Adam here. It has been an exciting few weeks since we launched the Kickstarter last month. So it’s a bit weird to be saying this already, but our Kickstarter for the special leatherbound edition of The Way of Kings ends in just a few days! It officially ends Friday at 3:05 p.m. MDT, so, if you’ve been thinking about backing it, you still have time. Feel free to check out our landing page, or if you’d like to see all our updates you can check those out here too.

If you’ve been following our updates, what I say here won’t come as a surprise, but we only have two stretch goals left! (If you prefer to hear Brandon and Isaac talk about them, you can watch this segment from our last livestream, or scroll down.)

We recently unlocked the $6,000,000 stretch goal, which is a Journey Before Destination bumper sticker that we’re very excited about. But the two remaining are epic (You don’t need to take my word for it, you can see for yourself how awesome these are).

These coasters (designs not final), that will be unlocked if we reach $6.5 million, are incredibly fun/awesome/cool/glorious/etc, and we want to see them become reality. If you’re unable to back the Kickstarter, don’t fret! Our hope is that if we unlock this stretch goal, that we will eventually have them for sale on Brandon’s webstore.

The final $7 million stretch goal is the one that I’m most excited for. Michael Kramer and Kate Reading narrating The Way of Kings Prime. Typically, stretch goals are intended to support any backers of the project. But we’ve discussed this internally and we feel this would be better used if it was something that we just made available—just as we did with The Way of Kings Prime ebook—free to anyone who wanted it. This is the final goal as, deservedly so, Michael’s and Kate’s talents don’t come cheap, but we feel they’re best suited to the task. If the goal is met, we’re not exactly sure when, or how, we’d make the audiobook available as it will be dependent on their narration schedule, but rest assured that we’d get it to you as quickly as possible.

Here are all the stretch goals that have been unlocked. Please note, that only specific backer tiers are eligible for all the physical rewards. If you’re unsure of which tiers qualify, please visit our Kickstarter page for complete information.

Isaac here. As many of you know, we’re hard at work preparing for our summer Kickstarter for the Dragonsteel edition of The Way of Kings. Today we’re kicking off the ramp-up period before the Kickstarter with a reveal we’ve been holding onto for quite some time.

Several years ago Brandon came to me with the idea of creating a huge movie-poster sized illustration of the Bridge Four crew. The idea was to have Kaladin and some of the original bridge men standing on a plateau on the bottom of the poster, but then up in the sky above them, there would be images of the bridge men as something more—almost Radiants—from roughly the Words of Radiance time period.

I held onto this idea for a while, keeping my eye out for just the right artist to create it, then at Illuxcon, I met the kind and amazing Zack Stella. We got to talking fantasy novels, and he recommended The Way of Kings to me before I got around to mentioning my connection to the books. I’ve loved Zack’s work for quite some time, and he turned out to be the perfect fit for creating this illustration.

Working with him was awesome. He instinctively grasped the aesthetics of the Stormlight Archive while at the same time bringing his trademark style to it. Every copy of the Dragonsteel edition of The Way of Kings sold through our summer Kickstarter will come with this nearly 24” x 36” movie-style poster folded up with it. I love the result, and I hope you will too.

For more information on the Kickstarter, Kara and I talked a little about it during JordanCon Online. Please note that all the details mentioned here aren’t finalized yet, and there are a few things that I got wrong when sitting in the hot seat (ie. we aren’t breaking The Way of Kings volumes at the UK breakpoint but after Interlude 6 and before Part 3) but the video should be pretty informative otherwise.

We have some exciting news coming to you this fall, and no, this is not about Oathbringer (this time). The Black Piper, a cinematic band from Provo, Utah, has composed their debut album Kaladin. And as you might have guessed, this original book soundtrack was inspired by The Way of Kings. They are starting their Kickstarter in a few days, don’t worry, I’ll send a tweet out so you don’t miss it.

Here’s how The Black Piper describes this album:

The album follows the journey of the main character, Kaladin Stormblessed, from his time in Amaram’s army to his time training as a surgeon in Hearthstone, his slave days in The Unclaimed Hills, and the crucible of Bridge Four, to the epic battles on The Shattered Plains.

Now, fans of the book can relive their favorite moments with a soundtrack that doesn’t impair how they visualize the story!

While this may be The Black Piper’s debut album, this is not their first foray into the musical production world. Among their team are composers who have worked on Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and La La Land. This massive project officially started in 2015 and features the talents of eight professional Hollywood film composers and an army of orchestrators, music contractors, copyists, recording engineers, mixers, and graphic and performing artists.

I could go on and on about the music, but I think you will get a better understanding and appreciation for the album, just as I did, by listening to a bit of it yourselves.

Here is a little sneak peak of a full composition from the Kaladin Album:

You can also check out these samples for some of the other tracks.

For those who didn’t see it, right before he left on vacation a few weeks ago, Peter arranged for his daughter to do the ceremonial “stair toss” of the new Stormlight book. This is a tradition that started when she was a baby, and tossed the manuscript of The Way of Kings down the stairs. Now we get her to do it each time.

