The first time I flew overseas was in high school. My mom chaperoned a school trip to England and France. We did all the tourist things, saw some cathedrals, ate strange food, walked around museums, had too much to drink for the first time. Traveling to Europe felt exotic. The only other times I’d left the country were trips to the Bahamas and a cruise that took us through Jamaica and Mexico.

When I moved onto my first boat in my early 20s, I started spending a lot more time in the Caribbean and Bahamas. My passport filled with stamps: Cuba, Columbia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Barbados, Dominican Republic, St. Barths, BVIs, and a dozen others. I spent most of my years as a yacht captain living “abroad,” but it was really the islands not that far away. To me, the rest of the world was a mystery. I’d never been to Asia or Africa. I’d only seen glimpses of London and Paris as a teenager. The entire Southern Hemisphere was beyond my knowing.

Friends and family thought I was some kind of globe-trotter because of my yachting years, and it did feel like I’d had an adventurous life. By the age of 30, I’d visited dozens of countries, living in some of them for a year at a time. I’d become a professional vagabond. But by the age of 32, I was retired from yachting and living in the remote mountains of North Carolina, working at a small independent bookshop, and writing stories as a hobby. My income at the bookstore was $300 per week, before taxes. I lived in a 850 square foot house with my girlfriend and our dog. The idea of saving up enough money to fly to Europe was bonkers to me. My money was going toward paying off my student loans, the only debt I still had in life. Very slowly, I was building up an emergency savings fund a few dollars at a time.

I’d written five books by this point — the Molly Fyde trilogy, Half Way Home, and The Hurricane. I’d also published a novelette called The Plagiarist. Each was self-published, with my own terrible cover art. The seventh thing I tossed online was another novelette called WOOL. I charged 99 cents for the ebook and $4.99 for the print-on-demand paperback, which was just 60 pages long. I then went back to writing my next novel.

Within two months, the sales of that small seventh publication was bringing in more than my bookstore job. Another month after that, and WOOL was making more in a month than I would normally make in a year.

Things got weirder, quickly. After having long given up on landing a literary agent, I suddenly started hearing from them, begging me to be their client. One stood out among the rest: Kristin Nelson of Nelson Literary Agency. Working out of Denver, she had an outsiders’ view of the publishing world, but all the insider connections and knowledge of the best in the biz. She blew me away with her honesty. “You’re doing better without a publisher than you probably would with one,” she wrote in an email. “But I can help you close foreign deals you aren’t even thinking of, and I can hook you up with a Hollywood co-agent to help you option your work.”

Signing with Kristin was one of the best professional decisions of my entire life, up there with deciding to self-publish. While I continued to write and release my own works, Kristin started bringing in foreign offers for translation. I think Brazil was one of the first deals we made. The advance I got there was more than I dreamed of getting from a US publisher. I want to say it was in the $60,000 range. Insane income for someone who was making less than half that as a bookseller. Germany also came calling, another huge book market. This time with a six-figure deal. By this time, I was making six figures every month from my Amazon sales, so most of my income was from the self-publishing side of things. But Kristin was knocking home run after home run. And then, just as she’d promised, doors in Hollywood began to open up.

“Ridley Scott and Steve Zaillian are interested.”

Now, if you were a sci-fi author making a dream list of partners in Hollywood, this duo would be right up there at the top. WOOL was about to go out to auction, but Ridley and Steve wanted to prevent the price from getting too steep, so they issued an ultimatum: take their offer and don’t go to auction, or go to auction without them. There were other parties already in talks with us who assured me they would get this film made, and looking back at their track records now, I think they were right. A WOOL feature probably would’ve come out in 2014 or 2015 had I gone that route. I’m glad I didn’t.

Instead of taking a higher chance of getting something made, I went with the guarantee of having Ridely Scott’s name attached to my novel. I’d already hit the New York Times bestseller list, and now Kristin had that, plus a film deal with a living legend, to take to foreign markets. (We were getting offers from US publishers as well, but the amounts they were offering weren’t worth giving up the digital rights, and print-only deals were off the table, we were told).

