The Gathering Storm coming sooner than expected

This afternoon I got word from Tor that the release date of THE GATHERING STORM has officially been moved up one week. The new on-sale date in the U.S. and Canada will be October 27, 2009, so mark your calendars. We don't yet know if other markets will be following suit; as more information comes in I'll keep you posted.

Jason Denzel at Dragonmount is one of the lucky few who has had the opportunity to read the finished book, and he posted his review of THE GATHERING STORM at the end of July. The review does include some very minor spoilers that he's marked off so you can skip them if you want the book to be completely fresh when you open it up in October. Also over at Dragonmount today Jason posted my comments on the situation with the outriggers and prequels. Short version: A MEMORY OF LIGHT is what Harriet and I are focused on right now.

I got home late last night from Worldcon, where Howard Tayler was beaten to the Best Graphic Story Hugo Award by the much-deserving Phil and Kaja Foglio with Girl Genius. Congratulations!

In this week's Writing Excuses episode Howard, Dan, and I talk about trimming—tightening your prose and reducing word count without changing your story. And while at Worldcon we recorded three episodes with the puppeteer and Campbell-winning writer Mary Robinette Kowal, so that's something to look forward to in upcoming podcasts.

And since it's Tuesday, a new MISTBORN 3 annotation has gone up and I have three links to give you: Part One Wrap-Up, Chapter Fourteen, and Chapter Fifteen. The beginning of Part Two is when Spook shows up, so these are chapters I particularly like. It's more setup, but with a more epic scope like HERO OF AGES has, more setup is necessary.