I have finished the second draft of Calamity, the third and final book of the Reckoners trilogy. As I’ve said before, my second draft of a story is the one where I do “bug fixing.” Essentially, I read through again and tweak any problems I know the book has, trying to make it readable by my editor. I often do a polish and trim during or after this. (In this case, the book was clean enough that I did it during, doing about a 5% cut along the way to tighten the language.)

So, huzzah! The book, and the series, is a wrap. I’ll probably end up doing one to two more drafts on this book after alpha readers (my family, writing group, editor, and agent) and then beta readers (who are carefully selected by my assistant Peter) have a look at it.

But for now, my Reckoners plate has been cleared. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) someone just shoved another full plate at me: Mistborn, Shadows of Self. It’s time for the editorial and beta reader edits for that book, which is due into Tor in its (mostly) final form June 15th. So, there’s no rest for me this time around, despite wanting to someday have a chance to play Bloodborne. (Mmm…Dark Souls games…)

Anyway, as you can see from the progress bars on my website, I’m already halfway through the Mistborn revision, so I may finish ahead of schedule. June 15th or earlier, then, will mark my official start of work on Stormlight Three. I know a lot of you are waiting for this, and I’m eager to get to it. Things will go better if I get this Mistborn revision done first, however, since we’re not far away from that one actually getting released.

Thanks, as always, for your support and patience. I realize many of you would rather I just stick to one project—but time has proven to me that my writing is stronger if I keep a variety of stories moving through my brain. The books that you personally love are made stronger by me dividing my time.

Anticipated work and release dates of future books are:

• Shadows of Self (Mistborn Era Two, Book Two)
  Set for October 6th and up for preorder now! Working on final revisions currently.
• The Bands of Mourning (Mistborn Era Two, Book Three)
  Set for January 26th and up for preorder now! The final revision notes not yet back from the editor. Will probably be due in two or three months. (So I’ll need to take a break from Stormlight when they arrive.)
• Calamity (the final book of the Reckoners)
  Spring 2016 sometime. The date isn’t set yet; we’re talking with Random House about this right now. The book just got sent in, and editorial revisions will likely be due late this summer. My goal will probably be to do them during the same break where I do Bands of Mourning revisions.
• Alcatraz vs. the Dark Talent (The Evil Librarians Book Five)
  Summer 2016 sometime. Note that currently the plan is to rerelease all four of the previous books during the winter/spring with brand new art (and, at last, ebooks). Yay!
• Stormlight 3 (No official title yet, though I’ve bandied about many different ones, including Stones Unhallowed)
  Christmas 2016. My next project, starting work in June. Anticipated writing time: 8–10 months, plus interruptions for drafting other books. Follow along on the progress bar on my website.

There you go! As I’ve said before, my goal is generally to do two books a year—one large epic and one smaller teen novel. However, last year, instead of doing a large epic I did two shorter Mistborn novels. (Along with one tiny book, in Evil Librarians 5. Amusingly all three of these books added together are only around two-thirds the length of a Stormlight novel.)

Hopefully I’m not releasing too much. I don’t want you folks to get tired of me. One side effect of the way I approached last year is that I currently don’t have any novellas in the pipeline, which saddens me, as Perfect State, Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell, Legion: Skin Deep, and Sixth of the Dusk have all had very good receptions over the last year. So, I’ve been wondering if—while writing Stormlight 3—it might be good for me to squeeze in a novella-length story about one of the side characters, then release it next spring as a teaser. We’ll see.

As for what I’ll do when Stormlight 3 is finished…well, that’s too far off to judge. My eyes are solidly on Stormlight at this point, and it’s going to dominate my life for the better part of a year. Once it’s done, we’ll see. My next book could be Rithmatist 2, or it could be the final Wax and Wayne book, or it could be a new teen project to follow up the Reckoners. All three are things I’ll consider doing in the break between Stormlight 3 and 4.

But man…I don’t even want to think about Book Four right now. Book Three is looming large, and it’s almost time to settle in and get to work.

For now, I hope you enjoy the Mistborn books and Calamity as they are released. Thanks again for your support!

Brandon Sanderson
May 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best Novel

• The Bands of Mourning
• Calamity
• The Dark Talent

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

Best Novella

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

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

Best Series (Hugo Awards only)

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

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

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

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

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

So I have some bad news and some good news: We have officially sold out of the first printing of the Elantris leatherbound edition. But don’t lose hope; we should have a second printing shipped early in the new year. I will announce any updates as they come.

