Culture

Thriller novelist began on Internet

By Li Jing (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-12 10:39

Xu Lei has set up a writing cooperative to help authors who are struggling alone with stories. [Zou Hong / China Daily]

A man dressed only in black edged his way onto the stage as music set the mood. It was enough for the audience to scream in a wild frenzy. This man, Xu Lei, is an author and a legend at the age of 28.

Not every best-selling novelist would like to promote his or her new book this way, but the mysterious atmosphere was just right for Xu, who is a rising star in the thriller novel genre.

Xu, popularly known as Nan pai san shu (an online moniker) is the author of the best-selling series Secrets of a Grave Robber, which includes six books so far.

The series has sold two million copies and been translated into seven languages.

At the end of last year, Hollywood's Paramount Pictures bought the copyright to Secrets of a Grave Robber, with a plan of making a series of three films.

"The movies might be like Indiana Jones,"he said.The deal made Xu the envy of many Chinese writers and one of the wealthiest novelists in China.

Xu told METRO Paramount approached him about the deal after reading a comic book by US-based Concept Art House based on his series.

Xu said he's happy about the deal, but would have liked to sell it to a domestic film company if one had been interested.

He said he is concerned that his typically Chinese story will not attract many A-list Hollywood stars.

Xu added his newly published novel, Battle of the Nujiang River, which tells the story of a band of Kuomintang soldiers who encounter mysterious phenomenon on the border between China and Myanmar(Burma) in 1940s, would also be adapted as a screenplay.

As a sixth-grade pupil, Xu once wrote a 40,000-word fairy tale, starring his classmates as a squad of explorers in search of a secret city.

But Xu was also fascinated by the Internet as a child and initially went into online commerce before pursuing his writing talent.

"When I was a young boy, I dreamed of being a information technology millionaire like Bill Gates," he said.

When Xu was a college junior student, he registered an online company, selling toys and gambling parts abroad.

In 2007, when his business shrank, his writing blossomed.