Mistborn

2012 Conventions: Taiwan, Orem, Australia Australia Australia, Las Vegas, BayCon, SDCC, Chattanooga, Gen Con Indy, Albuquerque, Dragon*Con

2012-01-30T14:22:00.002-07:00

Peter here filling in for Brandon since he's on a flight to Taiwan for the book expo. Below you'll find most of Brandon's convention schedule for 2012. There might be a couple more one-day stop-ins with Utah conferences, and we're waiting to hear back about an invitation to an autumn convention somewhere in Canada.

April will be Brandon's first visit to Australia. Swancon and Supanova have pooled resources to fly him out, so we hope Australian readers can send them the message that this was a good idea by attending in droves.

This week's Writing Excuses podcast episode talks about sensory writing with Sam Sykes, and there's an ALCATRAZ annotation talking about the lack of a map in the book.

Taipei International Book Exhibition

Dates: February 2–4, 2012
Place: Taipei International Book Exhibition 2012
Address: Taipei World Trade Center
District 5, Section 5, Xinyi Road, Sinyi District
Taipei City
Taiwan 110
Type: Signing
Schedule: FRIDAY 2012/2/3
14:15–15:15 TIBE HALL1
Reading/Q&A/Signing

SATURDAY 2012/2/4
14:00–15:00 TIBE HALL2
Signing
19:00–21:30 Eslite Shin-Yi store, 3F
Main Event: Interview/Q&A/Signing

Notes: Brandon is a guest of Fantasy Foundation.

Life, the Universe & Everything, Orem, Utah

Dates: February 9–11, 2012
Place: Life, the Universe & Everything 2012
Address: Sorensen Student Center
Utah Valley University
800 W University Pkwy
Orem, UT 84058
Type: Convention
Schedule: Brandon will be there Friday and Saturday only. There will be a live recording of Writing Excuses at 2:00 on Friday, and Brandon is currently scheduled to be on panels at 11:00 and 2:00 on Saturday.
Notes: Remember that this year, LTUE will be held at UVU.

Doom-Con, Swancon 37, Perth, Australia

Dates: April 5–9, 2012 (Easter weekend)
Place: Doom-Con, Swancon 37
Address: 207 Adelaide Terrace
Perth, Western Australia 6000
Australia
Phone: +61 8 9224 7777
Type: Convention
Notes: Brandon is International Guest of Honor.

Supanova Melbourne 2012, Australia

Dates: April 13–15, 2012
Place: Supanova Melbourne 2012
Address: Melbourne Showgrounds
Epsom Road
Ascot Vale
Victoria 3032 Australia
Type: Convention

Supanova Gold Coast 2012, Australia

Dates: April 20–22, 2012
Place: Supanova Gold Coast 2012
Address: Gold Coast Convention & Exhibition Centre
2684 Gold Coast Highway, Broadbeach
QLD 4218, Australia
Type: Convention

Superstars Writing Seminar, Las Vegas

Dates: April 30–May 2, 2012
Place: Superstars Writing Seminar
Address: Golden Nugget Hotel & Casino
129 East Fremont Street
Las Vegas, NV
Type: Writing Conference
Notes: Brandon is an instructor alongside Kevin J. Anderson, David Farland, Rebecca Moesta, and Eric Flint, with special guest speakers Kristine Kathryn Rusch & Dean Wesley Smith.
Prices go up April 1, 2012.

BayCon 2012, Santa Clara, CA

Dates: May 25–28, 2012
Place: BayCon 2012
Address: Santa Clara Hyatt
5101 Great America Parkway
Santa Clara, CA 95054
Phone: (408) 200-1234
Type: Convention
Notes: Brandon is a Guest of Honor.
The official con name this year is BayCon 2012: Pleasure Cruise, but we're pretty sure there is no actual cruise involved.

Comic-Con International, San Diego

Dates: July 12–15, 2012. Preview night July 11.
Place: Comic-Con 2012
Address: San Diego Convention Center
111 W. Harbor Dr.
San Diego, CA 92101
Type: Convention
Notes: Brandon is a Special Guest.

LibertyCon 25, Chattanooga

Dates: July 20–22, 2012
Place: LibertyCon 25
Address: The Chattanooga Choo-Choo
1400 Market Street
Chattanooga, TN 37402
Phone: (800) 872-2529
Type: Convention
Notes: Brandon is a Guest of Honor.

Gen Con Indy 2012

Dates: August 16–19, 2012
Place: Gen Con Indy 2012
Address: Indiana Convention Center
100 S Capitol Ave
Indianapolis, IN 46225
Phone: (800) 529-EXPO
Type: Convention

Bubonicon 44, Albuquerque, NM

Dates: August 24–26, 2012
Place: Bubonicon 44
Address: Albuquerque Marriott Uptown
2101 Louisiana Blvd NE (Louisiana & I-40)
Albuquerque, NM 87110
Phone: (800) 228-9290 — make sure to mention Bubonicon
Type: Convention
Notes: Brandon will be a Guest of Honor. This is a small convention and in recent years memberships have been close to selling out in advance, so preregistration is strongly recommended.

Dragon*Con 2012, Atlanta

Dates: August 31–September 3, 2012
Place: Dragon*Con 2012
Address: Various hotels in the Peachtree Center area. See the website.
Type: Convention

Alcatraz Annotations + Updates

2012-01-24T14:31:00.000-07:00

In this week's Writing Excuses podcast episode, Dan, Mary, Howard, and I talk about brevity.

Since all the chapters of my abandoned novel MYTHWALKER have now been uploaded, it's time to start dishing out something else for your weekly bonus content. So my assistant has put up the first annotation for ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS. This one talks about the process of coming up with the title for the book, with the various (and often ridiculously long) options that were considered.

If you're not familiar with my book annotations, think of them as the director's commentary on a special edition DVD. On your second read-through of a book, you may be interested to hear what I have to say about each chapter. Currently I have completed annotations for ELANTRIS, the Mistborn trilogy, and WARBREAKER. Check them all out. (Spoilers from later in the book than the current chapter are hidden.)

My assistant also uploaded another Twitter posts archive.

The leatherbound Wheel of Time charity auction for Worldbuilders is currently at $1,725.00. Wow!

I believe there are still slots available for the Magic the Gathering: Dark Ascension prerelease in West Valley this Friday. They don't count a slot as filled until you prepay, so give them a call.

Magic Dark Ascension Prerelease

2012-01-23T16:32:00.001-07:00

Hey, all. The new Magic the Gathering set is coming out in a little while, and the prerelease is this weekend. Dan and I had a lot of fun at the prerelease last time, so we’re going to be doing it again—with a twist.

Like for Innistrad, we’ll be going to Epic Puzzles & Games in West Valley at midnight on Friday. However, to shake things up, instead of drafting we’ll be doing a sealed deck tournament. (If you aren’t familiar with this, you get six packs and build a deck out of those packs.)

We will do an 18-person tournament, not including Dan and me. (So, 20 people.) As 12 of the 18 people play games against one another, Dan and I will team up against the six others in an Archenemy game with both Dan and me as the archenemies. Then, when those games are done, the six who played us will rotate out and six others will come in to play against us. And then, not surprisingly, we’ll play the last six.

This means we only have EIGHTEEN slots. We need to restrict it so that the tournament will work and so that we don’t end up staying TOO late. Therefore, if you want one of the slots, you’ll have to call Epic and preregister/prepay. There’s a chance I’ll be open to playing side games, like always, but I can’t guarantee it. (And, as always with these, I'm happy to sign books and might even have some copies of my novels for sale/trade. I'll try to show up around 11:30 if anyone needs books signed.)

So, details again:
Day: The night of Friday the 27th of January.
Time: Midnight (okay, so that means technically this starts on Saturday...)
What: 18-person Sealed Deck tournament, with special games against Brandon and Dan.
Where: Epic Puzzles & Games 3612 W 4700 S #4
Salt Lake City, UT 84820
How: Preregister by calling this number: (801) 982-0167

There will be some other fun things to this. (Beat Dan and me, and you will probably get a prize. Also, it’s likely that the tournament will be two-headed giant. We’ll explain the rules when you come, but if you have a buddy and want to sign up in pairs, go ahead.) Hopefully we’ll see many of you there. Or, at the very least, 18 of you...

Brandon

Signed, leatherbound THE GATHERING STORM and TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT auction for Worldbuilders charity

2012-01-20T12:47:00.001-07:00

Every year for the past several years, NAME OF THE WIND and THE WISE MAN'S FEAR author (and good buddy of mine) Patrick Rothfuss has run a charity drive where he matches at 50% donations to Heifer International through his Worldbuilders team page. Everyone who enters the general drawing gets a chance at a huge number of prizes. There are also individual auctions on several of the most desirable items. Pat explains it best.

I've donated various books to the prize pool before, and this year I and Badali Jewelry have teamed up to donate a special Wheel of Time package to the auctions. My contribution is from among my personal leatherbound copies of THE GATHERING STORM and TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT. With each Wheel of Time book that is released, Tor puts out a limited edition of 126 signed copies, 100 of them numbered for commercial release, and 26 of them lettered for publisher and author use. I received copies B and S of both books, and I'm donating the matched set of S copies.

Please see Pat's description below. The auction itself is here, and you can see the other auction items here. And remember, for every 10 dollars you donate on the Worldbuilders Team Page, you get a chance to win a book from the general prize pool.

AUCTION: signed, leather-bound copies of The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson with Wheel of Time jewelry.

These gorgeous gold-lettered books are leather-bound and designated "S" out of 26 lettered copies. The books come in their own matching leather slipcase, feature a facsimile of Robert Jordan's signature, and are signed by Brandon Sanderson.

In addition to these stunning best-selling books, this auction includes three lovely pieces of jewelry inspired by Jordan's series: an Asha'man Dragon Pin, a Dedicated Sword Pin, and a Great Serpent Ring.

We are very grateful to Brandon Sanderson for his donation of these rare books, and to the folks at Badali for making things even sweeter with the addition of the jewelry.

To see more pictures of these gorgeous books, or to place a bid on the auction, click here.

Sanderson's Second Law + Updates

2012-01-17T10:59:00.001-07:00

This week's Writing Excuses podcast episode covers more on fauna and flora. Check it out.

My assistant Peter has uploaded a new Twitter posts archive and the final chapter of my abandoned 2001 novel MYTHWALKER. He's also put up my Sanderson's Second Law article, which was first printed in the June 2011 issue of LEADING EDGE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY. The failure of MYTHWALKER was a contributing factor that led me to develop the Second Law.

A few years back, I wrote an essay on creating magic systems that I titled Sanderson's First Law. It had to do with the nature of foreshadowing as it relates to solving problems with magic. In that essay, I implied that I had other "laws" for magic systems that I'd someday talk about. Well, that time has come, as I've finally distilled my thoughts for the second law into an explanation that will work.

I'll start, however, by noting that none of these "laws" are absolute. Nor am I the only one to talk about them. By calling them "Sanderson's Laws" I'm merely referring to them in the way I think of them—they are rules I try to live by when designing magic systems for my books. There are a lot of ways to write, and the only real "laws" are the ones that work for you.

These work for me. I think they are actually all principles of good writing, not just writing as it pertains to magic systems. However, because magic systems are one of the things I most like to toy with in my writing, I have designed them in such a way that they encourage me toward stronger, and more interesting, magic in my fantasy books.

Read the rest here.

Updates + Hugo-Eligible Works & Gemmell Award Nomination

2012-01-09T12:42:00.001-07:00

My assistant put up another chapter of my abandoned 2001 novel MYTHWALKER. This one is exciting. There's just one chapter left.

In this week's Writing Excuses episode, Dan, Mary, Howard and I talk about worldbuilding flora and fauna. Check it out.

It's award nomination season again, so here's a quick reminder of what I've released that's eligible this year.

Eligible in the category Best Related Work:

Writing Excuses Season Six

Eligible in the category Best Novel:

The Alloy of Law

Eligible in the category Best Novella:

Infinity Blade: Awakening

Eligible in the category Best Short Story:

"The Eleventh Metal" (in the Mistborn Adventure Game)

You can nominate at this link by March 11th, 2012, if you are a member of the 2011 (Reno), 2012 (Chicago), or 2013 (San Antonio) World Science Fiction Conventions by January 31st, 2012. For more information on how the Hugo Award works, see my breakdown last year.

My fiction is additionally eligible to be nominated for a Nebula Award by February 15th, 2012, if you happen to be a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

I've also learned that THE ALLOY OF LAW is on the long list of nominees for this year's David Gemmell Legend Award, and the first round of voting is open now and runs through March 31st. Last year The Way of Kings won the award, to my great pleasure, so I already have the awesome battleaxe. Please vote for the book you think deserves it this year.

Plus I have a vested interest in the nominations of Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler, my Writing Excuses partners (aside from my brother Producer Jordo, whose only eligible work is Writing Excuses itself). Last year Mary won the Best Short Story Hugo for "For Want of a Nail," but Howard and Dan were defeated by worthy opponents in their categories. This year Dan is eligible with I DON'T WANT TO KILL YOU and A NIGHT OF BLACKER DARKNESS for Best Novel and "The Mountain of the Lord" in MORMONS & MONSTERS for Best Novella, Howard with SCHLOCK MERCENARY: FORCE MULTIPLICATION and "Deus Ex Nauseum" from SCHLOCK MERCENARY: EMPEROR PIUS DEI for Best Graphic Story, and Mary with "Goodhouse Keeping" from COURTS OF THE FEY for Best Short Story, "Kiss Me Twice" from the June 2011 ASIMOV'S for Best Novella, and "Whatnot" (a puppet play performed at the 2011 Worldcon) for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.

Soulcaster Fan Jewelry, Writing Excuses Season 7 & MYTHWALKER

2012-01-05T09:56:00.001-07:00

Forum member FeatherWriter posted this image of the Soulcaster that her mother made her for Christmas. Cool!

Season 7 of the writing advice podcast Writing Excuses that I do with Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Tayler, and Dan Wells has just kicked off. In the first episode, we talk about when good characters go bad.

My assistant also uploaded another chapter of my abandoned 2001 novel MYTHWALKER. There are three chapters left.

First Draft Finished + Updates

2011-12-27T16:37:00.000-07:00

This week's Writing Excuses episode is titled "Help, I Can't End My Book!" This is the final podcast of this season for Howard, Mary, Dan, and me. Check it out.

There's a new chapter of my abandoned 2001 novel MYTHWALKER up.

My assistant has put up a new Twitter posts collection that includes my live-Tweeting of finishing the first draft of A MEMORY OF LIGHT. If you want to cut to the chase, the part you really want to read is here below. I'll post more details later.

BrandSanderson Wed Dec 21
Ladies and gentlemen, A Memory of Light--the final book in The Wheel of Time--has been finished.

BrandSanderson Wed Dec 21
Now I'll open a metric gigaton of Magic cards that have been sent to me by fans, sleep for a day, and rest until next week.Then: revisions!

BrandSanderson Wed Dec 21
As for when the book will come out, Tor should do an announcement soon. Revisions will take a good six months. So fall, I expect.

BrandSanderson Wed Dec 21
Another common question: How many revisions will I do? The last two took about a dozen. (On non-WoT books, I do about seven or eight.)

BrandSanderson Wed Dec 21
Also, it's going to be tough to give direct replies to questions right now, what with like 1000 people tweeting/facebooking at me. :)

BrandSanderson Wed Dec 21
But lots of people are asking about outriggers/prequels. The answer is still the same. We'd rather not risk exploiting RJ's legacy. (more)

BrandSanderson Wed Dec 21
It is a step I don't think we want to take. Better to stop while we're ahead. I'm sorry, but they probably won't ever happen.

BrandSanderson Wed Dec 21
And now, yes, I will go to sleep. 7am here. That's 10 hours of solid writing after a full day of solid writing, so I'm beat.

BrandSanderson Wed Dec 21
Thank you all for the good wishes. May you find water and shade.

Mistborn Adventure Game Out Now + Updates

2011-12-19T16:54:00.002-07:00

My assistant has uploaded another chapter of my abandoned 2001 novel MYTHWALKER. He also put up a new Twitter posts archive.

This week's Writing Excuses podcast episode features Mary, Dan, Howard, and I talking about character foils. Give it a listen.

The biggest news for this week is that the long-awaited Mistborn Adventure Game tabletop RPG from Crafty Games is now available in ebook form. The hardcover and paperback copies will come next month or so, and we are planning a local release party for those once we have more details on the exact date. Anyway, I do hope to be able to share more thoughts on the exciting release of this game once I can take a breather from writing A MEMORY OF LIGHT (that deadline is coming up fast, and I'm very hard at work on it).

Utah Signings This Week

2011-12-13T09:50:00.003-07:00

I'll be signing twice in Utah this week in the run-up to Christmas. Details are below. Sorry, Idaho Falls folks, but I don't currently plan to go there as I usually would this time of year. I need to keep buckling down here and finish writing A MEMORY OF LIGHT. As always, you can tell me your city and I'll email you when I'm visiting nearby. And check my events calendar to see my current schedule for next year.

Barnes & Noble, West Jordan, UT

Date: Thursday, 12.15.11 Time: 6:30 pm–8:30 pm
Place: Barnes & Noble Booksellers – Jordan Landing
Address: 7157 Plaza Center Drive
West Jordan, UT 84084
Phone: (801) 282-1324

Barnes & Noble, Orem, UT

Date: Saturday, 12.17.11 Time: 2:00 pm–4:00 pm
Place: Barnes & Noble Booksellers – University Crossings Plaza
Address: 330 E University Parkway
Orem, UT 84058
Phone: (801) 229-1611

I'll sign any book of mine that you bring or buy at either store, but it's nice to buy at least one book (it doesn't have to be one of mine!) that day in order to support the store hosting me.

Where to buy signed copies of THE ALLOY OF LAW + Updates

2011-12-12T16:09:00.000-07:00

First some updates. The naming rights auction for a Stormlight (or other) character that I talked about last week ends in 38 hours, as do most of Orion's other auctions benefiting the UK charity Samaritans.

My assistant Peter has put up another chapter of my abandoned 2001 novel MYTHWALKER. Quite a bit happens in this one. And he also put together another Twitter posts archive.

This week's Writing Excuses podcast episode features Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman talking with Mary and Dan at the recent World Fantasy convention. Interstitial Art is the topic--books that don't fit well in any particular genre category.

Mistborn and Stormlight Archive T-shirt store InkWing's T-shirt contest this month involves Koloss Head-Munching Day (December 19th). They're also asking for photos of people wearing the Koloss Head-Munching Day shirt. In related news, Ta'veren Tees has a Wheel of Time Christmas ornament they're giving away with orders over $40 that use a coupon code, and they're also in the middle of a "Twelve Tees of Christmas" sale.

Many of the booksellers I visited during my recent tour still have signed copies of THE ALLOY OF LAW. Check my events calendar to see if I'll be near you anytime soon. If I won't be, give one of the following stores a call. (You can also tell me your city and I'll email you when I'm visiting nearby.)

Mysterious Galaxy
7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd. Suite #302
San Diego, CA 92111
(858) 268-4747
Alone among the stores on this list, Mysterious Galaxy has signed copies of a lot of my other books, not just THE ALLOY OF LAW, and will ship worldwide. Give them a call.

Murder by the Book, Houston
2342 Bissonnet
Houston, TX 77005
(713) 524-8597
(888) 424-2842
Murder by the Book's copies of THE ALLOY OF LAW are signed not only by me but also by interior artist Ben McSweeney, who illustrated the book's newspaper broadsheet.

Chapters Metrotown
Metropolis, Metrotown 4700 Kingsway
Burnaby, BC V5H 4M1, Canada
(604) 431-0463
This Chapters will have your cheapest shipping option for delivery anywhere in Canada.

Forbidden Planet
179 Shaftesbury Avenue
WC2H 8JR London, United Kingdom
0207 420 3666
Forbidden Planet will also ship worldwide, but they're probably your best bet for getting a signed copy of THE ALLOY OF LAW in Europe. Their copies are all the UK edition of of the book. They also have some signed THE WAY OF KINGS split paperbacks: Part 1, Part 2.

I will eventually add this book to my website store as well, but I won't do that until it has been on the shelf for about a year and the mass market paperback has been released already. Please support your local bookseller.

Stormlight (or other) Naming Rights Charity Auction

2011-12-07T11:01:00.000-07:00

I know we just finished one of these for A MEMORY OF LIGHT and JordanCon, but while I was in the UK, Marcus from Gollancz/Orion told me about the charity auctions they were going to be doing. 100% of their proceeds go to the Samaritans charity there in the UK, and they're auctioning off items like getting thousands of words of your writing reviewed and edited by specific Gollancz editors, lunch with editors and an author, every Gollancz proof or ARC for 2012, etc. Anyway, it seemed like a good cause, so I agreed to do another name auction for them. I also signed a bunch of books and a shirt and posters among other goodies.

The full text of the naming auction is below, or check out the listing. We did already have a naming auction for Stormlight 2 earlier this year (won by Jason Pittman), so that's why this auction is less specific than previous ones. Jason has priority for a new character in Stormlight 2 (which I'll start writing in January after finishing a couple drafts of A MEMORY OF LIGHT), but if I find room for two secondary characters with roles of near-equivalent importance, I'll adapt the name of this new auction's winner as well if it seems right for the book. If not, I'll find another project for the winner's name to go in, perhaps an upcoming novella or something I haven't considered yet. If I do end up using the name in a short piece, the character could be even more important than secondary—it's really all up in the air right now. At the very least, it's a good charity that the auctions are going to support, so check them out.

Here's your chance to become a character in a bestselling fantasy book! Bid now on naming a character in a forthcoming novel or project from New York Times Bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, author of the Mistborn, Stormlight Archive and Alcatraz series, as well as much more. Brandon is also the author who was selected to complete Robert Jordan's bestselling WHEEL OF TIME series.

Brandon has very kindly donated the rights to name a character in one of his upcoming works. He will soon begin work on the second Stormlight Archive book, a sequel to THE WAY OF KINGS, due for release in late 2012 or early 2013. As the winner of this auction, you can submit a name (or variation thereof) that will appear in that book, or another upcoming project of Brandon's choosing. There is no guarantee that the name will be used in a specific book, but it will be used somewhere, and whatever he does is bound to be great. The character named may play a minor or major role in the work, depending on where the writing leads Brandon. There is no promise of dialogue or impact on the plot, but Brandon will do his best to make the appearance more than just a passing cameo.

All money raised from this auction will go to the Samaritans, Orion Books Charity of the Year. Do check out or other auctinos, including reviews of your writing by Gollancz editors, lunch with an author and more!

Naming Examples

Some examples from winners from past auctions for names illustrate the variations that Brandon may use when the novel actually appears. For example, charity auction winner Brian Neff's name appeared as Naeff in THE GATHERING STORM and TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT. Winner Scott Franson's name appeared as Llarimar ("Scoot") in WARBREAKER. Aaron Yeoman's name appeared as Yomen in THE HERO OF AGES.

Rules and Conditions

If you participate in this name auction, you acknowledge that you understand and agree to the terms and conditions below. You must have an active PayPal account to bid.

Brandon will adapt the winning bidder's submitted name to fit the world of the Stormlight Archive or other project (as seen in the examples above). Usually this means altering the spelling/pronunciation to fit the culture of the fictional world. However, Brandon reserves the right to reject any name he may find to be inappropriate.

