Top Retellings of Classic Tales

This is not happening…

It can’t be. I wrote a piece today for one of my publishers on what it has been like to go from a bookseller to a bestseller. One year ago, I was shelving books, arranging displays, dusting a bookstore, and writing in the mornings and on my lunch breaks. WOOL 5 hadn’t been written yet. I was just wrapping up the rough draft of WOOL 4. Cut to a year later.


Ridley Scott and Steve Zaillian option the film rights. 20 foreign countries pick up WOOL. Random House in the UK and Australia. #1 on Amazon. #11 on the New York Times list. It just doesn’t make any sense. And then this, which I think may be the most surreal event in a long line of surreal events. This was just Tweeted by an Australian bookseller:



What? Really? I have to somehow process this? Because it doesn’t compute.

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Published on November 30, 2012 21:04
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message 1: by [deleted user] (new)
Dec 04, 2012 10:37AM

How cool is that???? ALL of it is so cool!! Can't wait for the MOVIES!! Yes, that's a plural!!


message 2: by [deleted user] (new)
Dec 04, 2012 12:05PM

Your words resonate . . . across the worlds.


message 3: by [deleted user] (last edited Dec 04, 2012 01:57PM) (new)
Dec 04, 2012 12:17PM

And the silos, especially with the long winding staircase depicted in those German ads and sites, are perfect movie settings. Fifty buried skyscrapers . . . in a post-apocalyptic wasteland? Ridley Scott probably envisioned the sets by the end of the first book, scripted scenes by the fifth. With a diverse, interesting cast of human characters, a mass migration from the silos to our imaginings . . .


message 4: by Msmerricat (new)
Dec 05, 2012 07:31AM

Msmerricat I picked up a print copy as a Christmas gift. Just posted your Blog on my facebook page. Congratulations on all your successes! And Ridley Scott? o.m.g.


message 5: by Shawn (new)
Dec 06, 2012 08:30AM

Shawn Holy cow! That is such awesome awesome news, Hugh. Can't wait to see the movie!


message 6: by James (new)
Dec 08, 2012 08:02AM

James Larranaga You deserve success and inspire all of us writers! As Yoda once said to a struggling Luke Skywalker... "you must unlearn what you have learned. Do or do not...there is no try."

You just did it. You wrote whenever and wherever you could and the world discovered you. The key is to write and set your ideas free to go into the world.

A lot of people try to write a book. You Did it.


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