Dawnshard is Out!

Adam here. The long-anticipated novella is finally out today! For those of you who haven’t been following Brandon on social media, or this summer’s past Kickstarter for the 10th-anniversary edition of The Way of Kings, then this will probably be a very happy surprise for you.

If you’re preparing to dive into Rhythm of War when it’s released next week, this is the perfect time to read this story.

Here’s a bit about the novella:

From Brandon Sanderson—author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive and its fourth massive installment, Rhythm of War—comes a new hefty novella, Dawnshard. Taking place between Oathbringer and Rhythm of War, this tale (like Edgedancer before it) gives often-overshadowed characters their own chance to shine.

When a ghost ship is discovered, its crew presumed dead after trying to reach the storm-shrouded island Akinah, Navani Kholin must send an expedition to make sure the island hasn’t fallen into enemy hands. Knights Radiant who fly too near find their Stormlight suddenly drained, so the voyage must be by sea.

Shipowner Rysn Ftori lost the use of her legs but gained the companionship of Chiri-Chiri, a Stormlight-ingesting winged larkin, a species once thought extinct. Now Rysn’s pet is ill, and any hope for Chiri-Chiri’s recovery can be found only at the ancestral home of the larkin: Akinah. With the help of Lopen, the formerly one-armed Windrunner, Rysn must accept Navani’s quest and sail into the perilous storm from which no one has returned alive. If the crew cannot uncover the secrets of the hidden island city before the wrath of its ancient guardians falls upon them, the fate of Roshar and the entire Cosmere hangs in the balance.

This story is similar to Brandon’s previously release novella set in the same world, Edgedancer, as it’s a way to bridge the gap between main releases in the Stormlight Archive epic.

We’re still working on getting the book ready for printing but it’s currently (or will be shortly) available in ebook from these retailers:

• Kindle
• Nook
• Apple Books
• Smashwords
• Kobo
• Google Play

I’m excited to announce my Kickstarter for The Way of Kings leatherbound. It will go live Tuesday, July 7th at 9:00 AM MDT and go through Friday, August 7th at 3:00 PM MDT. If you don’t want to miss out on the first day, check out the landing page over on Kickstarter, click the green “Notify me on launch” button, sign up for a Kickstarter account, and you will be notified when the campaign goes live.

We still might make a few tweaks between now and July 7th, but let me share with you some of the things you’ll see on our Kickstarter page when everything kicks off next Tuesday.

Hold onto your seats! This is going to be a long post with several tall graphics to scroll through. I hope you’ll find it fun and informative because we’re excited to finally get these details out into the world.

Why Kickstarter?
In the past, we’ve offered the anniversary editions by themselves for reasonable prices. The Way of Kings is so large, however, that we needed to split it into two volumes to maintain the quality and integrity of the physical books. This results in a set that costs more to produce, therefore it also retails for more. We recognize this is your hard-earned money, so we’ve turned to Kickstarter as a way to:

1. Give you more bang for your buck.
2. Bring the excitement of a book release party home to you.

Book release parties sometimes offer attendees goodie bags full of extra swag. In this case, the more people who back the Kickstarter release, the more swag we’re going to put into your goodie bags, so to speak, mostly in the form of stretch goal rewards, which we’ll discuss further down.

I’ll save most of the photos of the unbound sample we have of The Way of Kings leatherbound for release day, but here’s a mockup of the two volumes. We’ll post more photos as we get them from the printer and bindery. Please note that many of the images are just mockups, not actual photographs, and many of the designs are not final.

When you finally hold these volumes in your hands, we hope you’ll agree that they’re the finest books Dragonsteel has produced so far.

Rewards
I recognize that many of you are perfectly happy with your existing copies of The Way of Kings, in whichever format you prefer. With this in mind, we’ve created six pledge tiers so you can get involved with the campaign at whatever tier you’re most comfortable with. We’ll use BackerKit to facilitate add-ons, which will further the customizability of your pledge, allowing you to buy some of the rewards à la carte once the campaign is over. Even pledging $1 to the “make a pledge without a reward” tier will allow access to the add-on store. More on this later. Here’s an overview of the pledge tiers with explanations for the different rewards further down.

Since the books, the posters, and the other goodies are various sizes and will arrive from the manufacturers at different times, you will be charged shipping for each package we send out, depending on which tier you pledge to. For more information, there’s a handy shipping chart in the shipping section further down.

To save on shipping (particularly overseas) some of you asked for a tier that has no physical rewards besides the leatherbound. We gave this some thought and don’t feel that discounting the leatherbound is fair to those buying it in the other tiers—plus, the amount of work and effort we’ve put into this has pushed the margins pretty tight—but we think we’ve found a balance. You can either opt for physical rewards in Tier 4, or you can opt for none of them in Tier 3, and in exchange we’ve added this reward to Tier 3: a $10 digital gift card to our store. If shipping is an issue, you can buy digital copies of some of my novellas there—or you can save up for a physical item you want, when you want it.