If the winning bidder chooses to submit the name of someone else (such as a friend or family member), the winning bidder must submit a written release from this other person giving permission to use his/her name.

Finally, we hope it doesn't have to be mentioned but the submitted name will be rejected if Brandon feels that it is in any way offensive, mischievous, or ill-intentioned, or if it is disruptive to the story.

This auction is for the name only. The winning bidder may not dictate the character's personality, description, or role in the story. If the winner supplies any of these things as part of the name submission, Brandon may or may not draw from that when implementing the character in the novel as the story demands. Any such ideas become the sole property of Brandon Sanderson with no further compensation or acknowledgement.

Your bid is a legally binding contract and it requires that you make full payment of your bid amount if your eBay ID is the highest bidder. You must make full payment through PayPal within 2 days of the auction close.

If you are the winning bidder, you must provide contact information (email address, physical address, telephone number) with the payment email for ongoing correspondence as the submitted name is processed.

Novel Release Date

As mentioned, the release date for the novel is in late 2012 or early 2013. However, publication dates are naturally subject to change. The winning bidder may receive email with updates on the actual release date.

The auction ends in one week. And by the way, late 2012 for Stormlight 2 to come out is looking less and less likely. Right now I'm guessing early 2013. I do still have to write the book first, but it's really coming together in my head.

Darrell Sweet

2011-12-06T15:01:00.001-07:00

For those who do not know, Darrell Sweet—illustrator of all of the Wheel of Time covers—has passed away.

The first of his covers I can remember seeing was his beautiful cover for THE EYE OF THE WORLD. I’m sure it wasn’t actually the first, however. Mr. Sweet was one of the premier fantasy artists for many years in the business. I have a healthy appreciation of what he accomplished, and I’m not sure many new readers realize just how influential and important he was as an illustrator.

We’ve gone far more realistic these days in fantasy art than Darrell’s style was complimentary toward. However, when I first got into fantasy books, the covers were not like what we had today. The genre was still in its infancy, and fantasy illustration was equally youthful. Publishers were still trying to figure out how to illustrate it. We usually either got conceptual covers like the sf ones you can find on this thread or, far worse, the dreaded woman in a chain mail bikini—a trope I consider downright stupid in a genre almost universally populated with strong female protagonists.

(Note that I don’t intend this as a dismissal of Frazetta or Vallejo. Though I wouldn’t consider myself a fan of that style, often their art was on the right books. A Conan cover SHOULD have art like that. However, this style (as seen in this link) was even prevalent on things like the Pern books, where it didn't belong.)

For more research, look through this whole archive of fantasy and sf covers, many from that era. That was the sort of thing we were dealing with. Grim, dour, oiled up, or silly was the norm. With that in mind, compare what Darrell brought to us.

Into these realms, Darrell’s artwork was a breath of fresh air. He's beautiful with colors, his creatures are fantastic and fanciful, and he gets across a truly magical and wondrous feel to his art. When Mr. Sweet came along, that's when fantasy illustration started to change. Now, a lot of Wheel of Time fans like to gripe about inaccuracies in the Wheel of Time book covers. They have that luxury because we, as a genre, have seen huge strides in illustration over the last two decades. However, it would be unwise to dismiss the illustrators who—through their majestic use of imagery and color—lifted us up to this point.

Sir, I picked up THE EYE OF THE WORLD in large part because of your wonderful cover, which is a true masterpiece that I would put up beside any other piece of fantasy art. You gave us beauty, wonder, and magic. You will be missed. Rest in peace.

Brandon

(As a side note, people are wondering about the last Wheel of Time cover. Mr. Sweet did finish a concept, which I have seen, but did not finish the entire illustration. No decision has been made yet whether another artist will take this concept and do a final piece according to it, or if the book cover will be scrapped and a new concept done. I will let you know.)

Interview, Giveaways, Ordering Deadline & Updates

2011-12-05T16:21:00.001-07:00

In this week's Writing Excuses podcast episode, Dan, Mary, Howard, and I build fantasy settings that you can use. It was a bit of an experimental episode; I hope you enjoy it.

The deadline to order signed books and have them shipped to U.S. addresses in time for the holidays is in about an hour. Of course you can order anytime year-round, but we can't guarantee on-time arrival if an order comes after the deadline.

I've put two new Utah signings on my events calendar for next week. There's also a new chapter of my abandoned 2001 novel MYTHWALKER up.

There's a new interview with me by Helen Lowe that went up today. She also has a contest giving away two copies of THE ALLOY OF LAW—open to residents of New Zealand and Australia only.

The official Brandon Sanderson fansite, 17th Shard, is also having a giveaway of massive proportions. The deadline to enter is noon tomorrow, Mountain time. Here's what they're giving away:

A signed, numbered copy of THE ALLOY OF LAW (#781)
The Mistborn Adventure Game by Crafty Games
A paperback of THE WAY OF KINGS
A Mistborn trilogy box set
A WARBREAKER paperback
A signed copy of ELANTRIS
A full set of the cosmere: ELANTRIS, the Mistborn Trilogy, WARBREAKER, and THE WAY OF KINGS
A set of the four Alcatraz books—ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS, ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE SCRIVENER'S BONES, ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE KNIGHTS OF CRYSTALLIA, and ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE SHATTERED LENS

There are no geographic restrictions on their contest. Comment on their news post to enter.

Magic with Brandon, Monday the 5th Edition

2011-12-02T10:12:00.000-07:00

So, I’m going to be heading up to Epic Games on Monday to do a spot on Dungeon Crawlers Radio. (Listen live from 6:00 to 7:00 on Monday. Details below.) I realized that if I’m going to be in a game store, I must play some Magic! I also feel like it would be a nice treat following three weeks of pretty brutal touring.

However, I realize it’s short notice. So this time, instead of just doing a “Come if you want to play!” shout out, we’ll reserve spots for those who email me. That way, we’ll know for certain if we have enough to play. (The store has to get ready, since this isn’t a normal drafting time for them.)

The cost is $14, and you keep your cards and maybe win prizes. Time is 7:00, Monday the 5th. If you want a spot, drop me an email! We’ll email you back and confirm with you. If we don’t get enough people, we’ll drop you an email and let you know if it’s on or off for certain.

And for the rest of you, have a listen to me as I chat with the Dungeon Crawlers guys about geek type stuff. It’s a fun program, well worth a listen.

Best,

Brandon

Dungeon Crawlers Radio
Monday, December 10, 6–7 p.m. Mountain time
Listen live here

Epic Puzzles & Games
3612 W 4700 S #4
Salt Lake City, UT 84820

Official NaNoWriMo Pep Talk + Updates

2011-11-28T15:52:00.000-07:00

My assistant Peter has uploaded a new Twitter posts collection and another MYTHWALKER chapter. This is a novel that I abandoned back in 2001, but I cannibalized the parts that were working into WARBREAKER when I started writing that. This chapter contains the first scene that another scene in WARBREAKER parallels, though I rewrote it entirely from scratch.

In this week's Writing Excuses podcast episode we discuss mystery plotting. We also recently put out very short pep talks for people participating in National Novel Writing Month: from Dan, Mary, and me.

I also did an official pep talk for the NaNoWriMo folks that you can read here. Here's an excerpt:

In the year 2002, Thanksgiving in the U.S. fell relatively late in the month of November. So it was that on November 30th, I found myself at my mother’s house, home from college for the weekend. I lay on the log bed in the guest room, my stomach full of turkey leftovers, furiously pounding at the last novel I would finish before landing a book deal the following year.

I’d done NaNoWriMo the previous year, and had found the experience to be wonderful. This year, my friends and I were holding a competition to see which of us could finish first, and it came down to the last day. I won. And I didn’t.

You see, while I’ve had a lot of fun with NaNoWriMo over the years, I think it’s time to come clean. Though I’ve participated seven times so far, and I’ve never actually won. Oh, I’ve completed the fifty thousand words. I commonly write 50k words in a given month these days, as writing is my profession. However, what I’ve never done is start a brand new project on the first of November, then keep writing straight through on it.

Read the rest on the NaNo site.

Mistborn & Stormlight gamer bags + Updates

2011-11-21T13:18:00.002-07:00

In the most recent Writing Excuses podcast episode, Dan, Mary, Howard, and I talk about characters who do dumb things. There are a lot of traps that writers fall into involving this, and we talk about how to avoid them.

InkWing has a limited number of Mistborn- and Stormlight-themed gamer bags for sale. They're also running another T-shirt giveaway contest.

This week's chapter of my abandoned 2001 novel MYTHWALKER features Siri's wedding. And there's a new Twitter posts archive uploaded.

Several of the stores I've signed at recently have autographed copies of my books that they can ship to you. Forbidden Planet in London, Murder by the Book in Houston, Joseph-Beth in Lexington, UBooks in Seattle, among others. Check my Facebook past events page and give the store nearest you a call. (You don't have to be a Facebook member to see the info.)

And I'll be signing throughout the UK all the rest of this week, so check out my events page to find the signing nearest you.

Also, this year's Great Hunt is still going, even though industrious readers have already pretty much decoded the entire excerpt. So we've added some new surprises that further codes will unlock.

ALLOY illustrations, Blood and Bloody Ashes Shirt + Updates

2011-11-15T14:22:00.001-07:00

I'm in the middle of my tour for THE ALLOY OF LAW right now; I'm in Houston today and will be in London by Saturday. If you want email reminders when I'll be near you, sign up and tell me your city. Meanwhile this year's Great Hunt continues, and readers have gone a long way toward deciphering the encoded file from Robert Jordan's notes.

By the way, THE ALLOY OF LAW was one of five write-in candidates to be added in its category as a 2011 Goodreads Choice Award semifinalist. If you think it deserves the award, you can vote for it here. Competition is pretty stiff, though!

This week's Writing Excuses episode features Andrew P. Mayer joining Howard, Mary, and Dan at Dragon*Con to discuss taking ridiculous-seeming over-the-top concepts and using them to create brilliant literature.

In the newest chapter of MYTHWALKER, my abandoned novel from 2001, the switch is on. You knew it was coming.

Yesterday on Twitter I participated in a #torchat. The first half of it is also up in my newest Twitter archive post, and I'll put up the rest next week.

Several readers have reported that the ebook version of THE ALLOY OF LAW has images that are hard to read. Tor is working on a solution right now, but in the meantime, I've uploaded all of the images to their own page here. You can see them below. I'm including a color version of the Elendel city map (by Isaac Stewart, who also runs the Mistborn and Stormlight Archive T-shirt store) that doesn't appear in the book. And you can download a full-resolution broadsheet PDF if you are a Tor.com member. By the way, broadsheet (and Shallan's sketchbook) artist Ben McSweeney will be with me at my Houston signing today, so fortunate readers there can get his autograph as well.

Ta'veren Tees has a new T-shirt available for preorder. I think I'll let it speak for itself.

Mysterious Galaxy can ship you THE ALLOY OF LAW

2011-11-10T10:28:00.002-07:00

Hey all, just a quick note that Mysterious Galaxy, where I signed last night in San Diego, now has a bunch of autographed copies of THE ALLOY OF LAW. If you want a copy and couldn't get one from Sam Weller's before they sold out, give Mysterious Galaxy a call. They can ship worldwide.

Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore
7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd. Suite #302
San Diego, CA 92111
Phone: (858) 268-4747

New Wheel of Time Great Hunt

2011-11-09T13:11:00.001-07:00

Well, I’m off on my tour. The THE ALLOY OF LAW release party was a blast, even though the bookstore was a little light on copies. We managed to get everyone a book, I think. So huzzah, and forward.

One of the things I announced yesterday on Twitter and Facebook was another Great Hunt to coincide with my tour. If you aren’t familiar with it, this is a concept from the Wheel of Time books which I (very loosely) adapted into a scavenger hunt to hold while on tour. I leave codes hidden around the world for Wheel of Time fans to locate, and they collectively input them into a web page which slowly unlocks text for everyone to see. (You can read a recap of last year's Great Hunt here.)

I have some thirty codes to reveal, hide, or otherwise give out while on tour this time. I may hide some inside books in certain bookstores. I might give them to individuals (like Tor employees) for safe keeping, and require you to figure out who they are. Or, perhaps, you might have to do something else. Whatever strikes me.

Before we go farther, however, some ground rules:

The codes are inside envelopes this year, with a label requesting that a bookstore employee NOT open the envelope and read the code over the phone. I’ll probably prepare the bookstore employees for what is coming. You are required to fetch the codes yourself, or at least send someone you personally know to get the code. I don’t want you bothering employees of any store—whether it be bookstores or someone from a store next door—to do the work for you. They aren’t being paid to fetch codes. If you know someone in the area and can send them, go for it. Avoid bothering strangers.
All but four of the codes need to be entered in order to reveal the secret, but each one inputted will reveal small bits. This is a collective endeavor. Share information, work together. Once you find a code, input it on this page. Everyone else, feel free to watch the page and try to figure out what the secret is going to be as more is revealed.
It is okay to try to guess codes. They have something in common. In a way, they are some fun information themselves.
If you want to get involved, both Theoryland and Dragonmount (among others) are likely to have threads where you can post, participate, and see what codes have been found and what others have been tried. You can follow the hunt's progress by searching for the hashtag #wotgh on Twitter.

Now, as to the secret itself, I feel I should manage some expectations. Last year, we revealed a chapter from the upcoming Wheel of Time book. There are no chapters that are ready this time; they’re all in first-draft stage. So the secret this time will not be something quite so earth-shattering. (Sorry.)

I still think it is cool, though it is more in the ‘cool curiosity’ category rather than the ‘sneak peek’ category. This is something that was written by Robert Jordan himself, and is taken directly from his notes. People have frequently asked us to show some of the notes, and Harriet agreed to let us show you this chunk. It is illustrative of the kinds of things you’d find in the notes themselves.

So, swear the hunter’s oath and get to it! Let’s have some fun. I plan to give away some of these in each city I visit, so UK Wheel of Time fans, you should have plenty of opportunities this year to help out.

Best,

Brandon

THE ALLOY OF LAW midnight release tonight, Fan Trailer + Updates

2011-11-07T09:53:00.001-07:00

This week's Writing Excuses podcast episode features Jonathan Mayberry talking with Mary, Howard, and Dan about avoiding pigeonholing yourself as a writer.

There's a new chapter of my unfinished 2001 book MYTHWALKER up.

The big news, of course, is the release of my new Mistborn book, THE ALLOY OF LAW, tonight at midnight. The BYU Bookstore is already handing out line numbers as of 7:00 this morning; some dedicated fans camped out a week ahead of time to get the lowest numbers. For more details on how the signing tonight will go, please see the events calendar.

I should be sending out a newsletter tomorrow with a reminder of my upcoming tour stops, so if you want to be on the mailing list, be sure to tell me the city where you live.

Some fans put together a trailer for the book, which although not strictly accurate is still pretty awesome. (By the way, only the prologue of the book takes place in an Old West-type setting.)

Mistborn: THE ALLOY OF LAW comes out in one week

2011-11-01T14:05:00.002-06:00

First, on an unrelated topic, the charity auction for getting your name in A MEMORY OF LIGHT is now live. There will be one winner, and the auction ends November 10th. You can also still donate to the drawing through December 1st and have a chance at your name getting used.

Today I have a guest blog piece up over at the Tor/Forge blog entitled "My 14-Year-Old Self Might Take Issue with The Alloy of Law." Here's an excerpt:

As we get ready for the release of The Alloy of Law, I find myself wondering what the teenage me would think of what I’m doing in this book. You see, I became a fantasy addict when I was about fourteen, and one of my mantras quickly became, “If it has guns, it’s not good fantasy.”

Now here I am, adding guns to my most successful fantasy series.

Go read the piece, and then if you haven't yet checked out the sample chapters, read those too. Next Monday evening I'll head down to the BYU Bookstore for the midnight release of the book, and then I'm off on a whirlwind tour of the US, Vancouver, and the UK. Check my events calendar for details and to see if I'm coming near you. If you want an email reminder when I'm going to be near your city, tell me what city you're in (or the nearest large city you'd be willing to drive to).

One of my former students, shrain, has uploaded a video (below) of me talking about the concept behind the book and reading from the prologue and second chapter.

Alloy of Law T-shirt, Infinity Blade novella on Nook + Updates

2011-10-31T16:05:00.002-06:00

My assistant Becky wanted me to do one last shout-out for international signed book orders. The deadline is tonight, if you want them signed before I leave on tour. Anything you order after right now I won't be able to sign until I return from the UK at the end of November, and with the way international holiday shipping goes, books I sign then are unlikely to reach you before December 24th.

The release of the new Mistborn book, THE ALLOY OF LAW, is one week and eight hours away. The BYU Bookstore will start handing out line numbers for the midnight release at 7:00 a.m. on Monday November 7th. For more details, see my events calendar.

This week's Writing Excuses podcast episode was recorded at Dragon*Con and features Mary, Dan, and Howard talking with Mur Laferty about continuing education for writers, such as workshops, podcasts, and books.

My assistant Peter uploaded another chapter of my unfinished 2001 novel MYTHWALKER, and another collection of my Twitter posts.

Barnes & Noble took a while to get the INFINITY BLADE: AWAKENING ebook online, but I'm not exactly sure how long it took, since the link I was using never ended up working (since they didn't classify the book under its ISBN for some reason). Anyway, the book is now available on the Nook, and the correct link is below. (Along with the other links for it.)

The book should be DRM-free (I know for sure that the iBooks version is), so if it hasn't yet appeared on your preferred ebook store, either the iBooks version or the Nook version should work for you (if you don't want the Kindle version). The Nook version is optimized for devices using the Adobe Digital Editions framework (such as the Sony Reader, etc.), but I have not personally verified that it is DRM-free.

InkWing, which sells shirts based on my books, recently had a contest giving away three of their new Alloy of Law T-shirts. (I mentioned it on Twitter and Facebook.) Anyway, the winners have now been announced, so if you entered, check to see if you won. The shirt itself is offered with free shipping for a limited time.

Holiday deadline, Mistborn pumpkin & Updates

2011-10-25T09:34:00.001-06:00

Here's a really cool Mistborn pumpkin by deviantART member joh-wee. She calls it "Survivor of the Flames." Be sure to check out the full image and the unlit version.

My assistant Becky wanted me to remind international readers that the deadline for ordering books so I can sign them before leaving on my book tour is one week from today. More details here.

There's a new chapter of my abandoned 2001 novel MYTHWALKER up. Things should start to happen again in the next chapter.

This week's Writing Excuses podcast features another one of our brainstorming episodes. This time Mary, Howard, Dan, and I mash up four wacky headlines to each come up with a story. The results are pretty entertaining.

And there's another collection of my Twitter posts up. If you haven't been following me on Twitter or Facebook, you've been missing each time I announce a reader's name I have inserted into A MEMORY OF LIGHT. For more details, see here.

Mistborn UK ebooks, Bulgarian ALLOY release, Mistborn metal music

2011-10-19T13:57:00.002-06:00

I'm very happy to report that the Mistborn trilogy ebooks are now, at long last, available again in the UK (and Australia and New Zealand) in what should be error-free editions (unlike the old versions that used to be available). This has been longer in coming than any of us would have liked, but it's good to finally be able to announce this.

I also have an announcement that came as a surprise to me. It turns out that MISTBORN: THE ALLOY OF LAW has already been released, as of five days ago. In Bulgaria. So if you are currently somewhere near Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna, Burgas, Ruse, Stara Zagora, Pleven, or Sliven, you can go out and buy the book now. (Thanks to the Bulgarian reader named "I." who emailed to tell me about this!)

Finally, some Mistborn readers from Austin, TX wrote in to let me know they have recorded a song from Zane and Vin's points of view that is, appropriately, metal. With a lot of screaming. Not about puppies. I'll let you form your own opinion.

Play Magic With Me: Saturday the 22nd Edition

2011-10-18T09:38:00.002-06:00

I had so much fun with the draft we did at Epic Games last month that Dan and I decided we’d do it again, only try to make it more accessible to people. So, we’re going to be going back to Epic Games (in West Valley Utah) to play again this weekend. A few things are different this time.

It will be at a reasonable time. 2:00 p.m. instead of midnight. :)
This time it won’t be a pre-release, so the place won’t be so packed. We’ll have plenty of space to sit and play.
I’m going to arrange it so that everyone who comes to play with me specifically gets a chance to play me in a game or two. (See below.)

Q: WHAT WILL WE BE PLAYING?

My goal is to do a draft (probably the new set, but maybe the three Mirrodin sets). I’ll sit in a group of eight, plus me, so we draft with nine people. Then, we’ll have a regular draft tournament with the store’s prizes. However, I will SIT OUT of the tournament and play at the sidelines with anyone who has a moment between games or who doesn’t have a match at the moment.

My games will have different rewards. I still have a few of the prizes that Wizards sent me, so I’ll be giving those out to everyone who plays me. Plus, if you beat me, you’ll win other cool stuff. There should be at least one copy of THE ALLOY OF LAW up for grabs.

The format for playing me will be to use your draft deck; I’ll use mine. However, I will ALSO bring my Commander/EDH deck, and we’ll plan on at least a few multiplayer Commander battles.

Q: HOW MUCH WILL IT COST?

Playing in the draft will have a cost, whatever the normal drafting cost is at the store. Somewhere between $10–$15, I can’t remember. Playing me has no cost, though I’ll spend the first hour or two drafting. Also, I’ll probably bring hardcovers of my older books that I will be trading in exchange for cards. (Maybe even some rare foreign editions.)

Hopefully, this will be a fun time for all. I worry that last time, some people came to play with me, but because of the nature of the draft tournament (where you don’t end up playing everyone, but instead end up playing according to your win record) didn’t get the chance. We’ll fix this time by having all of my games be exhibition games for prizes, rather than part of the actual draft tournament.

Q: I’M A NEW PLAYER OR I HAVEN’T PLAYED IN YEARS. IS THAT A PROBLEM?

Not at all. This tournament will be casual. If we have enough people, maybe we’ll do a ‘less experienced’ tournament and a ‘more experienced’ tournament, but that will be really the store’s call. Either way, this will be very relaxed, and by the nature of the tournament you’ll eventually be playing people around your own skill level. Beyond that, games with me are just for fun anyway. If you’ve never tried drafting, it’s a lot of fun, and I’ll give a primer lesson to those who haven’t done it before.

(Sometimes, I even situate myself next to those who haven’t played before so that they can ask me for advice. Last time, the person sitting next to me hadn’t drafted before, and I helped him build a deck that placed in the top three in the tournament.)

So, if you have time, come play!

Epic Puzzles & Games
3612 W 4700 S #4
Salt Lake City, UT 84820
801-982-0167
Saturday 10.22.2011, starting at 2:00 p.m.

THE ALLOY OF LAW in three weeks + Updates

2011-10-17T13:23:00.001-06:00

In the most recent Writing Excuses podcast episode, award-winning editor Lou Anders joins Dan, Mary, and Howard to discuss writing endings. Give it a listen.

My assistant posted another chapter of my abandoned novel MYTHWALKER from 2001.

MISTBORN: THE ALLOY OF LAW will be released in three weeks, and Sam Weller's has already sold out of their preorder quota of signed and numbered copies. I'll drive up there this Friday to do the signing, and then they'll start shipping the books out with the goal of getting them to your door on November 8th. In some cases it might take a couple of days beyond that, since they need to estimate arrival time and have to be careful not to have the books arrive early (which is a no-no as far as the publisher is concerned). Please bear with them.