After signing with Ridley and Steve, I had my first taste of corporate air travel. I’d never flown business class before, which I assume is the norm. Most people never do. I never thought I would. I was a fish-out-of-water. No idea what to do with the hot towel, no idea if the food or drinks were included, what to ask for, what to expect, how to operate the seat or the table or any of the little compartments. I watched in absolute horror as a gentleman in the first row immediately went to sleep, skipping the meal and what I soon learned were free drinks. How could you sleep through a once-in-a-lifetime experience like this, I naively thought to myself.

I was picked up at the airport by someone holding my name on a placard, like a scene from a movie. They took me to a hotel someone else had booked and paid for, and the next day I was on a real Hollywood studio lot, brushing past actors I recognized, meeting with the head of the studio, talking to producers. I never felt like I belonged there (I still don’t). I felt like a tourist. Even with all the sailing I’d done, the near-death experiences at sea, working for the rich and famous on mega-yachts, I have never lost the deep-rooted feeling of being a kid raised on a farm in North Carolina, chucking hay bales and climbing on top of grain silos. It’s my core identity, and I think it always will be.

It’s important for me to remind myself how unusual overseas travel is for most people, and should’ve been for me. Otherwise I might get inured to it. Especially as my social circle filled up with people who fly to Japan to go skiing for the weekend, or head to Ibiza every summer. That wasn’t me then, and it isn’t me now. Back in 2011, in my early 30s, I hadn’t been overseas since that high school field trip with my mom. So it was a big deal when I signed with a publisher in the UK and they wanted to fly me over for a book tour.

By now, Kristin and I had done deals with five or six foreign countries for translation. But signing with Random House in the UK was different. Besides some spelling changes and a round of suggestions from my new editor Jack Fogg, the book being published there was the one I’d written and self-published while working in a bookstore in North Carolina. I’d be able to do press without a translator. My novel was going to be not just shelved in bookstores, but featured in the windows. Tube stations were plastered with the amazing new cover art they’d created for the book, the iconic red one that would eventually grace a US edition and several other overseas editions.

That flight to London was the most pampered I’d ever felt in my life. British Airways business class. A seat that turned into a bed. Delicious food. A huge screen for watching movies. I got a little sleep, but I was too excited and didn’t want to miss anything. I wanted every course. Besides the flight home, I figured I’d never travel like this again. That’s been my attitude this entire adventure: today is the last time for any of this.

Arriving in London felt like the culmination of a very long journey of wanting to be an author someday — a dream I had when I was twelve. Hitting 30 without having finished my first novel, I’d almost given up. I was reviewing books as a side hustle, going to book fairs, interviewing authors, thinking this was as close as I’d ever get to my dream. But then Molly Fyde captured my imagination and I wrote a trilogy of books I remain proud of today. Then WOOL went viral against all odds. Now I was walking down the high streets of London and my book was being featured everywhere. I signed hundreds of copies. Queues of readers at every bookstore. I saw people reading the book in public. Little did I know that this wasn’t the end of my writing adventure there in London, but the beginning of something even bigger. The left side of a crazy London-based pair of bookends.

The foreign deals kept coming in. I think we’ve done deals with nearly 50 countries now, and for more than just WOOL. I was flown to Brazil, Germany, Taiwan, Italy, France, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Finland, the Netherlands, Ireland, back to the UK, Poland, and a few I’m forgetting. Ridley and Steve had scripts written and directors attached, so I flew back to LA a few times. I flew to NY to meet with publishers and ended up doing the first print-only deal with a major publishing house, a deal that gave me the rights back after only a few years (we’ve since sold the rights two more times and will be able to get the rights back once again). I went on an exhilarating and exhausting US book tour. I even started sleeping through entire flights, finding a connection with that man I’d watched pass out over a year prior.

The feature film never materialized. Things looked good on the second round, but an actor broke his arm on another project, delaying that shoot, which meant the director search had to start from scratch. After five years of this, I asked for the rights back and was lucky to have a great relationship with the producers, who agreed to let it go. This almost never happens after a huge development investment. Were it not for their generosity, the deals with AMC and Apple may never have happened.

