Copyright Hugh Howey 2012. All rights reserved.

. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Copyright Hugh Howey 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

WOOL by High Howey Format: eBook ISBN: 9781448150205 Imprint: Conerstone Digital Released in June, 2012 Reading Group Questions

1. Tell us how you feel about your self-publishing success story in three words? Dreams. Come. True. 2. How did you find the challenges and the benefits of self-publishing? How has the partnership with Random House assisted? The benefits of self-publishing seem to perfectly match the challenges, like the two go hand-in-hand. If it were easy, the satisfaction of success wouldn't be nearly as great. It's like climbing a mountain. You wear yourself out getting to the summit, and then you have this breathless, wheezy, dizzy high of accomplishment. Before waking up the next morning to a blank sheet of paper and the drive to do it all over again! As for the partnership with Random House, it's been an absolute dream. Working with dedicated and brilliant editors has taken the work to the next level. But it's the ability to reach more readers than ever before that really excites me. Random House has expressed a broad appreciation for the work and a strong commitment to launching the book in a big way. I couldn't have landed in more capable and expert hands. 3. Did you ever think this kind of success would come when you first put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard)? Never. I began writing simply to entertain my wife and a handful of friends. I'll never forget how difficult it was back then to convince even family members to give my works a go. The assumption seemed to be that if they knew the person creating the art, it must not be very good. Great works are made by people we have no contact with, hermits ensconced in lonely little cabins, right? They come from people who are inaccessible and who wear their pants differently. I think I believed this myself until recently. I understood what an uphill battle it would be to try and reach a wider audience, and so I never gave myself much of a chance, never even allowed myself to dream of something like this. Because of that, this journey has felt even more startling. The fact that strangers are now reading and enjoying my stories is unbelievable. It's far more than I ever imagined for myself. And then to

Copyright Hugh Howey 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

have someone like Ridley Scott come along and take interest in turning this into a film . . . one simply has to shake their head in wonder. 4. What is it like being the man on everyones lips at the moment? Has life changed much, and if so, how? It's surreal. Literally, as in, none of this feels real at all. It often feels like it's happening to someone else, and I'm just watching it unfold from a block away. The biggest change has been in my "day job." Instead of shelving books and dusting fixtures at the bookstore, I now spend my non-writing hours replying to e-mails and PR inquiries. The upgrade here is the ability to work in my underwear, something they severely frowned upon at my last job. 5. How long did it take you to write Wool? The original novelette (what has become Wool 1) was written over several weeks. It clocks in at 12,000 words, which doesn't quite qualify it as a novella. When the sales took off and reviewers began clamouring for more, I undertook the rest of the books, which took three months to write and revise. This was while I had a full-time job, which meant getting up at ridiculous hours in order to cram 6 to 8 hours of writing on top of everything else I had going on. My wife, to say the least, worried for my health. The fact that she's a psychologist should have probably given me pause, but I was too focused on writing at the time to make out what she was saying. 6. What do readers have in store for them with your next book? More surprises. My second-favourite thing in the entire world is a reader who thinks they know what's going on. My absolute favourite thing is that same reader a paragraph or two later. 7. Any other books in the making? A few, yeah! I have a zombie book releasing soon that's unlike anything else out there. It's a series of brief literary works told from the perspective of the infected. The events take place in New York City, a one-time home of mine. Living in lower Manhattan during the events of 9/11 left me with some demons I have yet to excise. I don't know that I ever will, but this zombie book is my attempt to deal with those events. It won't be an easy book to read. It certainly hasn't been an easy one to write. Once it's out, I'll return to the world of Wool to wrap up that saga. And then I have a new world to create called Sand. I think readers are going to really enjoy where that series takes them. It's bleak enough to make the world within the silo look like Shangri-La!

Author Q&A from Hugh Howey, author of Wool Available as an ebook June 2012 ISBN: 9781448150205 Imprint: Cornerstone Digital | Publisher: Random House Australia
Copyright Hugh Howey 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.