If you want a numbered copy but didn't preorder in time, the other option is to come to the midnight release at the BYU Bookstore. Even they could sell out, so it's a good idea to preorder so they make sure to have enough copies. (If there are any left over after that night you can have one shipped to you, but this doesn't seem likely at this point.)

If you don't care about a numbered copy but just want a signed book, check my events calendar to see whether I'll be signing near you. I'm hitting many areas of the US with one stop in Canada for the first time, plus my first-ever tour of the UK. My calendar also lists some of my worldwide convention appearances for 2012. If you'd like to be sent an email reminder when I am appearing near you, join my mailing list and mention what city you live in.

I will even sign Kindles or Nooks if you're into that sort of thing. Regardless, the ebook will be released the same day as the hardcover, which is a frequently-asked question. You can read the first six chapters for free right now.

My New York Comic Con Schedule

2011-10-12T09:52:00.001-06:00

NYCC is this weekend, and I'll be there Saturday only. Here's my schedule. Hope to see you there! But if you live in the area and can't make it to the convention, I'll be back in November for the THE ALLOY OF LAW tour. Check out my events calendar.

Date: Saturday, 10.15.11 Time: 1:00 p.m.–7:30 p.m.
Place: New York Comic Con
Address: Jacob K. Javits Convention Center
655 W 34th St
New York, NY 10018
Type: Convention

Schedule:

1:00 p.m.
Signing at Premiere Collectibles booth #2617

4:00 p.m.
Signing & MISTBORN Giveaway at Tor Books booth #945

6:30 p.m.
Panel: Winter is Here: Epic Fantasy Takes the Throne, room 1A15
Brandon Sanderson, Peter V. Brett, David Chandler, Nils Johnson-Shelton, Philippa Ballantine, Rae Carson
Long a staple of the SF/F genre, epic fantasy is poised to take a coup over the bestseller lists, thanks in part to HBO's fantastically popular series based upon George R.R. Martin's "Game of Thrones" novel. This summer saw signing lines hundreds of readers deep (luckily none with swords in hand) for #1 New York Times bestselling author Patrick Rothfuss' American appearance. Now, in a special spotlight session exclusive to New York Comic Con, we pair internationally bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, Peter Brett, Phillipa Ballantine and epic fantasy debut authors Rae Carson, David Chandler and Nils Johnson-Shelton talk about why swords and sorcerers, king-makers and kingslayers; dragons and high drama have renewed resonance in fiction.

A MEMORY OF LIGHT names + Updates

2011-10-10T16:18:00.001-06:00

I've made another Twitter archive post. And as I continue writing the first draft of A MEMORY OF LIGHT (now up to 75% of my 300,000-word projection), keep your eye on Twitter and Facebook. Each time I come across a spot in the book where I need to insert a new name, I'll pick one from the A MEMORY OF LIGHT fundraiser drawing that's currently ongoing, and I'll announce whose name I picked. For more info see last week's post.

In this week's episode of the Writing Excuses podcast, Dan, Mary, Howard, and I cover pitching. This is something we get a lot of questions about, and it's an important skill for a writer to learn.

There's a new MYTHWALKER chapter up, which features a lot of Siri and Vvenna.

Get a personalized copy of TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT + Holiday shipping deadlines

2011-10-06T16:38:00.003-06:00

Now that the mass market paperback of TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT has been released, I've added signed hardcover copies of the book to my online store. I will personalize each copy to your request—you can have me write something like "Music to dazzle" or "Iron to bind" if you like. And of course all of my other books are available as well.

Because I'm going on tour in North America and the UK all November long, the sooner you can get your order in, the better. (If getting a book by December 24th is important to you.) In fact, for international orders, we're setting a deadline of November 1st so I can sign everything before I leave. The U.S. deadline is December 5th. Jewelry orders have different deadlines; see below. Now, if your order comes in too late we will still do what we can, but the likelihood your order will arrive before December 24th goes way down.

Posters & signed books ordering deadline

To US addresses: December 5th by 5:00 p.m. Mountain time
To international addresses: November 1st by 5:00 p.m. Mountain time

Jewelry ordering deadline

To US addresses: December 6th
To international addresses: December 4th

A MEMORY OF LIGHT Naming Rights for JordanCon and the Mayo Clinic

2011-10-05T11:06:00.001-06:00

Short version: I'm going to be drawing a bunch of names to adapt for use in A MEMORY OF LIGHT. To add your name to the pool, donate here. There will also be an auction for a more important character name in November.

Long version: If you were following me on Twitter and Facebook early last year, you saw me mention a large number of readers whose names I was adapting to appear in TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT. The most common question I got in response was, "How do I get my name on that list?!" My response was that you had to have contributed to a fundraiser that TarValon.net ran back before THE GATHERING STORM came out. But I let people know there would be another chance to get your name into the final book in the series, A MEMORY OF LIGHT.

Each Wheel of Time book has around two hundred new character and place names. When I was writing THE GATHERING STORM I tried inventing names the way I usually do, and I found that some of them didn't blend so well. So I decided to move to the method Robert Jordan used: He picked many names by altering ones that appear in our world today. This fits with the way he constructed the world of the Wheel of Time, as that world is both our world's distant future and distant past, and our legends are based on events from that world and that world's legends are based on events from our world. Picking names that way for TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT resulted in ones that blended in better, with the happy bonus that a lot of fans who had contributed to the fundraiser but not won the contest for the three individual name winners at the time were still able to have their name appear in the book as a minor character (or location).

Auctioning off naming rights was something I started doing even before I had the opportunity to work on the Wheel of Time. I spoke some about this in my original post on the subject back in 2009. Well, in April this year, we did another auction to appear in the next Stormlight Archive book. That auction benefitted a local Utah not-for-profit corporation for educational, literary, artistic and charitable purposes, with primary interest in science fiction and fantasy. They in turn donated the funds to BYU's volunteer-run science fiction and fantasy symposium, Life, the Universe, and Everything. The symposium was a great help to me back when I was an aspiring writer, and supporting something like that is a cause I can get behind completely.

So we're doing something similar this year for names in A MEMORY OF LIGHT. The process is being run by JordanCon, the not-for-profit fantasy literature convention that was founded in honor of Robert Jordan. I've been to three JordanCons now, and it is a great convention. Proceeds from this fundraiser will benefit both JordanCon and the Mayo Clinic.

For the details, I'm just going to quote their news release in full.

The Robert Jordan estate, Brandon Sanderson and JordanCon, Inc are pleased to announce a joint effort to raise money for two incredible not-for-profit organizations and offer fans the chance to become a named character in the final installment of A Memory of Light .

Fans will have two opportunities to participate in this fundraising effort.

The first option will be a highest-bidder auction through eBay’s eBay Giving Works. The highest bidder in this auction will be memorialized as a character (physical description, name within guidelines) in the final installment of The Wheel of Time. This auction will run from November 1 to November 10.

The second option is through a drawing. Fans who donate $10 will have their names entered into a drawing to included in the final installment of A Memory of Light. The final number of names drawn is determined by Brandon Sanderson as dictated by the needs of the story. Donating is not a guarantee that you will be included.

The Mayo Clinic, a non-profit organization and premier medial research center; as well as JordanCon, a literary convention and non-profit organization based in Atlanta, Georgia are both set to benefit from this fundraiser.

WHAT IS JORDAN CON?

www.JordanCon.org

JordanCon is a fantasy literature convention founded in honor of the late author, Robert Jordan. Jordan was the author of the best selling The Wheel of Time series. JordanCon features four tracks of simultaneous programming, a Dealers Hall, and charity events benefiting the Mayo Clinic. Past guests have included Harriet McDougal, Brandon Sanderson, David Wong, Jana G. Oliver, David B. Coe and Eugie Foster.

New to JordanCon this year will be the Art Show featuring art from a variety of fantasy and sci fi artists. Guests this year will include author Mary Robinette Kowal, artist Sam Weber and Toastmaster Melissa Craib Dombrowski.

Please note that JordanCon, Inc has applied for tax-exempt status as a 501(c)3 corporation. While we are awaiting the final verdict from the IRS, we are allowed to begin soliciting donations. Our tax-exempt status will be retroactively applied to the day of our filing.

WHAT IS THE MAYO CLINIC?

www.MayoClinic.com

For more than 100 years, Mayo Clinic has inspired hope and contributed to health and well-being by providing the best care to every patient through integrated clinical practice, education and research. Today, your generosity is at the heart of sustaining Mayo's mission.

As a not-for-profit organization, Mayo Clinic reinvests all earnings into improving patient care. Yet philanthropy provides essential support as we develop better methods to understand, predict, prevent, diagnose and treat disease, and train the next generation of physicians and scientists.

Mayo Clinic has more than 3,300 physicians, scientists and researchers from every medical specialty. They work together with 46,000 allied health employees to care for more than half a million patients each year, from every U.S. state and many countries.

In 2006, Robert Jordan was diagnosed with cardiac amyloidosis, which is a rare blood disease where abnormal proteins form in the bone marrow and become deposited in the patient's heart. During his illness Robert Jordan received treatment at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and encouraged his fans to donate in support of the clinic. JordanCon is proud to continue to honor that request each year through various charitable fundraisers at the convention.

Q & A

If I donate, What happens to the money?

All funds received will go directly to JordanCon with 10% of the proceeds going to the Mayo Clinic.

May I participate in both?

Yes, you may participate in both the General Auction and the Drawing. Please note you cannot win more than one character named for you.

Please follow these instructions! In the notes section, include your full name, and email address.

What are the rules for naming characters?

You may use your name or an appropriate name of your choice, but the author reserves the right to approve it or change it to fit the type of character created. A physical description of yourself may be used.

How long is the Fundraiser and when will winners be announced?

The fundraiser will run from October 1 to December 1, 2011, and winners will be announced at www.jordancon.org. The auction will run from November 1 to November 10. We will announce the winner of the auction and the first name drawn by Brandon Sanderson. All future names drawn will be announced via Brandon’s website.

Can I be entered multiple times in the General Drawing by giving several donations?

Yes! For every $10 you donate, you name will be entered into the drawing. If you donate $100, your name will be entered 10 times. However, your name can only appear once in the story.

I am trying to donate to the General Auction or enter the Drawing, but have difficulties. Who do I contact?

You must contact eBay for issues regarding payments. They are our vendor handling all the transactions. If you are having an issue with the drawing, please contact jordancon@jordancon.org.

May I pay by check or cash?

At this time we are only able to accept credit card, debit, or PayPal as methods of donation.

Who is eligible to win?

All fans are eligible to win with the exception of members of JordanCon, Incorporated’s board of directors and their immediate families.

I have questions about my privacy

All donors give consent to have their names published publicly. This is done to ensure fairness and so you may see that your name did go through before we randomly draw the winners for the Drawing. All winners, including the General Auction winner, further agree to allow us to use their names to announce them as the donors selected to be use in A Memory of Light, including use of their names in any publicity associated with The Wheel of Time in this regard.

Private information such as contact emails and phone numbers will be given to Brandon Sanderson in case he chooses to use additional names at a later time. All other copies will be destroyed.

What if I have more questions?

Please send them to jordancon@jordancon.org with a subject heading indicating your question. We will get back to you as soon as we can!

New novella INFINITY BLADE: AWAKENING + Updates

2011-10-04T13:59:00.001-06:00

First some updates. There's a new MYTHWALKER chapter up, and this week's Writing Excuses episode features Pyr editorial director Lou Anders talking about the Hollywood Formula. In addition, Ta'veren Tees has a new shirt up for preorder, Tai'shar Manetheren, and they also have a coupon code.

SHORT VERSION OF TODAY’S ANNOUNCEMENT

We have an exciting announcement today. A novella I wrote—INFINITY BLADE: AWAKENING—has just been released as of this posting, and you can find it on all of the major ebook retailers. I hope you guys enjoy reading it! It’s intended as a bridge story between the iPhone/iPad game INFINITY BLADE and the sequel to that game, though I did my best to write it in a way that one does not have to have played the game to understand the story. (Though you should totally play the game. It’s heaps of fun.)

BRANDON SANDERSON (a.k.a. LONG) VERSION OF TODAY’S ANNOUNCEMENT

As many of you might know, I haven’t (in the past) written a lot of short fiction. I do have a couple of pieces you can read, but on the whole, I’ve not spent my time on shorter works. In the last few years, I’ve started to change this. There are a number of reasons for that, not the least of which being the fact that I like to try new things and practice types of writing I don’t do as often as others. Big epics are always going to be my first love and my driving passion in publishing. However, some ideas don’t fit a large epic—indeed, practicing short fiction seems like a way that I can explore new worlds and characters without committing myself to too many large series.

You’ll see me releasing a handful of short fiction pieces over the next year. I’ve got some in anthologies, others I’m preparing to do directly as electronic downloads, and then a few other very special pieces. One of these was announced today on stage at Apple’s "Let's Talk iPhone" event. It’s called INFINITY BLADE: AWAKENING, and is a bridge story between the two video games in the INFINITY BLADE series. (An iPhone/iPad game series.)

You might be asking, “Brandon, you are a big bestselling author. Why are you writing a video game adaptation?” My answer is simple: I can do it because I’m a big bestselling author.

Let me explain. I’ve reached a point, due in no small part to luck of the draw, that I’m capable of passing on any project I want and writing only the things that interest me. I have somewhat eclectic tastes. I’ve said over and over again that one of the ways I stay fresh when working on large projects is by doing things I haven’t done before. Last year, this itch was scratched by THE ALLOY OF LAW and DEATH BY PIZZA.

I initially downplayed the INFINITY BLADE offer. However, after a little back-and-forth, I realized that this project had the potential to be a whole lot of fun. They gave me complete creative freedom, yet I also had some pretty strong constraints. They had built a video game (a very fun one, by the way) that was very popular. My challenge was to take things placed into the game because of mechanics, and actually build magic systems, a world, characters, and a story to match them. The game developers had some ideas, but they told me I could do anything at all that I wanted.

I’ve often said that interesting limitations make for interesting magic systems in books. Well, I’ve also found that interesting limitations in writing can force me to grow and stretch in different ways as a writer. I took on the project partially because the guys I was working with were so much fun, but also because—as a gamer—I’ve always had a bit of an itch to be involved in video games in one way or another. (I’ve always envied Orson Scott Card, for example, who worked on the original MONKEY ISLAND, one of the great games of all time.)

This story was just plain FUN to write. I had a blast with it, and it turned out quite well. I got to play with the idea of blending entertainment media—the story is for sale in-game, and together with the game, blends storytelling with gameplay. I think our world is going to change in interesting ways as books, video games, and cinema meld together.

So, this story hit a sweet spot for me. I got creative freedom, the ability to work with fun people, a chance to work with some interesting limitations, a chance to dip my toes into video games (they also let me do a draft on the script for the second game), and a chance to play with transmedia.

As I said in the short version, this story is intended to be accessible to all—but that said, it does rely a lot on things that happened in the first game while throwing balls up into the air for the second game to catch. (That was part of the challenge.) Much like THE ALLOY OF LAW, it is not intended to be the end-all of my career, but rather is me exploring new types of writing and trying to have fun along the way.

That said, I am quite pleased with the book and what it accomplishes. I present it to you proudly, and hope that both Brandon Sanderson fans and INFINITY BLADE fans will find something awesome in it to love.

Best,

Brandon

Fantasy Magazine interview with Leigh Butler + Updates

2011-09-26T15:31:00.000-06:00

Leigh Butler interviewed me for Fantasy Magazine. The interview talks about THE ALLOY OF LAW, the Stormlight Archive, the Wheel of Time, THE RITHMATIST, and rules of magic among other topics. It's fairly extensive, so check it out.

This week's Writing Excuses podcast episode features Patrick Rothfuss's assistant Valerie Dowbenko and my assistant Peter Ahlstrom. Many writers will never get to the point in their career where they need to hire an assistant, but some of the sorts of things assistants do often get done by significant others acting as business partners. And many of them are things that an unpublished writer can afford to let slide so they don't impinge on writing time.

I've also posted the sixth chapter of my unfinished novel MYTHWALKER from 2001.

Magic: The Gathering Tonight in West Valley

2011-09-23T13:55:00.001-06:00

Tonight is the prerelease for Innistrad, which features mechanics such as double-faced cards. The set looks cool, so I've decided to head up to Epic Puzzles & Games and try it out tonight.

The details are below. If you plan to come, please get there around 11:30 and make SURE to find me and let me know you want to play with me. I would rather play with people who like reading my books than just with random Magic fans. I'll try to play a game or two with everyone who's there to play with me. And if you happen to bring along some of my books, I'll be happy to sign them.

Since this is a prerelease, there will be a $20 to $30 buy-in for your cards. We'll either play sealed deck or draft.

Magic: The Gathering Innistrad Prerelease
Epic Puzzles & Games
3612 W 4700 S #4
Salt Lake City, UT 84820
801-982-0167
Friday 09.23.2011, from 11:30 p.m. until the wee hours of the morning.

Mistborn Fan Trailer + Updates

2011-09-19T13:54:00.000-06:00

There's a new chapter of my unfinished 2001 novel MYTHWALKER up. This is the chapter where things really start to happen. I've also uploaded a new collection of Twitter posts.

This week's Writing Excuses podcast episode is another that was recorded at the World Science Fiction Convention this year, and on this one we talk about gender roles with guest Keffy Kehrli.

A reader of mine, Laura (rasinrice), wrote in to let me know she created a fan trailer envisioning what she thinks a Mistborn movie would look like, using clips from other trailers and movies. I think the overall effect is pretty awesome, and the opening quote is exactly right for a Mistborn trailer in my mind. Check it out.

November 2011 UK Signing Tour

2011-09-14T13:05:00.001-06:00

My new Mistborn book, THE ALLOY OF LAW, will be released on November 8th in North America and November 10th in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. (See here for how to get a signed copy of the U.S. hardcover, and you can read the first six chapters for free here.) While my North American tour dates have been available on my calendar for some time, I haven't previously toured the UK.

Well, for the first time ever my signing tour will have a UK leg. After I finish up my New York stop I'm flying straight to London to start a rather daunting series of signings. Most days I'll be signing twice, once around lunchtime and once in the evening, hopping a train between signings.

The lunchtime signings will be quick stop-ins with no time for a reading or Q&A, but I'll try to give everyone as much individual attention as reasonable. If you want to get the most out of my visit, come to one of the evening signings, where I'll be doing my standard routine of reading and answering questions before starting to sign books. Because most of these evening events happen outside normal bookstore business hours, they are all ticketed events. Please call the bookstore hosting me for details on how to get a ticket. (Lunchtime signings don't require a ticket.)

Hope to see you there!

Forbidden Planet, London

Date: 11.19.11 Time: 1:00 pm-3:00 pm
Place: Forbidden Planet Megastore
Address: 179 Shaftesbury Avenue
London WC2H 8JR
Phone: 0207 420 3666
Notes: I'll try to do a reading and Q&A but I'm not sure if we can work that out at this location.

Waterstones, Guildford

Date: 11.21.11 Time: 12:30 pm-1:30 pm
Place: Waterstones Guildford
Address: 71-73 High Street
Guildford GU1 3DY
Phone: 0843 290 8357
Notes: **Signing only. No reading or Q&A.**

Waterstones, Milton Keynes

Date: 11.21.11 Time: 6:30 pm-8:30 pm
Place: Waterstones Milton Keynes
Address: Unit 72, Midsummer Place
Milton Keynes MK9 3GA
Phone: 0843 290 8495
Notes: **This is a ticketed event. Please call the store for details on how to get a ticket.**

Waterstones, Birmingham

Date: 11.22.11 Time: 12:30 pm-1:30 pm
Place: Waterstones Birmingham High Street
Address: 24-26 High Street
Birmingham B4 7SL
Phone: 0843 290 8149
Notes: **Signing only. No reading or Q&A.**

Waterstones, Nottingham

Date: 11.22.11 Time: 7:00 pm-9:00 pm
Place: Waterstones Nottingham Bridlesmith Gate
Address: 1/5 Bridlesmith Gate
Nottingham NG1 2GR
Phone: 0843 290 8525
Notes: **This is a ticketed event. Please call the store for details on how to get a ticket.**

Waterstones, Liverpool

Date: 11.23.11 Time: 12:30 pm-1:30 pm
Place: Waterstones Liverpool One
Address: 12 College Lane
Liverpool L1 3DL
Phone: 0843 290 8457
Notes: **Signing only. No reading or Q&A.**

Waterstones, Manchester

Date: 11.23.11 Time: 7:00 pm-9:00 pm
Place: Waterstones Manchester Deansgate
Address: 91 Deansgate
Manchester M3 2BW
Phone: 0843 290 8485
Notes: **This is a ticketed event. Please call the store for details on how to get a ticket.**

Waterstones, York

Date: 11.24.11 Time: 12:30 pm-1:30 pm
Place: Waterstones York
Address: 28-29 High Ousegate
York YO1 8RX
Phone: 0843 290 8715
Notes: **Signing only. No reading or Q&A.**

Waterstones, Edinburgh

Date: 11.24.11 Time: 6:30 pm-8:30 pm
Place: Waterstones Edinburgh West End
Address: 128 Princes Street
Edinburgh EH2 4AD
Phone: 0843 290 8313
Notes: **This is a ticketed event. Please call the store for details on how to get a ticket.**

Waterstones, Newcastle

Date: 11.25.11 Time: 6:30 pm-8:30 pm
Place: Waterstones Newcastle Emerson Chambers
Address: Emerson Chambers, Blackett Street
Newcastle NE1 7JF
Phone: 0191 261 7757
Notes: **This is a ticketed event. Please call the store for details on how to get a ticket.**

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THE ALLOY OF LAW giveaways & ebooks + updates

2011-09-12T16:17:00.002-06:00

This week's Writing Excuses podcast episode is another one that was recorded at the World Science Fiction Convention. It features Lauren Beukes and talks about writing other cultures. Check it out.

There's a new MYTHWALKER chapter up. This one introduces Vvenna, who eventually became Vivenna in WARBREAKER.

There are a few giveaways of advance reading copies of my new Mistborn book, THE ALLOY OF LAW, that are going on right now. First I'll mention one with no regional restrictions: the official Brandon Sanderson fan website 17th Shard is giving away three copies as well as other prizes. The other contests currently ongoing are limited to U.S. residents only: Tor is giving away five copies, and Goodreads is giving away ten.

THE ALLOY OF LAW will be released on November 8th in North America and November 10th in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. (See here for how to get a signed copy of the hardcover.) But you can read the first six chapters for free now on Tor.com. This preview is also available as a free ebook, for those of you who prefer to read on an ereader. Now, I'm told that some of these versions are region-restricted, but it's been reported that's not the case with the Sony Reader version. (The Tor.com version is viewable from all over the world, so the ebook restrictions are frustrating.) The ebook of the complete novel will be released at the same time as the hardcover.

Updates + ALCATRAZ ebooks in French

2011-09-06T14:25:00.001-06:00

At the World Science Fiction Convention in Reno a couple of weeks ago, we recorded a few Writing Excuses podcast episodes. The first one features Patrick Rothfuss, and we discussed suspension of disbelief. Check it out.