You’ll notice that Tiers 3, 4, 5, and 6 have a limited number of backers available. If we sell out of these, we might open up new tiers, but be aware that the leatherbound books in these new tiers won’t ship until sometime in 2021, though these books will still be considered part of the first printing of this edition. If we do open new tiers, we will only be able to do it once for Tier 6, capping the signed and numbered copies to just less than 2000 copies total.

Bridge Four Movie-Style Poster

Even without the stretch goal rewards, each pledge tier comes with the bonus of a Bridge Four movie-style poster—by the amazing Zack Stella—in either digital or physical format. Pledge Tiers 1 and 3 come with 1920 x 1080 and 1080 x 1920 digital wallpapers based on the Bridge Four poster, and Pledge Tiers 2, 4, 5, & 6 each come with a physical 23.75″ x 35.75″ Bridge Four poster—rolled, not folded.

New Stormlight Novella

I’m working on a new Stormlight novella in the vein of Edgedancer, a story about Lift that bridges the gap between Words of Radiance and Oathbringer. The new Stormlight novella will be available as an e-book in all tiers, or in both physical and digital formats in Tiers 2, 5, and 6.

Alternate Novel: The Way of Kings Prime Free E-Book

I understand these are hard times and not everyone has the funds for The Way of Kings leatherbound, so I decided to take something originally planned as a stretch goal reward and give it away for free on my website in e-book and PDF forms. You’ll be able to find these in the Online Library on July 7th.

The Way of Kings Prime was written in 2002 and is basically an alternate version of The Way of Kings, which was published by Tor Books in 2010. The Way of Kings Prime is very different from the published book. Think of it as set in a different universe with a completely different plot. If you haven’t read the 2010 canonical version, please read that one first.

The Way of Kings Prime is what we’re calling a Sanderson Curiosity. A hardcover version of it is included in Pledge Tiers 5 and 6, or as an add-on for backers of the campaign. We can’t guarantee we’ll ever reprint it once the campaign is over.

Pick Your Order of Knights Radiant

After you back the campaign, and before we fulfill your pledge when the campaign is over, we will give you the opportunity to pick an Order from among the ten Orders of Knights Radiant. If Order-specific stretch goal rewards are unlocked—and you choose Pledge Tiers 2, 4, or 5—those rewards will be themed to your chosen Order. (Read further down for more about the stretch goal rewards.)

For example, if you pledge $200 for The Way of Kings leatherbound and choose Windrunner as your Order, all five Order-specific stretch goals (sticker sheet, patch, art print, pin, and challenge coin) will be themed toward that Order, using its unique glyph and color scheme.

Not sure which Order of Knights Radiant to choose? Take the Official Knights Radiant Order Quiz. Or if you’d prefer, you can read about each Order and make a decision based on that. We’ve worked hard to give each Order its own visual identity, so when in doubt, pick your favorite symbol or color scheme.

Stretch Goal Rewards

We have prepared ten stretch goal rewards as a way of telling our backers “thank you.” Each time we unlock one by meeting a certain amount of pledged money or backers, all pledge tiers will get more rewards in the digital art package, and Tiers 2, 4, 5, and 6 will receive more physical rewards. (The exceptions to this are the “genuine leather” and “slipcase” stretch goal rewards, which only apply to Pledge Tiers 3 through 6.) Thus, the bigger we make this release party, the more rewards the “attendees” get in their goodie bags!

We hope all of these will unlock during the course of the campaign, but if there’s something you want here and are worried it might not unlock, you can check out the add-ons further down.

Please note that while we’ll carry The Way of Kings leatherbound in our online store after the Kickstarter, we can’t guarantee that future printings will have the slipcase and genuine leather (if unlocked). Future printings of the leatherbound sold through the online store will be sold separately from any of the stretch goal rewards available here.

Add-Ons

Anyone who pledges to any tier of the campaign—even if it’s only $1 to the “make a pledge without a reward” tier—will have access to the add-on store through BackerKit once the campaign ends. These are items that you can purchase in addition to what you already receive with your pledge. For example, if you pledge to Tier 4 and the campaign ends without unlocking the playing cards, you will still be able to buy the playing cards for the add-on cost through BackerKit. If the campaign ends with the playing cards unlocked, you will get a copy of the playing cards with Tier 4, but you will also be able to buy additional copies of the playing cards (and anything else in the add-on store), if you would like.

