Tour, The Gathering Storm Chapter 1 + More, Parsec Award, Geekarati

I'll be discussing some of these things in more detail later, but since I'm a couple days behind on announcing recent developments, first I'm just posting a quick catch-up entry for today.

My excellent webmaster and brother, Jordan, has added an Events page to the site. I know, people have been asking for a page like that for a while--well, it's finally here! Right now it's got all the dates and locations for my THE GATHERING STORM tour, as well as an appearance at the Book Academy writing conference later this month and a couple more signings in December (effectively though not technically part of the tour). This page will automatically update itself to remove events that are already past, so it's a good way to keep yourself updated on where I'm going to be.

At Dragon*Con this past weekend there were a slew of THE GATHERING STORM-related announcemnts from Tor Books and Tor.com, the first of which is that chapter one of the book is now available for free over at Tor.com (free registration required). The prologue to the book (which is much longer than the first chapter, at somewhere around 25,000 words) will be released on September 17 as an ebook, as were the prologues of other recent volumes. Tor also announced the availability of all the books in the Wheel of Time as ebooks, starting with THE EYE OF THE WORLD on October 27, and a subsequent volume following each month after that--and each ebook will feature new cover art. And finally Tor announced the organization of fan volunteer Storm Leaders for each city of my upcoming tour. For more information on all of these topics, please check out Dragonmount's writeup on the announcements.

Also at Dragon*Con, my Writing Excuses podcast with Howard Tayler and Dan Wells was presented with a Parsec Award for excellence in Speculative Fiction Podcasting--Best Writing-related Podcast. We're quite honored and now I really wish I could have been there. (I am already confirmed for Dragon*Con 2010.) I guess people have really responded to our 15-minute format and our acknowledgement that we're not that smart! (But if you want to hear someone who really is that smart, this week's episode again features Mary Robinette Kowal as we answer writing proces questions from the audience at the recent World Science Fiction Convention. Go give it a listen! And it's also available on iTunes as usual.)

Finally, in the most recent MISTBORN 3 Annotations I discuss Demoux, Elend's white uniform, and happy obligators, Elend's leadership and the number sixteen (includes major spoilers, though they are hidden by default), and the disappearance of Feruchemists. If you find the annotations interesting, you can discuss them over in my forums.

Finally, this past weekend I appeared on the Geekarati podcast talking about all my books, including the Wheel of Time books and the online release of WARBREAKER. Give that a listen too! (Even though my voice sounds like it's pitched a lot higher than usual.)