Hugh Howey

Bestselling author of Wool and other books. Currently sailing around the world.

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Apocalyptic Love Story

So this is how my NaNoWriMo is going. I set out to tell a romance novel, and I got a few chapters in when all the writing about strolls on beaches filled my head with sand, and then I found myself launching into SAND for some reason, which led to 12,000+ words rattling off, and now it looks like I’m writing this story for my NaNo, which is fine but not what I set out to do.

Oh, and the first eight or so chapters of SAND are totally clean enough to share right now. I just feel like it might spoil the read for later. I’ll keep mulling it over.

Also: Amsterdam has been the best writing city every. And no, not because of the brownies. I’m flying out tomorrow having sampled nothing but the occasional secondhand whiff on the streets. It’s the ease of transportation, the perfect hotel room, the cold and the rain, the great (non-smoking) cafes, and the awesome people. I could have a helluva writing career if I lived here. Now it’s off to Rome, where I hope I can be half as productive.

8 replies to “Apocalyptic Love Story”

is it about two people living close to a beach whose lives become upended when newly free silo dwellers invade looking for a place to live?

Exciting! I’ve been wanting to do NaNoWriMo for years, but always had excuses why I couldn’t. This year, my friend talked me into joining her in the adventure and I’m loving it so far. It’s hectic, but I’m learning a lot from the experience and I’m enjoying my novel so far. We’ll see how I feel in a couple weeks.

SNAP!!! I got 1500 words into my intended nano and then a different story popped into my head and I was bursting to write that, instead.

I gave it a placeholder name, based on what I thought the outcome would be – “Junk” – and now I’m nearly 10k words into it, the name has oddly become relevant and I think I’ll keep it.

AND no zombies in this one! Problem is I don’t think it will go for 50k words, maybe half that, so I may be forced to write a sequel. Either way, my first foray into non “fantastical” apocalyptic fiction seems to be quite good fun to write :)

I switched stories too. Went from working on that funky dystopian ROCKS to a brand new courtroom drama/thriller I’m calling DAY ZERO. Suddenly the words are flowing.

And I published my latest Silo story on November 1, too, so November is looking good!

How ironic that I started WOOL in Rome, read it through Florence and Cinque Terra, finished it in Lucerne, and will be visiting Amsterdam in a few weeks.

Keep up the good work!

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