Another example: Maybe you’ve pledged to Tier 4 for The Way of Kings leatherbound but also want goodies from a second Order without needing to buy a second copy of the leatherbound. We have the Order Pack add-on that allows you to buy the five Order-themed goodies in any Order of your choice at a discounted price from what we’ll eventually sell it for in the online store. This, and any of the add-ons, can be purchased multiple times with a different Order of Knights Radiant chosen each time, but please note that some add-ons might have a limit on the quantity you can purchase.

While we hope many of these goodies will be sold later in our online store, we can’t guarantee availability and pricing outside the campaign. The backer pin is exclusive to the Kickstarter and will only be available in conjunction with the campaign.

Independent Bookstores

We love independent bookstores, so as part of the campaign, there will be a few limited vendors who will have copies of The Way of Kings leatherbound as well as some of the swag items. These bookstores include:

• Subterranean Press
• The BYU Store
• Murder By the Book
• Mysterious Galaxy
• Powell’s Books
• Borderlands Books

We’ll have more information about this after the campaign, but the books likely won’t be available at these vendors until the holiday season.

New to Kickstarter?

If you’re not familiar with Kickstarter, it’s a platform that allows creators to crowdfund their creative projects. The campaign lasts several weeks, and when it’s over, my team will go into full production and fulfillment mode. We will send out Kickstarter surveys, which will allow you to choose your Order of Knights Radiant—if your pledge needs that information—and also to give you the chance to give us your most up-to-date information so that your books and goodies arrive to the correct address in as timely a manner as possible.

If you’d like to know more about how to make a pledge on Kickstarter, here’s a short overview.

Shipping

After the campaign, your shipping will be calculated based on your pledge tier and shipping address. Some rewards will have to be shipped separately from others. For example, The Way of Kings leatherbound will be shipped directly from the bindery so that it doesn’t have to come across the country to us before we then ship it back out to you. The rolled posters will be shipped separately in 24” wide triangle boxes. Because of these realities and others, we unfortunately can’t use a one-size-fits-all approach to shipping, therefore, rewards will be sent out in waves (more on that below), and shipping will be charged to you depending on how many packages you are receiving.

Reference the chart below to see how many packages and the total cost of shipping you can expect for each tier. Please note that the Total Shipping side of the chart is not the price per package, but represents the total you will pay for shipping and handling.

We welcome international orders! However, we do not ship everywhere, so if your country is not listed, we apologize. It means we haven’t been able to establish reliable delivery in that region yet.

We hope to have most rewards fulfilled by the holidays 2020, but many things like the physical editions of the Stormlight Novella and The Way of Kings Prime will not be ordered from the printer until after the campaign is over and might not ship until early 2021. If we wind up opening extra leatherbound tiers, they will ship sometime in 2021 as well.

Wave 1

When The Way of Kings leatherbound is finished, we will verify all backers’ addresses—including addresses outside of the United States—and then provide this information to the bindery who will ship your books, shrinkwrapped and packaged in custom-fit boxes, directly to you.

Posters will likely also be sent in this first wave of shipping, both to addresses inside and outside of the United States.

Wave 2

Many of the stretch goal rewards and add-on items will be produced after the end of the Kickstarter. As soon as we have all of these rewards in-hand (except for the books), we will once again verify addresses before packaging up the rewards and sending them out to you, hopefully in one box of awesome happiness.

If your shipping address is outside of the United States, your goodies will be shipped in Wave 3, as described below, to save you on shipping costs.

Wave 3

The Way of Kings Prime and the Stormlight Novella are the items most likely to be shipped in this final wave. These will be fulfilled as soon as we get the books back from the printer, but not without once again verifying addresses. Please keep in mind that printing usually takes a few months, but in some cases can take much longer.

If you live outside of the United States and have chosen pledge tiers 2, 5, or 6, postage is more cost effective for you if we wait until the Stormlight Novella and The Way of Kings Prime are delivered to us so we can ship your books and goodies together.

Risks and Challenges

As part of each Kickstarter, they ask those running the campaign to outline the risks and challenges associated with producing the products you’re asking people to help fund. Here’s what ours says:

We’ve been producing our anniversary editions for several years now, and before that, we produced some of our own hardcovers, so we’re experienced in the production of nice books and other goodies. Currently, most of the files are ready to send to the manufacturers, and some of the products are already in various levels of production.

One of the biggest challenges will be getting everything produced or printed and delivered to you in a timely manner. Our printer, bindery, and other suppliers are all top notch, but producing quality books and products takes time, with quality assurance steps all along the way. We don’t want to rush any of these steps because we want to send you the best products we can produce.

In addition, as we’ve seen from world events this year, there are sometimes things out of our control that affect more than just supply lines. If we have to hit pause once in a while because people’s safety is on the line, then we will do so, but rest assured that we will do all in our power to deliver your books and goodies as quickly as possible.

Thank You!

