Though there’s a lot of ground to cover, this post is going to have to be quick due to my WAY OF KINGS deadline coming up on April 8th. First off, the latest Writing Excuses podcast covers juggling multiple viewpoints. And the most recent MISTBORN 3 annotations talk about what the mistsickness is doing and more on Sazed’s conversation with the First Generation.

The first round of David Gemmell Legend Award voting is over, and I was surprised to learn that both THE GATHERING STORM and WARBREAKER have made the short list (going up against THE CARDINAL’S BLADES by Pierre Pevel, EMPIRE: THE LEGEND OF SIGMAR by Graham McNeill, and BEST SERVED COLD by Joe Abercrombie). I still feel that THE GATHERING STORM is a better fit for the award since it is much more in the spirit of David Gemmell’s work than WARBREAKER is, and I’d rather not split my fanbase’s vote, but this is a fan-voted award and you (the fans) can give it to whatever book you think best deserves it. I definitely want to win that battleaxe one of these days, but I’m sure Harriet would like a battleaxe for Robert Jordan too. (As Joe, Graham, and Pierre would each like one for himself.) Voting on the final round should start fairly soon; I believe it will happen at this link and run until sometime before the awards ceremony in June. I’ll mention it again sometime after voting has begun.

THE GATHERING STORM has also made the final round of Audible’s 3rd Annual Tournament of Audiobooks where it will be up against THE HELP by Kathryn Stockett. THE HELP got 75 more votes in the semifinals than THE GATHERING STORM did, so TGS is going to need some…help…if you would like it to win the tournament. Voting starts here sometime Tuesday afternoon. (And here’s a non-flash link.)

Finally, Suvudu has been running a cage match for the last few weeks pitting fantasy characters against each other; the winners are selected by popular vote. Rand al’Thor has gotten past Locke Lamora, Conan the Barbarian, Roland Deschain, and Drizzt Do’Urden to make it to the final round against Jaime Lannister from George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. Now, George posted over on his Not A Blog a scenario proposed by the Lannisters: that each combatant in the final round choose six companions to fight at his side:

Jaime’s six will all be characters from the worlds and stories of George R.R. Martin (that would be me); Rand is free to fill out his six with characters from the works of Robert Jordan AND Brandon Sanderson. (Yes, he can even include Conan, since Jordan wrote about him).

Not sure how that last would be possible, since Rand apparently already balefired Conan from the pattern in the second round. I do wonder what restrictions there would be, since if Rand can choose anyone from Robert Jordan’s works or my works, he would have several deities to choose from. (Of course, Jaime already defeated Cthulhu, so he’s proven his mettle.) If you were picking six characters to fight at Rand’s side, who would you choose?

I was going to say that I was fine with this scenario if it was cool with the folks at Suvudu, but it looks like David Pomerico has already posted his version of Rand’s response to the challenge, where he says he’ll take on any number of Jaime’s companions by himself. Now, Jaime’s previous round against Kvothe from THE NAME OF THE WIND featured awesome writeups by both George and Pat Rothfuss on how they thought the fight should play out, and Jason at Dragonmount (among others) really wanted me to provide something similar for this round. EDIT–SEE BELOW–

(All, this originally said I wasn’t going to do a writeup. When I dictated this post to Peter, he misunderstood what I said and wrote that I wasn’t going to do a writeup. I’m totally planning to do one–I said I didn’t know if I could do one like GRRM did, in-character, because I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate. Rand doesn’t belong to me, and I don’t know if it would be right to do something from his eyes.

I AM however, planning to do a separate write up to talk about the match, maybe from my viewpoint. I’m not sure what I’ll do yet, but I am planning to squeeze in the time to do it, despite my deadlines. Sorry for the mixup. I was kind of mumbling when I told Peter about this, as I was working on something else, and I guess he thought I said I wasn’t going to do one at all. Back to the original post now.)

I look forward to seeing what George writes. The fans ultimately decide who comes out on top, so check Suvudu and start voting sometime tomorrow.