I've put up the third chapter of my unfinished novel MYTHWALKER from ten years ago.

The big announcement today is that the first ebooks of ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS are now available, in French. Currently you can buy the first three books, and I assume the fourth one will come out around the time it gets published in print form in France.

I do want to get the ebooks out in English too, but for now my French publisher is being more progressive. For one thing, the books are being put out DRM-free as I suggested to them. That means you should be able to buy the ePub version (from anywhere other than Kindle, which uses a different format) and load it on your Nook or Sony Reader with no problem. Now, I haven't been able to verify that DRM is definitely not applied by all of the stores below, but some of the linked pages specifically mention there is no DRM. So I hope it's the case across all of the vendors.

THE WAY OF KINGS interior illustrations now uploaded

2011-09-01T16:27:00.000-06:00

Here are all the interior illustrations from THE WAY OF KINGS. This should be especially useful if you've been squinting at the illustrations in the ebook. There's also a link to the cover illustration wallpapers, which you can download if you are a Tor.com member.

Reddit IAmA, Signed THE WAY OF KINGS + Updates

2011-08-31T13:53:00.001-06:00

This week's Writing Excuses podcast episode with Mary, Dan, Howard, and me covers worldbuilding communications technology. The state of communications technology can have a wide-reaching effect on your story, so give it a listen.

My assistant has uploaded another chapter of my unfinished and abandoned novel Mythwalker from 2001. There's also a new collection of Twitter posts up.

THE WAY OF KINGS has now been out in hardcover for a year, so I'm adding signed and personalized copies to my online store. Please note that the way my store calculates shipping charges gets confused because TWoK is the same size as THE GATHERING STORM but much heavier. The result is that if you want to buy two copies, it's probably cheaper to submit two separate orders instead of putting two copies in one order. Sorry about that.

Today I started an IAmA on reddit. (Basically a Q&A.) If you're following me on Twitter or Facebook, you heard about it an hour ago. I'll keep answering questions for the next three hours or so, but there are so many questions already I'm likely not to get to anything posted after this point. We'll see.

A NIGHT OF BLACKER DARKNESS

2011-08-25T16:47:00.000-06:00

My buddy and Writing Excuses cohost Dan Wells recently released his hilarious gothic vampire novel A NIGHT OF BLACKER DARKNESS as an ebook. I'm embedding a preview of it below, and you can get it on Kindle, Nook, iBooks, and Smashwords.

This is still one of my personal favorite novels—quirky and strange, but very amusing and borderline genius. It's the story of a man in the 19th century who fakes his own death, and when he rises from his coffin that makes a bunch of vampires think he's one of them. (The fact that he can go out in sunlight and stand garlic proves to them that he's the vampires' "chosen one," destined to lead them to glory.) With cameo appearances by historical figures like John Keats and Mary Shelley, it's an absolute blast to read.

Forum move, ALLOY preview, Worldcon costumes + Updates

2011-08-24T12:02:00.001-06:00

The site that has hosted my forums for years, the Official Time-Waster's Guide, has now officially gone offline. The front page hadn't really been updated in years as staff members moved on to other projects, and few areas of the forum were still active, so it's not a big loss. My official forums will now be hosted by the official Brandon Sanderson fansite, 17th Shard. (They also just posted a writeup of the Q&A from my recent West Jordan signing, covering both my books and the Wheel of Time.) Dan Wells is also moving his forum over there, and the Reading Excuses forum is also there. The admins are currently looking into moving over a read-only archive of relevant TWG posts, so we'll see if that happens.

The catalyst for TWG going offline now rather than some other time is that the old forum software it was running was vulnerable, and a hacker exploited that vulnerability to harvest email addresses and salted/hashed passwords. That means that if you had an account there, you may see an uptick in spam, and if your password was an easily crackable one that you used elsewhere (especially if it was the same password you use for your email account), someone may break in to your accounts elsewhere. So it's a very good idea to change the passwords you use on any other site that shared the login you used at TWG. Because the passwords were salted and hashed they should still be fairly secure if you picked a robust password in the first place, but it's a good idea to err on the side of caution and change your passwords anyway. (If you're wondering, the forum also used a lot of custom code which made updating it difficult, and we decided the effort it would take to secure everything again wasn't worthwhile in the face of its diminished activity and the other available options.)

Remember when I said last fall on Twitter that I had just written the most awesome Allomantic gunfight ever? (Okay, it was also the first Allomantic gunfight ever written.) Well, that gunfight appears in THE ALLOY OF LAW chapter six, now up on Tor.com. This marks the end of the short story that I originally planned, which turned into the new Mistborn novel coming out on November 8th. If you read the six preview chapters that have been released, you'll understand why this really was the only good place to end the preview. I wanted you to get a comprehensive sample of what this novel was really about, and with this chapter all the elements come together. But now the book doesn't come out for more than two months, and there won't be any more preview chapters. Please try to be patient. Anyway, to find out how to get signed copies of the book when it does come out, see here.

I'm very pleased with how THE ALLOY OF LAW turned out. On the other hand, I'm very displeased with how my draft of MYTHWALKER turned out way back in 2001, which is why I stopped writing it. But if you're a glutton for punishment you can check out chapter one. Some of its elements will look familiar, since I cannibalized them into later books.

The newest episode of Writing Excuses is up, and it covers revision focusing on description. This past weekend at the World Science Fiction Convention in Reno, Writing Excuses was beaten in the Hugo voting for the Best Related Work category by a fine book called CHICKS DIG TIME LORDS. Mary contributed one of its essays (among many great women authors). She also won a Hugo for her short story, "For Want of a Nail." (Dan lost the Campbell to Lev Grossman, author of THE MAGICIANS.)

Also at Worldcon a group of us attended the Girl Genius Steampunk Ball in costume. Here's a sample photo, taken by Pemberly's assistant Kathy. I'm dressed as an Elendel Allomancer and my assistant Peter is Allomancer Jak from the Elendel Daily broadsheet. Pemberly and Peter's wife Karen are dressed to accompany us to the wedding dinner in chapter four of THE ALLOY OF LAW. (Not that Allomancer Jak was there.)

You can see a few more photos on Facebook. I'll try to get more tagged soon.

THE ALLOY OF LAW Release Events

2011-08-16T09:57:00.000-06:00

This is going to be a long post. If you want to know how to get numbered copies of MISTBORN: THE ALLOY OF LAW, scroll down.

ITEM #1: THE TOUR

This year's tour will have two legs: A North American tour (for the first time it's not just a U.S. tour—there's a stop in Vancouver BC) and a UK tour. My North American signings are listed on my events page, so check out that page to see if I'm signing near you. I don't have locations and times for my UK tour yet (those will come in September), but I'll be there between November 18th and 26th.

If I'm not going to be appearing near you, there is still a way for you to get a signed book. Please scroll down to the section on Sam Weller's by mail. I am also going to Australia in April (see the events page)—in Perth, Melbourne, and Gold Coast on the weekends, probably with stops at the cities in between on weekdays (that schedule won't be worked out for quite a while). I'm also going to be somewhere in Asia in February, but that hasn't yet been announced.

The focus on my tour stops will be on getting everyone's books signed. I like to do a reading and answer questions at every stop, and I also try to pre-sign some stock so if you just want a signed book and don't want to stand in line for me to personalize it for you, you can just grab the book and go. However, I already know that there won't be a reading or a Q&A at the Brooklyn stop or the daytime UK stops (they won't have room for seating), so keep that in mind.

Some of the events might be ticketed (such as Murder By the Book in Houston), which means that the bookstore requires you to buy the book FROM THEM in order to get it signed. I've asked for this to happen at as few booksellers as possible, but each store has the final call. Why would they do this? Well, a lot of stores have to bring in extra staff (or even rent extra space) in order to handle an enormous event like this. In the past, they've spent this money and then had everyone bring in books they bought from Amazon to get signed. It makes them very bitter, as they lose money after all the work they put into holding an event. (In one famous case I heard of, a small bookstore held a signing where they spent hundreds on staff, promotion, and cookies, only to have over a hundred people, out of the hundred and twenty who came, bring in books they bought from Amazon.)

As I said, I've requested that the signings all be open to anyone. However, I can see the bookstores' point. Please be respectful and realize one of the reasons that places like Amazon can give you the books so cheaply is that they don't have to maintain or pay rent on expensive storefronts in retail areas. Support your local booksellers; it's because of them that we can have signing events. If possible, I'd ask that you go and buy the book from the store where you're planning to see me. You can buy it early and keep the receipt. If you bring the receipt with you to the signing, that's as good as buying the book at the signing. Generally, at ticketed events, as long as you buy any hardcover book, they will let you get your other books signed. So, for instance, you could buy THE ALLOY OF LAW and then get paperbacks of the Mistborn trilogy and THE WAY OF KINGS or my two Wheel of Time books signed. And even if you don't buy your copy of ALLOY at the signing, it's nice to support the store hosting me by buying at least one book (by any author) while you're there.

I don't know which events will be ticketed—other than Murder By the Book, which is confirmed. I'm slowly gathering information on this. There probably won't be many that are, but I wanted to lay the groundwork just in case. I'll add more information to the events page as it trickles in.

Finally, there may be a cap on the number of books I will personalize for you at a time. I'll sign all your books, but personalizations can take a while, so if there's a large crowd, to keep the line moving I may only personalize three books at a time. However, it's just fine if you want to go to the end of the line again and wait to get three more books personalized. I WILL sign paperbacks. I WILL NOT sign books I did not write—e.g. the Wheel of Time books before THE GATHERING STORM. Yes, people have asked; often about one per signing.

ITEM #2: RELEASE EVENTS

I will be doing two special signings in conjunction with the book's release on November 8th. Like with my previous books, I will be numbering copies in conjunction with these release events. The two events are: the BYU Bookstore midnight release and the Sam Weller's mail order event. (Details below.)

What does it mean to get a numbered copy? Well, just what it sounds like. If you get a book from one of the two release events, I'll number your copy. I intend to give out as many numbers as there are people who participate in those events (unless we run out of books). In a way, these numbers are less about being limited editions and more about getting a special add-on, an indication that you made it to one of the initial events. This is something I started doing for fun with my first book, and I had originally intended to limit the numbers to the first fifty people who got to me. However, I found that I felt bad stopping numbering if someone went to all the trouble to come to the release party, so I shifted to doing it this way.

I generally stagger my numbering so that lower numbers can be picked up from each signing. Each number is unique. I will rotate by 100s. (So, 1–100 are at BYU, 101–200 are at Sam Weller's, 201–300 are at BYU, etc.)

Each event will have its own rules regarding how you get your number and which number you get. Read on for info.

ITEM #3: BYU MIDNIGHT RELEASE

At 12:00 a.m. on November 8th, I will be doing the world's first signing for THE ALLOY OF LAW. Numbers 1–100 will be given out at this signing. (Though everyone who comes will get a numbered copy unless they run out of books.) Number twelve will be reserved for Dan Wells because of a funky thing he and I do. (He has number one of my first book, number two of my second, and so forth. I have number one of his first book and so forth.) Other than that, all numbers will be given out in the ORDER YOU ARRIVE TO WAIT IN LINE IN. Let me make this clear. It doesn't matter how early you preorder. Numbers will be given out based on line order. Details follow.

The line will start forming at the northwest entrance here:

In past years, people have started lining up even a few days ahead of time, so the BYU Bookstore is going to be handing out numbers to people in line to take some of the pressure off you. They will start doing this MONDAY MORNING at 8:00 a.m. Book #1 will be reserved for the first person in this line at eight. #2 to the second. And so forth. (With the exception listed above.) You can only buy ONE copy of the book in the low numbers per person waiting. (In other words, if you are there in line, you can't buy #1–10 by yourself. You have to have ten people if you want to do that.) If you need multiple copies but don't have multiple people, that's fine—we'll give you #1 and then some higher numbers. This restriction goes for anyone in the first hundred spots.

Here are some more details from the bookstore:

Numbered tickets will be given out on Monday, November 7th, beginning at 8:00 a.m.
Numbered tickets will be given out in the ORDER YOU ARRIVE TO WAIT IN LINE.
You may hold a place in line for NO MORE THAN ONE PERSON for NO MORE THAN ONE HOUR.
Each person in line will only receive ONE ticket for ONE numbered book. ONE numbered book per ONE numbered ticket per person.
The number on your ticket will be written on the back of your hand with a permanent marker.
You will be asked to prepay for your book to receive a numbered ticket. If you have already prepaid, bring your receipt or confirmation number to claim your number, but that doesn't affect which number you receive. Please check in at the guest table to make sure your paperwork is in order for the book distribution.
Once you have paid for your book and received your numbered ticket, you are free to leave until right before 11:30 p.m., BUT:
The northwest entrance of the BYU Bookstore will be opened at 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. (exact time is yet to be determined) when the Alloy of Law of Midnight Release Party will begin.
There may be games, a drawing for prizes, and treats!
Beginning at 11:30 p.m., fans will be asked to line up, in order, according the numbered ticket that they received.
If you are not in your numbered location by 11:45 p.m. you will be asked to get in the back of the line. You will still need to present the numbered ticket to get the correct numbered book.
Once you have received your numbered book you are free to get into a separate line to have it personalized by Brandon.
Brandon will personalize up to three books per trip through the line. If you would like to have him personalize more than three, you are free to get back in line.

The bookstore has asked me to get there a bit early so I can be finished signing and numbering all the books by 9:00 or so. Once I am done, they will let everyone in and we'll have a meet & greet where you can talk to me, ask me your burning questions, take pictures, etc. (The idea is that this will help the personalization line move more quickly after midnight.) There will also be things like trivia contests going on during this time.

Around 10:30 I will do a reading and/or a general Q&A, and at around 11:15 there may be a prize drawing. (At least judging by last year. I'm not totally sure what they have planned this year.) Then at 11:30 they want everyone to line up again in preparation for midnight, as explained above.

I will personalize as long as I can. The past couple of years' events have finished up by 3:00 a.m. Since all of the books will be pre-signed and numbered, everyone will get a numbered edition if they come. However, since I'm local, you can always just come, pick up a book, and leave—then get it personalized at some other signing when things aren't so crazy. This will probably be a busy event, but it should be very easy to just come, get a pre-signed/numbered book, then buy it and take off without waiting in line after midnight.

Now, here's the important part. It's hard for stores to judge how many copies to order for this sort of event, and I'm worried that BYU might not order enough. THEY MIGHT RUN OUT. Therefore, they are letting you preorder to be assured you get a book. If you don't preorder, it's first come first served. If a lot of people preorder, they will get in more books to make sure everyone who ordered early is covered.

So, for this event, I strongly encourage you to call and buy your book ahead of time. It will save you money and will make things easier for us. Let me say one more time, however, that you do not get your number based on when you preorder. You get it based on when you arrive in line, starting at 8:00 a.m. Preordering just guarantees that you get a copy, not that you get a low number. Still—please, please preorder soon so they can be sure to have enough books for the event.

Details:
BYU Bookstore, Provo, UT
12:00 a.m. November 8th (Monday night/Tuesday morning) (book released)
~9:00 p.m. November 7th (doors open)
8:00 a.m. November 7th (numbers distributed)
Preorder by calling (800) 253-2578. You'll need to bring your receipt or confirmation number to the midnight release and stand in line with everyone else.

ITEM #4: SAM WELLER'S BY MAIL

I realize that not everyone can make it to one of these events. It's unfair if you live in Germany but want a numbered copy. Therefore, I've started doing virtual booksignings with Sam Weller's—a wonderful independent bookseller in Salt Lake City that has been a supporter of my books since I was a nobody—alongside the standard signings I do there.

I will be going in to Sam Weller's after the middle of October to sign, number, and personalize 500 copies. Sam Weller's will then ship them out; they will try to time the shipping so the book arrives at your door on the 8th. However, they're not allowed to deliver before that date, so they can't cut things too close and some books may arrive after the 8th. If that's the case, though, they'll try to keep the delay as short as possible. International orders will be shipped first, since those have the longest transit time. THE ALLOY OF LAW isn't as thick as last year's books, so that keeps the shipping price lower. The book itself will also be discounted to $19.99. Shipping will be $5.50 in-country, $12 to Mexico and Canada, and $13.75 to other international destinations. (Note that Sam Weller's cannot track packages internationally. They've tried.) If your order is shipped inside Utah, or if you pick it up in the store, there will also be sales tax.

SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT MULTIPLE BOOKS: When the book is released, Sam Weller's will be in the middle of moving to a new location. So for this year, they need to keep things as simple as possible. That means that they won't ship out any signed book other than THE ALLOY OF LAW, and you can get a maximum of three copies. (If you want another signed book of mine, you can always use my store.)

When you call Sam Weller's, please be certain to tell them (even if they don't ask) specifically how you want the book personalized. If you don't tell them specifically, they will have it signed but not personalized. Simply telling them your name is not enough. You have to tell them "I want it personalized to John" (for example). If you don't want it personalized, tell them "Signature Only" just in case.

Details:
Sam Weller's Bookstore
Order by phone or by email:
Phone: (801) 328-2586 or (800) 333-7269
Email: books@samwellers.com
Preorder deadline: October 14th
Note: You may pay by credit card (over the phone) or PayPal (via email) only.

Thank you all for reading, and I hope to sign a book for you at one of the tour events. Let me apologize in advance for how sloppy my signature is, though.

MYTHWALKER Prologue + Updates

2011-08-15T12:16:00.001-06:00

This week's Writing Excuses podcast episode covers making descriptions serve multiple purposes. This helps keep your descriptive passages from being dry, among other things. Give it a listen.

I haven't mentioned it here yet, but Tor.com put up chapter five of my new Mistborn book, THE ALLOY OF LAW. There will be one more preview chapter after this; I think it will go up before the end of the month. Then there's a bit of a gap before the book comes out in November, but Tor.com has other surprises planned.

The WARBREAKER annotations are finished, and the only annotations I have written now are for THE ALLOY OF LAW. I hardly think you would appreciate me putting those annotations up before the book is even out. In a perfect world I would put up annotations for THE WAY OF KINGS, but I didn't write any. I usually write annotations for a novel while going through its copyedit, but last year I was so busy writing TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT that I had my assistant Peter Ahlstrom handle the copyedit for THE WAY OF KINGS instead. And now I'm busy writing A MEMORY OF LIGHT. I may yet write annotations for THE WAY OF KINGS, possibly when I finish AMoL and am gearing up to write the second Stormlight book, but that won't be until November or so.

So I need to start putting up a different kind of bonus content for a while, and that means dipping back into something I've already written. For now, that's MYTHWALKER, which in some ways is a very early version of WARBREAKER. I gave my thoughts on it back in the first chapter annotation for WARBREAKER:

Back around the year 2000 or 2001 I started writing a book called Mythwalker. It was an epic fantasy novel, an attempt to go back to basics in the genre. I'd tried several genre-busting epics (one of which was Elantris) that focused on heroes who weren't quite the standards of the genre. I avoided peasant boys, questing knights, or mysterious wizards. Instead I wrote books about a man thrown into a leper colony, or an evil missionary, or things like that.

I didn't sell any of those books. (At least, not at first.) I was feeling discouraged, so I decided to write a book about a more standard fantasy character. A peasant boy who couldn't do anything right, and who got caught up in something larger than himself and inherited an extremely powerful magic.

It was boring.

I just couldn't write it. I ended up stopping about halfway through—it's the only book of mine that I never finished writing. It sits on my hard drive, not even spellchecked, I think, half finished like a skyscraper whose builder ran out of funds.

One of the great things about Mythwalker, however, was one of the subplots—about a pair of cousins named Siri and Vivenna. They switched places because of a mix-up, and the wrong one ended up marrying the emperor.

My alpha readers really connected with this storyline. After I abandoned the project, I thought about what was successful about that aspect of the novel. In the end, I decided it was just the characters. They worked. This is odd because, in a way, they were archetypes themselves.

The story of the two princesses, along with the peasant/royalty swap, is an age-old fairy tale archetype. This is where I'd drawn the inspiration from for these two cousins. One wasn't trained in the way of the nobility; she was a distant cousin and poor by comparison. The other was heir to her house and very important. I guess the idea of forcing them to switch places struck some very distinct chords in my readers.

Eventually, I decided that I wanted to tell their story, and they became the focus of a budding book in my mind. I made them sisters and got rid of the "accidental switch" plotline. (Originally, one had been sent by mistake, but they looked enough alike that nobody noticed. Siri kept quiet about it for reasons I can't quite remember.) I took a few steps away from the fairy tale origins, but tried to preserve the aspects of their characters and identities that had worked so well with readers.

I'm not sure why using one archetype worked and the other didn't. Maybe it was because the peasant boy story is so overtold in fantasy, and I just didn't feel I could bring anything new to it. (At least not in that novel.) The two princesses concept isn't used nearly as often. Or maybe it was just that with Siri and Vivenna I did what you're supposed to—no matter what your inspiration, if you make the characters live and breathe, they will come alive on the page for the reader. Harry Potter is a very basic fantasy archetype—even a cliché—but those books are wonderful.

You have to do new things. I think that fantasy needs a lot more originality. However, not every aspect of the story needs to be completely new. Blend the familiar and the strange—the new and the archetypal. Sometimes it's best to rely on the work that has come before. Sometimes you need to cast it aside.

I guess one of the big tricks to becoming a published author is learning when to do which.

(If that sort of authorial analysis interests you, be sure to read the rest of the annotations. I also annotated ELANTRIS and the Mistborn trilogy. Check them out.)

At this point I'm still too busy finishing up the Wheel of Time to comment much on these chapters, so my assistant will fill in when he feels there is something to say. He has a few comments at the end of the MYTHWALKER prologue that went up today.

But as I said, the book is boring. I know it's possible to pull off writing yet another book about a peasant boy coming of age, but it didn't work for me. I wish I had something better to put up for you than a bad book like this, but this is what I've got. The good books that I want you to read are MISTBORN and WARBREAKER. But I still put up WARBREAKER's draft chapters for you to see, warts and all. I think looking at the early seeds of an idea and comparing them to the eventual successful novel can be valuable to the aspiring writer. Please don't read MYTHWALKER expecting it to be any good. If you read it at all, do it to see the origins of the much better novels that I eventually wrote.

My Worldcon Schedule

2011-08-12T10:32:00.002-06:00

Next week I'll be at Renovation, the 69th World Science Fiction Convention, in Reno. My schedule is below, with a few comments from me interspersed. Worldcon is a great place to meet industry pros, so I'm looking forward to seeing many of you there. Highlights for me this year include the live Writing Excuses recording and the Girl Genius Ball on Thursday and the Hugo Awards ceremony on Saturday.

WEDNESDAY

Wed 1:00 p.m.–2:00 p.m., A01+6 (RSCC)
Panel: Tourists: Creating Characters and Stories in an Existing World
Paul Cornell (m), A. C. Crispin, Brandon Sanderson, Dean Wesley Smith, Melinda M. Snodgrass
Writers discuss working within the confines of an already existing world. They’ll discuss how they create something unique and original within the space of something already established and loved. What are the issues at work in that situation? What freedoms exist there that don’t exist when creating a completely original work?