I have the best fans in the world. You’ve proven that to me time and again as I get to meet and interact with you, so I can’t say thank you enough. You are awesome and you are amazing. I hope you’ll join us for this online release party for The Way of Kings leatherbound on July 7^th this year.

Introduction

Welcome and happy Koloss Head Munching Day! It is time for my yearly update on projects! Strap in for a long post. (If you want to compare, here is a link to last year’s post.)

It has been a busy month for us, here at Dragonsteel Headquarters. The leatherbound edition of Mistborn 2, which was supposed to get here in November, was delivered the day I flew home from the UK, ending my tour. (And the Mistborn 1 second printing came the next day.) So I’ve been doing a lot of sitting and listening to podcasts while I sign stacks and stacks of books. (If you’re curious, I’ve been listening to Hardcore History.)

• My Year
• Main Projects Updates
• Secondary Projects Updates
• Minor Projects Updates
• Potential Projects Updates
• Movie/Television Updates
• Updates Conclusion
• Projected Schedule
• Conclusion

My Year

January–June: Oathbringer Revisions
I spent most of this year doing revisions for Oathbringer. I did several exhaustive drafts during the January–June months, and did the final handoff to Peter (for copyediting and proofreading) right at the end of June.

June–Mid September: The Apocalypse Guard
Then, for the first time in what felt like forever (it was really only about sixteen months), I got a chance to work on something that wasn’t Oathbringer or Edgedancer. I launched right into The Apocalypse Guard, the follow-up to The Reckoners…and it didn’t work. I spent July, August, and part of September writing that. (I finished the last chapter sometime in early September, and turned in the second draft a few weeks later.)

September–October: Legion 3
I was already feeling a little discouraged by that book not quite coming together, though at that point I assumed I’d be able to fix it in revisions. (Well, I still think I can do that–I just think it will take more time.) Mid-September, I launched into Legion Three: Lies of the Beholder. That took around a month to finish, bringing us to mid-October. By then, I knew something was seriously wrong with The Apocalypse Guard, as my revision attempts were fruitless. So, I called Random House and pulled the book–then launched into Skyward.

October–November: Skyward
I have been writing on that book ever since, and you can read the blog post yesterday about that.

November–December: Oathbringer Tour
The tour was wonderful–somehow both exhausting and energizing at the same time. Here are some of the fan costumes that showed up this year. Thank you all for coming out to see me!

December so far: Skyward
Unfortunately, and I know you guys know to watch for them, there are no hidden or secret novellas or books for this year. I have been running around feeling behind all year, first on Oathbringer, and then trying to find a replacement for The Apocalypse Guard.

Updates on Main Projects

Stormlight

It’s time to take a little breather. I’ve begun working on the outline for book four, which is kind of a mess right now because of things I’ve been moving around between books as I write. My goal this year for Stormlight will be to have rock-solid outlines for books four and five done by December 2018.

My current projection is that I’ll spend half of my time writing Stormlight, and half of it doing other things. (I spoke last year about just how big an undertaking a Stormlight book is–and why I can’t write them back to back.) I realize that many of you would prefer to have only Stormlight, but that would drive me insane–and drive the series into the ground.

I think this is a realistic schedule. So, I’m giving myself 2018 to work on Skyward (hopefully a trilogy) and other projects. Then on January 1st, 2019, I go back to Stormlight refreshed and excited to be back in Roshar, and I write on book four until it’s done. (With a 2020 or 2021 release, depending on how the writing goes.) I do hope to find time for a novella, like Edgedancer, that we can put out between books. This one is tentatively called Wandersail.

For those who don’t know, the Stormlight Archive is a ten-book series composed of two five-book arcs.

Status: Writing outline for book four.

Mistborn

Wax and Wayne 4 is on the slate next after I finish Skyward. (Though if it’s going well, I may do the entire trilogy for Skyward first.) I need four or five months at least to do Wax and Wayne, so rain or shine, my plan is to get into this on September 1st at the latest. Hopefully a little earlier.

This will wrap up the second era of Mistborn books. (And yes, I’ve settled—at long last—on just calling it that. All the other terms I tried were just too confusing.) Once the Wax and Wayne books are done, I’ll look to do something else for a little while before coming back for Era Three. (1980s spy thriller Mistborn.)

Status: To be written in 2018.

Skyward

Current main project. Yesterday’s blog post talks about it in depth–but so far, so good!

Status: To be written in 2018.

Updates on Secondary Projects

Legion

The third Stephen Leeds/Legion story (which is roughly the same length as the second one) is finished! Titled Lies of the Beholder, this is the story that delves into Stephen’s backstory, his interactions with Sandra, and the nature of his aspects. Good stuff! It’s done, and it’s weird. But good weird.

