Hey, all. This week marks the 30th anniversary of the start of The Wheel of Time! I wanted to write something up for you, but I ended up using it for a new foreword for The Eye of the World that Tor is releasing. So you’ll be able to read it then. It’s a little about my experience as a youth picking up the first book, and a discussion of why I think The Wheel of Time has been so enduring.

Today, instead, I’ll point you toward some of the other commemorations that have been posted around the internet. In addition, I’ll leave you with a little tidbit.

• Tor.com
• Dragonmount

This is generally the time of year when I talk about awards, and what I have that is eligible. It’s become a bit of a tradition this time of year for authors to run down their list of eligible works.

This year, though, I’d like to point those of you eligible to nominate for the Hugos toward an interesting fact. The Wheel of Time, I’ve been told, is eligible for Best Series. That might be surprising, since the series was finished some five years ago—but last year, Harriet and I released a novella set in the world in a charity anthology.

This sequence, about Perrin, was cut from A Memory of Light. But released on its own in this form, even if it’s not in the main continuity, is enough for Hugo eligibility. I’m tickled by this idea because the Hugo for Best Series was created in large part because of The Wheel of Time, which got nominated for Best Novel as a completed work.

I’m a big fan of the idea of a Best Series award. I’ve talked in the past about how some of the things we epic sf/fantasy writers work on are bigger than the sum of their parts. While I think the individual books are great, what is most remarkable to me about The Wheel of Time is its scope, its influence on the genre, and its plotting and pacing across fourteen enormous volumes.

So if there was ever a series that deserved the Best Series Hugo, it’s the one that made everyone create the award in the first place. Instead of focusing on other things I have that are eligible, I’d request that those who can nominate for the Hugos this year consider The Wheel of Time for Best Series. If it deserved a Best Novel nomination, it certainly deserves consideration for Best Series.

Thanks, everyone!

Brandon

Introduction

Another year has passed, and Koloss Head Munching Day is upon us again. It’s been a fun year, full of me working on interesting side projects, so expect quite the list of updates in this (very long) post. But first, let me give a hearty thank you to the community of readers that continues to put up with my sometimes insane writing process. I realize it results in me having a lot of projects, necessitating posts like this one to keep everyone up to date. For many writers, this might be an overwhelming number of irons in the proverbial fire—but it is exactly what I need to keep me excited about the process, and to keep me from burning out.

Know, however, that I realize this can be a little frustrating if you’re waiting for one specific update that keeps not happening. It’s quite the challenge to keep all this straight, but I do my best to keep in mind that by beginning something, I make an implicit promise that I will finish it. I take this promise seriously. I will do my best to balance my artistic needs with the trust you’ve all shown me by continuing to support my work. I consider this post, along with updates on places like my subreddit, to be essential parts of this process. I often cannot rush the artistic process, but I can keep you all informed of what is causing delays, or what projects I find exciting. This is how I make myself accountable to you, as you are the means by which I even get to do this wonderful job in the first place.

So, introduction done, here we go! Let the circus commence.

My Year

January-March: Skyward and Legion Revisions
I kicked off the year quickly doing a second draft of Skyward. Pulling The Apocalypse Guard from the publisher, then promising them Skyward to publish in the fall of 2018, meant that I had to scramble. It wouldn’t do to pull a book I judged to be of inferior quality, only to replace it with a book that I didn’t have time to revise up to my standards. So you’ll see a number of months dedicated to Skyward. (Which, if you somehow missed it, did come out—and is still sitting quite happily on the New York Times bestseller list many weeks later, so thank you all very much!)

Another thing I’d been putting off for months was the necessary revisions of the third Legion story. Tor was quite patient with me on this one, considering the Legion collection was scheduled for publication in the fall as well. But during these three months, I did multiple revisions of both books, eventually getting Legion into a polished state. (There was one more draft of Skyward still to do.) Legion Three, Lies of the Beholder, can be found in the Legion collection that was published earlier this year.

Finally, somewhere in here, I squeezed in an outline and world guide for Death Without Pizza. (Yes, that’s a name change—no it’s not the final name, but just a placeholder.) More on that later.

April: Children of the Nameless
Sometime around March of last year, Wizards of the Coast sent me an exploratory email. It being the 25th anniversary of their card game, they were wondering if I’d be interested in doing a story with them. As most of you know, I’m quite the fan of Magic: The Gathering. It’s my primary hobby, and I have way too many cards. (Which still aren’t enough, of course.) I was enthusiastic, and you can read more about the process I used to approach the story in this blog post.

I knew that by doing so, and by writing the story as long as it ended up, it would make getting to some of my other projects later in the year more difficult. (Namely, the fourth Wax and Wayne book, which I’ll talk about shortly.) But this was kind of something I had to do, so I ask your forgiveness in taking this detour to Innistrad. I’m exceptionally pleased with the story and the response it has gotten, so if you haven’t read it, I present it to you here! Reading it requires no prior knowledge of the card came or the lore surrounding it.

May: Skyward Final Draft
How long it takes to write a story depends on a lot of factors, but in general, three months gets me around 100k words. Shorter stories, with fewer viewpoints, tend to be faster—while longer stories with more intricate plotlines (like Stormlight) tend to take longer. But that’s just for the rough draft. Generally, doing all the other drafts takes an equivalent amount of time to the first draft. (So, if the first draft takes three months, the second through fourth drafts will together take another three months.) You can see this at play in Skyward, which took about three months to write in the end of 2017, then took three additional months of revision to polish up.

I did sneak in a little time to do an outline for a piece called The Original in here as well, which took about a week. I’ll update you on that in the secondary projects section.

June–August: Starsight First Draft
And, speaking of three month first drafts, here we get me buckling down and doing the sequel to Skyward. It’s finished in its first draft form, and dominated my summer. In here, I also did detailed outlines for the third and fourth books of the series. (And this is where I determined for certain that the series would need to be four books instead of three.)

September–October: Odds and Ends
In these months I had some travel to record episodes of Writing Excuses, I did a quick second draft of Starsight to send to my publisher, and I did some revisions to Children of the Nameless. I also did more work on The Original, Death Without Pizza, and Alcatraz Six (AKA Bastille vs. the Evil Librarians, or Alcatraz vs. His Own Dumb Self). Finally, I slipped in some brainstorming with Dan Wells on how to fix The Apocalypse Guard.

Basically, I knew that November would be mostly lost to touring, and I was scrambling to get some work done on small projects to clear my plate for 2019, which will be dedicated to working on Stormlight Four.

November: Skyward Tour
I spent most of November on tour for Skyward, and quickly finishing up final revisions on Children of the Nameless. I got to see a lot of you while touring for the book, and had a blast—but these tours get more and more difficult as the lines get longer and longer. The tour for Stormlight Four in 2020 might require me to do some things I’ve been dreading, such as limit the lines to a certain number of tickets. It makes me sad to contemplate, but I’ll keep you all in the loop about what we decide to do.