And this is where London reenters the picture. The first place I landed overseas as a teenager. The first place I saw WOOL featured in bookstores. After years of working on scripts, writers’ rooms, and miracle after miracle, a TV show based on that little novelette was about to start filming just north of London in the small town of Hoddesdon. Five years ago, I walked on the set of SILO for the first time. The stairs were still under construction, just a web of i-beams and the first few wooden treads installed. The cast was just starting to arrive and rehearse. The entire project vibrated with excitement, but also uncertainty. How would it all come together? How would it be received? Apple had already created some hits with Ted Lasso and The Morning Show, but it wasn’t known as the sci-fi powerhouse that we know it for today. Soon, all that would change, and SILO would be a large part of it.

Despite the pandemic and a writers’ strike, the first two seasons were a spectacular success, one of the most-viewed shows on AppleTV when they released. Shay and I came back to London for the premiere, one of the highlights of this adventure. With the success of the first two seasons, we got green lights to tell the rest of the story. Last year, season three wrapped. Today, I was on set for the final day of shooting for season four. The final day of filming for this series, period.

Harriet Walter shot her last scene as Walker, and as I sat behind the monitor and watched, tears streamed down my cheeks. Not just for her powerful performance — even though that was more than enough — but because of the journey she’s been on and has taken us on, all the cast and crew. I wasn’t the only one crying. Folks, this set was special. Everyone who worked on this show has said the same thing, over and over, effusively: it’s the best thing they’ve worked on. The tightest crew. The most incredible and gracious cast. Top to bottom, the most likable, lovable, ego-less people in the industry. It starts with Graham Yost and Rebecca Fergusson, two of the most beautiful souls I’ve ever had the pleasure to know, much less work with. Their spirit set the tone. And the people AMC and Apple assembled lived up to their standard and then some.

Over lunch we boogied in the rain to some live DJ-ing from a crew member, reminisced over the shared journey, and tried not to think about all of this ending in just a few hours. But then it was time for Rebecca’s final shot (these scenes were not shot in order, so no spoilers here about when Juliette’s journey might end). And it was during this scene that the mood behind the cameras became truly surreal. People began pouring in. Usually there’s a handful of people back there, but soon it was fifty or sixty. Cast members who had already wrapped earlier in the week. Common (Sims), Shane McRae (Knox), Remmie Milner (Shirley), and others. Executives from AMC and Apple showed up, none of whom had ever been to a series wrap before, despite making hit after hit over the years. They flew all the way from LA to be here. Together, we’d been on this journey the longest, back to doing initial deals, before writing rooms were even assembled.

Everyone kept asking me how I was feeling, and the honest truth is this: I still feel like a tourist. Like a visitor. This show is so much bigger than the books, than the initial ideas. It’s hundreds of creatives pouring their energies together, all pulling the same direction. It’s the fan reception making it one of Apple’s biggest hits. It’s the readers who powered this all from the beginning. It’s everyone who ever wrote a kind review or told a friend about this story. It’s my friends and family who believed in my weird little hobby from the beginning. It’s my mom who made books such a big part of my life and my sister who has poured love and faith into me for as long as we’ve been adults. It’s Kristin, my co-agents, and the producers and executives who saw something worthy in these works.

Fifteen years. That’s how long it’s been from the first film deal to wrapping the full story we wanted to tell here on sets spread across London. Most authors never get a chance like this, and I understand and appreciate that. If I could snap my finger, I’d make it so everyone got to experience this. I want that so badly, for every artist to get as lucky as I’ve been. Maybe that’s why I feel obligated to soak up every moment like it’s the last. To not appreciate this, to not be overcome with gratitude, would be to waste it all.

Even though this part of my adventure is coming to a close, wrapping on shooting is only part of it. We still have two seasons of Silo to look forward to watching together! I think the season three release date should be announced before too long. And the wait for season four will be the shortest interim so far for the show. Many more happy tears of gratitude to come. But for now, this has been the perfect bookend here in London, where my publishing journey took an unexpected turn thanks to Random House, and where the Silo stories truly came alive under the stewardship of AMC and Apple. A kid from North Carolina who never dreamt of half of this . . . and is overflowing with gratitude.

