TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT IS OUT

Hi there. It’s Brandon’s assistant Peter writing the newsletter this time. Brandon is currently at a signing in Cincinnati, and any spare minutes he does have he’ll probably spend writing, so it falls to me to write the newsletter. You’re receiving this because you signed up or sent Brandon fan mail. If you’d prefer not to get emails like this in the future, just reply and ask to be taken off the list.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you probably know what TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT is. And you probably know that it was released yesterday. (So why am I writing this newsletter about it?) Anyway, this is book thirteen of the Wheel of Time series, following up on last year’s THE GATHERING STORM. I’ve read the book and like it, but of course I’m incredibly biased.

Brandon has described this book as being more like books 4–6 of the series while THE GATHERING STORM was more like books 1–3. TGS was a thematically tight novel focusing on two main storylines, while TofM needs to bring together the other storylines from all over the place to where they need to be before the final book can start. Because of TofM’s broad focus, Brandon feels that while TGS was an excellent novel, TofM is actually a better Wheel of Time book. For people who’ve finished the book already, there’s an informal poll at Theoryland.com—60% of readers so far say they like it even more than TGS, and 14% like it equally as much. Brandon had said last year that satisfying readers would be harder with TofM than it was with TGS—with TGS he basically had to write a book that didn’t suck (as many naysayers feared it would), and he ended up hitting it out of the park. With TofM he had to write something BETTER than TGS—and so far reader response looks promising! I agree with Brandon’s estimation that it’s a better Wheel of Time book than TGS. There are some awesome scenes here, folks, some from people you wouldn’t expect it of.

As for what happens in the book, well, the book cover text is collected at this link for people who like to read that sort of thing. Personally, if I know I’m going to read a book, I like to avoid any spoilers whatsoever so it’s completely fresh.

WARNING: If you don’t like spoilers, PLEASE do not read the glossary in the book until you’ve finished the book itself. It contains a few massive spoilers you’ll wish you hadn’t seen. I’m serious—no peeking!

Anyway, enough rambling on that topic. Most of you have probably bought the book already anyway, unless you’re waiting to see Brandon and Harriet on the tour. But if you’re one of those people who are undecided on getting the book, there are some preview chapters out there:
Chapter one
Chapter two
Chapter eight

THE TOUR

Last year’s tour took a lot out of Brandon and it took him about a month to recover. (He tends to catch a cold sometime during each tour, which doesn’t help.) And with THE WAY OF KINGS coming out just a couple of months ago, Tor decided to make this year’s tour a bit shorter. So he can’t get as close to as many people on this tour as he would normally like. But don’t worry—when A MEMORY OF LIGHT comes out sometime in 2012, it will be a massive tour unlike any before seen by mortal eye. (Or something like that.)

Harriet is also accompanying Brandon on this tour in every city, though she can only handle staying up to a certain hour and may have to bow out of some signings early. She knows her limits, so please respect that! Brandon is still a young turk so he’ll keep signing until everyone’s book is signed, even if he has to take it to the parking lot. And he’ll sign any book that he wrote, no matter where you bought it. (But it is nice to support the store hosting him by buying at least one book while you’re there, and to avoid any doubt if you want to start reading the book before the tour reaches your city, it’s a decent idea to buy TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT at the store ahead of time and bring your receipt when the signing day comes. Some stores may give priority to people who bought the book there.)

Here are the signings, plus a few places he’ll be immediately after the tour:
BYU Bookstore (yesterday)
Sacramento B&N (yesterday)
Cincinnati Joseph-Beth (right now)
Dallas Borders (Nov 4)
Baltimore area B-A-M (Nov 5)
Washington area Borders (Nov 6)
Harvard Coop (Nov 7)
New York B&N (Nov 8)
Utopiales convention, Nantes, France (Nov 10-14)
Paris WHSmith, France (Nov 16)
Idaho Falls B&N (Nov 27)
He’ll also do a few Utah signings up through Christmas, not yet
arranged.
For complete details of all these signings go to:
coppermind.brandonsanderson.com/events

EBOOK VERSION (Kindle, etc.)

