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A lot of the emails I get have asked me about the new series I’m writing in addition to Theodosia, so I thought I’d mention it here. It’s called, NATHANIEL FLUDD, BEASTOLOGIST, and tells the story of Nate Fludd, whose parents are lost at sea so he is sent off to live with a mysterious unknown relative who turns out to be the world’s last remaining beastologist. It is now Nate’s job to help take care of the world’s mythical beasts.

I have had a blast writing this series. I’ve always adored animals, and we had a ton of them when I was a kid, including some very exotic ones; a goat (we lived in a city) chipmunks, about eight cats, three dogs, chickens, an anteater, and for a few brief weeks, two baby bear cubs. So yeah, animals were a huge part of my childhood.

The idea for this series came about when two different things I’d been reading about kind of crashed into each other. I’d read a newspaper article about a couple of new species of animals that had been discovered in some wild, desolate place. It made me realize how there really are so many pockets of uncharted territory in our world, who knew what lived there?

I was also doing some research for a medieval book I was working on and stumbled across medieval bestiaries, books that documented all the creatures the medieval scholars believed existed at that time, and I was struck by how many mythical beasts had once been thought to really exist.

And then I thought, well, who’s to say they didn’t exist?

Thus Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist, was born.

Now a warning; these are much shorter, smaller, easier to read books that the Theodosia books. I specifically wanted to write something for slightly younger readers. However, many Theodosia readers (kids and adults) have enjoyed them. Just be forewarned that if you’ve read Theodosia, you can probably read these books in about an hour each. The first one, The Flight of the Phoenix came out in September last year. The second one, The Basilisk’s Lair, came out this week!

So that’s what I do when I’m not working on Theodosia or writing blog entries.