I heard some more good news this morning: The Calamity audiobook is now available for preorder via Audible in the US and also Audible UK. The book comes out in February in all formats! Check the regional tabs in the upper right of my blog post for your local links.

While perusing reddit, I found out one of my readers, speeddemon974, had developed a pretty cool Twitter bot to automatically post whenever a change is made to percentage bar that you can see in the upper-right corner of my website. Check it out here.

For those who didn’t see my tweet last week, Tor.com released the preview of Chapter Three for The Bands of Mourning. These chapters do include spoilers for Shadows of Self, so be warned.

There are a few Writing Excuses episodes to talk about this week, starting with the episode from a few weeks ago: How to Hand-Sell Your Manuscript to Agents and Editors, with Michael Underwood and Marco Palmieri. The two of them took the stage with Howard and Dan at GenCon Indy 2015 to discuss this topic. Marco Palmieri is a senior editor at Tor, and Michael Underwood is an author and also the North American sales and marketing manager for Angry Robot Books. We begin with a list of the things to avoid doing, including the classic mistakes like chasing editors into restrooms, but we quickly move on to where you get started, and what your task list is going to look like. We cover resources like Literary Marketplace, Locus, and Publishers Lunch, and the not-so-secret-anymore #MSWL hashtag.

In last week’s episode of Writing Excuses, Q&A on Showing Your Work, with Daniel José Older, he joined us for a Q&A on showing your work around. Here are the questions, which were submitted by attendees at the Out of Excuses workshop:

• What’s the best way to meet editors and agents at conventions?
• How do you write a good query letter?
• What do you mention as credentials in your query letter?
• You didn’t cover self publishing at all this month. Self publishing is legit, right?
• Can you submit the same work to more than one agent or editor at a time?
• Can you re-submit a revised work to an agent who previously rejected the piece?

In this week’s episode of Writing Excuses, Moving On, with Ellen Kushner, she joins us for the final episode of Season 10. Per the title, it’s time to be done; but what does “done” mean? How do you go about declaring a project finished when you know there are still things wrong with it? How do you clear your head, your workspace, and your life for the next thing you need to do?

Last week, in Tor.com’s continuing reread posts for Words of Radiance, we rejoined Shallan as she attempted to outwit the Ghostbloods, and had an unnerving encounter with a (presumed) Herald. This week, in Chapter 64, she hides from Amaram while Kaladin hides from depression. It’s a cheerful sort of chapter.

My assistant Adam is working on updating the Twitter post archive for December.

Adam here.

Brandon is not human. I haven’t ascertained exactly what he is. He could be a robot, which is a common theory posed by many of his readers due to his prodigious production rate. Maybe he’s an alien or some other unknown quantity, but he is most assuredly not of the human variety. This couldn’t have been made any plainer to me than it has over these last several weeks while following him around Europe.

Brandon had some type of interaction or event with his readers almost every day, many of which were signings that lasted several hours. He had meetings with publishers, and he somehow managed to continue his work on the book he’s writing. (Oh, and did I mention that there was an eight-hour time difference?) I felt constantly worn out and am still trying to recover. (I woke up at 3:00 am this morning, so that’s not going very well.) Brandon mentioned in passing a few times that he may have been fatigued. I am fairly certain that he just needed to go plug himself in to recharge his internal battery. I felt exhausted after three weeks and he spends almost half of his year traveling!

All teasing aside, this trip gave me a greater understanding of the strain Brandon puts himself under. I know why he does it. He loves and appreciates every single one of his readers and would feel negligent if he missed out on an opportunity to show that to you. I know he was grateful for your patience as you waited in line, often for many hours, to get your books signed or snag a photo with him. I will be posting pictures of some of the people Brandon met, some exceptional fan art, and maybe some cosplayers on Brandon’s social media over the next several weeks. I hope you all enjoy them as much as I did!

Calamity and The Bands of Mourning have both been voted into the Semi-Final round in the 2016 Goodreads Choice Awards, so thank you for your voting thus far! If you’d like to vote again, you can find Calamity in Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction, and The Bands of Mourning in Fantasy.

The Humble Bundle fantasy/sf RPG ebook bundle, that features three of Crafty Games’ Mistborn Adventure Game books, expires in just over five days. So if you’ve been curious to give them a try, now is a fantastic time.

Brandon has done quite a few interviews of late, two of which are now live. The first was with Hank Garner on the Author Stories Podcast, where they discussedBrandon’s first introduction into fantasy by his eighth grade teacher, how his two year missionary journey to Korea informed his later writing, and why fantasy resonates with people in emotionally powerful ways. The second was recorded a few weeks ago in Paris by Le Point Pop (you can see a small snippet below) and also translated to French for any of Brandon’s readers who can read French –or who are as clever as I am and can push the translate button at the top of the page.

