About Robison Wells: Writing

Written By Robison Wells

I had never wanted to be a writer. In school, I did not like English—either writing or reading. This was the direct opposite of my brother, the inestimable Dan Wells (an amazing writer of the I Am Not a Serial Killer books, as well as currently working as VP of Narrative for Dragonsteel, Brandon Sanderson’s company.)

Dan wanted to be an author from the second grade on, and he would always drag me to the library with him. That is one thing that makes me very grateful for my gifted program at West High School: we would take the city bus across Salt Lake and we’d end up at the main SLC library at least twice a week, if not more often. I was still not a writer by a long shot, but I did develop a love for a certain kind of books: those about miniature wargames and model railroads. There was one book on wargaming that I checked out and renewed so often that it might have well just been my book.

Anyway, this is how everything progressed until I got to college. I remember taking a history class where we talked about the Battle of Stalingrad. (If you’re not familiar with the battle, it was the bloodiest in all of World War II, fought between the Soviets and the Germans and it was so dangerous to be out in the open that, in a few instances, troops would tunnel underground from basement to basement to advance.) I thought this was too good of an idea to give up on.

So I went to my brother and said “Here is this idea for a book—you should write it.” And he, being more seasoned in writer who heard these kinds of things all the time, said “Why don’t you write a couple of chapters and come down to my writing group and read it?” That writing group had five people, including one Brandon Sanderson. And yes, I fell in love with writing, but was terrible at it. But I learned quickly and at the end of the year I had one completely terrible fantasy novel.

ANYWAY, I then wrote a semi-autobiographical book about a little town I had lived in in New Mexico. The book, On Second Thought, was published by a small press in 2004. I put out two more books with them, Wake Me When It’s Over, and The Counterfeit. It wasn’t until 2011 that I was published in the national market, breaking out with my debut, Variant, in 2011. And, eight years later, with The Warning, I hit the New York Times bestseller list.

My books are:

Robison Wells
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