THURSDAY

11:00 a.m.–12:00 noon, A03 (RSCC)
Reading: Brandon Sanderson

3:00 p.m–4:00 p.m., A09 (RSCC)
Panel: Creating Gods
Brenda W. Clough, Brandon Sanderson (m), Carrie Vaughn
How does an author introduce superbeings into a work without pushing the human characters into insignificance? Gods are often gigantic projections of human characteristics. Can they serve other functions as well? Why are polytheistic settings so common in fantasy? What sources are authors using, and why? Why do readers find them so compelling?

5:00 p.m.–7:00 p.m., D05 (RSCC)
Writing Excuses Podcast
Mary Robinette Kowal, Jordan Sanderson, Brandon Sanderson, Howard Tayler, Dan Wells
The Hugo-nominated crew from Writing Excuses will record one of their podcasts—a series of interviews with well-known writers.

Recorded in front of a live audience, with guests such as Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant and Patrick Rothfuss.

8:00 p.m.–1:00 a.m., C03 (RSCC)
Girl Genius Ball
Kaja Foglio, Phil Foglio, James Myers (m), Cathleen Myers (m)
A Grand Ball Hosted by Phil & Kaja Foglio, featuring Victorian Steampunk & Gaslamp Fantasy Dancing in the European Style. Music by one of the top Celtic fusion bands, Avalon Rising. Victorian, Victorian Steampunk, or modern evening dress is admired, but not required. Mad Scientists, Minions, Clanks, Constructs and Innocent Villagers are all welcome, as are visitors from other Dimensions and Realities. Neither dance experience nor partners are required. All set dances will be taught and called, and frequent partner changing is encouraged in the spirit of true scientific inquiry.

Pemberly and I plan to attend in costume; I'll be an Elendel Allomancer. My assistant Peter and his wife will also be there, and Peter will be dressed as Allomancer Jak from the Elendel Daily broadsheet. (By the way, Peter will also be on two panels himself; you can see any program participant's schedule here.)

FRIDAY

11:00 a.m.–12:00 noon, A16 (RSCC)
Panel: Lighting the Fire for Reading
David-Glenn Anderson, James Bacon, John DeChancie, Ellen Klages, Brandon Sanderson (m)
How do you get your kid/young relative/neighbor to read? Why not an SF/F book? What about comics and graphic novels? Where do you start? Start with your own kids—read to them! Authors, editors, and educators discuss genre books to give to the next generation.

2:00 p.m.–3:00 p.m., Hall 2 Autographs (RSCC)
Autographing: Brandon Sanderson

5:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m., D03 (RSCC)
Panel: Post-Modern Fantasy, Epic and Otherwise
N. K. Jemisin, William Lexner, Nick Mamatas, Peadar Ó Guilín (m), Brandon Sanderson, Brent Weeks
There’s been considerable discussion of Fantasy, Fantastika, and Post-Modernism. What is this about, and why is it interesting for those who read, review, or critique present day fantasy?

SATURDAY

12:00 noon–1:00 p.m., KK1 (RSCC)
Kaffeeklatsch with Brandon Sanderson.

This will be a small group of 9 people sitting around talking with me; signing up ahead of time is required. You can sign up at the Information desk on Friday from 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., but you may want to line up a little earlier than that. If you've had an opportunity like this before or see me regularly, please give someone else a chance! Drinks will not be provided this year (but you can bring your own).

Also, if you're a writer looking to break in, kaffeeklatsches or literary beers with editors are extremely valuable, so consider signing up for those. Don't ever try to pitch anything at a kaffeeklatsch unless the editor asks you to, but just let them talk about what they love. Later on you can mention it in a cover letter: "When you mentioned _____ at the kaffeeklatsch in Reno, that made me think my novel would be right up your alley."

8:00 p.m.–10:00 p.m., Tuscany Ballroom (Peppermill)
Hugo Awards Ceremony
The Hugo Awards, nominated and voted for by your fellow Worldcon members, are presented for excellence in SF and fantasy for 2010. Masters of Ceremonies Jay Lake and Ken Scholes will introduce the presenters: our Guests of Honor and previous Hugo Award winners (Robert Silverberg, George R.R. Martin, Nancy Kress, Stu Shiffman, and others). The ceremony will also include the Big Heart Award, and a video highlighting Japanese Fandom including the Seiun Awards for the best SF published in Japan.

SUNDAY

1:00 p.m.–2:00 p.m., A01+6 (RSCC)
Panel: Twenty Years of the Wheel of Time
William Lexner, Jennifer Liang (m), Brandon Sanderson, Linda Taglieri
The Wheel of Time series is perhaps the most influential epic fantasy after Tolkien. The panel looks back at the series and its importance to the genre.

Final WARBREAKER Annotation + Updates

2011-08-09T09:55:00.002-06:00

On this week's Writing Excuses podcast episode, Mary, Dan, Howard, and I talk about Orson Scott Card's M.I.C.E. Quotient. That stands for Milieu, Idea, Character, and Event, and it is a valuable tool for improving your writing.

The final WARBREAKER annotation is up. Next week my assistant Peter will start putting up draft chapters of MYTHWALKER, the unfinished book that I lifted Siri and Vivenna from, among other things. These will go in the deleted scenes section of the library filed under Warbreaker. I need to warn you though that the book is really bad. I abandoned it with good reason. But sharing it with you is in line with my philosophy on the whole WARBREAKER experiment, as I explain it here. All the old drafts are still available here, so you can see how things progress from clunky, malformed initial idea to polished final execution and one of Library Journal's five best science fiction and fantasy novels of 2009.

There's also a new collection of Twitter posts up.

Signing tonight in West Jordan with Peter Orullian

2011-08-04T13:02:00.001-06:00

Just a quick reminder that I'll be signing in West Jordan tonight. I'm going to be driving back from Idaho, so if I end up a tiny bit late that will be why. But I shouldn't be late. I'll try to bring some of the Elendel Daily broadsheets to give out, and maybe two or three THE ALLOY OF LAW advance reading copies. (Whether this happens depends on logistical concerns, since I don't have them with me here in Idaho.)

Peter Orullian, author of The Unremembered, will also be signing at the same time. So if you want to get signed books from two different epic fantasy writers, this is a good opportunity.

If you haven't heard about this signing before, you probably haven't been watching my events calendar. Also make sure to drop me a note mentioning the city where you live if you want me to send you email reminders of signings near you.

Date: 08.04.11 Time: 7:00 p.m.–9:00 p.m.
Place: Barnes & Noble Booksellers – Jordan Landing
Address: 7157 Plaza Center Drive
West Jordan, UT 84084
Phone: (801) 282-1324
Type: Signing

Mistborn Adventure Game preorders + Updates

2011-08-01T12:53:00.002-06:00

Today's WARBREAKER annotation covers the epilogue. There's just one annotation left, folks. The WARBREAKER html version is also now completely uploaded.

This week's Writing Excuses podcast has another of our microcasting episodes. Mary, Howard, Dan, and I fielded questions from people on Twitter and answered them briefly. We discussed the following topics:

How do you hold the whole story in your head when it's a thousand pages long?
What steps do you use when creating a character?
As an outliner, when do you start putting in the details?
How do you patch plot holes?
How do you come up with names?
Is there one writing skill you'd like to get better at?
Writing groups: what do you look for?

In other news, Ta'veren Tees, the officially licensed Wheel of Time T-shirt company, is giving away a free T-shirt every Friday during August. Just hit "like" on their Facebook page and then watch their wall on Fridays to see if you are a winner.

I also did an interview with SciFi Bulgaria. If you read Bulgarian, check it out.

Now for the big announcement. Crafty Games' Mistborn Adventure Game tabletop RPG's cover art has been revealed, and they're running a preorder special from August 4th through 7th. The RPG comes out in November, but you can preview it at Gen Con this weekend if you're lucky enough to be attending. The book's many illustrations, including the cover, come from artist Ben McSweeney, who also provided illustrations for THE WAY OF KINGS and THE ALLOY OF LAW.

The book also includes the Kelsier short story that I mentioned back during the Mistborn 2 annotations. Some readers have been clamoring for this for years, so if you want to find out about Kelsier's training with his master Gemmel, pick up the RPG.

Last chance to vote for the Hugos

2011-07-29T10:56:00.001-06:00

The deadline to turn in your filled-out ballots for the Hugo Awards is this Sunday night, July 31st, at midnight Pacific time. I've talked about this before, but if you weren't aware and would like to vote for the Hugos, you can still become a registered member of Worldcon in order to vote.

Writing Excuses made the final ballot in the Best Related Work category, and Dan Wells, Howard Tayler, Mary Robinette Kowal, and my editor Moshe Feder are also independently nominated for awards. See my earlier post on the subject for more information on how voting works.

Renovation, the 69th World Science Fiction Convention, will be held in Reno from August 17th through 21st, and the Hugo Awards will be presented that Saturday night. I and many other writers will be there, and I will be participating in about three events each day. I'll post my schedule later, as the convention approaches.

THE ALLOY OF LAW Signing Tour

2011-07-27T13:23:00.001-06:00

THE ALLOY OF LAW, my new Mistborn novel set 341 years after the events of THE HERO OF AGES, is coming out on November 8th. If you haven't been aware, there are preview chapters up at Tor.com; chapter four just went up today.

Below is my U.S. and Canada tour schedule. I'm going to Vancouver BC for the first time, though the details aren't quite worked out on that stop yet. I'll also be heading somewhere else immediately following the Brooklyn date; keep your eyes on my events calendar. It's a good idea to tell me what city you live in if you want me to send an email reminder when I'm going to be near you.

Note: There WILL be an organized way to get signed and numbered copies by mail as there was in previous years, but we won't be ready to announce the details on that until the middle of August. It also looks like Murder by the Book (see below) will let you ship three other books to them for me to sign for every copy of ALLOY you buy from them. That may interest some of you. (As always, my own signed books store is also available for older books—I don't put any books there until a hardcover has been out for a year, so I don't compete with the bookstores. Your local bookseller is still the best place to buy my books; the more copies they sell, the more likely they are to keep ordering copies to put on the shelf so people see them.)

THE ALLOY OF LAW Midnight Release, Provo, UT

Date: 11.07.11 Time: 9:00 p.m.–2:00 a.m.
Place: BYU Bookstore
Address: Wilkinson Student Center (WSC)
Brigham Young University
University Hill
Provo, Utah 84602
Phone: (800) 253-2578
Type: Release
Schedule: Doors open at 9:00 p.m. on November 7th. The book will be released three hours after that. Books at this signing will be numbered; line numbers will be assigned starting around 8:00 a.m. on November 7th. Check back later for more details.

Mysterious Galaxy, San Diego

Date: 11.09.11 Time: 7:00 p.m.–10:00 p.m.
Place: Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore
Address: 7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd. Suite #302
San Diego, CA 92111
Phone: (858) 268-4747
Type: Signing

Barnes & Noble, Huntington Beach, CA

Date: 11.10.11 Time: 7:00 p.m.–10:00 p.m.
Place: Barnes & Noble Booksellers – Bella Terra
Address: 7881 Edinger Ave. #110
Huntington Beach, CA 92647
Phone: 714-897-8781
Type: Signing

University Books, Seattle

Date: 11.11.11 Time: 7:00 p.m.–10:00 p.m.
Place: University Book Store, Seattle
Address: 4326 University Way NE
Seattle, WA 98105
Phone: 800.335.7323
Type: Signing

Vancouver BC, Canada

Date: 11.12.11 Time: 7:00 p.m.–10:00 p.m.
Place: Location and time TBA

Joseph-Beth, Lexington, KY

Date: 11.14.11 Time: 7:00 p.m.–10:00 p.m.
Place: Joseph-Beth Booksellers
Address: 161 Lexington Green Cir # B
Lexington, KY 40503
Phone: (859) 273-2911

Murder by the Book, Houston

Date: 11.15.11 Time: 6:30 p.m.–9:30 p.m.
Place: Murder by the Book
Address: 2342 Bissonnet St
Houston TX 77005
Phone: 713-524-8597
Notes: Store policy requires that you buy one copy of THE ALLOY OF LAW at the store to get anything signed. I believe you can buy it there ahead of time and bring your receipt; call to make sure. They can also get books signed for you if you can't attend; see their site and/or call for details.

Barnes & Noble, Brooklyn, NY

Date: 11.16.11 Time: 7:00 p.m.–10:00 p.m.
Place: Barnes & Noble Booksellers – Park Slope
Address: 267 7th Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11215
Phone: 718-832-9066
PLEASE BE AWARE: This will be a SIGNING ONLY event. There is not enough space for a standard reading and Q&A. If you have questions for me, you may ask them while I'm signing your specific books, but please be courteous to everyone else waiting to get their books signed.

Australia 2012 visit, West Jordan signing + Updates

2011-07-25T14:07:00.001-06:00

I've added some events to my events calendar. First up is a joint signing with Peter Orullian (The Unremembered) in West Jordan on August 4th. I also added three conventions I'll be going to in Australia in April 2012; there will probably be bookstore signings between these events, but that hasn't been worked out yet. The Superstars Writing Seminar I'll be teaching at in Las Vegas after I return from Australia is also there. These items join my Worldcon trip to Reno, which is coming up in just three weeks.

Tor.com has posted my November tour for THE ALLOY OF LAW, but a couple of the events are still in flux, so I think I'll hold off on putting them up until everything is confirmed. I will also be having another tour somewhere else immediately following this one . . . details coming soon.

This week's episode of Writing Excuses discusses what an agent does. Dan's agent Sara Crowe is the podcast guest, so there's a lot of good information shared. Check it out.

The annotation for the final WARBREAKER chapter is up. As you should expect, it has too many spoilers to summarize here. That leaves two more annotations, one for the epilogue and one wrap-up annotation.

There's also a new collection of Twitter posts up.

Q&A Recording, T-Shirts & Updates

2011-07-19T12:55:00.001-06:00

I had a great time at Polaris in Toronto this past weekend. If you couldn't be there, you can check out an mp3 of the Q&A session that I did, which @Thesleepingwolf has posted online here. (If you want to download it and can't figure out which link to use, it's the one that says "Download File 9.43 MB." Or you can just listen to it on that page.) If you haven't heard me tell the story of how Harriet first got in touch with me, this is a good medium. It also covers several other topics including Mistborn, the Way of Kings, etc..

I'll be flying out to San Diego in a couple of hours for Comic-Con. I posted my schedule in the last blog entry (I'll basically just be there on Thursday).

If you didn't know, InkWing is run by Mistborn/Way of Kings interior artist Isaac Stewart, and they do the official T-shirts for my books. They have a contest every month or so that usually involves giving away free shirts, and this month they also have a coupon code. Check out their post here.

There are also official Wheel of Time T-shirts at Ta'veren Tees, and they have a teaser trailer for a new shirt that will be available this month. Check it out too.

Last week's Writing Excuses podcast episode covered Cyberpunk. So this week Dan, Mary, Howard, and I do one of our brainstorming episodes, in that genre.

This week's WARBREAKER annotation covers the biggest climax chapter. It's chock-full of spoilers, of course.

My San Diego Comic-Con schedule

2011-07-15T11:46:00.001-06:00

I'm on my way to the Polaris convention in Toronto right now (the schedule for that is here, with one correction: the Details, Filler, and Plot panel is now Saturday at 11 and the Ethics and the Wheel of Time panel is Sunday at noon). But since Comic-Con starts earlier next week, I think it's a good idea to post my Comic-Con schedule now.

WEDNESDAY, July 20th, Preview Night:

I may stop by the Tor booth, #2707, sometime between 5:30 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. This is nothing formal, though.

THURSDAY, July 21st:

12:00 noon to 1:00 p.m., Room 6A
“Putting the ‘Epic’ in Epic Fantasy: Writing to Excite!” Panel
Panelists: George R. R. Martin, Patrick Rothfuss, Brandon Sanderson, Christopher Paolini, Peter Orullian, K.J. Taylor, & Kevin J. Anderson. Moderated by Michael Spradlin.

1:15 p.m. to 2:15 p.m., official autographing area
Post-panel signing hosted by Mysterious Galaxy.

2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., Tor booth #2707
Brandon Sanderson signing. Tor will be giving away 48 copies of the MISTBORN paperback and five ARCs of the new Mistborn book, THE ALLOY OF LAW. The booth will also be giving out the THE ALLOY OF LAW broadsheet (I'm bringing a few copies of this to Polaris as well). Click for a bigger photo.

I hope to see you there! I'm heading back home Thursday night.

My Toronto Convention Schedule

2011-07-12T10:28:00.001-06:00

It's been listed on my events calendar for months, but in case you live near Toronto and weren't aware, I will be there this weekend as a Guest of Honor at Polaris 25. My schedule is below.

Address: Sheraton Parkway Toronto North
600 Highway 7 East
Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada
L4B 1B2

FRIDAY

06:00 p.m., York
Opening Ceremonies

07:00 p.m., Room 1080
Meet The Pros

08:30 p.m., Markham-A
Blastoff Party

SATURDAY

11:00 a.m., Newmarket
Ethics and the Wheel of Time
Brandon Sanderson (M), Rebecca Lovatt, Bill Cameron, Kirsten Bland
Robert Jordan is on record as having said that he began writing a work of high fantasy in order to seriously explore issues of good and evil. What is the moral status of someone whom we might find attractive and sound as a character, except that she approves of a reprehensible practice which is supported by her wider culture? What is duty, and is it always best to follow one's agreed-upon duty? Is it justifiable to do one's duty even when it does more harm than good?

12:00 p.m., Richmond
Signing: Brandon

01:00 p.m., Unionville
Finding Alpha Readers: Writing Groups
Brandon Sanderson (M), Erik Buchanan
Writing groups are a terrific way to hone your craft—you can receive unbiased feedback and find out what works and what doesn't. But what should you look for in a writing group? What do you need in order to join one?

03:00 p.m., York
Mainstage: Brandon
(Main address and Q&A)

05:00 p.m., Room 1080
Cartography in Scence Fiction and Fantasy: Worldbuilding - Literally
Brandon Sanderson (M), Jane C. Petrovich, Bill Cameron
Lord of the Rings was one of the first big fantasy epics where the land was as much a character as the characters. Whether it's following the map of a single planet, like Pern, or a whole region of space, following along on a map is sometimes as much fun as following the plot.

06:00 p.m., Room 1080
Magic: The Gathering

SUNDAY

11:00 a.m., Newmarket
So She Likes Coffee... Big Deal!
Derwin Mak, Kelley Armstrong, Brandon Sanderson, Rob St. Martin (M)
Writing interesting characters involves more than just giving them a laundry list of likes and dislikes, a hair colour, or a catchphrase. It involves backstory and philosophy, and can be altered by the events of the plot. Not everything about a character is necessarily visible on the page. What goes into creating memorable characters who seem as real as any flesh-and-blood person?

12:00 p.m., Aurora
Details, Filler, and Plot
Brandon Sanderson, Erik Buchanan
It's all very well and good to build an interesting alien world, or to craft characters who are unique, realistic and relatable, but they also have to have a story worth telling. And then there are the subplots: the story within the story. How can you craft a plot that will keep your readers eagerly turning pages to find out what happens next? And perhaps more important—how do you keep track of the plot of your own story when it gets complex?

02:00 p.m., Richmond
Signing: Brandon Sanderson

03:00 p.m., Aurora
Reading: Brandon Sanderson

05:00 p.m., Oakridges
Brainstorming the Ending
Brandon Sanderson (M), Sarah McCully, Erik Buchanan
Sometimes, in writing, the beginning is the worst place to start. A story is sometimes constructed by coming up with the climax first, and working backwards. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this approach? How do you know whether or not it will work for the story you want to tell?

06:00 p.m., York
Closing Ceremonies

Updates + Sanderson's Second Law in The Leading Edge

2011-07-11T12:18:00.001-06:00

Fantasy Faction did a video interview of me while I was in Europe. The result is over 30 minutes long, and covers topics such as the Way of the Kings, the Alloy of Law, Mistborn as a series, my writing process, The Wheel of Time, and the fantasy genre. Check it out.

There have been a few recent Writing Excuses podcast episodes that I haven't linked yet. First Dan, Howard, Mary, and I did a microcast covering seven different writing questions from listeners. Then we talked about query letters. And this week we talked about Cyberpunk.

The most recent WARBREAKER annotation covers a part of the climax that was one of the cinematic focus scenes I envisioned before I started to write the book.

There's a new collection of Twitter posts up. And besides also having a Facebook page I now have a Google+ account, though there probably won't be much content there until I can start importing my Twitter feed.

And congratulations to The Leading Edge (BYU's science fiction/fantasy magazine) on publishing its 30th anniversary issue. Dan Wells and David Farland contributed stories to this issue, and they've also printed an essay of mine entitled "Sanderson's Second Law." It starts out like this:

A few years back, I wrote an essay on creating magic systems that I titled Sanderson’s First Law. It had to do with the nature of foreshadowing as it relates to solving problems with magic. In that essay, I implied that I had other “laws” for magic systems that I’d someday talk about. Well, that time has come, as I’ve finally distilled my thoughts for the second law into an explanation that will work.

If you want to read the rest, you'll have to get a copy of the magazine. (At least until I post it on the website a few months from now. I also gave an address on the topic at JordanCon this year.)

THE WAY OF KINGS Wins the David Gemmell Legend Award

2011-06-22T13:28:00.001-06:00

I've put up a new WARBREAKER annotation about chapter 55. Plus there's also a new Writing Excuses episode up on professional organizations. As our cohost Mary Robinette Kowal is also the vice president of SFWA, she has many useful things to say on the topic.

About a week ago, I finally got back from my extended stay in Europe. I have to say, you guys treated me very well over there. I hope to be back soon.

One of the highlights was my impromptu event in Amsterdam. If you didn’t follow that little fiasco on Twitter, I ended up missing my connecting flight to Oslo because of an air traffic controller strike in France. This resulted in an eight-hour layover.

Well, I tweeted about what was happening, and some very kind (and somewhat determined) fans convinced me I should go out and see the city. I did. And it was awesome. By the end, there were about twenty of us. We grabbed food at a local place, and I asked what was considered authentic Dutch cuisine. I was told pancakes by one person and potatoes by another. So, I ordered pancakes and fries.

Strange looks ensued. Apparently “pancakes and potatoes” meant “pancakes or potatoes.” But I stuck to my guns. (And this was by no means just an excuse to order some fries...)

The signing in Oslo was awesome. I loved the store, and the turn-out was great. Seriously, if you live in the area, you need to check out Outland Kirkegata. They’re the only bookstore that has ever flown me internationally on their own dime just so their readers could get some signatures. And, speaking of bookstores, I did sign some books in a few places, wherever I found them. So here’s a list of places you’ll find signed copies:

Simply Books, Salt Lake City Airport
Top of Concourse C

Borders Books, Cincinnati Airport
Terminal 3B
Phone: 859.767.4960

Outland Kirkegata, Oslo
Kirkegata 23
0153 Oslo
Phone: 22 33 04 10

The American Book Center, Amsterdam
Spui 12
1012 XA Amsterdam
Phone: +31(0)20 625 55 37

Forbidden Planet Megastore, London
179 Shaftesbury Avenue
London WC2H 8JR
Phone: 0207 420 3666

Waterstone's, Guildford
71-73 High Street
Guildford GU1 3DY
Phone: 01483 536366

I had a great time in London. It was my first visit to the UK, but I intend to get back soon. And of course France was awesome, as always.

