It's been seven years of writing The School for Good and Evil and
six books, and now it's all gonna come to an end with the release of One True King.
So I wanted to look back at some of my favorite memories over this entire crazy
journey of writing The School for Good and Evil series.
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Memory number one.
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The Fan Art.
From day one, every kid that I would come in contact to had the most amazing
imagination about books that they would read.
If they loved a book, they would always create all kinds of awesome art for it and
I was one of those kids growing up.
So for all of a sudden, this little series that I was writing out of my own head to
spawn its own genre of fan art was sort of one of the weirdest and
craziest experiences I ever had.
And to this day, we have over 500,000 pieces of fan art all across the Internet
for The School for Good and Evil on our website, on social media, on Tumblr,
on all kinds of different art sites.
And I think, any time I get sort of stuck, or was losing motivation after writing
thousands and thousands of pages of the series,
I would just go look at the art that kids was making.
And it became sort of my gasoline to power my own engine and
imagination through all the years of writing the series.
Memory number two, the Santa letter.
I think the moment where I actually realized that I had a public
responsibility to kids reading The School for Good and Evil, came after the first
book when a mother shared with me a letter to Santa that her young son had written.
And he hadn't shown it to his parents or anything.
He had hidden it under his pillow.
And it basically asked Santa for, I think, a new pair of socks and some Lego thing.
And also said, I just read The School for Good and Evil and
I think the author should write a sequel.
So can you, Santa, make sure the author writes a sequel.
And if this happens, can I get the first copy?
And weirdly, I had just finished writing the sequel to The School for
Good and Evil.
It wasn't obviously out to anybody.
It wasn't coming out in bookstores for over a year later.
But the fact that this kid thought he could sort of conjure something into
existence, made us bound up the manuscript and send it to his parents,
who put it in his stocking for Christmas.
And that kid literally thought that he now had the power to sort
of shape the universe.
So that was one of the things that stayed with me forever,
was the kid who wished for a Christmas that we could fulfill.
Memory number 3, the wedding.
It wasn't just kids reading The School for Good and Evil, as I came to realize.
It was also adults, so much so, that we actually had a School for Good and
Evil inspired wedding in Latvia.
It happened a couple years ago, where a girl who was obsessed with the series
created her own themed wedding around the books.
And I feel very sorry for her groom who had to play the perfect prince.
But ultimately it was an absolutely beautiful affair designed as the schools,
complete with sort of EverNever tables and separations.
And it was just something that stayed in my memory and my imagination and
my own inspiration for years after.
I hope they're still married.
Memory number 4, EverNever TV.
One of the things I realized is that kids want the full experience
of reading a book.
And so after writing book two, I sort of realized that we kind of needed
our own YouTube channel, even though I can't act and
don't like being in front of the camera, including at this moment.
And so I had to find a way to make the School for Good and
Evil come to life on an actual social media channel.
And I was lucky enough to have a few of my friends come together, and
co-host a weekly show all about what it means to be an ever and never both in
the fantasy world of School for Good and Evil, and also in the world at large.
So we look at the world from the good perspective and
the evil perspective and it became kind of a weekly way to digest my feelings and
everything that was happening, not just on the page but off the page.
And so to this day on EverNever TV, we've had over 300 episodes, and
it's the best way to kind of live inside the world of The School for
Good and Evil outside of the books.
Memory number five, the school visits.
One of the great part about writing for kids is getting to go to schools all
around the country and the world and see the difference between the way that kids
interact from one part of the country to another part of the country.
Going to cities like Paris and London and Brazil, and
seeing how kids at the end of the day, all look for the same thing in storytelling.
Something that resonates with them,
something that makes them feel like their voice is heard.
So one of the coolest parts about The School for Good and
Evil was seeing how the characters in the books were sort of adopted and
taken on by fans around the world.
And at the same time, my experience meeting all kinds of different readers all
over the place then infused the next books I was writing.
I have characters all over the books that were inspired by kids I've met.
I'll give you an example.
In book five, Bert and Beckett appear,
two blond boys who like to plant dung bombs in inappropriate settings.
And they came directly from two boys I met named Bert and Beckett out of school,
who happened to be best friends and they could not do anything without each other.
They literally were both blond, both kind of the same height,
they finished each other's sentences and they were essentially one unit.
And I loved the idea of two best friends not being able to operate without
each other.
And that came directly from just going into the schools.
So it became a cycle of art feeding life and life feeding art.
Memory number 6, the movie.
One of the craziest parts of the entire School for Good and Evil experience was
having the book sell for a movie the very first day book one came out.
So literally the book came out into bookstores on a Tuesday and
we sold it to Universal that same day for
what was one of the bigger movie deals of the last ten years at the time.
And it was kind of this wild experience because I wrote the screenplays for
it, I was intimately involved all through these last bunch of
years while I've been writing the books.
And right now, just as we're getting close to the movie going into production,
I went through this entire period of not only writing the books but
also kind of re-imagining it for the screen at the same time.
So I got to experience the world in so many different ways, working with so
many different collaborators.
And I'm very hopeful that in the near future,
all of you will see that hard work come to life on a movie screen near you.
Even though The School for Good and Evil series is finally coming to an end,
thanks to all of you readers for making it live on.
And it will continue to live on and
hopefully be passed down to new readers because of you.
So thank you for everything.
And hopefully, there'll be more to come, we'll see.
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