Chuck Wendig

Early life

Wendig grew up in New Hope, Pennsylvania. He studied English and religion at Queens University of Charlotte and graduated in 1998. After working various odd jobs and publishing early works under the name C.D. Wendig and C. David Wendig, he became a full-time freelance author writing under the name Chuck Wendig.

Game writing

Before writing fiction professionally, Wendig worked as a freelance RPG writer for over a decade. Wendig has contributed over two million words to the pen-and-paper roleplaying game industry. He has worked as a writer and developer for roleplaying games, contributing to many White Wolf projects from 2002 to 2011, including Hunter: The Vigil (2008). He has also contributed numerous essays to The Escapist.

Wendig is part of the advisory board of Storium, an online storytelling game by Protagonist Labs that launched a successful Kickstarter campaign and raised over $250,000.

Screenwriting

Wendig co-wrote the Emmy-nominated interactive transmedia project Collapsus with Lance Weiler.

Along with writing partner Weiler, Wendig was selected for the 2010 Sundance Screenwriter's Lab for their feature film HiM. HiM is being produced by Ted Hope, Christine Vachon, and Anne Carey. His short film, Pandemic 41.410806, -75.654259, co-written and directed by Weiler, was selected for the 2011 Sundance Short Film Program. At one point, Wendig and Weiler were also developing television pilot for TNT with Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, but the network decided to pass.

He also contributed to David Cronenberg's transmedia production Body/Mind/Change, in which Weiler served as Creative Director.

Early novels

Wendig's first short story collection, Irregular Creatures, was published in January 2011.

In November 2011 followed Wendig's debut novel, Double Dead, published by Abaddon Books as part of its shared-world series Tomes of the Dead. Bad Blood, a sequel novella, was published in May 2012. The books were later collected as The Complete Double Dead, released in February 2016.

Wendig participated in the Evil Hat Productions Kickstarter, which raised money for a trilogy of novels penned by Wendig based on the Spirit of the Century RPG game. After a successful campaign, he went on to release Dinocalypse Now in 2012 and Beyond Dinocalypse in 2013. While slated to write the third and final volume of the Dinocalypse trilogy, Dinocalypse Forever, Wendig was unable finish novel due to other commitments and was replaced by novelist Carrie Harris.

For Abaddon, he also penned Unclean Spirits, out in May 2013, the first installment of the Gods and Monster series.

Miriam Black and Mookie Pearl

The first novel in Wendig's Miriam Black series, Blackbirds, features a girl who can see the death of anyone she touches. It was published in April 2012 by Angry Robot Books. It was followed by a sequel, Mockingbird, in August 2012. Also from Angry Robot, Wendig released The Blue Blazes in May 2013, the first novel in a new urban fantasy series following Mookie Pearl. The third book in the Miriam Black series, The Cormorant, was published in December 2013.

The Miriam Black books were optioned as a television series by Starz in 2014, to be developed by John Shiban, writer and producer of Breaking Bad and The X-Files, with a writers' room already set up. Wendig announced on his blog in November 2015 that Starz was no longer developing the adaptation.

In October 2014, Saga Press bought six books in Wendig's Miriam Black series, including the first three novels, previously published by Angry Robot Books. The first three books, Blackbirds, Mockingbird, and The Cormorant were re-published with new covers in 2015. Thunderbird and The Raptor & The Wren, books four and five respectively, will follow in 2017, with the sixth and final book, Vultures, to be tentatively published in 2018.

In October 2015, Wendig re-released The Blue Blazes, as well as self-publishing a sequel, The Hellsblood Bride, after contract disputes with previous publisher Angry Robot. He has stated that a third book, possibly titled A Sky Born Black or The Skyborn Bane might someday be published, should the first two books do well or be picked up by a publisher. However, Wendig said the first two books stand alone and a third book is not necessary to conclude the story.

Atlanta Burns and The Heartland trilogy

Shotgun Gravy, a young adult novella following Atlanta Burns, described as "Veronica Mars on Adderall," was self-published by Wendig in 2011. Wendig ran a successful Kickstarter campaign during February 2012 to publish Bait Dog, a follow-up novel to Shotgun Gravy, raising $6,800, more than twice the goal. Bait Dog was self-published in 2012, and was later acquired along with Shotgun Gravy by Amazon Skyscape, and republished as Atlanta Burns in January 2015. The second book in the Atlanta Burns series, The Hunt, was published in February 2016.

In July 2013, Skyscape launched Wendig's new young adult dystopian "cornpunk" trilogy, starting with Under the Empyrean Sky. It was followed by a sequel in July 2014, called Blightborn. The Heartland trilogy concluded in July 2015 with The Harvest.

Star Wars

It was announced in March 2015 that Wendig would write the flagship Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens novel, titled Star Wars: Aftermath, to be published in September 2015. The book would be the first in a trilogy of new canonical Star Wars novels published by Del Rey, bridging the gap between Return of the Jedi and the new Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens. Del Rey books later revealed that Wendig would be writing the last two books of the trilogy, Aftermath: Life Debt and Aftermath: Empire's End, tentatively scheduled for summer 2016 and 2017, respectively. Wendig's involvement with the books came after asking to write a Star Wars licensed novel on Twitter in September 4, 2014. He was approached by LucasBooks in New York Comic Con later that year, after seeing his tweet and reading his novel Under the Empyrean Sky. Aftermath was published exactly a year later, on September 4, 2015, and debuted at #4 on both The New York Times Best Seller list and the USA Today's best seller list.

Aftermath invited controversy for its inclusion of a gay man as a lead character.

Zer0es

August 2015 saw the publication of Zer0es, Wendig's new cyber-thriller from HarperVoyager. Invasive, a new novel set in the same world as Zer0es that takes place after the events of the book, is scheduled to be published in Fall of 2016.

Comics

In 2015, Archie Comics announced a new comic series written by Wendig and Adam Christopher, featuring a new version of their superhero The Shield.

Wendig was chosen in October 2015 as the writer of new Marvel ongoing comic book series Hyperion, based on the version of the character that appeared in Jonathan Hickman's run on Avengers, alongside artist Nik Virella.

During the ComicsPRO 2016 annual meeting, Marvel Comics announced a five-issue comic book adaptation of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, written by Wendig and illustrated by Luke Ross, launching on June 2016.

Blog and writing advice

Wendig has run his blog Terribleminds since 2000, where he dispenses regular writing advice. Much of his writing advice has been collected in his self-published e-books or his book The Kickass Writer, published in 2013 by Writer's Digest Books.

Personal life

He currently lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, his wife's son, and two dogs.

Reception

Aftermath debuted at #4 on The New York Times Best Seller list, and #4 on USA Today's best seller list.

Wendig was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2013.