One regret of the trip was that after we’d set my dates in stone, we realized I was not only doubly nominated for the David Gemmell Legend Award for Best Novel, but would be leaving Europe only a few days before the ceremony. We looked into changing things around, but the cost—and the fact that I was plain exhausted from the trip—was too much. We went ahead and regretfully returned on schedule.

To my great surprise, THE WAY OF KINGS actually won.

I hadn’t been expecting this. I’d been nominated three times before without winning. This year, with two books up for the award (like last year), I was convinced I’d split my votes again and have no shot at it. Beyond that, the competition was pretty steep this year.

I now wish I’d made the extra effort to stick around. Still, my publisher was there, and we’d talked about them accepting the award for me in case I did win. At least we were represented.

Either way, I’m deeply grateful to you all for your votes for THE WAY OF KINGS. Once I get the award, I’ll be sure to take photographs and post them up for everyone to admire.

And now, back to work on A MEMORY OF LIGHT.

(Also, p.s., I’ve been invited to Comic-Con International in San Diego again this year, with a request that I appear on the fantasy panel. I wasn’t intending to go, but with the invitation on the table, I decided it was worth the diversion. So if you’re attending, plan on seeing me there. I’ll bring some ALLOY OF LAW goodies to give away.)

THE ALLOY OF LAW Sample Chapters

2011-06-15T13:56:00.000-06:00

First a couple of updates. There's a new Warbreaker annotation up covering chapter 54 (with more about Old Chaps's background, aside from the usual discussion about the climax), and there's a new collection of Twitter posts. And the second Writing Excuses podcast episode with Mary Robinette Kowal as an official member covers internal character motivations.

The new Mistborn book, THE ALLOY OF LAW, comes out on November 8th. Today, Tor.com released the first batch of sample chapters, with the prologue and chapter one. They will put up five more chapters before the release date, which means that the preview is going to be about a third of the book. That's a large fraction, but I felt that after chapter six was the best stopping point for the preview: it's a satisfying chunk on its own, and it gives a good overview of the different aspects I wanted to include in the novel. It actually takes you up through the end of what I intended to be a short story when I started writing it. Of course well before that point I knew I'd keep writing the story to its natural conclusion, and it turned into a 95,000-word novel. (For comparison, the first Mistborn book was 215,000 words.)

I think you'll like the preview. Go check it out on Tor.com.

France Schedule + Mary Robinette Kowal Joins Writing Excuses

2011-06-07T11:27:00.001-06:00

The rest of my France schedule is below. But first a couple of updates.

Writing Excuses enters its sixth season with an exciting announcement: Mary Robinette Kowal joins Howard Tayler, Dan Wells, and me as our fourth full-time cast member. For the first episode of the sixth season we revisit our very first (unreleased) episode, Can Creativity Be Taught?.

The most recent WARBREAKER annotation is another one on the avalanche that is the climax. It covers chapter 53. Dance, dance, dance.

Fantasy Tavern, Paris, France, June 8

19.30 pm: Please RSVP if you wish to attend. Space is very limited.

Bloggers/Booksellers/Journalists meeting, Paris, France, June 9

19.00 pm: Please RSVP if you want to attend this event. Priority given if you are a bookseller, journalist, or blogger, but they will also fit 25 other people.

Etonnants Voyageurs, Saint-Malo, France, June 11–13

SATURDAY
15.00 pm: book signing (Librairie M’Lire jeunesse)
18.00 pm: panel "We are a legend" / "Nous sommes une légende" (E.M.M., salle 3 – Intra Muros, avec: Claudine GLOT, Gilles SERVAT, HOBB Robin)
19:30 pm: book signing (Librairie M’Lire jeunesse)

SUNDAY
11.45 am: panel "How to use magic" / "Du bon usage de la magie" (MAISON DE L’IMAGINAIRE - Intra Muros, avec: FFORD Jasper, STROUD Jonathan)
14.30 pm: book signing (Librairie M’Lire jeunesse)
18.00 pm: panel "How to deal with someone else's world" / "Comment je me suis emparé de l’univers d’un autre" (MAISON DE L’IMAGINAIRE - Intra Muros, avec: COLIN Fabrice, FFORD Jasper, FRUCTUS Nicolas)
19.15 pm: book signing (Librairie M’Lire jeunesse)

MONDAY
10.30 am: book signing (Librairie M’Lire jeunesse)
14.30 pm: book signing (Librairie M’Lire jeunesse)
15.30 pm: panel "Greet Brandon Sanderson" / "Pour saluer Brandon Sanderson"

Signing in Oslo Tomorrow

2011-05-31T11:42:00.000-06:00

Today my flight out of Strasbourg was delayed, so I missed my connecting flight to Oslo in Amsterdam. The result of that was an eight-hour wait in Amsterdam before the next flight, so I got to hang out with some of the local fans while eating pancakes and fries. If you're in Amsterdam and you missed it, that's probably because you don't follow me on Twitter or Facebook. Sorry for the really short notice, everyone, but you can't really plan missing a flight like that. I do hope to return to the Netherlands sometime in the future, but it could be a few years.

Tomorrow I'll be signing in Oslo, Norway. The Outland Kirkegata bookstore is flying me out, so I hope a ton of Norwegian fans can show up at the signing and make it worth their while. That's the major reason I sent out another newsletter today, but I also talked about my progress on A MEMORY OF LIGHT and about the THE WAY OF KINGS paperback release (it's out now!). If you're not on the mailing list, you can request to be added here. Also tell me your city and state if you want email reminders when I'm appearing nearby.

This week's Writing Excuses episode covers a bit of a different topic from usual. Howard and I sat down with Tom Smith at Penguicon to discuss filking and writing music. Don't know what filking is? Check out the podcast.

We did manage to get a WARBREAKER annotation put up last week. It's the one for chapter 52, and covers a lot of spoilerific things leading into the climax.

I'm going to France, Norway, the UK, and France again

2011-05-24T12:11:00.000-06:00

This morning my plane took off for the first leg of my European tour. The flight was delayed, but I have a long layover in Cincinnati, so I'll still get there in time for my connection. Anyway, here is my schedule of events.

Les Imaginales, Épinal, France, May 26–29

THU MAY 26
3:00 p.m. panel "Brandon Sanderson contre les infâmes bibliothécaires" ("Brandon Sanderson vs the Evil Librarians") followed by book signing.

FRI MAY 27
11:00 a.m. panel "La Fantasy" followed by book signing.
2:00 p.m. panel "L’état de la fantasy aux USA" ("How is fantasy today in US?") followed by book signing.

SAT MAY 28
10:00 a.m. panel "Dieux vivants, aventuriers, filles du people" ("Living Gods, adventurers, common girls") followed by book signing.

SUN MAY 29
3:00 p.m. panel "Meeting Brandon Sanderson" followed by book signing.

Outland Kirkegata, Oslo, Norway, June 1

Time: 5:00 p.m.–7:00 p.m.
Address: Kirkegata 23
0153 Oslo
Norway
Phone: 22 33 04 10
Type: Signing

Forbidden Planet Megastore, London, UK, June 4

Time: 1:00 p.m.–3:00 p.m.
Address: 179 Shaftesbury Avenue
London WC2H 8JR
UK
Phone: 0207 420 3666
Type: Signing

Waterstone's, Guildford, UK, June 6

Time: 12:30 p.m.–2:30 p.m.
Address: 71-73 High Street
Guildford GU1 3DY
UK
Phone: 01483 536366
Type: Signing

Fantasy Tavern, Paris, France, June 8

Time: 7:30 p.m.–8:15 p.m.
Address: 38 rue de la Bienfaisance
75008 Paris
France
Email to RSVP: tavern@fantasy.fr
Type: Radio show and signing

Another signing in Paris?, June 10

Not sure at the moment if this will happen. I'll keep you updated.

Etonnants Voyageurs, Saint-Malo, France, June 11–13

The panel and signing schedule for these three days isn't yet clear, but I'll post it when I know more.

I finally get back home on the 15th. I've wanted to meet readers in Europe for quite a while, but this is going to be exhausting. Pemberly will be joining me for the second half, starting in the UK, and we'll be able to get some sightseeing in.

I'm sorry if I'm not appearing anywhere near you this time. I'm sure I'll be back in Europe again in the future, but it could be a few years. Next April I'm going to Australia.

Updates + Hugo Voter Packet

2011-05-23T12:42:00.001-06:00

We've got a few more parts of the website working. The percentage bars on the left column are now functional again, and my assistant was able to put up another Twitter posts collection. New annotations and library items will have to wait for later though.

There are two new Writing Excuses episodes up. First, Howard and I sat down with Jim Hines to discuss parody and satire. Then we talked with John Scalzi about dialogue. Both episodes were recorded at Penguicon.

This past weekend at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards banquet, my friend and past Writing Excuses guest Eric James Stone was presented with the award for Best Novelette of 2010 for his story "That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made." Congratulations, Eric, and congrats to all the Nebula winners! If you want to read the story, Eric has posted it on his site. It has also been nominated for a Hugo Award in the same category.

I want to talk a little more about the Hugo Awards. I've mentioned before how anyone who registers for Worldcon can vote for the Hugos, and a little about how voting works. I haven't said much before about how there is a cheaper membership you can get that basically allows you to vote but not to attend the convention. The Supporting Membership goes for $50, which is well worth it especially if you consider the value of the following: the Hugo Voter Packet.

The Hugo Voter Packet came out at the end of last week, and it's an ebook package containing ebooks for every single work nominated for a Hugo. Most are available in ePub, mobi (for Kindle), pdf, and rtf files so you can convert them to work on the device of your choice.

Now, I should mention here that the $50 Supporting Membership fee, the $100 Young Adult Attending Membership fee, and the $195 Attending Membership fee (prices good until July 17, 2011) do not actually pay for these ebooks. The ebooks are free for registered members, like the DVD screeners sent to members of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences when they're deciding what to vote on for the Oscars. So to support the authors whose works appear in the Hugo Voter Packet, you should still buy the physical books or the commercial ebooks, since the authors do not get any royalties from this packet. (By the way, membership fees only support the running of the convention and are not used for profit.) But the Hugo Voter Packet is a great way to check out works that you wouldn't otherwise have read, so that you may make an educated choice when you fill out your ballot.

The packet contains the full text of eight novels:

Blackout by Connie Willis (All Clear, the second half of the story, is not included)
Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold
The Dervish House by Ian McDonald
Feed by Mira Grant (pen name of Seanan McGuire)
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells (Campbell nominee)
Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia (Campbell nominee)
Moxyland by Lauren Beukes (Campbell nominee)

(There are also excerpts of other novels by Lauren Beukes and Lev Grossman.)

Four complete graphic novels:

Fables: Witches by Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham
Girl Genius, Volume 10: Agatha Heterodyne and the Guardian Muse by Phil and Kaja Foglio with colors by Cheyenne Wright
Grandville Mon Amour by Bryan Talbot
Schlock Mercenary: Massively Parallel by Howard Tayler with some colors by Travis Walton
The Unwritten, Volume 2: Inside Man by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

(For those who measure their graphic novels in megabytes, that's 685 megabytes of sequential art.)

Two complete nonfiction books:

The Business of Science Fiction: Two Insiders Discuss Writing and Publishing by Mike Resnick and Barry N. Malzberg
Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Tara O’Shea

(There are also excerpts from the two other Best Related Work nominee books and links to all the episodes of Writing Excuses Season Four.)

Dozens of short fiction pieces, including every story in the November/December 2010 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction, the September 2010 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction, the September 2010 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, the anthology The Way of the Wizard, and the anthology Godlike Machines (all in the Best Editor, Short Form section). In the Campbell (Not a Hugo), Short Story, Novelette, and Novella sections, short fiction is from nominated authors Lev Grossman, Saladin Ahmed, Rachel Swirsky, Ted Chiang, Elizabeth Hand, Geoffrey A. Landis, Alastair Reynolds, Sean McMullen, Allen M. Steele, Aliette de Bodard, James Patrick Kelly, Eric James Stone, Carrie Vaughn, Mary Robinette Kowal, Kij Johnson, and Peter Watts.

Plus samples of work from nominated artists Daniel Dos Santos, Bob Eggleton, Stephan Martiniere, John Picacio, Shaun Tan, Brad W. Foster, Maurine Starkey, Steve Stiles, Taral Wayne, and Randall Munroe. And I haven't looked in detail at the contents of the sections for Best Semiprozine, Best Fanzine, and Best Fan Writer, but it looks like they also contain tons of complete stories and articles.

This is a very large amount of high-quality award-nominated reading material (some of the works are already award-winners, those that picked up Nebulas this past weekend). If you've been waffling on whether to buy a membership to Worldcon, the existence of this packet is something you should consider. And Worldcon members who are already registered, now's the time to get reading and get ready to vote! (The ballot closes July 31st, 2011.)

Gemmell Award Nominations + Updates

2011-05-09T13:59:00.002-06:00

The short list of six nominees for the David Gemmell Legend Award is out, and for the second year in a row I have two books on the list. Towers of Midnight and The Way of Kings join Brent Weeks's The Black Prism, Pierre Pevel's The Alchemist in the Shadows, Peter V. Brett's The Desert Spear, and Markus Heitz's The War of the Dwarves.

Once again I'm honored to have two books nominated for the award named for David Gemmell, as he was such a fantastic author. (My favorite of Mr. Gemmell's titles is Knights of Dark Renown.) Because this is a reader-voted award, that means you all took the time to stop by and give my books a nominating vote. That means a lot to me. Thank you so much!

I do find it amusing that I've now managed to lose the award more times than it's been offered. But did you know that the winner gets a battleaxe?

I definitely want to hang that battleaxe on my wall one of these days, but as always there's stiff competition from a set of very worthy nominees. All of these books deserve a read.

You can vote for the 2011 David Gemmell Legend Award here. If you already voted earlier in the year and are wondering what happened to your vote then, that's how the field was narrowed down to these six finalists. All vote totals were reset when the short list was announced, so you should vote again if you have a preference on what book wins. (Voting for the 2011 David Gemmell Morningstar Award and Ravenheart Award for best fantasy debut and best fantasy book jacket is also now open.)

In other award news, this past weekend I went to the Whitney Awards ceremony at the LDStorymakers conference. The Way of Kings won the Best Speculative Fiction award, and it also tied with Dan Wells's Mr. Monster for Novel of the Year. I'm happy the book has been so well received, and sharing an award with Dan is awesome. (See the following links for a complete listing of the nominees and winners.)

There are a couple episodes of Writing Excuses up that I have not yet mentioned. First Dan, Howard, and I did another braingstorming episode covering urban fantasy. Then at Penguicon, Howard and I sat down to record an episode with Nebula and Campbell nominee Saladin Ahmed to talk about non-traditional settings. Check them out.

Things are mostly working on my website after its recent server move—the library, annotation, and store pages are all accessible and functioning—but there's still some work to be done in the site's backend. The upshot is that I can't yet add new annotations or library items. So the WARBREAKER annotations are on hiatus until that gets fixed, as are the WARBRAKER html chapters, and the expanded "I Hate Dragons" short will also have a delayed posting in the library.

More of "I Hate Dragons"

2011-05-06T15:46:00.001-06:00

Thank you all for helping me out with the Delta situation (and for helping my brother win his goofy contest.) I wanted to do something nice, so I dredged up the chapters I wrote of "I Hate Dragons" as a writing exercise a few months back.

I had originally written these as part of a dialogue exercise, writing no narrative. After I finished them, as a second part of the exercise, I went back and added narrative to fill them out. (Though they're still heavily dialogue.)

Enjoy!

Anyone out there work for Delta Air Lines?

2011-05-04T11:20:00.000-06:00

Two big updates for today. The first is related to a tweet I made last night. I'm scheduled to fly to France later this month, and that trip is going to be smack-dab in the middle of working on the last WoT book. I worry that the trip is going to throw me out of my momentum writing the book. I was really hoping to be able to spend my skymiles to get myself a business class seat, where I could work the entire way and not worry about my laptop running dry or the seating keeping me from working.

Unfortunately, we're running into some snags getting me upgraded. I have the skymiles, I have an upgradable ticket (which my French publisher bought at considerable cost) but things just aren't working. So, I'm looking for someone at Delta who can somehow make this happen for me. It would not only help get AMoL out faster, but would make me very grateful. So, if you work for Delta in the right division (or know someone who does) and you think you can make this happen, drop me an email. I'll owe you a big favor, and I can make some cool things happen for WoT fans whom I owe a favor.

It's probably a long shot, but I thought I'd ask. Who knows. Maybe it will work out.

The second issue is that our website is having hiccups as we move to a new hosting plan. (You guys visit way too much; not that I'm complaining.) Our new server has php 5 instead of 4, so a number of things are broken, and Producer Jordo is away on a business trip so things probably won't be back to normal until next week.

Right now most of the section pages on the site don't work, but the individual pages still do—e.g. you can go to WARBREAKER chapter 51 using this link or the link in the sidebar, but the section links on the library page don't work. The same goes for the annotations and the store pages. Links to individual items or annotations function, but the section links are broken. You can manually visit any other library item, annotation, or store item by changing the number in the URL. Anyway, this should be fixed next week.

My Penguicon Schedule

2011-04-27T14:23:00.000-06:00

This weekend I'm a guest of honor at Penguicon, which is a hybrid convention for science fiction/fantasy and open source software. Howard Tayler is the toastmaster, so it should be a lot of fun. If you're in the Detroit area, consider registering at the door if you haven't preregistered.

Penguicon
Troy Marriott
200 W Big Beaver Rd
Troy, MI 48084

FRIDAY

6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m., Dennison 1
Attack of the Plot!
Ferrett Steinmetz, Brandon Sanderson, Christian Klaver, Charles Zaglanis
How authors attack the idea of plot.

7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m., Big Top
Opening Ceremonies

8:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m., Dennison 1
To Series or Not to Series. That Is the Question.
Stephanie Osborn, Steven Lake, Merrie Haskell, Brandon Sanderson, Jim C. Hines
The pros and cons of writing a series.

SATURDAY

1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m., Board Room
A Reading with Brandon Sanderson

3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m., Ballroom A
And Let It Be Said!
Stephanie Osborn, Steven Lake, Merrie Haskell, Brandon Sanderson, Christine Purcell
A look at dialog and scene/action description in writing, and how to effectively pull off quality dialog and scene descriptions your readers will remember.

4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m., Ballroom A
It's OKAY, the First Draft Is SUPPOSED to Suck!
Stephanie Osborn, Brandon Sanderson, Jim C. Hines, Lydia Nyx, Michael Cieslak
Turning off the inner editor.

7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m., Ballroom G
The Art of the Critique
Ferrett Steinmetz, Merrie Haskell, Brandon Sanderson, Christine Purcell, Charles Zaglanis
When you're writing stories, one of the quicker ways to get better is to have talented people critique you. But where do you find good people? What does a good critique consist of? And how can you use that feedback to improve your story?

10:00 p.m. – 1:00 a.m., Dennison 2/3/4
Magic: The Gathering Non-Sanctioned Booster Draft Tournament
Brandon Sanderson, Timothy Geisler
We are having a non-sanctioned booster draft tournament. Space is limited.

SUNDAY

10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m., Ballroom A
Writers Groups
Brandon Sanderson, Jim C. Hines, Michael Cieslak, Stewart Sternberg, Charles Zaglanis
The pros and cons.

11:00 a.m – noon, Ballroom A
Let There Be Life!
Ferrett Steinmetz, Stephanie Osborn, Brandon Sanderson, Lydia Nyx
How writers form characters and make them seem real.

12:00 noon – 2:00 p.m., Niles
Writing Excuses Podcast
Howard Tayler, Brandon Sanderson

3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m., Big Top
Closing Ceremonies

Writing Excuses Nominated for a Hugo Award

2011-04-26T16:21:00.003-06:00

First off, there's a new Warbreaker annotation that covers Vasher sneaking into the God King's palace. It also talks about why one character doesn't just kill another character.

This week's Writing Excuses episode, season 5 episode 34, covers story bibles. Dan, Howard, and I talk about different ways to collect the background information on your story that you need in order to keep things straight as you're writing it (or the sequel). Give it a listen.

The big news is that the previous season of Writing Excuses, season 4 (starting with this episode), has been nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Related Work, which is given out annually to (usually) nonfiction works relating to the field of science fiction and fantasy. Traditionally the winner has been a book (for example, John Scalzi won it in 2009 for a printed collection of his best Whatever posts). Writing Excuses Season Four joins four other nominees this year:

Who can vote? Anyone who registers for the 69th World Science Fiction Convention (this August in Reno) before the voting deadline July 31st. (Rates go up July 17th, so registering before then is best.) The ballot is available now, but most people will wait to vote until they've had a chance to read, listen to, or watch enough material from the nominated people and works to make an informed decision. I have more details on how voting works in a previous post.

That's not the only Hugo category, of course. Here's the full list. Many of my good friends are also nominated—my cohosts Howard Tayler and Dan Wells are respectively nominated for Best Graphic Story and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (not a Hugo); my and Dan's editor Moshe Feder is up for Best Editor, Long Form; Mary Robinette Kowal has a short story nomination; Eric James Stone has a novelette nomination; Larry Correia is also up for the Campbell; and two of my books' cover artists, Dan Dos Santos and Stephan Martiniere, both garnered Best Professional Artist nominations.

All the nominees in each category are luminaries in the field and deserve your attention. It's an honor to be included among them.

Stormlight Archive Name Auction Winner, T-Shirts + Updates

2011-04-20T14:47:00.002-06:00

Last week I talked about the charity auction to get your name in the next Stormlight Archive book. Well, the auction is now over. The winner is Jason Lynn Pittman, and his winning bid was $1,825, which will go to support Utah's science fiction and fantasy symposium Life, the Universe, and Everything. Once I sit down to plan out the book (after I've written the first draft of A MEMORY OF LIGHT), I'll figure out where Jason's character will fit in and how to adapt his name to Roshar.

If you're interested in donating directly to LTUE, I said how at the bottom of the previous post. Plus there's also another auction going on right now for a pretty cool king-sized dragon quilt that also benefits LTUE.

InkWing has yet another contest—they're giving away two Kaladin T-shirts and two button packs. And Ta'veren Tees has a new band of the red hand/it's time to toss the dice shirt up for preorder. I got one of these at JordanCon and it's pretty cool. Check out their announcement here.

In the most recent WARBREAKER annotation I talk about the vote to go to war against Idris. And this week's Writing Excuses podcast episode covers what a writer wants and does not want in an alpha reader. There's also a new Twitter posts collection on the site.

My JordanCon Schedule + Updates

2011-04-13T12:43:00.002-06:00

Tomorrow my assistant Peter and I are off to JordanCon in Atlanta. Their full schedule is listed here. My panels are below. Please pay special attention to the details of the Magic draft on Friday night, if you want to participate.

There are also a couple of other updates. TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT has made it to the semifinals of Audible's Tournament of Audiobooks, but it is currently behind in votes to MATTERHORN by Karl Marlantes. If you liked the TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT audiobook, consider giving it your vote. (Of course you can vote for MATTERHORN instead, if you think that was a better audiobook.)

The Stormlight Archive character name auction is still going on. The local newspaper did an article on it.

I haven't linked this week's Writing Excuses podcast episode yet. Recent episodes were recorded at LTUE when I was at ConDFW, so I don't appear, but this episode marks my return. Dan Wells, Howard Tayler, and I talk about urban fantasy.

