far out of the mix of his peers, but it was also amazing how much he could learn when all the distractions were taken away. I got closer to him at a time when most kids were pulling away from their parents. It does create an identity issue. Carter is a little out of synch. He's really smart, very capable, but in an average American middle school, he wouldn't have a clue how to interact in that environment.
What was your favorite discovery, during your research?
The House of Life, the ancient school of Egyptian magic--I'd had no idea that that existed. To know that magic pretty much originated in the culture of ancient Egypt--the way they practice magic is accurate in the book--it puts a different spin on the idea of magicians and the practice of magic. When they say the pharaoh's magicians came out and did their magic in front of Moses, that's who the magicians were. The House of Life reference was because they could heal with their spells, but they also made charms that protected the pharaohs--they were very busy.
And the hieroglyphs you represent in the book are actual hieroglyphs?
I did quite a bit of research, and had shelves of books on hieroglyphs and how magic pertained. The ancient Egyptians considered all writing magic. They had to be careful: if they created the word "cat," they had to deface it slightly, because they believed they could create a cat. The idea was that the ultimate form of magic was to speak and the world began. You see that influence in the Gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word." All these ancient cultures dovetail, and they were all forming and evolving at the same time. --Jennifer M. Brown