Dan Wells (author)

Daniel Andrew "Dan" Wells (born March 4, 1977) is an American horror and science fiction author. A Utah native, he currently resides in North Salt Lake, Utah, US.

Early life

Wells wrote his first stories based on the Choose Your Own Adventure series when he was in second grade. He followed up with several novellas, a serial and a series of comic books when he was in high school. He finished his first serious novel when he was 22. He is a graduate of Brigham Young University, with a bachelor's degree in English, emphasizing writing and editing.

He is the brother of author Robison Wells.

Career

Wells is best known as the author of I Am Not a Serial Killer, a horror novel published in the United States by Tor Books. It has been released in the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, and Taiwan.

He also is one of the four authors (including Mary Robinette Kowal, Brandon Sanderson, and Howard Tayler) who contribute to the podcast Writing Excuses.

You can contact Dan through his assistant Kenna Blaylock at danwellsassistant@gmail.com

Critical reception

Horror writer F. Paul Wilson described I Am Not a Serial Killer as a "dazzling, unputdownable debut" with a protagonist "as chilling as he is endearing." Young adult fiction author Jack Heath praised it as having "plenty of thematic merit", and noted that "all the characters are richly identifiable, including–and I can't stress enough how impressed I was by this–the serial killer...Wells is a first-time novelist, and yet he's already created a sympathetic villain, the holy grail of thriller writing."

In 2011, Wells was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His novella, The Butcher of Khardov, received a nomination for the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 2014.