That said, here are some pictures from my tour! Let the costume parade commence:

Syl – Barnes & Noble, El Cerrito

Mistborn – University Bookstore, Seattle

Shallan and Jasnah – University Bookstore, Seattle

Cobalt Guard – University Bookstore, Seattle

Spensa Nightshade – Anderson’s Bookshop, Chicago

Mistborn – Barnes & Noble, Atlanta

Wax – Barnes & Noble, Atlanta

Shallan – Murder by the Book, Houston

Australia(?) and Bastille – Murder by the Book, Houston

Mistborn – Murder by the Book, Houston

December: Death Without Pizza
I needed a break from all the other things I’ve been doing, so in classic Brandon style, I worked on something fresh and new to give myself a breather. This was where I was going to do Wax and Wayne Four, but doing Children of the Nameless meant that instead of three months extra space at the end of the year, I only had one month. (As CotN had taken one month to write, and one month to revise.) I had the choice of pushing back the start of Stormlight Four, or doing something else for this month and trying to sneak in W&W 4 sometime next year. I chose the latter. It’s important to me that I let myself do side projects to refresh myself—but I also think it’s important to keep to my Stormlight schedule. It would be too easy to keep putting off the big books until they stretch to years in the making. I told myself I was going to divide my time in half between Stormlight and other projects.

The truth is, I’m getting really anxious about getting back to Stormlight. That’s a very good sign, as once I finish a Stormlight book, I’m usually feeling quite burned out on the setting, and need a number of months to recover.

Anyway, that’s where the year went! Now, on to the exciting part. The big list of projects and updates to them.

Updates on Main Projects

Stormlight
As you just read about above, I am on track for starting this book on January first. I’ll begin with a reread of the first three books, as I find I need a periodic refresher, even on my own novels. This will also be important for helping me really nail down the outlines for books four and five.

As I’ve worked on the Stormlight series, I’ve shifted a lot of things around in the outlines. Famously, I swapped Dalinar’s book and Szeth’s book (making Book Three have Dalinar’s flashbacks instead of Szeth’s). But along the same lines, I moved a chunk of Book Three into Book Two, and then moved around smaller arcs for Three, Four, and Five.

The Stormlight series has a very odd structure. Each novel is outlined as a trilogy plus a short story collection (the interludes) and is the length of four regular books. This lets me play with narrative in some interesting ways—but it also makes each volume a beast to write. The other superstructure to the series is the spotlight on the ten orders of Radiants, with each book highlighting one of them while also having a flashback sequences for a character tied to one of those orders. If that weren’t complicated enough, the series is organized in two major five-book arcs.

What this means is that I need to do some extra work on books four and five, as they together tie off an arc. There are some small plot lines I’ve been pushing back from book to book as I nail down what each volume will include—but I can’t do that with Book Five, as it will be the capstone of this sequence. So I need the outlines to be tight to make certain I get everything into them that needs to be there.

Anyway, that’s a long way to say, essentially, I’ll start posting updates to the Stormlight subreddit in January, and you can follow along there or on the progress bar we’ll post here on my website on January first. I’ve commissioned a special piece of artwork to be used in Stormlight Four blog posts, which we should be able to reveal next year. (I’m pretty excited about it.) So you have that to look forward to as well!

Note that while I’m optimistic about this being my fall 2020 release, delays could happen if the book doesn’t come out smoothly on the first draft. I’ll keep you updated with regular posts. A lot will depend on how long the revisions take.

Status: Book Four is my main project for 2019, for an anticipated 2020/2021 release.

Mistborn
My big failure in 2018 was not getting to Wax and Wayne Four. But all is not lost! I am going to do whatever I can to squeeze this in next year. I’m feeling I might need a break in the middle of Stormlight Four, as I sometimes do. If so, I might squeeze this in there. But it will depend on a many factors. So, we’ll have to take a wait-and-see attitude.

I’m going to try to hold myself back from doing any other side projects, like Children of the Nameless or The Original from this year, until Wax and Wayne is finished. Book Four will be the conclusion of their story, and the wrap-up of era two of Mistborn. (And I have big things planned for Era Three, which I am planning to write between Stormlight Five and Stormlight Six.)

Status: Pushed off for now, but to be written very soon. No release date yet.

Skyward
Book Two, Starsight, is done, and I’ll be noodling on revisions for it in the early part of next year while I write the Stormlight Four and Five outlines. It’s scheduled for October of next year.

Stormlight Four taking all of my 2019 will likely mean that Skyward Three won’t be written until 2020, for a spring 2021 release. (At least, that would be my best guess at this point.) So you’ll have a larger-than-usual wait between Books Two and Three, unless something happens to let me squeeze Book Three in early. As I mentioned above, it’s a four-book series, and when I get back to it, I anticipate doing Book Four soon after Book Three. (Like I did in writing Books One and Two very close to one another.)

Status: Book Two ready to go in 2019. Book Three likely in 2021, Book Four likely in 2022.

Death (Without Pizza)
A major bombshell update here: we have finished a first draft of this book! I’m moving this up to major projects, as I anticipate a release of this novel in the coming two years. It is a Dresden Files-esque urban fantasy series set in London, starring a necromancer. (With a very Sanderson-style take on necromancy.)

Many of you have been following along with this project, which I’ve mentioned for many years in the State of the Sanderson posts. I wrote a rough draft of a big chunk of this book back some years ago now, but didn’t like how it was going, so I shelved it. The idea stuck with me though—and I really wanted to give it another chance. Over the years, one part I didn’t like was actually the pizza aspect. The original pitch was for a pizza delivery man who became a necromancer.

Well, over the years, I found I wanted a stronger character for the protagonist. Starting with the title Death by Pizza had pushed me to make the story more jokey than I wanted, and had led me to cut corners on the worldbuilding in ways I didn’t like. So when I went back to the drawing board, I started going in different directions with the storytelling. A more intricate, interesting magic system. And a character with more heart. Where I eventually ended up going was studying metal music culture.

The subculture of heavy metal music is fascinating to me. I really like how passionate the fans are about it, and how often outsiders are wrong about those inside it. (Do a little reading on the topic, and you might find that a lot of your stereotypes of metal fans are wrong—like mine were. The more I read about and talked to metal fans, the more fascinated I became by the subculture.) It seemed to me that a metalhead who finds out he’s a necromancer could be a cool hook.

Well, around the time I was really getting into this, I was chatting with Peter Orullian, a novelist who is a friend of mine. He’s mostly known for his epic fantasy series The Vault of Heaven, but he also happens to be a metalhead and a musician. (He’s toured internationally fronting metal bands, and recently composed an entire rock opera in the style of Trans-Siberian Orchestra. He’s even written a book with the band Dream Theater, in conjunction with one of their concept albums.)

Well, the match seemed perfect. He could bring the expertise on metal music, and I could provide the worldbuilding. So we jumped into a collaboration. I wrote out a lengthy world guide and outline, and Peter did a lot of experimenting to find the right voice for our character. We worked on the first volume all during the summer and fall, and the resulting book is quite promising. It’s the story of an American metal singer living in London whose day goes from bad to worse as he gets kicked out of his band, then makes his way to his favorite pub to lick his wounds—only to end up getting shot in the head during an apparent robbery. And after that, things start to go really badly for him.

Peter finished the first draft in November, and I’ve been spending my December doing a second draft. After that, I’ll kick it back to him for a third draft so that we can make sure our different voices are smoothed out. We’ll see where it goes from there! In any case, though, Death Without Pizza will not be the final title for the story. We’ll pick something a little less silly; I’m a little worried people will expect something over-the-top metal like Brütal Legend—which was great, but not the direction this story ended up going. Anyway, I’ll post updates as we go along!

Status: Being revised. After that, we’ll look for a publisher.

Updates on Secondary Projects

The Original
I’m moving this novella (which I don’t think I’ve mentioned before in a State of the Sanderson) into the Secondary Projects section. A while ago I had an idea for a story about a world where, if you committed a crime and went on the run for it, the government could create a clone of you (with your memories and personality) to hunt you down. After all, who better to hunt a criminal than a copy of that criminal? The copy would have strict controls in place so they could be killed by the government with the press of a button, but would be given the promise that they could take their Original’s place if they succeeded in hunting them down and killing them.

Earlier this year, the idea developed into a full-fledged outline, which I wrote out during time when I needed a break from other things. It worked out well, and so you might see progress on this in future years. Right now, I like the idea of doing it as an audio original, perhaps with a coauthor who is more experienced in audio or voice acting. So watch for updates here.

Status: Outlined.

The Apocalypse Guard
I do someday want to do something with this book. I’ve given it to Dan Wells, my long-time friend and sometimes partner in crime. He’s come back with some suggestions on how I could fix it, along with some brainstorming on where it could go as a series.

I’m going to give you fair warning, though. Every time Dan and I brainstorm together, weird things happen. Legion was the result of one of those sessions, as was Dan’s book I Am Not a Serial Killer. (Which you should all go read, if you haven’t.) The two of us are odd enough on our own, but together we’re downright strange. (You should see the two of us in role-playing sessions, where we constantly try to out-bizarre one another with our character concepts.)

I fully expect something to come out of The Apocalypse Guard sessions I’m doing with Dan, but…well, don’t expect it to be normal by any stretch of the word.

Status: In revisions, getting weirder.

Alcatraz
I’ve been tweaking Alcatraz Six. I did a partial draft a few years ago that went off the rails, and this year, I trimmed that back with some help from a friend into the parts that worked. From there, we’ve been trying to figure out how to get Bastille’s character voice right. It’s moving. Slowly, but it’s moving. Book Six, written from Bastille’s viewpoint, will be the end of the series.

Now that Legion is done, the next series I want to make sure gets tied up is Alcatraz. It shouldn’t be too much longer.

Status: Book Six made some small progress this year.

White Sand
Graphic Novel Two came out this year, and was very well received. (Save for the forced artist change, something I hated to have to do. That said, the new artist is doing a fantastic job.) Graphic Novel Three is the end of this sequence, and is well on its way to being completed.

The prose version is still available if you sign up for my mailing list. Though remember, we’ve made numerous updates to the story during the adaptation process.

I have no immediate plans to do sequels to this in graphic novel form, though you can expect stories set on Taldain to happen in the future.

Status: Final graphic novel is well under way. Release in 2019 or early 2020 likely.

Dark One
My outline for this drew a lot of buzz around both Hollywood and New York. The story, if you aren’t familiar with it, is about a young man in our world who discovers that a fantasy world has declared him to be the Dark One, and starts sending hit squads into our world to assassinate him. Pitched as “Harry Potter from Voldemort’s viewpoint,” the story follows this young man as he is forced to confront the possibility that he might do what the prophecies say.

We have a graphic novel in the works, and I’ve been doing pitches in Hollywood for a potential television show. So movement is certainly happening here.

Status: Going well. Might have art to show soon from the graphic novel.

Elantris, Warbreaker, Rithmatist
No updates from last year, I’m afraid. There was no intention to make progress on these this year. Once Alcatraz is wrapped up, I’ll turn my attention back to The Rithmatist as the last looming series that needs a wrap-up that hasn’t gotten one. Elantris and Warbreaker sequels aren’t to be expected until Stormlight Five and Wax and Wayne Four are done.

Status: Keep waiting. (Sorry again.)

Updates on Minor Projects

The Reckoners, Legion
These are both finished, and I don’t foresee any future updates anytime soon. Do note, however, that the Reckoners board game has been shipping, and it turned out great. You should soon have a chance to buy copies if you missed the Kickstarter, and I suspect there will be expansions in the future.

Status: Completed

Adamant
No change from last year. This space opera series of novellas is in limbo until I find the right time to work on them. It will happen eventually.

Status: No movement.

Soulburner
No motion on this space opera that I might rename Starburner once I get around to doing something with it. I have a cool worldbuilding document, but no novel specifically. I’ve been tempted to see if it would work for a video game setting.

Potential Cosmere Stories
Keep the following on your radar, as they may happen someday. However, as I’ll be knee-deep in Stormlight in 2019, don’t expect anything to happen on any of them until it is done. The list includes: Dragonsteel/Liar of Partinel, Sixth of the Dusk sequel, Silverlight novella, Threnody novel, Aether of Night, Silence Divine.

Movie/Television Updates

So, let’s talk about movies.

People tend to get really excited about news of my books being adapted—and rightly so. I’d be very excited to someday see one of my properties turn into a film, and I think it’s inevitable that some day, we’ll see it happen. However, the process of a book becoming a film or television show is a long one, involving the input of a lot of people. And fans tend to get very excited when something is being developed, but often don’t realize that the stages of development can often take a long time.

I thought it might be helpful here to go over what some of those steps are, so you can get a better idea of how far along my various properties are. Understand that this is a rough guide, and individual properties might follow a different route. This is also kind of an outsider’s take on it all, as I don’t consider myself an expert in Hollywood. Those who know more about the ins and outs of the business would probably consider this a gross over-simplification.

Step One: Producers Option a Story
In Hollywood terms an “option” is kind of like a rental agreement. The most common way a story starts on its path to an adaptation is with an option. (Sometimes, there’s even a step before this called a Shopping Agreement.) Basically, someone (usually a producer, but sometimes a studio) comes in and offers to pay an author every year to “option” their work, meaning the producer/studio gets exclusive rights to make a film on that work. They don’t buy the rights completely, however. Usually, they set a buyout price, then pay 5/10% of that price every year or so to keep the option locked up. This gives them time to put all the other pieces together for a film without needing to commit to paying the full buyout price until they’re certain the film is going to happen.

My agent once told me that about 1 out of 30 of the properties he saw get optioned eventually got made into a film or show. An option is absolutely an important step, but a lot of times fans see an option agreement in place and start expecting a film any day—when really, this is just the first exploratory step in the process. Sometimes, producers even option rights they never intend on making into films. (I once had a producer brag to me that he—in order to make sure nobody in town was trying to sell something similar to his property—had bought up all rights to similar books for cheap, with the intention of sitting on them for five years to make sure he didn’t have any competition. I was not impressed, to say the least.)

Step Two: Screenplay
Usually, after the option agreement is signed, a screenplay is commissioned for a film. For a television show, it will either be a screenplay for a pilot, or some kind of series bible or “treatment,” a kind of outline that talks about the process the group would use in adapting the property.

This screenplay, treatment, or bible is what the producers will take around town to try to get studios, directors, and actors interested in a property. A book being successful is interesting to Hollywood, but what they rightly want to see is if that book can be made into a workable screenplay. Often, this process takes years, as a screenplay/teleplay will be commissioned—then go through several rewrites. Sometimes, the producers will decide to hire a second or even third screenwriter to do a pass on the script, if they decide it needs another take or specific revisions.

Step Three: Studio Interest
With screenplay in hand, the producers will approach the studios or larger production companies. (Or sometimes content distributors, like Netflix.) The goal here is to get interest from parties with deep pockets and the power to actually make a film. This step can occasionally be skipped if a studio was involved from the beginning. (This has happened with several of my properties.) Sometimes, the studio might be interested—but send the producers back to step three to do more revisions before offering any kind of official deal or promise of distribution. Sometimes, the producers will need to secure promises from multiple parties—like, for instance, they might get a smaller studio in the US interested, then have to get a foreign partner interested to provide funding for overseas distribution promises.

Step Four: Attaching Talent
With a screenplay in hand and the backing of a studio or similar group, the producers can now try to get a director or actor on board with the film. This crucial step will have a big influence on how/if the film will get made. Obviously, if you get a major director interested, that makes the studios sit up and take notice. Likewise if a major actor attaches to the project. For television, this often involves getting an established show runner attached. (In my experience, with television, sometimes this sort of thing happens in Step Two instead—with the showrunner being involved in the pitch documents. In that case, Step Three is the big one: getting someone big in the business to fund a pilot.)

Step Five: Actual Green Light
Finally, if all the pieces come together, you get what is called a green light. The film is scheduled for shooting, the studio commits a large chunk of money to the project, and people start getting hired. This is when the option actually gets exercised, and the author gets the payment for the contract they likely signed years and years ago. Once in a while, a group of producers will decide that the property they hold is big enough that (once their option period runs out) they decide to pay the buyout price to get more time to try to get the film made. Sometimes, instead, they’ll just agree with the author to extend the option period for another payment.

Step Six: Film Gets Made
I’ve never gotten here, but I hear it’s a lovely experience.

So, with that in mind, I can tell you where each of my properties are. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to name a lot of names. For instance, if a director is interested but hasn’t signed on officially, it’s not my place to announce them as being involved. Likewise, if some producers have offered to option something, but we don’t have signed paperwork, it’s generally best if I stay quiet about the details so that they can do publicity on the deal in the way they would like.

Anyway, here’s where we stand for each of my properties.

Snapshot
It might be odd to see this one at the top of the list, but I think right now the best chance we have at a film would be one based on my story Snapshot. MGM announced their option of the rights almost two years ago, which is great—because it meant that we already had studio backing, cutting out one of the steps in the process. The producers were impressive in their enthusiasm, and they jumped right into commissioning a screenplay with a very talented writer.

I’ve read the screenplay, and consider it the best I’ve ever read based on one of my books. It helps that Snapshot itself is a shorter work, more easily adapted to a film. The Snapshot screenplay is an improvement on my story in virtually every way, something that I discovered with both joy and a little bit of shame. (Really, the screenwriter did some things with the story I probably should have figured out myself.)

With this great screenplay, I hope there will be a lot more good news to share really soon.

The Cosmere
DMG Entertainment optioned the rights to the Cosmere, and they have been wonderful to work with. They commissioned screenplays for The Emperor’s Soul, Mistborn, and The Way of Kings. They’re currently in Step Three above, trying to get studio interest for the properties. Mostly, they’ve been pitching Mistborn as a film series and The Way of Kings as a television series.

Likely, the success of things like the new Lord of the Rings show and the Kingkiller Chronicle will influence how this goes in the future.

Steelheart
The Reckoners series was optioned some years ago now by 21 Laps, Shawn Levy’s company, using backing from Fox. We were happy when they renewed their option this past summer, as we weren’t certain what the status of this would be in light of the Fox–Disney merger. It seems they’re planning to take the Reckoners with them through the process, which is good news.

This was an exciting deal, as Mr. Levy has done some great work—including the film Real Steel, which was an excellent adaptation of the original story. (And, of course, he was heavily involved with Stranger Things on Netflix.) Beyond that, it came with the implicit promise of support from Fox, meaning that we could skip the “finding a studio” step. That said, this is still in the screenplay stage.

Stephen Leeds/Legion
The Stephen Leeds stories have recently been optioned for a television series by a new production company. This is the property’s third time being picked up for an option, so I’m hopeful we’ll make it work this time. I don’t believe the company has been announced officially yet, so we’ll hold off on mentioning them for now. But we’re probably in the middle of Step Two for this one.

Dark One
Dark One, based on an outline and worldbuilding guide from me, is being shopped (in a Step Three kind of way) by FremantleMedia and Random House Studios, with an impressive showrunner attached. There has been movement since that announcement in June, but I can’t say anything publicly yet.

Bonus Mention: The Wheel of Time
As The Wheel of Time does not belong to me, I like to be careful about what I do and say with it. I don’t want to overstep my bounds. But for those who haven’t been paying attention, this series has progressed into a full-blown green light at Amazon Studios—with actual episodes being written and filming soon starting.

I don’t know what role, if any, I’ll have in this. Like I said, I like to be respectful of Team Jordan. It’s not my place to try to muscle in and pretend I’m in charge. At the same time, I do think I could offer something to the production, and the showrunner (who is quite sharp) has reached out to me multiple times for conversations about the adaptation. I’m impressed with everything I see, and hope to at the very least be able to pop over to the set when filming happens and grab some photos for you all.

For most of my own properties, I’d say to not hold your breath. I think they’ll happen eventually, but you shouldn’t start to get hyped up until Step Five happens for something. Well, we’re past Step Five with the Wheel of Time, and you can officially begin to feel hyped. It’s actually happening, and it looks great so far.

Games and Other Licensed Work
I’m interested in doing some more video game work. Ever since I got to be part of the Infinity Blade games, I’ve had the itch to do this again. Right now though, there is nothing in the works that I can announce—I’ve had some short preliminary conversations with game studios, but no contracts. I’ll continue to look at doing this, and will announce what I can, when I think something might actually be happening.

Unfortunately, Mistborn: Birthright never came together. (Though I’m on very good terms with the folks there.) And you can ignore any rumors about CD Projekt Red. Some fans got hyped when I said I liked them as a studio—and some news sites even picked it up as a story, for some reason. But that was just me mentioning in a random post that I think they do good work. I’ve never met with them—or talked to them—and have no reason to believe they even know who I am.

Video games aside, we do have some exciting and fun licensed properties that we’ve been working on, and I figured I should have a section in the State of the Sanderson for updates on these.

Board Games
We’ll keep looking at doing more board games. The Reckoners game, from Nauvoo Games, and Mistborn: House War, from Crafty Games—who also developed the Mistborn Adventure RPG—all of which turned out very well, and (equally important) were shipped in a reasonable timeframe to the backers on Kickstarter. We had a Stormlight game in the works, but have backed up a few steps on that one for various reasons. I hope to have one of those finished at some point. You may have seen my announcement from a few months ago, but we’ve partnered with Brotherwise Games to bring you the Call to Adventure: Stormlight expansion that should be out fall of 2019. I would also be interested in doing a deckbuilding card game based on my works eventually. (After all, you know how addicted I am to Magic: The Gathering.)

Jewelry
Badali Jewelry continues to do an excellent job creating a variety of awesome artwork pieces based on my various books. They approached me to do this way back when I was basically a nobody, and have been with me all this time, creating beautiful and detailed works.

Coins
Shire Post, creator of many fantasy-themed coins for various different properties, did a very successful Kickstarter for Mistborn coinage, and I’m quite pleased with both their professionalism and artistry. We here at Dragonsteel did the designs so that they’d be 100% in continuity with the books. We’re looking at doing more with Shire Post in the future.

Music
Black Piper’s Kaladin album has been shipping its physical rewards for backers, and are finishing up the last steps of their Kickstarter. I’m very pleased with the music, which you can find on Spotify, iTunes, Amazon MP3, and many other digital outlets. I think they did a great job, and suggest that it would make a great accompaniment to your next Stormlight reread. Due to the complexities of fitting in the album around the windows for some of our other licenses, if you’re interested in owning this we’d encourage looking at it before year-end.

Amazon
We’ve recently partnered with Amazon to help bring you more apparel options. As of now, it’s the only place other than my website store to sell officially licensed clothing. And in the not-to-distant future we’re going to expand our selection to include hoodies and other things as time allows.

Projected Schedule of Releases

Starsight (Skyward Two): November 2019
White Sand Three: Sometime 2019–2020
Stormlight Four: Fall 2020
Skyward Three: 2021
Wax and Wayne Four: Sometime 2020 or 2021

Conclusion and TL;DR

Whew. That’s quite the list, eh? This post gets longer and longer each year. The short version is actually very simple. I’m dedicating most of my efforts to Stormlight Four next year, with occasional short deviations to work on Skyward or Mistborn.

Once again, thank you all for joining me on this journey.

Brandon Sanderson
December 2018

It’s been ten years since Robert Jordan died.

In some ways, I find this a difficult post to write. I’ve known for years I would want to put something here when this day arrived. At the same time, I’ve always found it a strange thing to remember the day of someone’s death. Though their life was something to celebrate, their death certainly isn’t.

But this is also a very meaningful day for those of us in Wheel of Time fandom. It was the day we lost a great man, and I lost a mentor I’d never met.

I believe I’ve mentioned how strange it is for me to know Robert Jordan’s family so well, now, after working with them intensely for five years—yet not know the man himself. To me, Robert Jordan is still an almost mythical figure, like from the books themselves. A statuesque man with a hat, a cane, and a knowing smile.

I could probably go on at length regarding the many ways he changed the face of fantasy, at least for me, but today I’ll try to pick just one. Robert Jordan taught me how to describe a cup of water.

It seems a simple task. We all know what water looks like, feels like in our mouth. Water is ubiquitous. Describing a cup of water feels a little like doing a still life painting. As a child I used to wonder: Why do people spend so much time painting bowls of fruit, when they could be painting dragons? Why learn to describe a cup of water, when the story is about cool magic and (well) dragons?

It’s a thing I had trouble with as a teenage writer—I’d try to rush through the “boring” parts to get to the interesting parts, instead of learning how to make the boring parts into the interesting parts. And a cup of water is vital to this. Robert Jordan showed me that a cup of water can be a cultural dividing line–the difference between someone who grew up between two rivers, and someone who’d never seen a river before a few weeks ago.

A cup of water can be an offhand show of wealth, in the shape of an ornamented cup. It can be a mark of traveling hard, with nothing better to drink. It can be a symbol of better times, when you had something clean and pure. A cup of water isn’t just a cup of water, it’s a means of expressing character. Because stories aren’t about cups of water, or even magic and dragons. They’re about the people painted, illuminated, and changed by magic and dragons.

I think of that whenever I look at my old, worn copy of The Eye of the World. (That’s the actual one I bought, back in the fall of 1990, that started me on this path.) Because, ultimately, books aren’t even about the stories—they’re about what those stories do to us.

Thank you, Robert Jordan, for teaching us these things. We miss you.

Brandon Sanderson
9/16/2017

Just a quick update before the weekend. On Monday I will have a big post for Magic: The Gathering players, so look forward to that!

The latest Writing Excuses writing advice show episode talks about worldbuilding without breaking viewpoint. We’ve also uploaded this year’s submission for the Hugo Voter Packet in the Best Related Work section, where Writing Excuses Season Eight is nominated. It features eight popular episodes from last year, and you can also see the full episode list here. For Hugo Award voters it’s in the Hugo Packet, but anyone can see the page here, and of course anyone can download the episodes for free.

Leigh Butler at Tor.com has posted a “Hugo Refresher” with summaries of each book in the Wheel of Time, along with a favorite passage from each book.

Shawn Speakman’s The Signed Page website has a few signed hardcovers available of Steelheart and The Alloy of Law, left over from when I stopped by Shawn’s place in the past. (And of course, I have many signed books in my website store, along with jewelry, shirts, and other things.)

My assistant Peter has uploaded all of my Twitter posts from May.

Hey, all. I’m back from tour at long last, and am hard at work on Stormlight 3. In fact, because it’s national novel writing month, you might see me posting daily wordcounts on social media. Back in 2002, I finished the original draft of The Way of Kings over NaNoWriMo. (Finished it the Friday after Thanksgiving, I believe.) Seems thematically appropriate to me to post about it again, now that it’s November.

This book won’t be ready until next year around this time, at the earliest. Fortunately, I can point you toward a few new releases that might keep you busy for a little while. The first is The Wheel of Time Companion. This is the official name and release for the encyclopedia that Harriet and Team Jordan have been working on for many years. (I believe they started compiling it way back even before the release of Knife of Dreams!)

They’ve put a ton of effort into this volume, and it shows. If you’ve ever wanted a comprehensive encyclopedia of the people, places, and terminology of the Wheel of Time, this is for you! And it will look very handsome on the shelf beside your other Wheel of Time books.

The second release is tangentially Wheel of Time-related as well. Jason Denzel, webmaster for the largest Wheel of Time fansite, has become a good friend of mine over the years. He was the first person in Wheel of Time fandom to really reach out to me when I was announced as the guy who would finish the series. (He actually found me on tour with a backpack full of Magic cards.) He was an awesome resource all through my working on the books, and we’ve remained buddies ever since.

It happens that Jason is also a storyteller. He’s done mostly independent films up to this point, but a few years back he wrote a novel called Mystic that he let me read. It’s very good—a kind of Celtic-inspired fantasy with some very intriguing worldbuilding. It’s one of those books that straddles the line between young adult and adult (much like the early volumes of the Wheel of Time, actually) and is a quick, well-paced read. Give it a look!

Meanwhile, I’ll get back to work.

For those who haven’t yet seen the results of the 2014 Hugo Awards, they have been posted here. The Wheel of Time, despite displaying a fine showing for first place votes, ultimately did not prevail in winning a Hugo Award. (Though Mary’s excellent novelette, “The Lady Astronaut of Mars,” did win—so congrats! And Julie Dillon, whose art graces the cover of Shadows Beneath among many other works, picked up a well-deserved Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist.)

The first post online I saw regarding this was someone commiserating toward me that I’d been robbed. While I appreciate this sentiment, and this fan’s enthusiasm, I don’t feel the same way. I think it’s incredible we got onto the ballot in the first place, and I think we did very well. We were not “robbed.” This is how the Hugos work—the fans decide what is worthy, and—by definition—that is the piece that deserves the award.

This is a good thing. The award—as I’ve blogged about before—belongs to the fans. In addition, the Hugos have a built-in failsafe against people swinging in and voting only for one author, rather than reading extensively in the category. (It comes in the form of Instant Run-Off voting, which is explained here.) While The Wheel of Time got a lot of votes for first place, not many people ranked us second or third. This means that while some people really, really love The Wheel of Time, the majority of voters didn’t. (Or, the people who ranked us second also ranked Ann Leckie’s book first.)

More likely, though, I have a hunch that many readers just didn’t have time to read the entire series by the deadline. Epic fantasy novels have a tough time at the Hugos. The Lord of the Rings, famously, lost to Foundation. Volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire have lost on three separate occasions, while Guy Gavriel Kay (in my opinion, the greatest living author of epic fantasy) hasn’t ever even been nominated.

I don’t think this is the result of some conspiracy, though the award—which is in the shape of a rocket ship—does tend to favor science fiction. I do think, however, that the length of epic fantasy books and series work against them in regards to awards. Hugo voters, historically, have been a responsible lot—but asking them to read ten thousand or so pages before voting in a category was a bit of a stretch.

Reading, digesting, and keeping abreast of an epic fantasy series is a time-consuming process, which sticks us with a catch-22 when it comes to awards. If volumes get nominated on their own, as George R.R. Martin’s were, they can’t be read alone, and have a handicap because they’re only one slice of a larger story. If they get nominated as a single story (as The Wheel of Time did) then they’re just too long to read in time for the voting. (Not to mention the controversy of having a series voted in the “novel” category.)

This isn’t to say fantasy novels in a series can’t win. (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire did win, as did Paladin of Souls by Lois Bujold.) But in the long run, I always thought we were an underdog here, and I’m actually pleased at the showing. (We ranked significantly higher than “No Award,” which means that the majority of fans did think we deserved the award, just not as much as other pieces did.)

I’m fully confident that The Wheel of Time was, and is, worthy of award recognition. Robert Jordan was an amazing man, and a fantastic author who inspired an entire generation of writers and readers. I’m honored to have been part of the series, and honored that the Hugo voters gave us a nomination in the first place. Truly, this was a great way to recognize him, and I sincerely appreciate the nod from fandom.

Congratulations to all the winners! I look forward to seeing you all in Spokane next year.

Brandon

The deadline for voting in the Hugo Awards is Thursday night at 11:59 p.m. Pacific time. The online ballot can be submitted here by all World Science Fiction Society members, either who will be attending Loncon 3 from August 14th through 18th, or who have a supporting membership.

I posted an extensive writeup of my thoughts on the Wheel of Time’s nomination in the Best Novel category here, and I hope that all of you who are planning to vote took the time to familiarize yourselves with the nominees in every category. My best wishes to the creators of all the nominated works—it’s an honor to be in your company.

It’s unfortunate that previous travel commitments mean that I’m in the UK next week instead of the following week during the convention. However, Robert Jordan’s wife and editor Harriet McDougal will be there to attend the Hugo Awards Ceremony and enjoy your hospitality in London.

Writing Excuses Season Eight is one of the Hugo Award nominees for Best Related Work. Season 8 covers all the episodes we released in 2013, and currently Season 9 is going strong. Recently we finished a group of critique/workshopping episodes for the short fiction that we published in our anthology Shadows Beneath. The anthology includes our final drafts, but it also includes the first drafts and the transcripts of the episodes where we brainstormed and workshopped them. So before listening to the episodes below, it’s best to get the anthology and read the first drafts.

• Critiquing my novella “Sixth of the Dusk”: Part 1
• Critiquing my novella “Sixth of the Dusk”: Part 2
• Critiquing Mary’s novelette “A Fire in the Heavens”
• Critiquing Howard’s story “An Honest Death”

(Note: Dan has a story in the anthology too, but he wasn’t done with his first draft when we were recording the workshopping episodes.)

Mary and Dan are also nominated for short fiction Hugo Awards in the novelette and novella categories. It has truly been a banner year for the whole crew!

In other news, I wrote an article that’s on the Barnes & Noble book blog, about why we still read novels when there are alternatives.

GraphicAudio has released the first part of their full-cast audio dramatization of the second Mistborn book, The Well of Ascension. You can listen to a preview below and pick up the book here. The first Mistborn, Elantris, and Warbreaker are also available.

The Hugo Voter Packet (including all of the Wheel of Time ebooks) is now available. If you’re a Worldcon member, go to this link to download it. It’s not too late to join—Supporting Memberships to Loncon 3, the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon)—with voting rights—are £25 or $40 until July 13th, and anyone who joins before the voting deadline on July 31st can vote. Or if you’re going to be in London, an Attending Membership for £125 or $205 (there’s also a reduced Young Adult price). As I have discussed before, please only vote in a category if you’ve read the nominees, and please don’t vote unless you’re willing to vote in multiple categories. Thanks for participating in the Hugo Awards process!

The Writing Excuses crew and I will be guests at Westercon in Salt Lake City from July 3rd through 6th this year. Westercon membership also gets you into Fantasycon across the street, and both conventions have a large number of luminaries attending. Westercon has a special price until June 1st: $25 now plus $25 at the door (paying $50 now is also fine). This convention will see the release of a special Writing Excuses project (we’ll announce details later), so Dan, Mary, Howard, and I hope to see many of you there. We’ll also record live episodes of the show, and we hope to have some very cool guests.

Finally, here’s the press release about the White Sand graphic novel that was announced this week at Book Expo America:

Dynamite announces deal with Brandon Sanderson for “White Sand”
Graphic novel trilogy to launch beginning in 2015

May 29^th, 2014, Mt. Laurel, NJ: Dynamite Entertainment is pleased to announce its agreement with New York Times Bestselling Author Brandon Sanderson for a brand new project titled “White Sand.” Sanderson gained renown for hisMistborn series of novels and his work in completing Robert Jordan’s epic Wheel of Time fantasy series. His current YA series The Reckoners commenced in 2013 with Steelheart, a #1 NY Times Young Adult bestseller, and his most recent novel, Words of Radiance, was a #1 NY Times Hardcover Fiction bestseller, continuing his Stormlight Archive epic fantasy series.

A brilliant, new fantasy world, White Sand is split into two halves: on one side are the Daysiders, and on the other the Darksiders. Daysiders have a unique ability to control and manipulate sand, bending it to their will to attack, or protect, as they wish. Darksiders have their own unique abilities and culture, and must wear thick dark lenses while on the Dayside. Generally speaking, Daysiders and Darksiders do not get along…and White Sand follows the adventures of one particular Daysider, a boy named Kenton.

The White Sand Graphic Novels are based on Brandon Sanderson’s manuscript, and the graphic novels are the first published work to explore these worlds. As with Brandon’s other fantasy novels, White Sand takes place in his larger universe called the Cosmere, where consistent rules and themes are followed. The White Sand Graphic Novels will be as integrated into the Cosmere as any of Brandon’s other novels with many “Easter Eggs” for Brandon’s large fan base.

Dynamite plans to produce White Sand as a series of 3 original graphic novels, the first of which will be published in 2015. Look for more details on this exciting new project later this year!

“So far this has been a fantastic experience. I’m super excited to be doing this. For years we’ve wanted to do a graphic novel of one of my books, but I dragged my feet because I knew that my fans would want something new, not just an adaptation of one of the stories they’ve already read. It took us years to find the right project, but we finally settled on White Sand, which is one of the books in the Cosmere that I haven’t published yet. We’ll be doing it exclusively as a graphic novel, and this is awesome. I love graphic novels, and I love the company Dynamite. We took our time finding the exact right product, which I can endorse enthusiastically. I’ve hand chosen the artist and the writer who will be working on this. I hope that you will all really love the product we’re producing. I look forward to showing you White Sand, the graphic novel,” said author Brandon Sanderson.

“I can’t express how excited we are that Brandon is entrusting us with creating original gns from his manuscript,” said Dynamite CEO/Publisher Nick Barrucci. “It’s an incredible responsibility, and we’re working hard to execute the best trilogy of Graphic Novels possible. As his fans know, Brandon’s worlds are interconnected and build on each other. His characters and universe truly are the ‘Marvel Universe’ of prose. This series of Graphic Novels continues to build on his mythos. The best part, is that Brandon is completely vested in the project and overseeing it. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“LIKE” DYNAMITE’S FACEBOOK PAGE TODAY!
http://www.facebook.com/dynamitecomics

Join the conversation on Dynamite Entertainment’s twitter page at http://twitter.com/DynamiteComics.

To find a comic shop near you, call 1-888-comicbook or visit http://www.comicshoplocator.com/.

For art and more information, please visit: http://www.dynamite.com/.

About Dynamite Entertainment:

Dynamite was founded in 2004 and is home to several best-selling comic book titles and properties, including The Boys,The Shadow, Vampirella, Warlord of Mars, Bionic Man, A Game of Thrones, and more. Dynamite owns and controls an extensive library with over 3,000 characters (which includes the Harris Comics and Chaos Comics properties), such asVampirella, Pantha, Evil Ernie, Smiley the Psychotic Button, Chastity, Purgatori, and Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt. In addition to their critically-acclaimed titles and bestselling comics, Dynamite works with some of the most high profile creators in comics and entertainment, including Kevin Smith, Alex Ross, Neil Gaiman, Andy Diggle, John Cassaday, Garth Ennis, Jae Lee, Marc Guggenheim, Mike Carey, Jim Krueger, Greg Pak, Brett Matthews, Matt Wagner, Gail Simone, Steve Niles, James Robinson, and a host of up-and-coming new talent. Dynamite is consistently ranked in the upper tiers of comic book publishers and several of their titles – including Alex Ross and Jim Krueger’s Project Superpowers – have debuted in the Top Ten lists produced by Diamond Comics Distributors. In 2005, Diamond awarded the company a GEM award for Best New Publisher and another GEM in 2006 for Comics Publisher of the Year (under 5%) and again in 2011. The company has also been nominated for and won several industry awards, including the prestigious Harvey and Eisner Awards.

All characters, names, logos, etc. are and © their respective owners.

About Brandon Sanderson:

Brandon Sanderson was born in 1975 in Lincoln, Nebraska. By junior high he had lost interest in the novels suggested to him, and he never cracked a book if he could help it. Then an eighth grade teacher, Mrs. Reader, gave him Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly.

Brandon was finishing his thirteenth novel when Moshe Feder at Tor Books bought the sixth he had written. In 2005 Brandon held his first published novel, Elantris, in his hands. Tor also published four books in Brandon’s Mistborn series, along with Warbreaker and then The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance, the first two in the planned ten-volume series The Stormlight Archive. Four books in his middle-grade Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians series were released by Scholastic. Brandon was chosen to complete Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series; the final book, A Memory of Light, was released in 2013. That year also marked the releases of YA novels The Rithmatist from Tor and Steelheart from Delacorte.

Currently living in Utah with his wife and children, Brandon teaches creative writing at Brigham Young University. He also hosts the Hugo Award-winning writing advice podcast Writing Excuses with Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Tayler, and Dan Wells.

www.brandonsanderson.com

The Wheel of Time, as a whole, has been nominated for a Hugo Award for best novel. I am thrilled, honored, and excited—and when Harriet heard the news, she lit up as I’ve never seen her do before. Thank you.

Congratulations to all of the other nominees! I have a few things I’d like to say about this nomination. First, I’d like to speak to Wheel of Time fans themselves. Secondly, I’d like to speak to those who are criticizing the nomination.

To The Wheel of Time Fans

Thank you for your enthusiasm. I’m certain that Robert Jordan is smiling at you right now. However, I do want to reiterate what I said earlier when I got wind that the WoT fandom was considering a campaign to get the Wheel of Time nominated: be careful. Please don’t let the Hugo Awards become a shoving match between fandoms.

“But Brandon,” you might say, “everyone says the Hugo Awards are a popularity contest. Shouldn’t we prove how popular Robert Jordan is?”

Well, yes and no. The Hugo Awards are a popularity contest—but they should be a fiction popularity contest, not an author popularity contest. The Hugo Awards were founded in the 1950s by dedicated sf/f fans who saw mainstream literary awards ignoring science fiction and fantasy. This award was founded to combat that, to show off the brightest and best fiction the genres had to offer. It was done in an era long before the internet, and Worldcon attendees were chosen to be the voters because of their dedication to the genre as a whole.

When I first started voting for the Hugos many years ago, a long-time fan impressed upon me the importance of my responsibility. Each work must be judged independently of its author, and must be judged against the competition in its category. We, as fans, use this award to proclaim to the world the fiction we are proudest of.