Right now, the goal is to collect all three Legion stories and release them in hardcover sometime around September 2018. That means there probably won’t be a standalone release of Lies of the Beholder until a year or so later, like we plan with Edgedancer. However, for those who like cohesion on their bookshelves, I’ve mandated that Subterranean Press be allowed to do a leatherbound like they did with the first two. So you can have books that match. This should happen right around the release of the collection.

In the UK, there should be a small-format version of the story on its own rather than a collection. (Again, for matching purposes. In the US, the small-format hardcovers have been published by my own company, Dragonsteel, as we waited for enough stories to do a collection.) We should eventually do a small-format Dragonsteel edition for people who really want one of those to match, but I’d suggest that the best way to support the stories is to buy the collection. And if you haven’t ever tried them out, you’ll be able to get them all at once!

This marks the end of the Stephen Leeds stories, though we’re in talks for another television deal—so maybe that will happen.

Status: Series finished! Publication in late 2018.

Alcatraz

Contrary to last year’s State of the Sanderson (where I didn’t expect movement on this series this year) there have been developments. I have tried working on the sixth and final book (which will be from Bastille’s viewpoint) and have found that I didn’t like the test chapters I did.

The story went the wrong direction, and beyond that, I didn’t feel like I had Bastille’s voice down. In some attempts, the book just sounded too much like the previous ones—but when I exaggerated her voice, she felt a bit Flanderized. I’ve been toying with how to make it work, and I’ve come up with a somewhat outside-the-box solution. My long-standing friend and former student, Janci Patterson, is also a big fan of the series. She’s been offering feedback since I wrote the first book back in…2006, was it? I’ve gone to her and asked if she’d be willing to collaborate on it.

The goal is that by bringing in another author to write it with me, I’ll be able to get the book to work—to have it feel different enough from the others, yet still be in the same theme and spirit. The goal is to do an outline in early February once I have book one of Skyward done, then hand that off to Janci and let her toy with it a while before sending it back to me.

So you can watch for that, and I’ll post updates.

Status: Outline to be written in 2018.

Elantris and Warbreaker

No change on either one from last year. The plan has always been to look back at Sel and Nalthis once the Wax and Wayne books are done. That’s still my intention.

Status: Keep waiting. (Sorry.)

White Sand

Graphic Novel 1 was a huge success, and Graphic Novel 2 is finished and off to the printers. Expected publication date is February 2018. It will be the second of three.

The prose version is still available to be read. If you sign up for my mailing list, we auto-send you a link to it.

Status: Graphic novel 2 coming in early 2018.

The Rithmatist

This continues to be the single most-requested sequel among people who email me or contact me on social media. It is something I want to do, and still intend to, but it has a couple of weird aspects to it—completely unrelated to its popularity—that continue to work as roadblocks.

The first problem is that it’s an odd relic in my writing career. I wrote it as a diversion from a book that wasn’t working (Liar of Partinel, my second attempt at doing a novel on Yolen, after the unpublished novel Dragonsteel). It went really well—but it also was something I had to set aside when the Wheel of Time came along.

I eventually published it years later, but my life and my writing has moved in a very different direction from the point when I wrote this. These days, I try very hard to make stories like this work as novellas or standalone stories, rather than promising sequels. I feel I did promise a sequel for this one, and I have grand plans for it, but the time just never seems to be right.

The other issue is that writing about that era in America—even in an alternate universe—involves touching on some very sensitive topics. Ones that, despite my best efforts, I feel that I didn’t handle as sensitively as I could have. I do want to come back to the world and do a good job of it, but doing an Aztec viewpoint character—as I’d like to do as one of the viewpoints in book two—in an alternate Earth…well, it’s a challenge that takes a lot of investment in research time.

And for one reason or another, I keep ending up in crisis mode—first with Stormlight 3 taking longer than I wanted, and now with The Apocalypse Guard not turning out like I wanted. So someday I will get to this, but it’s going to require some alignment of several factors.

Status: Not yet. We’ll see.

Updates on Minor Projects

The Reckoners

The Apocalypse Guard was in this universe, and we’ll see what happens there, but for now I’m leaving this series alone. There might be a Mizzy book that I end up doing, but no promises.

Status: Trilogy complete. Series done, for now.

Adamant

This space opera novella series is in same place it was last year, I’m afraid. (One novella done, no more written on the rest.) I took a little time to work on the outline, but didn’t find a chance to write the second novella. It will be awesome when I do it, and I got really close to moving this to the front burner several times, but it didn’t end up working.

Status: Still possible in the near future.

Dark One

My eternal “like Harry Potter from Voldemort’s viewpoint” fantasy sequence is still hanging out, buzzing at the sides of my brain. I wrote a really spectacular outline for it this summer, one I love quite a bit, and it got both television graphic novel interest—but these are deals still very much in the works, so I can’t talk about them yet.