I will be at the Orem Barnes & Noble this Saturday, June 11th, for the first ever B-Fest. This is a national teen book festival that will take place in Barnes & Noble stores all over the country June 10th–12th. Hundreds of authors of teen books will be making appearances around the country, so check here to see what’s happening at your local Barnes & Noble, or here for everything at the Orem store.

You can see my event schedule below or on the upcoming events page on my website. I hope to see many of you there!

B-Fest

Date: Saturday, June 11th
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Address: Barnes & Noble University Crossings
330 East 1300 South
Orem, UT 84058
Phone: (801) 229.1611

Schedule:
1:00 p.m.: Sabaa Tahir
4:00 p.m.: Brandon Sanderson
6:00 p.m.: Dan Wells

Wristbands will be handed out starting at 9:00 a.m. on June 11th to save your place in line!

All,

I’m back from tour, and slowly recuperating (and getting ready for my trip to Dubai). Calamity, I’m proud to say, did fantastically. Thank you all for your support! I didn’t think we had much of a chance on the bestseller lists this time, as—because of quirks in the system—we were up against some very difficult competition. We took #1 anyway. Huzzah!

A lot of people have been asking if this is the end of the Reckoners. It is. The trilogy is finished, and came together wonderfully. However, as you all know, I’m unlikely to leave an ending without some hints of where the characters would go in the future.

I don’t currently have plans to do a direct sequel series, but the next project I’m planning is in the same universe. This is a new trilogy in the works with Delacorte (the publisher of the Reckoners), and it’s the unnamed project I talked about in my State of the Sanderson post in December. It’s scheduled tentatively for a 2018 release, and it’s called The Apocalypse Guard.

Here’s the pitch:

Over a decade ago, people started manifesting strange, incredible powers. One side effect of this was an awareness of alternate dimensions—some of these powers could reach into other realities, other versions of Earth. Though infinite dimensions are present, most of these are unstable, existing only as vague possibilities.

A few of these worlds, however, are stable. These real, alternate versions of Earth are sometimes very, very different from the one we know. And a bizarrely large number of them, it turns out, are doomed. And so the Apocalypse Guard was founded: an organization of thousands of scientists, engineers, and extraordinary individuals who save planets.

They comb the dimensions searching for stable worlds to contact. When they find one that is facing some kind of cataclysm, the Guard either finds a way to save the planet, or evacuates it. The process can take years, but so far the Guard has saved some dozen planets—though it has lost half as many to utter destruction.

Emma is the Guard’s coffee girl. On summer internship at mission control, she gets to witness—from a safe distance—their activities. During the events surrounding the rescue of a planet, however, a shadowy group attacks the Guard and throws it into chaos. Emma finds herself cast through dimensions to be stranded on a doomed planet the Guard had been planning to save. Cut off from mission control, woefully inexperienced, Emma has to try to meet up with the Guard or find another way off the planet before cataclysm befalls it.

In the tradition of the Reckoners, The Apocalypse Guard is a fast-paced, action-oriented story with roots in comic book traditions. This one is a little more science fiction and fantasy than it is superhero, and it will dig deeper into the mythology begun in the Reckoners. It is not a sequel to the Reckoners, in that it has new characters and a new story, but it might help answer some questions left by the end of Calamity.

It’s going to be a little while before I write this. Stormlight 3 takes precedence currently, and after that I’m thinking I should probably write the sequel to The Rithmatist. However, I’ve been mulling over this new series a lot, and even went so far as to commission some concept art.

I’ve only done this before with the Stormlight books, having Ben McSweeney (who ended up becoming the illustrator for Shallan’s sketchbook pages) do concept roughs for the characters, so I could have them as kind of a quick reference for how the characters look.

This was really handy, and so I had it done for The Apocalypse Guard as well. We put the characters together in an action shot, though keep in mind that this was mostly for my internal reference (and kind of as a proof of concept). This isn’t the cover art, and isn’t intended to be a finished “movie poster” for the books. More a cool piece of concept art trying to nail down character looks and outfits.

Anyway, enjoy!

Art by Kelley Harris – Check out her website and Deviant Art Page!

Hey everyone! Brandon’s assistant Adam here. As you probably know, Brandon has been on tour for his latest release, Calamity, which is the final book of The Reckoners series. While on tour, he likes to take pictures of people who show up in costume, or bring in something that stands out. I thought I would share some of the pictures he’s taken so far. Before I get to that, however, I want to remind you of a the last few stops Brandon will be making for his tour this week. If you want to see a detailed schedule, I would recommend you visit the Upcoming Events page on his website.

