Hugh Howey

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

The Gift of Reading

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a post about how my ebooks could now be found in the Kindle Unlimited program. I said I would give away a 6-month subscription to Kindle Unlimited to five of my readers, and all they had to do to qualify was leave a comment on that blog post. Readers left dozens of comments. Actually, they left hundreds. Some shared stories about what their libraries meant to them growing up, others how they grew up poor but found adventures in whatever books they could find or…

Unlimited Reading

I grew up going to the library, because my family couldn’t afford my reading habit. Each week, I would leave with a stack of books, and I remember feeling like I was robbing the place. I couldn’t believe they let me just walk out with all those books! I had no concept of who was getting paid or how, or that authors were even people like my mom and dad. I just wanted books to read and lots of them. Libraries are still one of the best places to get…

Capturing the Complexity of my Characters

My first sweep through The Reader was a bit hurried; I was quite excited, as one might imagine. Here I was, holding a electronic gizmo from the future, reading about exploits the likes of which I’ve never encountered in fiction. The problem was, I read these accounts as if they were just exciting fiction, and that first pass missed something that I’m picking up on now. Just as in real life, there are few good guys and bad guys in Molly’s story. Most everyone falls somewhere in-between. That’s not to…

Two Huge Announcements

First, I worked all weekend to create a new website (this one!). Simple and clean with a breathtaking splash that changes as you surf. The focus, as always, will be the content. Molly Fyde, especially. All posts from the old blog will get moved over, and I’ll probably run both concurrently. If you prefer the look of the other site and the Blogger network, you can go there to read. This site will be a general locus for everything I’m working on, not just the Molly books. The second announcement…

The Impossible Map

I’ll never forget the day I showed Dr. Lisa Robinson, one of my astronomer friends at NASA, what has since become known as “The Impossible Map.” We were having lunch together in the cafeteria near KSC HQ (the hub of Kennedy Space Center’s inland industrial area) when I showed her The Reader for the first time. As I’ve said before, this project drove me batty from the first week, and I think Lisa was worried about her old friend. I was flipping through documents and talking excitedly about what I’d…