Publisher’s Weekly (Oct 13, 2011) reports:
When Australian author John Flanagan arrives stateside in early November for a two-week, cross-country tour, he’ll have a lot to talk about. On October 4, Philomel published Ranger’s Apprentice: The Lost Stories, a collection of tales starring the characters from Flanagan’s bestselling 10-book fantasy adventure series. On November 1, the publisher will release Brotherband Chronicles: Book 1: The Outcasts, the inaugural volume of a series that is set in the world of Ranger’s Apprentice but introduces a new cast of characters who embark on seafaring adventures.
Ranger’s Apprentice, which has sales of more than three million copies in the U.S. alone and has been sold to publishers in 18 countries, debuted in 2005 with The Ruins of Gorlan. The series began as a sequence of stories whose central character was based on Flanagan’s then-adolescent son, Mike. The author wrote the stories in hopes of getting Mike interested in reading.
“I’d like to say that the stories turned him into an avid reader, but they didn’t,” says the author. “They did show him how much reading could involve all his senses and emotions, however, and he did love the stories. I started out by giving him a story every Friday afternoon when he came home from school. I told him that I was planning to write some stories for kids and asked if he’d check them over and see if he thought kids would like them. Parents can be so sneaky. I knew he was beginning to get hooked when he came to me on the fourth Friday and asked, ‘Where’s my story for this week?’ ”
Read the rest of Sally Lodge’s article HERE