Wednesday, February 24: Houston
Thursday, February 25: Austin
Friday, February 26: San Antonio
Saturday, February 27: San Antonio

Below is just a sampling of photos the Brandon has taken. If you know someone, or see yourself, feel free to tag yourself on Facebook so you can brag to your friends.

Barnes & Noble, Orem

The Calamity tour has been going strong for about a week now, and I have been fortunate enough to visit with some awesome people so far. The rest of my brief schedule is below; check my events calendar for full details on the tour. I hope to see many of you at the signings.

Monday, February 22: Chicago
Tuesday, February 23: Milwaukee
Wednesday, February 24: Houston
Thursday, February 25: Austin
Friday, February 26: San Antonio
Saturday, February 27: San Antonio

I want to take a quick moment to thank all of you for your enthusiastic response to Calamity. Thanks to you, Calamity is the #1 bestseller on Audible. It’s all because of you that I’m able to continue this crazy career.

In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, Wonder as a Subgenre, we discuss the Element of Wonder in science fiction and fantasy and how that same element, or “sense of wonder,” can be used to give wondrous flavor to stories whose driving force lies among the other elemental genres. If you have “wondered”: how to use wonder at smaller scales, how to create it with context, or how you might use it in support of other themes of your story, then this will be a good listen for you.

Last week, in Tor.com’s continuing reread posts for Words of Radiance, Kaladin and Shallan escaped from something and sniped at each other. This week, in Chapter 71, we glimpse Teft’s past before we return to a very gloomy Kaladin, an intent Shallan, moments of stunning openness, and the return of something dangerous.

My assistant Adam is working on updating the Twitter posts archive for February.

The Calamity Release Party at the Orem Barnes & Noble is just a few hours from now. This is the final book of the Reckoners trilogy that began with Steelheart, and I’m looking forward to seeing what you think of the end.

You can see my brief schedule below; check my events calendar for full details on the Calamity tour. I hope to see many of you at the signings.

Tuesday, February 16: Orem
Wednesday, February 17: Seattle
Friday, February 19: Denver
Saturday, February 20: Philadelphia
Monday, February 22: Chicago
Tuesday, February 23: Milwaukee
Wednesday, February 24: Houston
Thursday, February 25: Austin
Friday, February 26: San Antonio

Today also marks the rerelease of my humorous middle-grade books Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians and The Scrivener’s Bones in new illustrated editions. The tour bookstores will have some copies, so now’s a good time to pick up this series! Book 3 follows in April, book 4 in July, and the long-awaited book 5 will be released in September.

In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, The Convention Survival Kit, with Gail Carriger, Gail Carriger joined us at WorldCon in Spokane, Washington, to talk about her Convention Survival Kit, which is full of things most of us wish we’d known to bring to conventions back when we first started attending them.

Last week, in Tor.com’s continuing reread posts for Words of Radiance, Kaladin and Shallan acrimoniously began their trek back to the warcamps. This week, in Chapter 70, the trip continues.

My assistant Adam is working on updating the Twitter posts archive for February.

The Calamity release is just two weeks away! Check my events calendar for full details on the Calamity tour. I hope to see many of you at the signings. Here’s a quick summary of the tour:

Tuesday, February 16: Orem
Wednesday, February 17: Seattle
Friday, February 19: Denver
Saturday, February 20: Philadelphia
Monday, February 22: Chicago
Tuesday, February 23: Milwaukee
Wednesday, February 24: Houston
Thursday, February 25: Austin
Friday, February 26: San Antonio

I also had the privilege to be a guest on the Functional Nerds Podcast a few days ago. You can give it a listen here.

In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, Writing and World Building for Role Playing Games, where Dan and Howard were joined for the day by Michelle Lyons-McFarland, Monica Valentinelli, and Shanna Germain. Their discussion centers around how worldbuilding for roleplaying games, and especially the manner in which the world is presented, differs from worldbuilding for novels. We don’t talk about rule sets or physics simulations. We’re after the things that players want and need to read in order to immerse themselves in the setting, and get “in fiction.”

Last week, in Tor.com’s continuing reread posts for Words of Radiance, a tentative expedition to observe a chasmfiend chrysalis and gather information ended in an unexpected Parshendi sighting and a collapsing bridge. This week, in Chapter 69, there’s one day to make it back through the chasms to the warcamp before the next highstorm hits.

My assistant Adam is working on updating the Twitter posts archive for February.