I’m pleased with what I have though, and feel this series has moved for the first time in a long while. Note that I did end up pulling it out of the Cosmere, as it ended up working better as a dark secondary world fantasy than it did as a Cosmere YA series. It went both older, and more twisted, in the current outline. Hopefully, by next year’s State of the Sanderson we’ll have something more solid to announce.

Status: Exciting developments in the works!

Death by Pizza

Pizza delivery man becomes a necromancer. On my perpetual list of things to do—but no movement.

Status: No movement.

Soulburner

Random space opera thing I worked on for a while.

Status: No movement.

Potential Cosmere Stories List

Here are things that at one point I’ve had in the works, and probably someday plan to do, in the Cosmere:

• Dragonsteel/Liar of Partinel. (Hoid’s origin story, to be written sometime after Stormlight is done.)
• Sixth of the Dusk sequel. (I had a pretty cool idea for this last year. Nothing more than that.)
• Untitled Silverlight novella. (What it says on the tin.)
• Threnody novel. (An expedition back to confront the Evil that destroyed the old world.)
• Aether of Night. (Still in the Cosmere, and you can see the odd remnant of an Aether popping up here and there. Bound to be drastically different from the unpublished novel, which I allow the 17th Shard to give out to people who request it on their forums. Basically, the only thing from it that is canon is the magic system.)
• Silence Divine. (Disease magic novella set on Ashyn.)

Movie/Television Updates

Mistborn and Stormlight Films

These rights are held by DMG Entertainment, and they’ve been very good at working with me and showing me things. They have scripts for both Mistborn and The Way of Kings, which they are actively trying to make happen in Hollywood.

One way they’re approaching this is to do a Stormlight VR experience, which we’ve talked about before. This is less about making a video game, and more about making something to show off to studios to kind of immerse them in the setting of the books. As I determined early on, this is an interesting but weird world, and having visuals (like the art in the books themselves) helps a lot with bringing people around to understanding.

They do plan to release the VR experience to fans on Steam, for those with VR headsets. It’s not intended to be a full game, as I said, more a demo of the Shattered Plains—you’ll get to personally experience the Shattered Plains from the novels and interact with the characters and creatures that inhabit them. We’ll do some posts on it in coming months as it gears up to be released, and I’ve invited the developers to do some guest posts on my blog.

Regardless of what happens on the film and television front here, at the very least you have that to look forward to!

The Reckoners

Still held by Fox, with 21 Laps producing. They renewed their option this summer, so they are still interested in the property, though I haven’t had any specific updates in a while. I have no idea how the Disney acquisition might affect things.

Snapshot

If you missed my weird, cyberpunkish detective story, you can now get a copy of it in our Dragonsteel Edition bundled with another of my stories. The ebook is still around too. MGM snatched this up almost before it was published—it was very hot in Hollywood in the months leading up to publication.

The screenwriter they attached to it had another project delaying him for the bulk of this year, but they’ve said he’ll turn his full attention to it staring sometime just after the holidays.

Other Properties

Legion and Dark One are currently in negotiations. The rest of the Cosmere is covered by the DMG deal, as we want one company working on that at a time. We have a small deal for Defending Elysium that has it under option with a screenwriter, and the first draft screenplay is good. That leaves Alcatraz, The Rithmatist, and a couple of shorts (Dreamer, Perfect State, Firstborn) with no options right now.

Updates Conclusion

There we go—everything I’ve talked about should be on that list. I have a few other little stories bouncing around in my head that I haven’t talked about yet. (Well, probably there are hundreds, but only a few that are relatively close to seeing the light of day.) We’ll see what happens.

Projected Schedule

My projected publication schedule looking forward swaps The Apocalypse Guard out for Skyward and moves the Legion collection into the place of Wax and Wayne 4, reflecting what I actually wrote this year. (Note, these are always very speculative. And Peter is probably already worried about Stormlight 4.)

September 2018: Stephen Leeds/Legion Collection
November 2018: Skyward
Fall 2019: Wax and Wayne 4
Sometime 2019: Skyward 2
Sometime 2020: Stormlight 4
Sometime 2020: Skyward 3

Conclusion: Birthday!

Last year, I tried out something where—in response to people asking me if they could send me birthday gifts—I suggested sending me a magic card from a specific set, with a signature and note on the back.

This was a little experiment that people had a lot of fun with, and this year I want to post the results! That means a lot of photos, as I wanted to show the notes people wrote on the cards. Many of you included touching letters to me as well, which I read and appreciate—though those tended to be a little more personal in nature, so I’m not going to post them.

