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Future Afghanistan school site - "Before"

Finished Afghanistan school - "After"

For the First Time Ever, Penguin Group (USA) Has Built a School, Grades One Through Six, Honoring American Booksellers, Librarians, and Educators Who Supported Khaled Hosseini's #1 New York Times-Bestselling and Internationally Acclaimed Novels, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns.

New York, New York, November 19, 2008 . . . Penguin Group (USA), a member of the Penguin Group, one of the world's largest English-language consumer trade book publishers, is proud to announce that it has built a primary school in Afghanistan, in partnership with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the United States Association for UNHCR. The school is located in Arababshirali, roughly 150 miles from Kabul, in Kunduz Province. The school, which recently opened its doors to 270 students, grades one through six, is a tribute to American booksellers, librarians, and educators who supported Khaled Hosseini's #1 New York Times-bestselling and internationally acclaimed novels, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, published by Riverhead Books, an award-winning and critically acclaimed imprint of Penguin Group (USA).

In 2001, while still a practicing internist, Khaled Hosseini began writing his first novel, The Kite Runner. Two years later, it was published in hardcover by Riverhead Books, and followed by a #1 New York Times-bestselling trade paperback edition a year later. It has since become a critically acclaimed international bestseller, published in forty-eight countries, with more than 6.75 million copies shipped to date in the U.S. market alone. It has also been credited with leading readers far and wide to a heightened consciousness about Afghanistan, its culture, and its people.

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One of the most fascinating parts of writing fiction for me is hunting and gathering my research materials. There's a certain heft of materials that makes me feel ready to begin, a particular quantity of stuff spread around my office that signals the time to begin writing.

My husband calls this "clutter".

I call it "research".

I know other authors who work in monastic conditions, reading and making notes off site, then returning to a pristine desk to write. They need the clarity to focus. I need the chaos to create. They can work anywhere, while I need to return to my mess to hear my characters speak.

There's a particular order to my hunting and gathering - it's not random after all these years. First are the maps. I love maps, big maps, and will usually buy a big folding one of the area in question. I snag a few travel guides to that area, heavily post-it note and bookmark them, and grab some articles from online.

Dragonfire is interesting in this because the heroes have a backstory, often in a different location from the site of the book. It's usually also at a different point in time. Quinn, in Kiss of Fire, was strongly affected by an incident during the Albigensian crusade. Donovan, in Kiss of Fury, had a memory of his father joining the pirates in Tortuga. Erik, in Kiss of Fate, recalls his Viking roots, his time in early medieval England, and his lost love in the 18th century. (Erik required a lot of maps - I'm bracing myself for the other older Pyr, like Rafferty, who will probably give me a world tour.)