Just setting me up for my eventual fall.

The epilogue had to be included. After all, I felt the need to remind you that Alcatraz doesn’t consider himself a hero, and that there is much more to this story. This one ended on far too upbeat a note to be leading to what he implied at the beginning, hence this comment.

Untold millions screamed out in pain.

The last page was one of the jokes that I gleefully entered. I know that a lot of people out there love to look at the endings of books and see how things turn out, if only to reassure themselves that nobody dies.

That’s a horrible habit, I must say. We authors hate it when people look at our endings without reading what led up to them. It gives us shivers to even contemplate. Drama becomes melodrama without proper emotional investment. If I’d wanted the ending first, I’d have written it that way.

Wait. I did.

Either way, I put this in so that you’d be chastised. So there! Ha! Hum.

Acknowledgments

The acknowledgments aren’t as long as in some of my books, since I only ran this book through one writing group, and didn’t work on it as long as many. Still, I’m very thankful for these folks–and I worry constantly that I forgot someone. If I did, I’m sorry. Let me know so I can put you in twice next time.

His potted plant, Count Duku.

That only leaves the bio page, which is one of my favorite parts of the book. I hope Scholastic ends up using the picture of my potted plant instead of my actual picture. That’ll really make me laugh. [Assistant Peter’s note: There is no author photo in the book.]

Wrap-Up

Again, I hope you enjoyed reading this book. Seriously, I think it was one of the most fun books I’ve ever written. It was as obsessive a task as I’ve ever participated in–I sat, working furiously and writing pretty much every day for sixteen days until it was done.

Since then, people have called it brilliant, meaningful, silly, and all kinds of wonderful words. However, for me, it’s just something that I had to write. It still means a lot to me that people are so willing to read my books. Thank you.

Brandon Sanderson

The Alcatraz Project
Book One: July 2005-January 2007