JordanCon III, Atlanta

Date: 04.15.11–04.17.11
Place: JordanCon III: ConSaken
Address: Crowne Plaza Hotel Atlanta Perimeter at Ravinia
4355 Ashford Dunwoody
Atlanta, GA 30346

FRIDAY

1:00 p.m., Oakwood AB
Opening Ceremonies

4:00 p.m., Camellia
Signing, Brandon Sanderson & Harriet McDougal

9:00 p.m., Azalea
Magic the Gathering Draft with Brandon Sanderson
Preregistration is required. Email Brandon if you want to get on the list. There will be a small buy-in of around $10 or $15. Also, if someone wants to come judge the match, you would be welcome.

SATURDAY

12:00 noon, Azalea
Fantasy Writing (Brandon Sanderson)
A 90-minute crash course in writing fantasy novels.

2:30 p.m., Dogwood
Kaffeeklatsch: An hour with Team Jordan (Brandon Sanderson, Alan Romanczuk, Maria Simons)
Limited to 10 pre-selected participants. Slots are already full; sorry about that.

4:00 p.m., Oakwood AB
A Memory of Light: Status Report (Harriet McDougal, Brandon Sanderson, Maria Simons, Alan Romanczuk, Richard Fife)

5:30 p.m., Oakwood AB
Costume Contest (Brandon Sanderson, Harriet McDougal, Linda Taglieri, Richard Fife)
Show off your tailoring skills or just come to watch the parade of Seanchan, Aes Sedai, Asha'man, and more!

10:00 p.m., Azalea
Magic with Brandon
Can you muster a successful Magic the Gathering deck and defeat the Brandon Sanderson? Bring your deck and find out.

SUNDAY

11:30 a.m., Camellia
Signing, Brandon Sanderson

1:00 p.m., Azalea
JordanCon's Got Talent (Brandon Sanderson)
Come give your 30-second book pitch to our experts!

Appear in the Sequel to THE WAY OF KINGS

2011-04-12T16:09:00.001-06:00

Ever since I started announcing on Twitter the names of fans that I was adapting to go into THE GATHERING STORM and TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT, readers have been asking me how to get their names put into the next book. Well, there will be another oppoturnity to participate in a charity drive and have a chance to get your name put into A MEMORY OF LIGHT, but that's not what I'm talking about today. Instead, I'm talking about how one person can get his or her name (or most likely a variation thereof; see below for examples) used for a significant second-tier character in the next Stormlight Archive book.

There's a charity auction for naming rights going on right now at eBay, with a final bell Saturday evening at 9:30 p.m. Mountain time. Proceeds will benefit the local science fiction and fantasy symposium, called Life, the Universe, and Everything (LTUE). (Yes, that is a Douglas Adams reference.)

As it was held at my university, LTUE was one of the science fiction and fantasy conventions that I attended regularly while trying to break in, and it was always an invaluable experience. Now that my books are published and available worldwide, I like to take opportunities to give back to the community that fostered my development as a fan and as a writer.

I was Guest of Honor myself at LTUE in 2010 (my first stint as a GoH), and for a science fiction convention the crowd at my Guest of Honor speech was amazingly young—full of people in their twenties. (If you want to know why this is significant, do a Google search for the "greying of fandom.") In my opinion, local conventions of this sort, which promote the sharing of our excitement for the genre among the up-and-coming generation of readers and writers, deserve all the support they can get.

LTUE has been running for nearly 30 years, but it is and always has been organized by unpaid volunteers. For one reason or another there are always funding issues, especially they try to keep registration free for students—a practice I support, as I can easily recall how little money I tried to spend while working my way through college and writing thirteen novels at the same time. So I'm more than pleased for the proceeds from this name auction to go toward keeping LTUE going next year.

The auction listing follows. And see the bottom of the post for information on donating directly.

LTUE Benefit Name Auction Brandon Sanderson

Here’s your chance to become immortal! Bid now on naming a character in a forthcoming novel from New York Times Bestselling author Brandon Sanderson.

Up for auction: Brandon will begin work on the second Stormlight Archive book, a sequel to THE WAY OF KINGS, due for release in late 2012 or early 2013. As the winner of this auction, you can submit a name (or variation thereof) that will appear for a second-tier character who plays a significant role in a few scenes in the book.

All proceeds from this auction will benefit Life, the Universe, and Everything: The Marion K. “Doc” Smith Symposium on Science Fiction and Fantasy held in Provo, Utah. LTUE is an annual event dedicated to helping students, up-and-coming authors, and professionals hone their craft and network with their peers. Now in its 30th year, LTUE is the premier genre publishing event in the Intermountain West.

Naming Examples

Some examples from winners from past auctions for names illustrate the variations that Brandon may use when the novel actually appears. For example, charity auction winner Brian Neff’s name appeared as Naeff in THE GATHERING STORM and TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT. Winner Scott Franson’s name appeared as Llarimar ("Scoot") in WARBREAKER. Aaron Yeoman’s name appeared as Yomen in THE HERO OF AGES.

Rules and Conditions

If you participate in this name auction, you acknowledge that you understand and agree to the terms and conditions below. You must have an active PayPal account to bid. As the host of this auction, UtahSF reserves the right to reject any bid at its sole discretion and to screen any and all bidders regardless of their eBay feedback history.

Brandon will adapt the winning bidder’s submitted name to fit the world of the Stormlight Archive (as seen in the examples above). Usually this means altering the spelling/pronunciation to fit the culture of the fictional world. However, Brandon reserves the right to reject any name he may find to be inappropriate.

If the winning bidder chooses to submit the name of someone else (such as a friend or family member), the winning bidder must submit a written release from this other person giving permission to use his/her name.

Finally, we hope it doesn’t have to be mentioned but the submitted name will be rejected if Brandon feels that it is in any way offensive, mischievous, or ill-intentioned, or if it is disruptive to the story.

This auction is for the name only. The winning bidder may not dictate the character's personality, description, or role in the story. If the winner supplies any of these things as part of the name submission, Brandon may or may not draw from that when implementing the character in the novel as the story demands. Any such ideas become the sole property of Brandon Sanderson with no further compensation or acknowledgement.

Your bid is a legally binding contract and it requires that you make full payment of your bid amount if your eBay ID is the highest bidder. You must make full payment through PayPal within 2 days of the auction close. Do not bid if you are not 100% sure that you can follow through with payment at the winning bid price promptly. You will also be bound to make full payment even if a higher bid has been removed for whatever reason, resulting in you becoming the high bidder.

Be aware that if a family member, another person in your household, or any other person who has access to your account uses your eBay or PayPal account, you are still fully liable and cannot avoid payment if you win the auction. All sales are final.

UtahSF is a 501(c)3 organization, so your winning bid amount (or portion thereof) may be tax-deductible. Contact a tax accountant or advisor for specific information.

If you are the winning bidder, you must provide contact information (email address, physical address, telephone number) with the payment email for ongoing correspondence as the submitted name is processed.

Novel Release Date

As mentioned, the release date for the novel is in late 2012 or early 2013. However, publication dates are naturally subject to change. The winning bidder may receive email with updates on the actual release date.

Donating Directly

As you can see, the auction itself is already up above a thousand dollars, which means many readers won't have a chance at winning. But if you would like to donate a few bucks toward the convention without bidding, that's something you can do. Make a check or money order out to UtahSF, print on the info line that this is a donation for LTUE, and mail it to:

LTUE Donation
c/o Joe Monson
PO Box 360
Orem, UT 84059-0360

Note though that this isn't like the Wheel of Time charity drives; it doesn't mean you have a chance of your name showing up in the book just by donating. That's mostly due to the way I create names for my books as opposed to Wheel of Time books. Roshar is a world very different from our own, so its names bear little resemblance to names in our world but rather are in line with principles I have worked out for the planet's languages and cultures. The Wheel of Time, however, takes place in a world that is ours in both the distant future and distant past, so names adapted from those in our current culture blend in well there, and Robert Jordan adapted many names from mythology and the world around him.

Still, if you do donate directly to LTUE, feel free to drop me a line and tell me. You never know what might happen.

Anyway, happy bidding!

UK Cover Art for THE ALLOY OF LAW

2011-04-05T11:48:00.000-06:00

If you're in the UK, Australia, or New Zealand and have been wondering how the cover art of Gollancz's version of the next Mistborn book will appear, look no further.

If you missed the US Tor cover and the cover flap synopsis, head over to Tor.com to see both.

The book comes out in November. Amazon is currently saying November 8th in the US/Canada and November 17th in the UK (and I assume Australia and New Zealand). This could shift around by a week or so by the time November rolls around.

Name Auction Coming, Music + Updates

2011-04-04T13:51:00.001-06:00

Want your name to appear as a character in the Stormlight Archive? There's going to be an auction for just that starting on Wednesday to benefit the Life, the Universe, & Everything (LTUE) symposium. I'll post more details when the auction begins.

This year's LTUE hosted the recording of a number of episodes of the Writing Excuses podcast, one of which aired this week. In it, Dan and Howard are joined by Robison Wells and Sarah Eden to talk about writing romance.

The most recent WARBREAKER annotation is a long one covering chapter forty-nine. It talks about Vasher's temper and using the priests as scapegoats, among other things.

In Suvudu's cage matches, Vin managed to hold off Jon Snow and Perrin was defeated by Quick Ben. Which sets up two matches, as Suvudu announced here. Starting on Wednesday, Vin will face Quick Ben and Perrin will have a consolation match against Jon Snow. Suvudu is accepting writeups for consolation match; see the announcement for details. They also have a forum where you can make suggestions about future cage matches. And superfan Terez is holding her own contest for best Vin vs. Quick Ben writeup.

Some people have sent me links to their music recently. Joey Maker has a passing reference to Rand Al'Thor in a rap song of his here. And Darin Porter wrote a whole song about Kaladin called "You Can't Go Back."

Dan Wells says, "I don't want to kill you."

2011-03-30T14:48:00.001-06:00

This is just a quick note to say that my Writing Excuses cohost Dan Wells's final John Cleaver book in the trilogy that began with I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER is out in both hardcover and trade paperback. The title is I DON'T WANT TO KILL YOU, and it is brilliant. [Assistant Peter says: I liked the first book and thought the second took it up just a notch, but the third book blows both of them away.]

Dan has posted his tour schedule on his site. He'll be at the Barnes & Noble in Orem tonight, and then in ten other cities.

Tsunami Relief Auctions, Writing & Illustrating for Young Readers + Updates

2011-03-28T11:57:00.001-06:00

Tor has donated a few of my books for auction at Genre for Japan, a charity drive to support the British Red Cross's Japan Tsunami Appeal. The auctions include a THE WAY OF KINGS audiobook, hardcovers of THE GATHERING STORM and TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT, and a Mistborn boxset. You can go to those links to bid (in UK pounds); bidding and auction rules are here. There are over 130 other items up for auction as well, so check it out.

A couple of years ago, I was an instructor at the Writing & Illustrating for Young Readers conference in Utah. I'm unable to do it again this year in June due to my Europe tour (more on that later as details are finalized), but it's a valuable experience if you want to break in to creating books for children. Instructors this year include Louise Plummer and Holly Black, among others. The workshops are filling up fast, so it's a good idea to register quickly.

Audible.com is once again putting on its Tournament of Audiobooks, and TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT is one of the competitors. The first round is underway, and so far TOWERS is narrowly beating out AMERICAN ASSASSIN. If you want to vote, click on the Best Sellers tab. (THE GATHERING STORM won last year's tournament.)

Suvudu has Vin up against Jon Snow in the semifinals of this year's cage match. Since Jon Snow hails from George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, he's probably going to win. Which I'm perfectly fine with, as George is a true master of a writer. Besides, I really have no interest in seeing both Vin and Perrin winning their semifinal matches (Perrin will be pitted against Quick Ben from Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen, who is no pushover) and facing each other in the final.

Ta'veren Tees is having a contest where customers can win free Wheel of Time shirts. See their contest rules here.

This week's Writing Excuses podcast episode features Larry Correia and Robison Wells joining Dan and Howard to talk about writing action scenes. The most recent WARBREAKER annotation covers more on Siri and Susebron's relationship. And I have a new batch of Twitter posts up.

Hugo Nomination Deadline Tomorrow

2011-03-25T10:45:00.001-06:00

Back in January I posted about nominating and voting for the Hugo Awards. Well, if you're eligible to nominate (you needed to be a registered Worldcon member by the end of January, or have been a member of last year's Worldcon), the nomination deadline is tomorrow night. If you didn't register quickly enough to nominate, now is a good time to register so that you'll be eligible to vote on the final ballot, which should open fairly soon. The convention itself will be in Reno, Nevada from August 17th through 21st.

If you want more details, read my earlier post. For now, here's a reminder of what I've been involved in that's eligible for a nomination.

ELIGIBLE IN CATEGORY: BEST RELATED WORK

Writing Excuses Season Four

ELIGIBLE IN CATEGORY: BEST NOVEL

Towers of Midnight
The Way of Kings
Alcatraz Versus the Shattered Lens

OTHER CATEGORIES
I have a vested interest in a few other possible nominations. My editors Moshe Feder and Harriet McDougal are both eligible in the Best Editor (Long Form) category. Cover artists Michael Whelan, Darrell K. Sweet, and Todd Lockwood are eligible in the Best Professional Artist category. Howard Tayler's Schlock Mercenary book Massively Parallel is eligible in the Best Graphic Story category. Dan Wells's books I Am Not a Serial Killer and Mr. Monster are eligible in the Best Novel category, and Dan himself is eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (not a Hugo, but nominated on the same ballot).

If you're eligible to nominate and haven't done it yet, consider doing it now. And if you've already nominated and happen to want to revise your nominations, you can submit a new ballot that will cancel out the old one, which is rather convenient.

Suvudu Cage Match: Vin vs. Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander

2011-03-23T13:28:00.001-06:00

Over at Suvudu, Vin is up against Zedd from Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series. Here's how I think the match would go down.

Vin crouched behind the earthen bank, the scent of burned wood pungent in her nose. A stump smoldered nearby, specks of red flaring alight in the breeze. The aging man with the white hair stood with hands clasped behind him at the center of the field; scarred patches of ground lay blackened where his wizard’s fire had fallen.

She stilled her breathing, resisting the urge to puff in and out. He would hear that, this strange old man with the ability to draw fire and lightning into his hands. He didn’t carry a bit of metal on his body, and had stopped her coins in midair when shot at him. He’d nearly stopped her as well, the air seeming to grow thick around her as she’d scrambled away. She’d barely gotten out of that with her life.

“Well,” the aging man said. “You might as well come out. Neither of us find this an ideal situation, but it is what it is, and we must accept it.”

She knew very little of this man. Indeed, she couldn’t quite remember how she’d come to this place, this quiet and darkened forest. She felt eyes in that darkness, watching; she could hear them stirring, the watchers, yet none of them spoke.

The white-haired man strolled forward. “I do feel bad that I have to kill you. Unfortunately, in order for me to live, you must die. Objectively, you can see that I must not hold back, as I must seek my own self-interest first. Certainly that is logical.”

Whoever this old sorcerer was, he did like to talk. Vin crept quietly around the perimeter of the clearing, burning tin, pewter, and steel. Light on her feet, alert and anxious to move, she kept to the shadows, watching for an opening. Perhaps . . .

It seemed her only choice.

“Perhaps we should join together,” she yelled out. “Fight against those who are watching.”

He spun and did that thing with his hands, where he seemed to gather in heat from outside and fling it toward her. She ducked in a roll, sweating, as the fire took a tree behind where she’d been crouching.

She had one bead of atium, powerful enough to let her see the future for a few short seconds. But she’d have to be close to use it—very close.

“I think not,” the man said. “They have taken no move against me as of yet.”

“They’re in concert together,” Vin said from in her hiding place.

The old man gathered fire again.

“I think,” Vin called, “they’ll wait for us to weaken each other and then attack us as one.”

The old man froze. “As one?”

“Er . . . sure. Yeah.”

“Communally?” he said.

“I’ll bet.”

His eyes opened wide. “COMMUNISTS!” he yelled. Then, incredibly, he climbed up on a stump and began to address those watching. “Hear me, socialists! Your foul ways have no grounding in rational thought, and only seek to divest men of their rights! You will listen, now, as I explain—at length—why capitalism is the only method by which truth can be found and expressed.”

And with that, he launched into a long-winded speech about something he called "objectivism." Vin didn’t listen to much of it; she just crept her way forward, behind his back, and he blathered on and on. Was this really the best time for a lecture? She shook her head.

Right as he was getting into a definition of something he called "positive rights," she Burned atium and leaped forward, driving a glass dagger into the back of his neck. He tried to dodge, but the atium let her see the direction he’d go, and her mind adjusted immediately.

“Urk,” the old man said. “And thus we see that this young lady’s rational egoism is victorious in the end, and that is proof of everything I’ve been saying. And, unfortunately, I appear to have just proven Wizard’s First Rule. . . .” He slipped and fell to the ground, eyes wide, glassy, dead.

“‘Wizard’s First Rule?’” Vin asked. “I mean, really. Is it too hard to say ‘The First Rule of Wizardry’ or ‘Wizardry’s First Rule’? The way you say it sounds stupid. That’s always bothered me.” With that, she slipped off into the darkness.

There you go. If you think this is the way the match would play out, go cast your vote. The poll closes tomorrow.

WARBREAKER Annotation, Tweets, and Writing Excuses Episode on Rewriting

2011-03-21T15:07:00.002-06:00

Tracy Hickman and Dave Wolverton once again joined Dan and Howard for a podcast episode of Writing Excuses at the recent symposium on Life, the Universe, and Everything in Provo. This time they covered rewriting.

The most recent WARBREAKER annotation is almost all about spoilers from chapter 47. As WARBREAKER is the book I've released for free online, I conveniently have a link to the full text of each chapter at the bottom of each annotation page, and vice versa. So if you want to read chapter 47 before reading its annotation, that couldn't be easier.

There's also a new collection of Twitter posts up, covering most of the past week. Delicate Arch plays an important role.

Vericon Schedule, Signing in Boston Area, ALLOY OF LAW Cover

2011-03-17T11:15:00.000-06:00

This weekend I'll be Guest of Honor at Vericon at Harvard University. Other guests include Austin Grossman, Holly Black, Catherine Asaro, Sarah Smith, Ellen Kushner, and Delia Sherman. My schedule is below, and the full schedule is here.

All of us will also be signing at the Harvard Book Store at various times on Saturday. You can come to the signings without paying to register for Vericon, but all of the readings and panels will take place in Sever Hall for registered con-goers only. The whole con is $25 for students (with current ID from any institution) and $35 for non-students; Saturday only is $15 for students and $20 for non-students.

Tor.com has also revealed the cover art (below) for the Mistborn book that's coming out in November, THE ALLOY OF LAW. There's a short summary too. I may talk more about this later, but let me say that I love the art that Chris McGrath did for this.

Vericon, Harvard University, Cambridge MA (my panels)

FRIDAY
7:30–8:45 p.m., Sever 113
Young Adult Literature Panel: A panel about writing young adult literature featuring Holly Black, Catherine Asaro, Sarah Smith, and Brandon Sanderson.

SATURDAY
10:30–11:15 a.m., Sever 102
Brandon Sanderson reading and Q&A.

11:30–12:45, Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
A guest signing featuring Brandon Sanderson, Delia Sherman and Ellen Kushner. (Delia & Ellen will arrive at noon.)

2:30–4:00 p.m., Sever 113
Collaborations in Writing Panel: An exciting panel on collaborations and what they add to writing. Brandon Sanderson, Holly Black, Austin Grossman, Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman will talk about work they've done collaboratively with each other and with other excellent authors.

4:30–5:30 p.m., Sever 113
Brandon Sanderson Guest of Honor Speech

Wheel of Time Shirts

2011-03-16T11:36:00.000-06:00

There haven't ever, so far as I know, been official Wheel of Time T-shirts. A lot of people have asked where they can get them. Finally we have a place: Ta'veren Tees. I've got a few of the shirts, and they're awesome. (Particularly the Far Dareis Mai one.)

Their press release follows.

OFFICIAL WHEEL OF TIME® T-SHIRTS TO BE SOLD BY TA’VEREN TEES

Fans of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time® series now have a way to wear their love for the WoT on their sleeves—literally.

Ta’veren Tees is the exclusive provider of Wheel of Time® apparel officially licensed by The Bandersnatch Group, Inc. Located at www.taverentees.com, Ta’veren Tees is the first and only to sell T-shirts dedicated to the characters, themes, imagery and sayings found throughout Robert Jordan’s epic series.

The initial store opening features six designs; two for women, two for men and two unisex. More shirts will be rolled out and added to the inventory over the coming months, but don’t be fooled by the site name—shirts won’t skew only towards the series’ three famous ta’veren. Whether you’d like to throw a spear with the Maidens or secretly call yourself a darkfriend, you will find something to wear on taverentees.com.

“With the first designs, we want to make sure we address the wants and needs of both male and female Wheel of Time® fans. We think that fans will be very happy with the first six shirts and the ones we will release in the near future,” said Jeffrey Daniel, co-owner of Ta’veren Tees.

“It is important to us to take the Wheel of Time® world that Robert Jordan beautifully created and show our admiration for the series that we all love,” said Sophie Decaudin, Ta’veren Tees co-owner. “This is something that hasn’t been done before, there was a need for it, and we are excited to meet that need head on.”

By creating these shirts, Daniel, Decaudin and Co-owner Kiley Kellermeyer hope to provide yet another avenue for WoT fans to express the love and devotion they feel towards the amazing world and spell-binding characters Jordan created.

“These designs are not only colorful, but reflect the themes and characters in the Wheel of Time® books,” said Harriet Rigney, editor of the series and widow of James Rigney, the author. “They may not be able to stop cold steel, but they are extremely fashionable.”

“We also salute Jeffrey, Kiley and Sophie for the design and layout of the Ta’veren Tees website,” she continued. “It’s a clean, uncluttered format that’s easy to navigate and I’m sure the fans of the books will enjoy visiting often.”

“Sometimes playful, often insightful, Ta’veren Tees are a welcomed addition to the line of products officially licensed by The Bandersnatch Group,” she concluded.

Updates & Tweets

2011-03-14T14:48:00.001-06:00

This week's Writing Excuses podcast episode covers e-publishing. This one was recorded at Life, the Universe & Everything, and Tracy Hickman and Dave Wolverton/Farland join Howard and Dan. I was at ConDFW that weekend.

There's a new Twitter posts collection up, covering the first half of this month. And the newest WARBREAKER annotation covers Vivenna learning from Vasher, among other things such as why I developed the Awakening magic system.

Suvudu Cage Matches

2011-03-08T12:53:00.002-07:00

I blogged briefly yesterday about the Suvudu cage matches. I thought I’d dig into it a little further today, as I consider Monday updates (normally) to be more “Here’s what’s going on” updates. I prefer to move more in-depth posts to other days.

So, the Suvudu cage match. First off, I’d like to say that I’m impressed by the improvements made to the format this year. For one thing, the editors made a conscious effort to even out the power level of the combatants. That goes a long way toward making the matchups more interesting, I think—no longer do we have to suspend disbelief to epic proportions in order to pretend that Jaime Lannister would somehow ever NEED to fight Cthulhu, and somehow find a way to win.

