Updates, Tightening Language, and Suvudu Interview

At Comic-Con this past weekend I did an interview with Shawn Speakman of Suvudu where I talk about THE WAY OF KINGS among other things. Check it out.

In the most recent WARBREAKER annotations I talk about Ramblemen, Idris's drabness, Mab the cook, and Dedelin's decision, Siri's departure and character shifts, and monks in Idris and Dedelin's relationship with his daughters.

Over on Twitter and Facebook I've been posting scene-by-scene statistics for my line edit of TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT (which you can see on the sidebar of my site is 85% done). I'm going through and tightening the language, with a target of trimming each chapter by ten to fifteen percent. What does that mean in practice? I can't share examples from this book, but in this week's Writing Excuses podcast episode Dan, Howard, and I talk about how to do this sort of tightening revision using the first book I ever wrote, back in 1994. Some fans have urged me not to cut, or to release an "author's preferred text" edition at a later date; trust me, the version you'll see on the shelf is my preferred text. Every book I've published has gone through a similar ten to fifteen percent cut, and not because a publisher or editor demanded it. This is an integral part of my writing process, and listening to the episode will show you exactly why.