Hey! Brandon here with your Weekly Update. Sorry for not being here last week. I actually was at a writing retreat, so got some good work done. In fact, let’s talk about Stormlight 5. We are at, Bing!, 66%. This puts us at two-thirds. I am feeling really good about it. I am technically 317 words behind for finishing at my target, but that’s a very manageable amount behind. I will have to stop and do revisions in about a week because I need to get more material for the beta readers that’s revised. So, that’ll put me behind another, you know, 7,000-8,000 words. But, you know, I caught up from last time, so we’ll theoretically be able to catch up again. So, anyway, expect in a couple weeks we’ll have another week with no progress. 

Skyward Legacy continues to be at, Bing! 34%, the book that Janci is working on.

So, let’s talk about some things with the Kickstarter. The Cosmere box is finished. We have sent it all out. The team did that in 10 days. Really impressed with that. They sent word that they are beginning work on packaging the Warbreaker box. They still have one item that needs to arrive. And so, we still have a little—it’s been shipped, just not sure—it hasn’t arrived yet, as of my recording this. Hopefully it’ll be here by the time that you all see this, and then that one will get packed. That’ll start going out in September, theoretically.

Really good news for those who are wondering about the secret projects books. Secret Project 4, while we were in Tampa we got the first truckload. So, like Secret Project 3, it looks like the distribution channels have finally cleared up a little bit, and we are starting to actually get the books on time, when we were told we would get them. In fact, another truck is on the way. So, everything’s looking good for that one going out on time, like what happened with Secret Project 3. So, very excited about that.

We do have the Sel box up for sale now. These are the extras. We order extras in case we need to send replacements to people or things like that. Now that we have gone long enough that we know about how many replacements we had to send, we have our overage, so we are selling that right now. Get yours before they are gone.

Let’s talk about our convention, Dragonsteel 2023. There are tickets remaining, though we are getting close to our limit. In fact, the hotels are almost sold out. One of them is sold out. They added more rooms though, right? So, they did add some more rooms. But we are getting really close to where we were last year when we had to stop selling tickets. We’ll probably still have tickets up until the day of, but who knows? 

So, anyway, we wanted to give a shoutout to those who have won the Legally Distinct Metallic Tickets. If you’ve been following along with this, these are people who get to go to the front of the signing line and get a personalized book from me. They should all have already gotten a little video from me congratulating them and welcoming them. So, I’m going to announce them for you here, but I’m going to leave off the last names for privacy reasons. If you hear your name and your state, but you didn’t get a video, it means that, unfortunately, there was a different person with your name from the same state. But these went to Elijah from California, Leah from Virginia, Leo from Utah, Samantha from Utah, and Richard from Oregon. So, we will look forward to seeing you at the front of the line come Dragonsteel. They said that if we waited to record this they could find me a prop Legally Distinct Metallic Ticket, but I told them you can all imagine them. You are readers after all. So, imagining things is something you’re quite good at.

If you’re wondering why I’m recording in the Lair, we’ve actually been working on the Book Club for Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. This one, very special, is hosted by my wife Emily. And that’ll be coming up, what do you think? In a couple weeks?

ADAM: Couple weeks.

In a couple of weeks, you’ll be able to watch the Book Club, like we’ve been doing for all of these. Like I said, a little extra special. We even have a visitor from another country who is here to participate in this one. So, hmm. Be looking forward to that. 

We also wanted to give a shoutout to the charity drive we did with the numbered copies of Secret Projects 2 and 3. Thank you all for your generosity. I don’t actually know the final numbers because it’s still going as I’m recording this, but they’re already very high. And so, thank you. Again, we will use this for charity. Probably going to go to a children’s hospital, but there are other charity work we’ll do. I will come back to you when I know exactly what we’re going to be spending this money on, and we’ll do it as part of an update or a separate video, just so you can, you know, so that we’re accountable to you for the money that you’re giving us. 

And thank you for all who signed up for the mailing list as part of this. The mailing list is the best way that we’re able to kind of keep track of people and let them know about things. So, we really appreciate that. We promise not to spam you.

Last off here, I believe that our last thing is our final round of the first, you know, tier. What do you call these things?

ADAM: Bracket.

Bracket, yeah. The first bracket, the first-round brackets, the last one from our podcast. So, in the food heist, with 71%, is the Snackaderms, one of my favorites. This food heist has indeed defeated How is This Not a Movie Yet Coffee Heist, at 29%. With the bad story ideas, we have an upset. So Planetary Shenanigans or Sisyphus Plays Katamari Damacy, this is the weird planet I came up with where people lived on a planet that was being rolled along by a giant, has defeated Abraham Lincoln Writes Epic Fantasy Fan Fic of Moby Dick, which 52% to 48%, pretty close there. So, we have an upset. Will it go all the way? We will start—we’ve actually started voting. We’re a little bit behind order, because I think last week’s podcast started people voting on the second round of brackets, even though this one hadn’t been quite announced yet. So, if you want to participate in this, you can listen to Intentionally Blank. We actually have time stamps for each of these discussions of food heists and bad story ideas. 

Otherwise, hey, I’ll be back next week with another update for you. Thank you, as always.