A note on the ebook version of TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT. While the hardcover and the audiobook (including the Audible and iTunes versions) are out now, the ebook will not be released until February. Remember that there weren’t any Wheel of Time ebooks at all until starting last year, and the ebook for THE GATHERING STORM didn’t come out until the mass market paperback was released in the U.S. almost a year after the hardcover. It was originally Harriet’s plan to do the same thing with TofM, but Brandon spoke with her last week and convinced her to move up the release to February.

I know a lot of you love your ebooks, but try not to be too disappointed. Harriet is of the old guard who feel a book isn’t a book unless you can smell that paper and glue smell and riffle its pages. It takes time to adapt to something completely new when you’ve been doing things one way for decades. During Robert Jordan’s lifetime, the only ebooks he allowed to be sold were the prologue teaser ebooks. Harriet has already bent significantly from that by allowing the first twelve ebooks to come out one per month over the last year as she did. Let’s cut her some slack and appreciate that the TofM ebook comes out in three months instead of eleven. 🙂 (And for goodness’ sake, I wish diehard Kindle fans would quit it with the one-star Amazon reviews of a book they haven’t even read. Sheesh!)

INTERVIEWS

Brandon has done a few interviews in recent months that a lot of you may find interesting. First up is a multi-blogger interview talking about how he wrote THE GATHERING STORM and addressing some readers’ responses.
And its followup about TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT and THE WAY OF KINGS.
(Yes, both interviews are titled the same . . .)
A couple more:
Grasping for the Wind
A Dribble of Ink

OTHER STUFF

Brandon wrote a rambling blog post a few weeks ago about when future books will come out. Since then he’s worked on an urban fantasy novel with the working title DEATH BY PIZZA (that will get changed since that title promises more humor than you’ll find in the book) about a necromancer pizza deliveryman. He’s also nearly finished writing a short story set in the Mistborn world—except it will be around 60,000 words, making it actually a short novel. He’s going to try to make that available somehow next year sometime. Details are very sketchy right now, but it takes place a couple hundred years after THE HERO OF AGES and contains what Brandon called “the coolest allomancer gunfight ever.” For more updates on what he’s currently doing, follow him on Twitter or Facebook.

That’s pretty much it for this newsletter. I know back in September Brandon promised a “Here’s what’s going on in my life”-type newsletter later in the year, but who knows if that will actually happen? We’ve hit three newsletters for the year, which is a record, and I’m having trouble imagining we’ll actually get another one out in the next two months. Oh wait! There IS something important I need to mention . . .

SIGNED BOOKS FOR CHRISTMAS DEADLINE

You probably know that Brandon offers signed books (of hardcovers that have been out over a year already) on his site. His other assistant, Becky, who handles all of the orders for that, has let me know that if you want to give signed books as a Christmas present, you need to get your orders in early. Here are the latest dates you can place your order:

Stateside:
Books: Dec. 6th
Posters: Dec. 6th
Jewelry/decals: Dec. 6th

International orders:
Books: Dec. 4th
Posters: Nov. 19th
Jewelry/decals: Dec. 4th

Also, Brandon obviously can’t sign any books for these orders while he’s still off on his tour. If you order something now, he can’t sign it until November 20th at the earliest. By the way, posters aren’t signed—there was a limited edition art print of the Mistborn allomantic table that was signed, but that sold out in three days. Brandon does want to do some kind of art print or poster from artist Isaac Stewart this year as well, but time is kind of running out on that so I’m not sure we’ll hit the holiday season. Anyway, look for another great piece of art, such as a large THE WAY OF KINGS map or something like that. Here’s Brandon’s store. It also includes T-shirts.

Anyway, that is that. You have reached the end of the newsletter! If you don’t want to get one of these in the future, just ask to be taken off. And if you’re on this list and want email reminders when Brandon is signing near your house, email us your city and state if you haven’t done that already.

Best,

Peter Ahlstrom
Assistant to Mr. Sanderson

(Yes, that title is tongue-in-cheek. No one calls him Mr. Sanderson. Though if a Mistborn movie ever gets made, I want my name in the credits like that.)