For those readers who are fans of Stuart Gibbs, 2025 will be an awesome year for releases! March 4^th  marked the first of 4 releases with Spy Ski School the Graphic Novel (the 4^th of the series in graphic novel format). As we go through the year, we’ll also see All Ears (FunJungle Book 9) release on May 13^th and the first graphic novel format of Moon Base Alpha; Space Case scheduled for Aug 4^th and Spy School Blackout on October 7, 2025. These releases are only a small testament to Gibb’s long list of successes. Fun fact –  he’s authored 5 separate bestselling middle grade series: Spy School, FunJungle, Charlie Thorne, Moon Base Alpha and The Last Musketeer.

Aside from his success as an author, Stuart’s resume also represents various work experiences, including a field biologist, screenwriter, columnist, and novelist. Numerous of his past interviews touch on Stuart’s desire to be an author since childhood, even having the idea for Spy School in elementary school after seeing a James Bond movie. When asked how he ended up studying biology in college instead of writing. He responded, “I had found a literary agent before I graduated high school. He wasn’t able to sell anything of mine (because it wasn’t good enough for publication yet) but he did give me a great piece of advice. He told me that I didn’t need to study writing because I already knew how to write, so I ought to study something that interested me. In addition, I really only knew how one person had become an author: Michael Crichton, whose books I loved. He had gone to medical school and written books on the side. I figured that was how you did it. You picked a job in one field and wrote books on the side until you got published. I was actually pre-med for two days, but I realized relatively quickly that I was far more interested in biology (particularly field biology) than medicine.”

Because he has such a varied list of writing experiences in his repertoire, screenwriter, children’s author, and columnist, I asked which has been his favorite and why.

He excitedly explained that “Being an author is easily my favorite. Screenwriting could be fun, but you can be very successful at that and still rarely have a project get made, which was always frustrating. When I write a book under contract, though, it’s pretty much guaranteed to come out. That’s great – but the even better parts of the job have been getting to work with so many great people in the publishing business, getting to meet so many wonderful fans, and getting to meet – and become friends with – so many incredible fellow authors.” Stuart mentioning fans, led me to wonder what feedback from young readers has had the most impact on your work and how his own children have influenced him. He earnestly answered “I was really surprised by how much my readers responded to the potential for romance in my books. I get more mail about that than anything else. So it seemed that I needed to discuss relationships and romance more in the books. When my kids were younger, they would eagerly discuss book ideas with me and help me plan out action sequences when we were on vacation. Now, sadly, they have aged out of that. But we still discuss ideas on occasion.”

In celebration of his newest release, I noted that adapting his wildly popular and bestselling Spy School series into the beloved graphic novel format seemed like a natural progression. Reflecting on this, he offered insight into the possibility of unforeseen challenges or outcomes of taking on this challenge by relating the shift in writing he chose to make.  He said, “Given its visual style, I feel that the storytelling in a graphic novel is closer to a movie than a chapter book. So I decided to write screenplay versions of the graphic novels, in the same way that I would have written film adaptations. And I have been lucky to have an exceptionally talented artist in Anjan Sarkar who can then take those scripts and do such an incredible job translating them to the page.”

As a follow-up, I asked if, as he developed these graphic novel adaptations, he was tempted to change things up with the storyline. The simple answer was, “When I write the books, I use a lot of what I learned as a screenwriter. I try to create stories that are plotted in the exact same way that I would have plotted a movie. I do have to make changes in converting the stories to graphic novels. For instance, I have to cut down the dialogue and show more than I tell. But the stories themselves remain awfully close to the original books.”

As I always do, I had to ask if Stuart has any projects in the works for the future that might surprise us. He teases “I still have to keep much of this under wraps, but I am actually collaborating with the CIA on a new project. Hopefully, I will be able to share more details soon!” Now that’s a cliffhanger that will keep us all on watch!