Some of you will be completely uninterested in this, so we’ve collected the images in a gallery rather than posting them all here. Have fun browsing through them! And thank you so much to everyone. It was a lot of fun to see the little notes that you’d all sent in.

I’m forty-two today, which is an auspicious number in science fiction fandom. It’s going to be tough to top these last few months and the reception to Oathbringer.

The fact that I get to do this crazy thing for a living continues to be the best gift of them all.

Brandon Sanderson
December 2017

Edgedancer, a novella that was originally published last year as part of Arcanum Unbounded, was just released in eBook and (gorgeous) small hardcover yesterday.

For those of you who don’t know, the events that take place in Edgedancer occur between the closing of Words of Radiance and the forthcoming Oathbringer and is often referred to as Stormlight 2.5. The new release of Edgdancer also includes Lift’s interlude from Words of Radiance as a prologue so you can read all of her story in one place.

Here is a brief introduction to Edgedancer for those of you who haven’t read it yet.

Three years ago, Lift asked a goddess to stop her from growing older—a wish she believed was granted. Now, in Edgedancer, the barely teenage nascent Knight Radiant finds that time stands still for no one. Although the young Azish emperor granted her safe haven from an executioner she knows only as Darkness, court life is suffocating the free-spirited Lift, who can’t help heading to Yeddaw when she hears the relentless Darkness is there hunting people like her with budding powers. The downtrodden in Yeddaw have no champion, and Lift knows she must seize this awesome responsibility.

If you want to read the first few chapters of Edgedancer, Tor.com released the first 3 chapters as a preview last year.

Enjoy!

Hello, everyone! I’ve had my nose to the grindstone working on Oathbringer. However, as awards season is upon us again, I’m pausing to do my yearly roundup of what I have that is eligible.

I know that to many of you, the science fiction awards (and the occasional drama surrounding them) are of little interest. However, I think it is important for me to support these awards, as they are valuable for our community.

Science fiction and fantasy, as genres, have become increasingly mainstream. In addition, those outside fandom are coming to understand us better. However, we continue to face unfair treatment by certain literary circles. We can’t simply say, “Hey, you shouldn’t regard an entire genre with derision, particularly when the genre is so wide,” without in turn saying, “Take a look at these books as great examples of what we do well.”

It is important that we in the genres uphold what we think is excellent about what we do. Those authors—and the world at large—deserve to understand that we’re proud of ourselves and of what we accomplish.

At worst, awards are a popularity contest. And that’s just fine. At their best, though, they are the means by which we grow as a community.

This year has a special difference from previous years, in that the Hugo Awards is trying out an award for Best Series. Below I’ve listed what I have that is eligible for the Hugo and Nebula awards this year. In addition to the below, last year Camera Panda filmed my university writing lectures, which are well worth watching and are eligible as Best Related Work.

Hugo Awards nominations are open to all members of the 2016, 2017, and 2018 World Science Fiction Conventions, and the deadline is March 17. You had to be a member by January 21st to nominate, but it’s not too late to become a member of the 2017 Worldcon in order to vote on the final ballot once it’s announced.

The Nebula nomination deadline, for SFWA members, is tomorrow, February 15.

Best Novel

• The Bands of Mourning
• Calamity
• The Dark Talent

(Note: Calamity and possibly The Dark Talent are also eligible for consideration by the Andre Norton Award jury.)

Best Novella

• Mistborn: Secret History
• Edgedancer (appeared in Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection)

(Note: Both of these novellas are slightly over 40,000 words and thus are eligible as novels for both the Nebula and Hugo Awards. However, under the Hugos’ 20%/5,000-word category relocation rule, they are also eligible for the Best Novella Hugo Award, where they fit best.)

Best Series (Hugo Awards only)

• Mistborn
• The Stormlight Archive
• Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians

In these award eligibility posts, I generally pick one thing I’d like to highlight for awards consideration. Usually it’s a novella or novel I think represents my best work of the year, or the one that I think stands best on its own.

This year, however, I feel that my novellas and novels don’t work independently. The novellas are both parts of larger series, requiring foreknowledge to really work. The two novels I released were the third in their respective series.

(Arcanum Unbounded could be eligible for the World Fantasy’s anthology award, but that is juried by a committee. So it’s up to whoever is part of that jury, not the voting public.)

Therefore, the thing I’d like to highlight this year is Mistborn for the Best Series Hugo Award. Mistborn had two entries this year, and I do think I’m doing something particularly interesting with that series. (Taking an epic fantasy world and pushing it toward a modern-day urban fantasy.) I would rather people consider it, than the Stormlight Archive, as I’d prefer the attention be on Stormlight in a year when it has a full novel in consideration. Hopefully we will have many more years of the Series Hugo to consider worthy works.