This blog post is going up a little later, as Peter took some deserved time off, but now that he has time to edit again I wanted to get something up on the website to celebrate. A few days back, the last version of the proofread was turned in. My team has finally finished the laborious process of copyediting and proofreading the books—which is the last major step in sending the book to press. (I finished my last part, the final revision, back in June.)

This means that Oathbringer is in, once and for all. It’s actually coming! Brace yourselves. Tor will be releasing sample chapters every Tuesday on their website. (By my suggestion, we’re going to do about a quarter of the book this way.) The prologue and first three chapters are already up there for you to read.

In conjunction with the book’s launch, we actually have a couple of Kickstarters coming up. I feel good doing these now, as the Mistborn board game is done and shipping—I don’t want to have too many of these things going at once. However, two others that we’ve been working on for a few years have come together around the same time, so I hope you’ll forgive us running them in succession.

The first is a concept album of instrumental music, inspired by the Stormlight Archive. This one is up and running, and you can kickstart it here.

Once that’s done, Shire Post Mint, which does in-world coinage for fantasy books, will be launching another Kickstarter. They’ve already done a lot of high quality work for various book series, and now they are minting some beautiful coins with designs by my team. We’ll be supporting them in a kickstarter for Mistborn coins running from September 28th to October 28th. Details will be coming soon.

So, you can have your pick! Stormlight music, in-world Mistborn coins, or both. In the future, we’re hoping to do a few more board games (one based on the Shattered Plains and one based on the Reckoners books) and maybe even a calendar.

The release date for Oathbringer is November 14th for the US and Canada, and November 16th for the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. You can preorder at your store of choice, and doing that is always appreciated. We’ll also be shipping out our traditional Weller Book Works signed editions. Look for details on that in a month or so. Also, we should have release party details for you before too long.

I know that Poland, Spain, France, and a few others are actively working on translations shooting for as close to the English release date as possible. But it’s a big book. In fact, my biggest so far.

I’ll be doing a very short tour in the States—one of the problems with releasing so close to the holidays is that squeezing tours in is tough. After Thanksgiving, though, I’ll go back out and do an equally short tour in the UK. Dates for the US tour are up on Tor.com already, but I don’t have exact dates for the UK yet. Should be around the last week of November.

This has been an incredible journey. The book took years of work, but it came together wonderfully. I’m excited to be sharing this series with you, and have planned a few blog posts about the history of Stormlight (and the cosmere) for you to read sometime around the book’s publication date. So watch for those! And Peter is putting together a number of deleted scenes from old drafts of the first two books to release during the next two months, so that’s something else to look forward to.

In the meantime, I’ve launched into my next project, a series called The Apocalypse Guard, which has some loose connections to The Reckoners.

The pitch is as follows: Emma is the office intern (and Coffee girl) to the Apocalypse Guard—a supergroup that saves planets from cataclysmic events. During a series of attacks that leave the Guard crippled, Emma gets trapped on a doomed planet they were planning to save—but one they no longer have the resources to defend. Emma is left to try to survive the coming apocalypse, or somehow figure out how to save the planet—neither of which are things her clerical internship prepared her for.

The Apocalypse Guard is a fun, fast-paced adventure with (hopefully) some very cool worldbuilding. It also asks the very important questions: Who fetches Superman’s coffee, and what does she do when the world is falling apart?

Our target release date is next fall. You can follow along with the percentage bar on my website—though I should note, it’s a percentage bar (right now) for the entire trilogy, which I’m writing straight through. (Something I haven’t done since the Mistborn trilogy, but which I’ve been keen to try again.) I’ll be stopping between books to do some novellas or other shorts. (Odds are, right now, that I’ll write Legion 3—the last of that series—between books one and two of the Apocalypse Guard.)

As always, thanks for putting up with the schizophrenic insanity that is my writing schedule. Know that your willingness to embrace some of these crazy ideas—like Steelheart and Legion—is part of what makes me so excited to keep doing this job. I always have something new and bizarre to look forward to writing.

Brandon

P.S.
My current expected writing schedule involves taking a year and a half to do other projects, then diving back into Stormlight.

2017
June–August: Apocalypse Guard One (Fall 2018 Release)
Early September: Legion 3 (Sometime 2018 Release)
Late September–December: Apocalypse Guard Two (Mid 2019 Release)
Late December: Random Novella
2018
January–March: Apocalypse Guard Three (Mid 2020 Release)
April–July: Wax and Wayne Four (Series finale, Fall 2019 Release)
August–December: Undecided (Rithmatist 2, maybe?)
2019
All months: Stormlight Four (Fall 2020 Release)

The State of the Sanderson in December will have more details. For now, I hope you enjoy Oathbringer! I’ll be sure to do some posts early next year, gearing you up for next year’s books, the Apocalypse Guard and the final volume of Legion.

Brandon