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For a film buff like James Dashner, receiving the Hollywood treatment for his best-selling action thriller "The Maze Runner" is another happy plot twist in a multiple-chaptered narrative journey.
The movie adaptation of the Utah writer's 2009 novel opens in wide release — including at Dashner's neighborhood movie house, South Jordan's The District — on Friday. Sharp-eyed viewers might catch the Utah writer's cameo appearance at the end of the movie. "Basically, I'm sitting at a table. I'm on screen for about 6 seconds," he says, then adds with the enthusiasm that's his trademark: "Luckily for me, I happened to be in a scene with an Oscar nominee, Patricia Clarkson."
Dashner's love of popular culture, which he shares in a weekly post about what he's reading and watching, has endeared him to millions of fans, who haved dubbed themselves "Dashner's Army."
"They love the series, but they also love that he has that crazy childlike imagination that teens have — he hasn't left that behind," says Krista Marino, Dashner's editor at Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children's Books.
His army of fans can expect to see a faithful film adaptation, as director Wes Ball consulted with the author throughout the process, updating him on casting choices and script changes, and then inviting him to visit the Louisiana set.
The movie includes every character and every major scene from the book. "There are lots of little changes, but nothing that's going to upset the fans too much," Dashner says. "I really want them to look at this as another way to experience the story for the first time."
Or as his literary agent says: Just consider the movie a $30 million advertisement for the four-book "The Maze Runner" series, which has now sold 6 million copies and been translated into 40 languages.
The movie also will draw attention to Dashner's "The Morality Doctrine" series, launched last year, about a teen gamer who pursues a deadly hacker in the VirtNet virtual world.
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The male energy of The Glade • "The Maze Runner" begins when Thomas — played by Dylan O'Brien from TV's "Teen Wolf" — finds himself in a utility elevator that has delivered him to The Glade, where a handful of boys are trying to solve the code hidden within an ever-changing maze. All of The Gladers' memories have been wiped clean; none of the boys knows why he is there.
The series relies on straightforward, direct storytelling to tell a fast-paced, high-stakes story set in a very compelling world, says Anne Jamison, associate professor of English at the University of Utah, who teaches a course about young-adult literature.
In a Glade populated with male characters and only one girl, the story minimizes romance, which sets it apart from others in the genre. " 'The Maze Runner' is able to reach an audience that is sick of love triangles or turned off by too much moody introspection," Jamison says. "But it doesn't alienate readers who do like those elements."
It's based on a dark scenario, but readers seem to respond to the story's dual themes of hope and loyalty. "James had a very hopeful vision for a desperate situation," Marino says. "Instead of kids turning on each other, he organized them. It's a lovely, hopeful outlook on life. In a very desperate time, you're helping each other."
Dashner adds: "These kids are ridiculous. They never give up, as one bad thing after another is thrown at them."
Some of Dashner's influences are obvious, from his love of Stephen King's novels to William Golding's "Lord of the Flies," Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game" and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. He says he learned about how to unfold a mystery through cliff-hangers from his weekly obsession with TV's "Lost."
And then there's the more obvious local influence of Utah's popular corn mazes. "Even though they creep me out, I love going to them," Dashner wrote in a recent blog post. "The corn grows really high and it's so easy to get lost inside of them. A maze is so metaphorical to our lives, don't you think? Not knowing what's around the corner, trying to find your way, feelings of uncertainty and fear, being short-sighted."
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Rejections paved the way to Hollywood • Just like a movie script, Dashner's personal story includes its own "Can-you-believe-it?" twist.
The father of four, now 41, used to have a serious, dependable job as an accountant. His imagination flourished in the kids' stories he wrote on the side, teaching himself about character and plot developments in the drafts he wrote at night and on weekends. Repeated rejections from publishers didn't stop him.
"I've literally never taken a writing class," Dashner says, but he always believed he could make it as a writer.
He was raised in a large family in a small town outside Atlanta and moved to Utah to attend Brigham Young University, where he met his wife, Lynette.
In the early 2000s, Dashner helped finance his first books, a middle-grade series about a character named Jimmy Fincher, which was Utah's Cedar Fort Publishing's foray into the young-adult genre. That led to the four-book "The 13th Reality" series, published by Shadow Mountain Press beginning in 2008, about Atticus Higginbottom, a picked-upon 13-year-old.
But his writing career really took off in June 2008 when he earned the book contract for "The Maze Runner." On Aug. 6, Dashner quit his day job. A couple of months later, in a symbolic gesture, he ripped up the letter he received from the state outlining the requirements to renew his CPA license.
Yet his background as an accountant has served him well in his writing life, revealed in Dashner's organized approach to the game of publication, as well as his humility about the current publicity juggernaut for the film. Even his "Maze Runner" characters display an analytical aptitude as they tackle the task of cracking the secrets of the maze.
For Dashner, his years of working with numbers provide a frame of reference. Another movie based on the second book in his series, "The Scorch Trials," is in pre-production, but whether it gets made depends on how much money "The Maze Runner" makes.
"There's the stress of wanting it to do well at the box office, but I've gotten pretty good at putting that aside and enjoying the ride," he says. "I will never take this for granted. I will never forget the years of rejection, the years of working and writing at the same time."
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Going Hollywood, via Austin • To understand the phenomenal popularity of "The Maze Runner" series, you have to appreciate Dashner's great timing. He inked his national book deal before the release of "The Hunger Games," but his series has benefited from comparisons to the success of that other post-apocalyptic YA franchise.
Sales built slowly at first, exploding in popularity over time through social-media buzz driven by teens and crossover readers. Thanks to the upcoming movie, over the past six months the series has broken sales records every week or so.
For civilians — accountants, say, or other nonwriters — it's easy to imagine that all it takes to prompt a call from Hollywood is to write a page-turner. That's simply not enough. "Hardly any books become movies, and even those that do are usually on a smaller level," Marino says.
And so this week, Dashner will travel across the country for a six-city press junket. His wife and children will join him in Austin, Texas, for a red-carpet premiere with the director. "With the movie stuff, they finally think I'm cool," Dashner says.
The movie is "Jurassic Park" scary, not horror-movie gory, Dashner says, yet he's planning to cover the eyes of his youngest, a 7-year-old son, during the darkest parts.
After the hype from the movie release dies down, Dashner knows what he'll be doing: hunkering down at the computer to draft new stories. When he hits a snag in his writing, he'll take a break to read another book or watch a movie. "It's important to me to just keep writing," he says.
"You make so much money, why do you keep writing books?" one of his nephews likes to ask. Dashner's answer is simple: " I get to do what I love for a living."
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'The Maze Runner'
The 20th Century Fox movie based on Utah writer James Dashner's 2009 novel opens in wide release on Friday, Sept. 19.