Thank you, all of you.

Now for a visual trip down memory lane…

This is me working on one of my first novels. On the back porch of our small cabin at Pleasant Grove Campground.The first book event I ever had was a reading at my sister’s favorite bar in Charleston, SC. Opening for Sick Tyte Click (best band in the multi-verse, no kidding).My cover art was usually some kind of practical effect that I then photographed. Here I’m working on WOOL Part 2.For the cover of The Hurricane, I made a storm out of wire and shot it from above. This was self-publishing back in the day, kids.Here I am taking orders from my website. I used to sign books and ship them to readers anywhere in the world. It started innocently enough, but quickly became a full-time job on top of all the writing duties.Shooting the original cover of Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace.The Molly Fyde series remains one of my most ambitious and rewarding undertakings. No joke, this was my USPS runs TWICE A WEEK! The ladies at the counter all knew me and went from dreading seeing me to fighting over who got to help me. It would take hours, and they said it really made the day go by faster. I’d sit at the counter and answer emails or even work on a novel.This was my writing group in North Carolina, the High Country Writers. I was the young whipersnapper. And the only sci-fi writer. Nobody liked my stuff, but they tolerated me pretty well.The best thing about writing sci-fi is you get invited to nerd-fests and meet the coolest people. If you don’t know, Adam Savage is the biggest-hearted and most lovely human imaginable.Donning a spacesuit for a cover shoot of my old college magazine.Pretty crazy to be celebrated by CofC, considering I still haven’t graduated. I think I’m six credits short!One of the times I hit the NYT bestseller list, I was at a big SFF book conference. I remember introducing myself to Scalzi in the lobby, and he was like, “I know who you are. You’re the Wool guy.” By the way, there’s only one Scalzi. The best of the best.It was at ChiCon that I met John Joseph Adams for the first time; it would prove to be a very fruitful friendship and partnership. We’ve edited seven books together, and he’s published a ton of my short stories and acquired several of my novels for what is now Harper Collins. Here we are with some up-and-comer named Brandon Sanderson. (A note about Brandon: nobody, and I mean nobody, loves his fans more than this guy. He’s a jewel).My Italian publishers! One of the joys of this adventure has been meeting book peeps all around the world. I have the best publishers in every market, no joke.Signing the German editions for Piper, my German publisher.Random House UK created what quickly became an iconic set of covers, which we still pay homage to today with the most recent editions. They really set the standard.My Korean publishers! They make the most beautiful editions, inside and out.I love all my publishers, but Actes Sud in France has a very special place in my heart. They welcomed me like family and have treated these books like literature, rather than genre pulp. France is a special market for books. I owe them a lot.This is insane. The Watertown library was circulating the OG paperbacks, which can now sell for a thousand dollars. Readers had no idea and kept returning them. Uhhh, I would’ve paid the late fees.I’ve had the pleasure to spend some time with George at several conferences, and this man deserves every good thing the universe can throw at him. An absolute legend.Shay and me at the Silo premiere in London. This remains one of the best days of my career.Getting ready to be sent out to clean. On the set for season 2.To be honest, life in the mines isn’t so bad. Dressing up for season 3.On the red carpet with two badass women.Making up answers to questions at the Silo premiere.Knox and Shirley on the set for the season 4 wrap.Common is seriously the coolest and most talented person I’ve ever known. Lyrics flow through him like it’s nothing. I’ll never be half the writer this man is, and he genuinely loves his fans like no other.Walker’s workshop is one of the coolest sets ever.The greatest character I ever created played by one of the greatest humans I’ve ever known. Bex, thank you for everything.The last day of shooting for season 4. So lucky to have my soul mate in my life during this incredible ride. No one celebrates my wins quite like she does.This place will be broken down. Something new will be built here. But what we created will live forever.Then end. For now…

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