Introduction

Hello, and welcome! I hope the holiday season is treating you all very well. Around this time each year, I write a blog post called State of the Sanderson. I usually post it on or around my birthday, which happens to be today. (So, happy Koloss Head-Munching Day to you all.)

These posts run long and are extensive essays that go over what I did during the year, updating you all on the projects I’ve been working on, then doing a rundown of projects that I’m planning. (Find past year’s State of the Sanderson right here.)

I hope you’ll find this helpful and interesting. Storytelling is not an exact science, and things don’t always go as planned. At the same time, I believe it important to be up-front with you all. I know what it’s like to wait for years to read the ending of a favorite series, and I appreciate your longsuffering support when I jump between projects.

In teaching my university lectures and workshop, I interact with many, many hopeful and talented newer writers. Their excitement, and worry about the future, reminds me how fortunate I am to be able to do what I love for a living. In the story of the ants and the grasshopper, I get to spend my life making music—but instead of letting me starve in the winter, you bring me in and give me something warm to eat, then you listen while I tell you a story.

It’s strange to consider what might have been. How many plausible variations of life are there where I’m not a professional novelist? Did I hit on the one perfect sequence of events that brought me here, or would I have muddled my way through even if Moshe hadn’t agreed to look at Elantris back at a party in Montreal in 2001?

Though I deal in the fantastic as my daily labor, the scene where I’m not a writer is one scene I have difficulty conjuring. Would I be a professor perhaps? I do enjoy teaching, though only in moderation. (When I had to teach the same class multiple times in a day, I found the experience monotonous. One course a year is just about right for me—exciting, vibrant, and involving new things to teach and talk about.)

Indeed, early in my graduate studies, I realized I’d never make it as an academic. Ironically, I discovered that doing all the things in my writing program that would prepare me for a good Ph.D. or MFA course (being on the staff of journals, assisting professors, traveling to conferences) would prevent me from actually writing—so I threw all of that up in the air and doubled down on my novels. Some of my colleagues went on to professorships, but I was never really headed that direction.

For me, it was always write or bust. I don’t know what busting would look like—but I do know that, barring something truly insane, it would involve me ending up with a closet full of dozens and dozens of unpublished manuscripts.

As an aside, for those who didn’t hear the story on tour this year, my second son (who is six) has started to figure out what it means that I’m an author. He came up to me a few months ago and said, “Daddy. You write books!”

I said, “Yes!”

“You sell them, so we have money for food and our house!”

“That’s right.”

“And when people visit, you give them books from the garage! That’s how you sell them!”

I often give copies of the books to friends who visit, and in his six-year-old understanding, this was how we made our living. But hey, there are worse things to be than a garage novelist with a trunk full of demo manuscripts.

In any case, you have my sincere thanks for your support! I’m glad we’re not in the alternate, dystopian Sanderson timeline where I have a goatee and have to spend my life selling people insurance.

My Year

This year was almost completely dominated by the writing of Oathbringer, Book Three of the Stormlight Archive. The first files I have for the book were Kaladin scenes, written in June 2014. But the book didn’t really start in earnest until July 2015, when I wrote the Dalinar flashback sequence. (See State of the Sanderson 2015.) I had those done by October, but November was when I really dove into the novel.

I spent most of 2016 working on it, with only a few interruptions. It was an extremely productive year spent writing on something I’m very passionate about—but it was also a monochrome year, as I poured so much into Stormlight. There were far fewer side projects, and far fewer deviations, than the year before.

I’ve come to realize I can’t do a Stormlight book every year, or even every two years. You can see that this one took around 18 months of dedicated writing time (though that does include some interruptions for edits and work on other things.) My process is such that, when I finish something like Stormlight, I need to move on for a while to refresh myself.

That said, Oathbringer is done as of last week! Here’s a quick breakdown of the year.

January: Oathbringer

A lot of this month was revisions. I decided to do something unusual for me, and revise each chunk of the book as I completed it, which let me get my editor working on his notes early in the year—rather than making him wait until this month, when the whole thing finished. That means I’ll soon have a second draft of the book completed, though I only completed the first draft a little bit ago.

Also squeezed into January was a trip to Bad Robot, where I had a cool meeting with J.J. Abrams. (In conjunction with a video game my friends at ChAIR Entertainment are making—the Infinity Blade guys. I just gave a few pointers on the story; I’m not officially involved.)

February: Calamity Tour

I toured for Calamity, the last book of the Reckoners. The whole series is out now, so check it out! There is a nice hardcover boxed set of all three available in most bookstores, and it makes a great gift.

While on tour, I read from Stormlight 3, and some kind person recorded the reading for you all. Also, here’s another version from FanX in SLC.

As to be expected, there were a huge number of awesome costumes shown off during the tour. (More than I can reasonably put in this post.) Here are a few: