Reader Nate Kohl sent in these awesome photos of the woodburning project he did that features Szeth with some Allomantic symbols.

In this week’s Writing Excuses episode, Hooking Young Readers, we sit down with Kily Snyder, the Media Specialist (school librarian) at Discovery Middle School in Indiana, to help answer those often asked questions about the young reader markets from someone who has their finger on the actual pulse of those readers.

Last week, in Tor.com’s continuing reread posts for Words of Radiance, Kaladin finally initiated serious Windrunner training and tentatively accepted Renarin’s presence. This week, in Chapter 42, Shallan tackles some serious Lightweaver training and is saved from grave error by Pattern’s…well, patterns.

My assistant Adam has updated the Twitter archive for June.

As I shared on Twitter and Facebook yesterday, one of my readers from Australia, David Fonti, for his visual effects class made a cool video of himself in Shardplate. Great work, David. I’ve embedded the video below.

As a quick reminder, today is the last day to get your copy of the Elantris ebook for $2.99. And now through June 16th, The Rithmatist ebook will be only $1.99. My Hugo Award-nominated novella Perfect State is also still priced at 99¢, worldwide!

In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, Examining Unconscious Biases,
mystery may well be the most common element in use, at least in some form or another, across the many bookshelf genres comprising fiction. We discuss the driving force of elemental mystery, how to evoke those feelings in the reader, and the importance of being able to write mystery effectively.

Last week, in Tor.com’s continuing reread posts for Words of Radiance, Navani’s fabrials aided in the battle for the Plains, while Kaladin made a difficult choice back in the warcamp. This week, in Chapter 83, Shallan searches for the Oathgate while the battle rages, and Kaladin stands firm.

The SciFi ebook StoryBundle with my novella Legion is available only until Wednesday night, so the clock is ticking. I’m running three giveaway contests (ending very soon!) where you can win the DRM-free ebook bundle: One on Twitter, one on Facebook, and one on Google+. The rules for each are slightly different, so check out the posts and share them! Note that Legion is not available in the bundle if you’re in the UK/Commonwealth (except for Canada).

Later this year Subterranean Press will be releasing a limited edition hardcover of Legion‘s sequel, Legion: Skin Deep, which you can preorder here and read a preview of here. If you haven’t read the original Legion, this bundle is a great way to whet your appetite and get ready for the sequel.

Writing Excuses has aired a couple of episodes that I haven’t talked about yet:

• Side Quests
• Adjusting Character Sympathy
• Adjusting Character Competence
• Prewriting
• Critiquing “Sixth of the Dusk” (part 1)

Before listening to that most recent episode, it’s most useful to read the first draft of my novella “Sixth of the Dusk,” which you can find in the “The Making of Sixth of the Dusk” section of the Writing Excuses Anthology, Shadows Beneath, now available, which I talked about last week. The critique of my story will continue in next week’s episode, and then we’ll move on to critiquing Mary’s and Howard’s drafts of their stories.

My assistant Peter has uploaded another Twitter posts archive for June.

Playing a bit of catch-up, here are some interviews I did for BYU Radio back in March that I don’t think I ever posted. One, two.

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned that the jewelry section of the store now has the Bondsmith glyph and the Oathbringer shardblade pendant. There’s lots of other cool jewelry from Mistborn and Elantris, so check it out. Also, shirts are on sale.

There are a couple of recent awards that books have picked up. The Association of Mormon Letters (AML) has presented the Award for Young Adult Speculative Fiction for 2013 to The Rithmatist. Also, Steelheart won the Whitney Award for Best Youth Novel of 2013. I’m honored.

Speaking of Steelheart, the German version has been released in Germany. Also, this:

Voting for the David Gemmell Legend Award ends on Saturday, and anyone can vote for free. If you’ve read the nominated works, I encourage you to vote. The nominees are:

• The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch
• Emperor of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
• The Daylight War by Peter V. Brett
• War Master’s Gate by Adrian Tchaikovsky
• A Memory of Light by Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan

The Gemmells also host the Morningstar Award for best fantasy debut novel and Ravenheart Award for best fantasy book cover artist, and voting for those awards also ends on Saturday.

Four Writing Excuses episodes have aired that I haven’t yet mentioned on the blog. These are: Showing Emotion, Creator vs. Creation, Sanderson’s 3rd Law, and a microcasting episode that touches on these topics:

• Should you include your prologue as one of the three chapters you send in a submission packet?
• How do you get out of the spot where your protagonist has no motivation?
• What’s the best way to prove to a spouse that your writing is more than a hobby?
• How do you get back into a project after taking a break from it?
• Where do you start research for historical fiction?
• Let’s say you sold your first book. How do you tackle book 2 in a series?
• How do you go about writing an overarching setting, like Brandon’s “Cosmere?”
• What part about being a writer do you most enjoy, besides the actual writing?

Shawn Speakman has put a short interview with me up at Suvudu, mostly about Firefight.

Today’s free episode of StarShipSofa includes a complete audiobook of my novelette “Defending Elysium,” narrated by Nick Camm. You can also read the text version here.

An interpretation of Shallan’s lullaby from Words of Radiance has been recorded by Vi Hart. Give it a listen!

Today is the final day to get the Epic Fantasy Bundle (which includes The Emperor’s Soul if you’re outside the UK and associated territories) from StoryBundle. After 11:00 p.m. Mountain time today, the bundle will no longer be available. By the way, the winners of yesterday’s contest are Ashley Wilson-Rew, Matthew Holmes, Matt Jarchow, Prem, and Tess. Check for an email from my assistant Peter Ahlstrom and make sure to download your books tonight before the bundle offer expires!

The official Words of Radiance book tour is over (see yesterday’s post for a list of bookstores with signed books), but I’m doing an extra signing this Saturday in Salt Lake City at the Barnes & Noble in Sugarhouse starting at 3:00 p.m. This signing will go pretty much like the signings on the tour, but I hope it won’t last five hours. Anyway, I’ll sign any book I wrote that you bring, but it’s nice to support the store hosting me by buying something while you’re there. I will also do a reading and public Q&A (don’t worry, no spoilers for Words of Radiance will be allowed!). See the event listing for full details.

I also signed a bunch of books during the Literacy Promise conference, and those signed books are now at the Funfinity store in Springville, UT. Give them a call to see what’s left: (801) 491-8940

The Shardhunt is still ongoing. The most recent unlockable was a discussion of the back-and-forth development process for the Whitespine page from Shallan’s Sketchbook in Words of Radiance. (You can see the final versions of all of the art pages here.)

Here are some more stores that are participating in the Shardhunt. Give them a call to see if they have any books left that include signed bookplates and Szeth die-cut standup cards.

• Asheville, NC: Malaprop’s Bookstore and Cafe (828) 254-6734 (Thanks, Erin!)
• Hamilton, MT: Chapter One Book Store (406) 363-5220 (Say hi to Mara!)
• Homewood, AL: Books-A-Million (205) 870-0213 (Thanks, Lyndsie!)
• New Orleans, LA: Octavia Books (504) 899-READ (Say hi to Tom!)
• Coral Gables, FL: Books & Books (305) 442-4408 (Thanks, Noah!)
• Hanover, MD: Books-A-Million (443) 755-0210 (Say hi to Kaye!)
• San Francisco, CA: Books Inc. (415) 864-6777 (Thanks, Larry!)

And here are a few more airport stores where I signed books and inserted Szeth cards (or Syl and koloss stickers, if I ran out of the Szeth cards). Sometimes these get snapped up very quickly, but sometimes they stick around for weeks, so if you’re traveling through these airports be sure to check.

• SLC: Simply Books by gate C6
• MSP: Store by gate F5, and the “mall” store
• MKE: Newsstand by gate D30
• ORD: Barbara’s Books in E gates
• PHL: Heritage Books between B & C gates
• Philadelphia 30th St. train station: Faber Books
• DAY: Heritage Booksellers

Lastly, here’s something very much out of the normal swing of things. Rick Martin on Facebook posted these photos of two The Way of Kings-related Lego builds: the Battle of the Tower and the Chasmfiend hunt. The detail on these is amazing. Check out the full gallery here (but note that it contains spoilers if you haven’t read The Way of Kings yet!).

It’s time to announce the winners of the STEELHEART Mega Vault Fan Art contest. First, if you haven’t seen the teaser trailer, the prologue, or teaser chapters for STEELHEART, please go give them a look!

STEELHEART Preorders

The release date for STEELHEART is fast approaching, so think about preordering the book from your favorite vendor. (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, Audible, Apple, Kobo, Google Play.) If you would like a signed and numbered copy, Weller Book Works will begin accepting orders on August 15th for delivery on or very shortly after September 24th. Mysterious Galaxy and Shawn Speakman’s The Signed Page will also have signed books (without numbers) available to preorder, but they won’t be shipped as quickly. When I’m on tour in October, I’ll stop by both of these places and sign the preordered books, which will then be shipped out.

Mega Vault Contest Winners

We had a great response to the STEELHEART fan art contest. Take a look at all the entries over at my official fan site, 17th Shard. The fan art is just fantastic! There were so many awesome entries, in fact, that we had a hard time choosing winners. So we’ve made space for five winners and five runners-up.

The five winners of the Random House Mega Vault are, in no particular order:

Bleed by HeavenlyHedgehog

Steelheart by Archetype

Deathpoint by Kristal

He Was Majestic by Rodrigo

Legoheart vs. Deathlego by Neverland

The five runners-up will receive a STEELHEART poster signed by me, and their choice of one signed book from my online store. Here are the runners-up, in no particular order:

I’ve Seen Steelheart Bleed Poster by jlequire

What Are You Doing Here? by GalaxyFlyer

Steelheart Custom Binding by Stairdweller

Steelheart’s Ultimatum by ktep

Steelheart Promo Video by Scott Capener

To the winners: My assistants will be contacting you through the 17th Shard message system.

Thank you again for entering the contest, and thanks to Random House for providing these awesome Mega Vaults and posters as prizes.

Recently I got back from the The Rithmatist tour, so it’s time for me to post some pictures of some of the cool things I saw and some of the neat things you all gave me. I appreciate the time and thought put into the gifts.

Take a look at this Steel Inquisitor sculpture Meghan Etzel-Hardman gave me. Wow! You can take a look at more of her work at her site.

These awesome Mistborn costumes came from the hard work of Sarah Levinson, who came with her pals to Phoenix Comicon. From left to right: Karen as Tindwyl, Varouj as Sazed (I think I saw him dressed as Aang from Avatar one of the other days), me dressed as myself, Brian as Elend, and Sarah as Vin. The attention to detail on these costumes is amazing!

Here’s a beautiful bookmark I got from the Tattered Cover when I signed there, beads from New Orleans, the A Game of Thrones card game, and a silver spoon and expertly knitted animals for Baby Melvin (not his real name).

At one of my tour stops back east, I met fellow Tor author David Walton. He was kind enough to give me a copy of his latest book Quintessence, which I enjoyed reading during my flights.

One reader, lmlnewburg, created some fan art for a story idea the Writing Excuses cast helped me brainstorm about psychic birds in the jungle, “Sixth of the Dusk.”

And as usual, the various assortment of Magic cards:

Emily Grange knitted this koloss based on Ben McSweeney’s illustrations. The detail on this guy is amazing!

The event put on June 3rd by the King’s English Bookshop and hosted by the Provo Library was a great success. With nearly 500 people in attendance, this was probably the second-largest non-release-party event that I’ve had for one of my books so far.

At the signing, I received this beautiful glass ornament from the folks at Gomm Studios (check out their gallery of stained glass).

There were some nice T-shirts for those working the event. They gave me one too.

Take a look at that enormous gear decoration! Incidentally, the picture below was chosen by Publishers Weekly as their photo of the day on June 6th.

In addition to the book store signings, Phoenix Comicon and BookExpo America were all part of the tour. It made for a crazy time, but as always, I want to thank you all for coming out to the signings and other events. Because of you, The Rithmatist debuted at #6 on the New York Times Bestseller list.

A MEMORY OF LIGHT happenings + Updates

This post will have quite a few random tidbits. First off, my friend Tracy Hickman wrote to tell me about a holiday serial novel he and Laura are putting up. If you preorder, you can read and comment on the chapters as they’re written.

Irene Gallo at Tor.com posted a picture of the first printed copy of A MEMORY OF LIGHT. This is called an F&G (folded and gathered pages). The book comes out next month!

Most of my A MEMORY OF LIGHT book signing tour has been announced and posted on my events page. There are still a couple of Canadian dates to be added, but Tor should have those finalized soon. If you want email reminders when I’m near you, tell me your city at this link. I also have a handful of events in December, including this week in West Jordan.

Tor.com also put up a video where Harriet McDougal, Tom Doherty, Jason Denzel, Pat Rothfuss, and I talk about A MEMORY OF LIGHT. Check it out.

This is the last week for the A MEMORY OF LIGHT audiobook/iphone case promotion that I talked about a few weeks ago. If you buy the CD version of the audiobook, you can get a free iPhone 4/4S case. Details are here.

Moses Siregar III has an interview with Jason Denzel on the Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing podcast. It talks a lot about A MEMORY OF LIGHT, as well as other things Jason is involved in.

Writing Excuses has a couple more episodes: one on the Pixar rules for writing a compelling story, and one on beginnings. There are also two more bonus episodes we recorded for NaNoWriMo, which ended a couple days ago. I hope many of you reached your writing goals for November!

Here are two more cool pieces of fan art. The second one is a painting that the artist Megan brought to show me at my signing in Idaho Falls. Thanks!

Finally, the blog The Ranting Dragon is having a “cover battle” that I thought was pretty cool. You can vote for which cover art/design you like best, and the top vote-getters will face off against each other for…supreme domination or something. The competition is quite stiff, but the ebook cover for THE EMPEROR’S SOUL (art by Alexander Nanitchkov, design by Isaac Stewart) is in the first round. I love this art and the design, so I’m happy to see it nominated! You can vote for whichever cover you like, and you can also write in other options. For an explanation of the different rounds see here.

InkWing, which does Mistborn and Stormlight Archive shirts, has a new blog post announcing Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, as well as a limited edition Windrunner pin. Plus they have a contest for a free T-shirt. Check it out.

This week’s Writing Excuses podcast episode talks about raising the stakes—putting things at risk for your characters. We have also recorded a couple of pep talks for those of you participating in National Novel Writing Month. Here’s one from Mary and me, and here’s another from Dan and his brother Rob.

The last few weeks I’ve been sharing on Twitter and Facebook some fan art that people have emailed me about. I love seeing people’s interpretations of what they read, so keep it coming!

Hey, all! I had a wonderful time in Taiwan, and I thought I’d post some of the things I came home with. I always mean to do this following a tour, and hopefully I’ll make a habit of it from here out.

First up, I wanted to show a few of the letters I got. We got a lot of these, and I can’t show them all, but the thing I loved was how many of them were illustrated in some way. (Note, that’s Kaladin and Wit in the first one.) Some of the letters are blurred, since I can’t verify they don’t say anything personal.

This was, I believe, a New Years blessing I’m supposed to hang by my door.

This note, etched into metal, was particularly awesome.

The reverse side (above) includes a shot of some of the book covers in Taiwan. We’ve got some more of them below, specifically THE WAY OF KINGS (which launched last week.) With THE ALLOY OF LAW, the publisher gave out little certificates anticipating my visit, each with a signature line. The large numbers of people in each crowd, mixed with the time of interpretation between languages, meant that each person could only get one thing signed.

The publisher gave out the cards, if people wanted to get those signed as a keepsake instead of choosing one of the books. These certificates dubbed one a “Knight” of Brandon Sanderson. (And the publisher actually chose me five people to knight, with a sword and everything.) I’m not sure what it all means, or if I should really be going about knighting people, but the whole experience was very cool.

Emily was sent some chocolate also. These are only two of the treats people sent her. (She ate some of it before we could get a picture.)

My parents and sisters love jewelery, so we stopped by the local jade market. (Which happens under a bridge, and is filled with hundreds of little tables full of people selling various pieces of jade.) Picked up a few nice ones as gifts, though the pictures don’t really do them justice.

One of the knights gave me several awesome gifts, including a (signed!) CD by her favorite musicians and a stamp book full of stamps from Taiwan.

A fantasy novel written by a local author who stopped by one of my signings. I don’t know how soon I’ll be reading it (as it’s in Chinese) but maybe someday…

THE WAY OF KINGS was published in two parts, but packaged together in these gift bags. Included was a little notebook thing which was just plain awesome—so awesome, in fact, that I talked the publisher into giving me a box of them to bring home with me. I’m going to give them away on the website and at cons this year, so stay tuned to find how you can win one.

THE ALLOY OF LAW came with a pin for the 10th anniversary of the publisher, Fantasy Foundation. The certificate of knighthood was packaged with this, in the back.

And one last bit of chocolate.

There’s more, but I’ll post those in another post. We’ll also try to get up some pictures of me doing odd things while in the country, like eating an egg that my publisher claimed was 1000 years old.

Until then, thanks for reading and happy Chinese New Year!

Brandon