There are still some things to gripe about here, as there is still great power-level variety in the matchups. All things considered, this is a good group to battle it out, but do Gollum and Tasslehoff REALLY belong in this? I don’t think they match the others. And what about Pug, Allanon, and Zedd? Three full-blown, deeply trained wizards amid a bunch of melee fighters? Fantasy novels aren’t D&D. (Well, hopefully most of them aren’t.) There’s no reason to force power balance between the arcane and the non-arcane. But anyway, at least there aren’t any Elder Gods running around.

So, what are my thoughts? Basically, thinking of it rationally, Pug and company should end up dominating. Maybe Beowulf too. I mean, really. Beowulf is the proto-hero that almost all of the rest are (tangentially) based upon; the guy was practically indestructible. The others are arguably demi-dieties, and would be better off playing hardball with people like Rand and Gandalf than ending up fighting people like Tally or Druss. (Who, don’t get me wrong, are both totally awesome—but they’re going to have trouble with people who can teleport, call down the powers of the elements, and all-around warp the fabric of reality.)

Questions like these make it a little hard for me to figure out just what’s going on here. Is it just supposed to be a popularity contest? If so, Jacob Black wins and we can all go home. (Sorry, but it’s true.) If it’s not supposed to be a popularity contest, and we’re supposed to consider each pairing realistically, why don’t we have more information on the matches? How far apart do the combatants start? It’s a "cage match" by Suvudu’s title, but are they really fighting in a standard-issue wrestling cage? I mean, come ON, guys. We’re nerds here. We can’t make subjective judgments about fictional characters completely outside of canon if you don’t at LEAST tell us how the fights are set up.

Do people with followers get to bring some along? What about Perrin—one of his basic powers is calling on wolves for help. So can we assume he’s got a pack of them with him? Do the sf characters have guns? Can Vin assume everyone she’ll fight will have metal on them, or can we assume they will each know the person they’re fighting and be able to prepare?

Okay, yes, I’m overthinking this. But don’t tell me you weren’t too. Anyway, here’s my input on the two matches I’ve got some responsibility for:

Perrin against Tasslehoff. Really. We’re doing this? Okay, well, here’s what we’ve got. Perrin is an extremely skilled fighter whose very nature (being ta’veren) causes probability to warp around him and bring to him the things and people he needs at the moments he needs them. He has a power-forged hammer, the allegiance of tens of thousands of trained soldiers, and the ability to call upon hundreds of wolves if he really needed to. He is a berserker on the battlefield, and has the power to move in the world of dreams, where he has near-absolute control of his surroundings. He is guarded by Aiel warriors and two powerful Asha’man who can wield the One Power that made Rand such a force in the previous tournament.

Tasslehoff has a stick that throws rocks.

Okay, I’m underplaying it. Tas is a clever, brave little guy. (Actually, I think he may be immune to fear or something.) He’s prone to have a few tricks up his sleeves, magic items stolen here or there. But he’s also got a childlike view of the world, and has nowhere near the ruthlessness that Perrin has been forced by fate to learn. Tas can’t win this fight. I declare that this battle plays out like so: Tas defaults on his match by not showing up. He’s off picking Jon Snow’s pockets. Perrin wins. (And Wheel of Time fans, don’t prove me wrong. We’ll never live it down if Perrin loses to Tasslehoff.)

As for Vin and Logen Ninefingers, this is a far more even battle. To put the duel on better footing, I’m going to say that this is Vin before certain events toward the end of MISTBORN 3 that would make the fight wildly unfair. Also, I’m going to remove atium (which would let her see the future and win any battle she wants) from her repertoire for now. (If she has to fight Zedd, all bets are off.)

So, she’s a very, very talented Mistborn, capable of greatly increased strength, greatly increased speed, near-infinite endurance, supernatural sensory abilities, the capacity to change a person’s emotions at will, virtual immunity to metal weapons, the power to kill at range with coins shot at high speeds with expert precision, the ability to ignore many wounds and heal at an accelerated rate, and telekinetic powers that allow her to vault long distances and remain in the air when needed.

Okay, so maybe it’s not much of a fair fight. (This is what I was talking about.) Logen is a toughened warrior, very careful, but also capable of turning into a crazed berserker who doesn’t feel pain. But that’s not enough to face Vin. She’s out of his league. This fight goes on for a while, but he can’t get to Vin, who hovers outside of his range and flings back any weapons or arrows he uses against her. She pelts him with coins, then takes his head off with a six-foot-long koloss sword.

Reader Polls + Updates

2011-03-07T14:55:00.001-07:00

There have been a couple of reader polls lately that my books did well in. SFFWorld polled its forum members for readers' favorite books of 2010, and THE WAY OF KINGS came out on top, with TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT in second. In addition, Tor.com held a poll to determine the best science fiction and fantasy novels of the decade, and MISTBORN: THE FINAL EMPIRE came in at #9. They've since posted an appreciation of the novel by Jason Denzel from Dragonmount. TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT at #11, THE WAY OF KINGS at #12, and THE GATHERING STORM at #15 also contributed toward me managing to accrue the most votes of any author, spread among seven books. It's a surprise and quite an honor. I'm glad so many people are reading and enjoying the books.

Another poll that's currently ongoing is the Locus Poll and Survey. (Locus is the newsmagazine of the science fiction and fantasy field, and is a fantastic resource for anyone who wants to keep up with the industry.) You don't have to be a subscriber to fill out the survey and vote in the poll, but subscribers' votes count double. None of my books are listed as nominees, but they accept write-in votes.

Voting on the long list of nominees for the David Gemmell Legend Award is finishing up at the end of the month, and THE WAY OF KINGS and TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT are both on the list. If you haven't voted yet, give the full list of nominees a look. (Multiple votes don't count.)

Suvudu is doing yet another cage match where they pit characters from different series against each other and have them fight (usually to the death). This year both Perrin Aybara and Vin are in the pool of contestants. The writeups Suvudu does for these battles can be interesting, and often don't align with how the readers vote. Anyway, if you're interested in this sort of thing, take a look at the bracket.

In this week's Writing Excuses episode, Dan Wells, Howard Tayler, and I are once again joined by Sherrilyn Kenyon. We discuss perseverance—sticking in there in your writing career. Sherri has some great examples from her own experience, so check it out.

The newest WARBREAKER annotation covers the shortest chapter in the book. I considered making this the longest annotation, but decided against it. It's still much longer than the chapter itself.

Review of THE WISE MAN'S FEAR

2011-03-01T17:39:00.003-07:00

First some updates. This week's Writing Excuses podcast episode features Sherrilyn Kenyon talking about how to make your readers fear for your characters. The newest WARBREAKER annotation is on a climactic moment in the Siri/Susebron relationship. And there's a new batch of Twitter posts up, covering the past month.

Review of THE WISE MAN'S FEAR by Patrick Rothfuss

In case you haven’t heard, today is the release day of the long-awaited sequel to The Name of the Wind, a delightful debut fantasy novel by Patrick Rothfuss. I’ve had the privilege of reading the book, so I thought I’d post a heads-up here for those of you who read my blog, along with a review. (Of sorts.) Also, a reminder, I did an interview with Pat (and he kind of interviewed me back) for Amazon. You can read it at this link.

PART ONE: A REVIEW OF THE WISE MAN'S FEAR

All right, so the review of Wise Man’s Fear will focus on one question: Is it as good as the first?

The answer is . . . yes, and I feel that it’s quite a bit better. (That is saying a lot.)

There's the review. I figure that those of you reading this blog will either:

Have read Name of the Wind and liked it, so that review should be more than enough for you.
Have read Name of the Wind and didn’t like it. If so, I respect your opinion, even though you’re obviously a crazy person.
Haven’t yet read Name of the Wind, so giving you an extensive review of the second book would really just be a big confusing spoiler.

PART TWO: GO BUY IT

This is a very, very good book. If you liked the first, might I suggest that you go out and purchase yourself a copy this week? Pat may not mention it himself, but first-week sales are very helpful in giving a book good momentum. It will determine how long the book stays on shelves, how good its placement is in weeks to come, and how aggressively the sequel will be ordered by bookstores.

As I always state for my own books, if you’re not a hardcover buyer, don’t feel guilty not going out to get it—as authors, we like you to consume books as you prefer to consume them. Library, hardcover, ebook, paperback . . . your call. However, if you ARE intending to read Wise Man's Fear in hardcover, buying it early rather than late is always a nice sign for the author. Also, I’ve got a selfish reason for wanting Pat to sell well. I’d very much like to have a nice, friendly rivalry going with the chap. The Way of Kings hit #7 on the New York Times list. If Pat can hit in the top five with this book, it will give me something to shoot for.

(Honestly, I’m hoping he hits #1. It’s well within the realm of possibility for this book, and he deserves it. It will help the entire genre if this book sells well, as it will prove that big epic fantasy books by newer authors are still viable, and will also prove that excellence will be rewarded by the readership.)

PART THREE: A LONGER REVIEW (KIND OF)

Okay, so, I’m off on a tangent again. Let’s bring this back into focus. I’m going to assume that some of you haven’t read Name of the Wind yet. I often suggest it to people; it’s become—alongside Tigana, Eye of the World, and Dragonsbane—one of my top recommendations for fantasy readers. Often, however, people ask why they should read the book. Why do I recommend it?

Because it’s awesome.

Why is it awesome?

This often stops me. Why IS Pat’s writing awesome?

Well, the books have an absolutely wonderful magic system. One part science, one part historical pseudoscience, one part magical wonder. It’s the type of magic system that I’m always delighted to read, and ranks among my favorites in fantasy literature. But that alone doesn’t describe why the books are awesome.

In many ways, Name of the Wind is like an old, familiar coat. A young man orphaned at a young age. Time spent on the streets living as a thief and a street rat. A wizards’ school. Those who have not liked the book have often complained about the familiar tropes. What I love about how Pat uses these tropes, however, is the realism he strives to impart.

I view this story like a Batman Begins-type realism reboot of many classic fantasy tropes. We get to hear the legends of Kvothe, then read the truth, and make the connections of how things spiraled from realistic to fantastic. The way Pat does this is genius. In some places, you can barely pick out the tropes he is using—after one sequence in Wise Man’s Fear, I found myself laughing uproariously as I realized the mythological foundation for the sequence. There are familiar tropes, but they're taken and made so new and fresh that you have to peer through several layers of silk to see them for what they are. In other cases, there is delightful originality.

Those things, however, also fail to describe why the books are awesome.

Kvothe is a very compelling hero, very classical in that he’s widely accomplished yet marred by a single dominating flaw. (In this case, his temper.) He is witty, charming, and so wonderfully capable that he’s a delight to read about. (Particularly following much of the current fiction I’ve read, which seems to take the utmost pains to make certain I don’t like anyone I’m reading about.) He’s noble, yet brash, and is clever, but inexperienced. (Which makes him dense on occasion.) He lives.

But even that is not what truly makes these books awesome.

In the end, I think that if I distill why I’ve loved these books so much more than others, it’s because of this: They’re beautiful. Wise Man’s Fear is a BEAUTIFUL book to read. Masterful prose, a sense of cohesion to the storytelling, a wonderful sense of pacing . . . None of that is the reason for the awesomeness any more than a single dab of paint is the reason why a Monet is a thing of wonder. But if you step back to look and digest the piece as a whole—not thinking too much about the parts—you are left with a sense of awe.

There is a beauty to Pat’s writing that defies description. Perhaps if Kvothe were here, he could write an appropriate song that would capture it.

Brandon

p.s. As this is of note to many of those in my audience, I feel that I should mention that this book contains a fair bit more sex than the previous volume did. Pat avoids graphic details, but there are events in the latter half of the book that some readers may find discomforting.

French Interview + Updates

2011-02-22T15:50:00.001-07:00

While I was at the Utopiales convention I sat down for an interview with the great folks at Elbakin.net. (They're the same ones who gave MISTBORN an award; see pictures in my convention report.) Well, they've now posted the interview in French, and it covers a ton of different topics. (There's also an English version for those of you who don't read French.)

Kevin J. Anderson joins Dan, Howard, and me in the latest podcast episode of Writing Excuses to discuss writing in other people's universes, something Kevin and I have a bit of experience with. If that's something you're interested in learning about how to do, give it a listen.

This week's WARBREAKER annotation is a long one about Vivenna starting to work with Vasher. Check it out.

Another Writing Excuses Video & WARBREAKER Annotation

2011-02-07T15:17:00.002-07:00

We've got another Writing Excuses video up for you. This week's podcast episode covers using holidays in fantasy and science fiction, and Mary Robinette Kowal and Dave Wolverton/David Farland one again join Dan and Howard to discuss the topic. Moses Siregar III of Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing filmed it, and the video is up on YouTube.

There's also another WARBREAKER annotation up. This one covers the end of Vivenna's stint on the street and talks about how being a Drab affects her. It also discusses Nightblood's powers.

Writing Excuses Video + Updates

2011-01-31T18:01:00.001-07:00

This week's Writing Excuses podcast episode covers film considerations, and Mary Robinette Kowal and Dave Wolverton/David Farland join Dan and Howard to discuss the topic. Appropriately, this episode was also filmed by Moses Siregar III of Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing, and the video is up on YouTube.

The most recent WARBREAKER annotation covers Siri bullying Treledees and getting her hair color under control. It also explains something about the God King's tongue that's a big spoiler to anyone who hasn't read the book.

There's another new Twitter posts collection up. Note that I've changed my Twitter name from @BrandonSandrson to @BrandSanderson. There's a 15-character username limit on Twitter, and I hope this one will look less like an error and will lead to fewer people trying to reach me at @BrandonSanderson.

Today's the last day to register for Worldcon if you want to nominate for the Hugos. Read my previous post if you want to know why that matters.

For Your Nomination Consideration + Worldcon Deadline

2011-01-26T14:17:00.001-07:00

Hugo Award nomination season began this month, so I thought I'd let you know what categories my works are eligible in. If you don't know what the Hugo Awards are or how nominating and voting works, I also talk about that below. If you want to nominate, the registration deadline is January 31st. (You can also use this list when considering nominations for any other award that's out there, but for the purposes of this post I'm focusing on the Hugos.)

ELIGIBLE IN CATEGORY: BEST RELATED WORK

Writing Excuses Season Four

The Hugo definition for this category is:

Awarded to a work related to the field of science fiction, fantasy, or fandom, appearing for the first time during the previous calendar year or which has been substantially modified during the previous calendar year. The type of works eligible include, but are not limited to, collections of art, works of literary criticism, books about the making of a film or TV series, biographies and so on, provided that they do not qualify for another category.

Season four of the Writing Excuses podcast that I host with Howard Tayler and Dan Wells ran from January 2010 through August 2010, starting with this episode. If you have not listened to it, you may download the episodes to consider why it might be worthy of a nomination. Transcripts of every episode in the season are also available here. (Thanks to Mike Barker.)

ELIGIBLE IN CATEGORY: BEST NOVEL

Towers of Midnight
The Way of Kings
Alcatraz Versus the Shattered Lens

All three of these novels were released in 2010 by major publishers and are longer than 40,000 words, so they are eligible for nomination.

You may be interested to hear that no Wheel of Time novel has ever gained enough nominations to make a final Hugo ballot. Nor has a Wheel of Time novel ever made the short list for one of the traditional genre awards such as the Nebula or World Fantasy awards. (Though The Gathering Storm did make the short list for the second David Gemmell Legend Award, last year.) Guy Gavriel Kay spoke about this at the World Fantasy Awards ceremony in 2007, shortly after Robert Jordan passed away. I recommend that every fantasy fan read his speech. He doesn't posit that Robert Jordan should have necessarily been nominated, but he believes the contribution that bestsellers like the Wheel of Time make to the genre as a whole should be recognized.

OTHER CATEGORIES
I don't have works eligible in other categories this year, but I do have a vested interest in a few other possible nominations. My editors Moshe Feder and Harriet McDougal are both eligible in the Best Editor (Long Form) category. Cover artists Michael Whelan, Darrell K. Sweet, and Todd Lockwood are eligible in the Best Professional Artist category. Howard Tayler's Schlock Mercenary book Massively Parallel is eligible in the Best Graphic Story category. Dan Wells' books I Am Not a Serial Killer and Mr. Monster are eligible in the Best Novel category, and Dan himself is eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (not a Hugo, but nominated on the same ballot).

WHO NOMINATES FOR THE HUGO?
Recipients of the Hugo Award are nominated by and voted on by members of each year's World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon). There are two types of members: Attending and Supporting. Attending means what you'd expect: you get to go to the convention. Supporting is a type of membership that may be unfamiliar to you, but it's generally for people who will be unable to attend the convention for one reason or another but still want to financially support it. Supporting members can nominate and vote for the Hugos and can also vote on where a future Worldcon will be held, and they can pay to upgrade to Attending at any time. Attending or Supporting members of the previous year's convention may also nominate for the Hugos, but cannot vote on the final ballot unless they become members of the current year's convention.

This year, Worldcon will be held in Reno, Nevada, from August 17th through 21st. The name of this year's convention is Renovation. Anyone who registers before January 31, 2011 will be able to nominate for the Hugos. Attending memberships are currently $180 ($100 if you're age 21 or under, and $75 if you're age 16 or under) and Supporting memberships are $50 (rates will go up on February 28th). Nomination ballots will be accepted through March 26, 2011.

HOW ARE NOMINATIONS AND VOTES COUNTED?
Each person may nominate up to five works in each category (or individuals, if the award is for a person rather than for a work). All nominations are weighted equally; it doesn't matter which order you put them in. All nominations are totaled, and the top five go to the final ballot (or more if there is a tie for the 5th slot, or fewer if a nominee gets less than 5% of nominating votes).

Voting on the final ballot is a bit different. It uses a weighted voting system called instant-runoff voting (sometimes known as an Australian ballot, since IRV is used in Australian parliamentary elections, but not to be confused with the older definition of Australian ballot, which simply means secret ballot). In this system, you rank the choices by order of your preference. This means that you can vote for the nominee you actually want to win, whether you think it has a chance of winning or not—there are no "wasted" votes. Vote splitting is also not an issue; if there are three separate Doctor Who episodes nominated for a Best Dramatic Presentation (short form) award, for example, the IRV system does not make it more likely that something else will win because Doctor Who fans can't decide which episode to vote for. See an example below.

HOW MANY PEOPLE NOMINATE AND VOTE?
This depends on the category, since eligible nominators are encouraged to nominate only in categories they feel they have enough experience with. Last year when Worldcon was in Melbourne, Australia, there were 700 nominations for Best Novel. So if each person nominated five novels, that could have been as few as 140 nominating ballots. (Except that The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi received 142 nominations, so clearly many people nominated fewer than five titles.) Julian Comstock tied with Palimpsest for fifth place with 62 nominations, so both made it to the final ballot.

In the Best Related Work category last year, there were 259 nominations. The top nominee received 56 nominations, and there was again a tie for fifth place, with 29 nominations. (Writing Excuses received eight nominations last year.)

The final vote totals exhibit similar differences. 875 ballots were counted for Best Novel, and there was a tie for first with 380 votes for both China Miéville's The City & The City and The Windup Girl. 548 ballots were counted for Best Related Work, and This is Me, Jack Vance! won with 251 votes.

Here's a sample voting breakdown for the final ballot, from last year:

**Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form**
Doctor Who: "The Waters of Mars" (winner)	172	172	204	212	350
Dollhouse: "Epitaph 1"	199	201	205	243	278
Doctor Who: "The Next Doctor"	144	144	173	203
FlashForward: "No More Good Days"	123	125	127
Doctor Who: "Planet of the Dead"	70	70
No Award	59

The first column of numbers indicates what people ranked as their #1 choice. 199 people picked "Epitaph 1" as their favorite, and only 172 people picked "The Waters of Mars" as their favorite. Yet 199 was not above the 50% threshold necessary to win. So the instant runoff began: the lowest vote-getters were eliminated and those voters' preferences reassigned. Of people who voted "Planet of the Dead" #1, when that was eliminated, their #2 moved up to #1 and the votes were counted again; four had voted "Epitaph 1" as #2 and 32 had voted "The Waters of Mars" #2. "Epitaph 1" was ahead by a vote, but still didn't have enough to win. This process continued until eventually all but the top two were eliminated, and "The Waters of Mars" was declared the winner, even though it was behind in every round but the last.

You'll also notice the "No Award" listing. If you're voting and think none of the entries on the final ballot deserve your vote, you can pick No Award. I know that No Award won in the Dramatic Presentation category in 1977, but this is rare. There are more details on the Hugo voting system here.

TO SUM UP
The Hugo Awards have been presented every year since 1953 (except for a gap in 1954). When I was growing up, I knew that a "Hugo award winner!" tag on the cover of a novel like Ender's Game meant it was going to be a good read. Anything that makes the final ballot is going to be significant and worth your attention.

If you're interested in nominating and voting for whatever work or person you feel deserves a Hugo Award, consider registering for Worldcon by Monday next week and filling out a ballot sometime in the next two months. I will be attending Worldcon this year along with many other professionals and fans, and I hope to see you there.

Updates + Tweets January 17–20

2011-01-24T17:17:00.002-07:00

This week's episode of Writing Excuses is one of those that was recorded during the Superstars Writing Seminar, and it's on alternate history. I was doing a panel at the time, but Eric Flint and Mary Robinette Kowal were there with Howard and Dan to shed light on the topic. Check it out!

The newest WARBREAKER annotation covers Vivenna begging on the street. I also talk about influences from Les Misérables, which you may have noticed.

And there's yet another collection of my recent Twitter posts up.

Updates + Tweets January 10–17

2011-01-18T12:25:00.001-07:00

In this week's Writing Excuses podcast episode, Dan, Howard, and I go over more dialogue writing exercises. By the way, we recorded seven great episodes at this past weekend's Superstars Writing Seminar, with guests Sherrilyn Kenyon, Kevin J. Anderson, Eric Flint, David Farland, and Mary Robinette Kowal, so you have those to look forward to. The next seminar will be in April 2012 in Las Vegas (the weekend and venue should be nailed down this week), and early bird pricing is available.

The most recent WARBREAKER annotation covers more of Lightsong's bad dreams and the scene where he throws pebbles. There's also a spoiler discussion of the tunnels.

I've put up another collection of Twitter posts, mostly about the Wheel of Time reread. I started THE GREAT HUNT yesterday. But I also include a picture of the advance reading copy of Pat Rothfuss's THE WISE MAN'S FEAR that he shipped over.

Updates, Tor.com Q&A, and Tweets January 6-10

2011-01-10T15:29:00.001-07:00

In this week's Writing Excuses episode, we talk about fulfilling promises to your readers, and we give specific examples from our own stories and others'.

The most recent WARBREAKER annotation covers Vivenna's character arc hitting rock bottom. I also talk about how to give your Breath away one at a time.

Tor.com put out an open call for questions for me a while back, and today they put up the first batch of answers. Warning: contains spoilers for TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT, THE WAY OF KINGS, MISTBORN, ELANTRIS, WARBREAKER, and ALCATRAZ. Don't look at the post unless you've read those books. There are a lot more questions where those came from, and I'll be answering them a few at a time.

I'm still toward the beginning of my Wheel of Time reread, and I'll be at it for the next few months. I'm posting my thoughts on Twitter and Facebook as I go, and archiving them here on the site. A new page of tweets from the last few days is up.