Hey, everybody! Time for some updates.

Well, we’ll start with the 3.0 of Stormlight 5. We are at, Bing! 65%. It’s looking really good. We’re gearing up for the finish of the 3.0. I will do a 4.0 after that, which will need to be turned in in June, last day of May, I believe. But anyway, getting really close. I’m loving how this revision is turning out. I don’t enjoy the revision. Revision is hard. But I do think it’s moving along quite nicely.

Skyward Legacy—I actually was at a writing retreat all this week, and so I didn’t get any done on Skyward Legacy. But I will jump back into that this week. I actually got home today from my writing retreat. It was very relaxing. It was nice and snowy up in the mountains, and I sat, and I worked with a nice view of the landscape.

So, because of 600 videos, really more because we finally hit 500,000 subscribers, so thank you for that milestone, we are going to do a Tuckerization. So, what’s a Tuckerization? This is a term in sci-fi/fantasy fandom for when you put somebody into a book, and we’re going to Tuckerize one of you into Stormlight 5. What this means is, you’ll be able to send me your name or the name of a loved one and a brief description. We’re talking, like, one line. And I’ll have them make an appearance in Stormlight 5. I still have a little bit of time to get revisions in. And so I’ll take one of the characters that was not described like you or your loved one, and I will describe them like you or your loved one, and I will fantasy-ize your name that you give me and stick you in there. 

This is something I’ve done in my books all the way since from the beginning. This is where Skar from Bridge Four came from. That’s Skar, my good friend, and now an employee here. And, you know, all sorts of my brothers-in-law and my family members and my writing group all made it in. And I’ve been doing this all along. So we’re going to let one of you do it. And we’re going to have a contest. And Adam named it. This was not my name. He called it the Tuck Me In Contest. He did warn me this time that he had come up with quite the name. We are going to do the drawing for who gets to be Tuckerized on the 29th of March during our final livestream for the crowdfunding campaign for Words of Radiance. So, we’ll have about a month to get your names in. 

There’ll be a link in the description, how you can go about that. Please only enter one time. And that’s not a please. We will be checking. And we will discard you if you are entered multiple times. So please only enter once. Don’t, like, go through all the hoops and send in, like, five under different emails or something. But if each of your family members wants to send one in, well, we’re OK with that. So yeah. We will be doing that the 29th.

Speaking of the crowdfunding campaign, we go live next week, one week from today, at 10:00 AM Mountain Standard Time. So that is our big, cool crowdfunding campaign for Words of Radiance leatherbound. There’s all kinds of cool things there. Make sure you check back here in one week, as we’ll be going over a lot of interesting things involved in this campaign. 

In the meantime, we have the Bondsmith video for you. If you want to watch the Bondsmith video, this is our last of the videos, I believe. And so you can go check that out. I will be back next week for a livestream, March 5th at 6:00 PM, as our kickoff livestream for the crowdfunding campaign. 

That is quite an auspicious day because also the commercial version of The Sunlit Man releases on March 5th. Book releases tend to be on Tuesdays, and I believe that is a Tuesday. And so you’ll be able to pick up the last of the secret projects in the TOR commercial version if you didn’t get in on our last crowdfunding campaign a couple years back.

So we added some additional hotels for Dragonsteel 2024 because we sold out of our previous block. So you all are very excited about coming to this convention. They were very, very happy at the hotel that we sold out of our room block. And it’s actually making it much easier for us to book things in future years because you all are so enthusiastic. So thank you. And if you want to book, we do have new hotel rooms, new blocks opened. Dragonsteel.com. And if you booked not using the links, feel free to rebook, because the more people who book through our blocks, the easier it is for us to reserve more rooms, to get the space we need, and things like that. So use the group link or call the hotel, and they can update your reservation and include the discount.

So, lastly, there were a lot of comments last week about the possibility of splitting up payments. Last time we did one of these, we got a ton of requests. And so we have talked to BackerKit, and this is a functionality they can do. They’re very good at working with us. And we found a way that we can split your pledge into multiple payments. And it’s something you asked for. I’m a little wary for a couple of reasons. And I want to talk you through these because I never want to be taking advantage of our backers and our fans. So, let me walk you through a few things.

So, if this happens, your pledge will be split into four months’ payments beginning in April. So, we are doing this because we hope it’ll be easier for some of you. But we have some caveats, and we want to be careful about this. Right? One of the reasons we want to be careful about this is we don’t want to be predatory in any way in encouraging you to buy something you can’t actually afford. So if you can’t actually afford it, don’t. There—you know, we will find other ways to get your books and things like that. 

Beyond that, because this is a crowdfunding, and because we order product based on what people pledge, it’s very hard, virtually impossible, to figure out things like refunds and whatnot. If you’ve done crowdfunding campaigns before, you’ll know that refunds are not generally a thing that are offered. And because of this, if you split your pledge, and then make some of the payments and then don’t make the others, not sure I can get any of that money back to you. So, what I want to say is, be very careful about this. 

Again, we don’t want to be in a position where we’re taking advantage of our fans. But at the same time, last time we did this, people were like, “That’s a big chunk of money if you buy one of the higher tiers. We sure would like to be able to split that into multiple payments.” We’re doing that. We aren’t charging any interest on it or anything like that. But shipping will be charged separately for all backers. So while we’ve calculated some flat rates for the pledge tiers and can give you pricing up front on those, if you add add-ons, those are calculated by weight. Which means it’s really hard for us to estimate your shipping costs until the pledge management phase. So the shipping might be tricky for us, particularly with splitting some of these up. We won’t ship any of the rewards until you’ve paid in full. 

And because of the logistics on the back end, you can’t access your survey in the pledge manager until you’ve paid in full. Does that make sense? So, it is a little bit complicated. The shipping and sales tax will be a fifth payment after you fill out the survey. And so, anyway, I don’t want you to get into any kind of mire because of this. So be careful. But it is a thing that a lot of you asked us for, so we’re trying it out to see if we can make it a little bit easier for some of you who would like to split those payments. 

So, that’s probably a long-winded explanation for something that you already understand. You’re like, “We understand how splitting payments works, Sanderson.” But, you know, I want to be very careful, and I never want to take advantage of you guys. So I do appreciate you. Use this tool if you think it’s going to help you and if it’s a responsible way for you to approach pledging on the books. 

I really do appreciate all the support, and we will be back next week with a really exciting launch video, and with the livestream that evening. And I hope to see many of you there.