I love the Hugo Awards. They tend to run a great balance, consistently recognizing fiction that is both popular and thought-provoking. They have a grand tradition, and are one of the things that make me proud to be a member of science fiction fandom.

We want you to vote. We want you to be part of the process. But let me speak frankly to you: if you don’t intend to read and investigate the other nominees and participate in a wide variety of categories, you are doing the awards a disservice. I would rather have the Wheel of Time not win than have it be given an award as part of a thoughtless shoving match.

In this, I wish to hold up George R. R. Martin as an exemplar. He wants dearly to someday win a Hugo for best novel, a distinction that has eluded him. I’ve heard him speak about it. The thing is, he could win the award in a heartbeat; he has by far the biggest fanbase in our community. If he asked them each to pay for a Worldcon supporting membership and vote only for him, he’d win by a landslide.

He’s never done that because he knows that this award has only as much integrity as we give it. So long as you are willing to vote superior works by other authors above works by your favorite authors, you are doing the award justice.

Now, I firmly believe that the Wheel of Time is worthy of a Hugo Award. Don’t let my strong words suggest otherwise to you. But I can’t say for certain what I will vote for until I read the other nominated works, consider the category with an open mind, and make my decision. I also intend to continue being part of these awards for many, many years, rather than joining only once to vote on a single contest.

I sincerely request you do the same. Join with us, participate, and investigate all of the nominees in all of the categories. Then vote for the works you think are the best of the nominations. It is only by holding ourselves accountable as honest and responsible voters that we will maintain the prestige of this award.

To Science Fiction and Fantasy Fandom as a Whole

I have spent some time reading responses to the Hugo nominations, and wanted to reach out to you. I find it unfortunate that some of you, including prominent voices in fandom, are responding with anger or frustration about the Wheel of Time nomination. Some don’t like a series being nominated for the novel Hugo. Some don’t like WoT fandom reaching in and participating in the award. And others downright dislike the Wheel of Time as a work of art.

I would like to address some of these concerns that I see recurring in the discussions.

On the Wheel of Time Being Nominated as a Single Novel

On the first point, I wish to emphasize that the Hugo rules were intentionally designed to allow works like this to be nominated. Serials are such a part of our collective culture in sf fandom, and I promise you that the Wheel of Time is indeed a serial. It focuses on a single group of characters, a single plot and narrative, and the books each pick up exactly where the previous one left off. Yes, it took a long time to complete. Yes, it is large. However, Robert Jordan always considered—and spoke of—the Wheel of Time as a single story. The length of time it took to write that story is irrelevant as far as the Hugos are concerned.

A Game of Thrones season could be nominated collectively as a single entry into the dramatic presentation category. Connie Willis’s Blackout/All Clear could be nominated as a single work, though broken into two volumes. Indeed, this is similar to how Dragonflight and Ender’s Game could both garner short fiction nominations for their original forms, then be nominated for best novel in a later year once the story was expanded.

The Wheel of Time is eligible. These are your awards, however, and if this aspect of them is bothersome to you it’s quite possible to get this changed by participating in Worldcon and the Hugo Awards as a whole, making your voice known and advocating a revision. Your passion, therefore, should be directed at making that happen, rather than against the work that was nominated.

Attend Worldcon. Go to the WSFS Business Meeting. Blog about it. Bring your friends. We need people involved at this level of fandom.

On Wheel of Time Fandom

This brings us to the second two points, which I feel are the more important ones in most of these discussions. In regard to Wheel of Time fans participating, I want to tell wider fandom that I vouch for these fans. I offered words of caution to them above because I think they need reminders as they are new to core sf/f fandom, but I feel that you need to know that Wheel of Time fans are our people.

They have organized much as the fans back in the 1930s did, holding conventions and starting fanzines/websites. They attend Worldcons and their local literary conventions, though many of them have only started doing so in the last four or five years as they’ve realized the richness and scope of established fandom.

I charge you: do not reject their enthusiasm. I spoke honestly with them, and I wish to speak honestly with you. I have yet to attend a Worldcon where someone—either on panels or at the parties—didn’t ask what could be done to bring new blood into our fannish community. For years, we have worried about what to do. Now, as fandoms like that dedicated to the Wheel of Time have begun to discover both Worldcon and the Hugos, I feel we stand at an important confluence.

Welcome the Wheel of Time fans into our community. Welcome the next group of fans in too. Give whatever it is they’re passionate about a try. You might like it, and if not, you’ll still probably like them.

On the Wheel of Time as Literature

I understand that you may not personally enjoy the Wheel of Time. There is nothing wrong with that—it is the nature of art that some will disdain what others love. However, as I’ve read bloggers and fannish personalities speaking of a Wheel of Time nomination, some have unfortunately called it “shameful” or “embarrassing.” Worse, some of them have attacked the fanbase, calling into question its intelligence for daring to nominate the Wheel of Time—in essence, for daring to have different taste from the blogger posting.

You can’t beg people to come and participate in fandom, then tell them not to vote on your awards because you don’t like their preference in books. Indeed, attacking the fans of a work rather than criticizing the work itself is crossing a very big, and important, line.

For many years, we in fandom have had to suffer these kinds of dismissive, hurtful, and destructive attitudes from those who attack us because we like science fiction. Do not side with the bullies. Do not hold your own opinion in such high regard that you dismiss all others.

It is not shameful to like the Wheel of Time. No more than it should be shameful to be the kid who read Dune in middle school while others snickered. We should never have to feel embarrassed for honestly expressing our taste in fiction. No more than we should have to feel embarrassed to be the one at work who attends an sf con, much to the amusement of your co-workers.

If you have said these kinds of things about the Wheel of Time or its fandom in the past few days, I challenge you to take a long, hard look at your tone and what you’re implying. Ask yourself if you really want to belong to a world where only one kind of opinion is valid, where only your taste is acceptable.

Because in my experience, these are the sorts of attitudes that science fiction and fantasy fiction have spent their history combatting. So if you don’t think the Wheel of Time should win, vote for something else. But while you’re doing it, be kind. Treat these fans the way you want to be treated as a fan—and as a human being.

Brandon Sanderson
4/21/2014

Back in January I put up a long post about award nominations, with a particular mention of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time.

Well, if you’re a member of the 2013, 2014, or 2015 World Science Fiction conventions, it’s time to submit your nomination form for the Hugo Awards. The deadline is tomorrow morning at 7:59 a.m. BST—since this year’s Worldcon is in London, the deadline would be in GMT, except for that pesky Daylight Saving Time thing being in effect, which means it’s not actually GMT. Anyway, in the US, the deadline is 11:59 p.m. Pacific time tonight.

If you’re not a member of any of those Worldcons, it’s too late to register to be eligible to nominate. But anyone who registers before the Hugo Awards voting deadline will be able to vote on the final ballot once the nominees are announced and voting opens. There will likely be a Hugo Voters Packet for registered Loncon 3 members that includes most if not all nominated works. A Supporting Membership that lets you vote for the Hugo Awards is currently £25 or $40.