As a reader as well as a writer, I feel like each book should be its own story. I really don’t think my brain is capable of thinking in terms of one huge story arc – I have to split it up. As I began writing Princess Academy, the voice of the story took me in a different direction than my initial concept – the book took on its own life.ĭid you know when you were writing that novel that it would spawn additional books about princess-in-training Miri?

I started thinking, ‘What would it be like if there were other princesses in training as well?’ I wasn’t sure what I wanted the story to be, or how to complicate that idea further, but that got me thinking.

I remember I was writing The Goose Girl at the time, and one night my husband began telling me about a book he was reading, featuring a character who was tutor to a princess, and that’s where it first began. It’s very exciting – but the time really passed quickly! In fact, I now meet women with college degrees and babies in their arms, telling me that that they read Princess Academy when they were kids, and I think to myself, ‘Wait! Didn’t I just write that? How is that possible?’ It’s a bit like watching my own kids grow up – it’s beautiful, but at the same time unnerving and surreal.Ĭan you recall the creative spark that ignited Princess Academy? In her roles as both mother of four and writer, this Salt Lake City author is obviously a skilled multitasker: PW caught up with her while she monitored her four-year-old twin daughters’ indoor soccer class.Ī full decade since Princess Academy first hit the bookshelves? Does that seem possible to you? Hale’s wide-ranging oeuvre includes three books for adults, among them Austenland, adapted as a 2013 Sony Pictures movie YA series Ever After High, starring the children of classic fairy tale characters sci-fi thriller Dangerous fairy tale-inspired graphic novels Rapunzel’s Revenge and Calamity Jack, written with her husband, Dean Hale, and illustrated by Nathan Hale and The Princess in Black, also written with Dean Hale and illustrated by LeUyen Pham, a chapter book about a royal superhero, just optioned by Universal Pictures. The versatile Salt Lake City author has 20 books to her credit since the 2003 publication of her debut novel, The Goose Girl, which launched the Books of Bayern series.

The Forgotten Sisters’ 150,000-copy first printing brings the series’ in-print tally to more than one million copies, and Hale will greet some of her legion fans on a six-city author tour that kicks off February 21. On February 24, Bloomsbury will release The Forgotten Sisters, the final installment of Shannon Hale’s Princess Academy trilogy, on the 10th anniversary of the publication of the series’ launch title, the Newbery Honor-winning Princess Academy.

Princess academy book