Ten Questions
1. Which book changed your life? In some way, all of them do. Most recently, it has been The Age of Absurdity by Michael Foley. As soon as I finished the work, I flipped to the first page and read it again. 2. Where do you write best? In darkness and in silence. The world I create needs to be the only one that exists. When I can place myself inside the mind of my protagonist, I can see and sense what’s around them, and then the writing simply flies. 3. Who would you like to be stuck in a lift with? My wife. We have a habit of making the absolute best of any situation. She would smile and say: “Hey, it’s like camping.” 4. What are you most proud of writing? A letter to my dad on Father’s Day when I was in high school. I remember him coming to me with tears in his eyes and wrapping his arms around me. It was the first time I felt how great it can be to truly express myself with the written word in a way that I probably couldn’t with the spoken word. 5. What keeps you awake at night? My dog. We tried to train her to sleep in a crate. Turns out she’s better at training us than we are at training her. We got a king-size bed, but she still pushes us to the edge. 6. What novel would you give a child to introduce them to literature? I would hand them something that matches their wild imaginations. Fantasy, science fiction, magic, and mystery. 7. What is the last thing that you read that made you laugh out loud? Probably the news story about a paralysed man who was able to move his hand with his thoughts, a breakthrough in simulated spinal cords. Laughter, for me, is just as often a response to delight and surprise as it is to finding something humorous. I laugh a lot.
8. What book will you remember in 10 years’ time?
The Second Machine Age by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee. It will seem eerily prescient in 10 years, and anyone who reads it will marvel at how much it got right. 9. What is the best piece of writerly advice you’ve received? It came from Caroline Todd. She said to “stop thinking about writing, stop talking about writing, stop saying you’re going to become a writer one day, and just write”. 10. Which word do you most overuse? “Swivel”. But, could anyone blame me? • Hugh Howey’s latest novel is Sand (Century, R285)