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

Dragonsteel art director Isaac here. For the last year, we’ve been working close with Dynamite to bring you Volume 2 of the White Sand graphic novel, and today it finally releases. Let me introduce this next volume in the series with a bit of a history lesson.

White Sand has an interesting background. Many of you know that it was the sixth novel Brandon wrote–Elantris–that was picked up by Tor and published as his first novel, but by the time Tor released Elantris in 2005, Brandon had written more than thirteen novels. Mistborn, which came out a year later in 2006, was Brandon’s fourteenth.

But White Sand was Brandon’s first novel. His third novel–Lord Mastrell–was a sequel to it. When Brandon wrote his eighth novel, right after the infamous Dragonsteel, he went back to White Sand Prime and Lord Mastrell and rewrote them both from the beginning, combining them into the White Sand we now give away for those who sign up for the mailing list. I believe this was also the novel that got his agent Joshua’s attention, and while Joshua didn’t offer representation just yet, he did offer some suggestions for a revision. Brandon also had a list of things he wanted to accomplish were he ever to have the chance to return to White Sand and revise it. But when Elantris came out, turning around and revising an old novel was just not in the cards.

When Dynamite proposed a three-part graphic novel several years ago, Brandon met with Team Dragonsteel and laid out his vision for White Sand. We pulled out his revision notes along with Joshua’s commentary from so long ago. We re-read White Sand and made our own notes, and together as a team we fleshed out what Brandon would have liked to have done were he to revise White Sand today without the luxury of rewriting the book from the beginning. We clarified character motivations, we strengthened character arcs, we changed the gender of one of the main characters, and we brought in stronger elements from the Cosmere at large. Together, under Brandon’s direction, and with Dynamite’s help, we crafted this into the canonical version of White Sand.

Dynamite has worked hard under tight deadlines to bring us a high-quality adaptation from writer Rik Hoskin and high-quality illustrations from artist Julius Gopez. Peter, Karen, and I have poured over the text and illustrations and have done our best to keep the details true to the spirit of the original novel and keep it consistent within the canon of the Cosmere. We hope you enjoy this next foray into the world of White Sand.

Introduction

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

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

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

My Year

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

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

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

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

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

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

Updates on Main Projects

Stormlight

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

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

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

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

Status: Writing outline for book four.

Mistborn

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

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

Status: To be written in 2018.

Skyward

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

Status: To be written in 2018.

Updates on Secondary Projects

Legion

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

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

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

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

Status: Series finished! Publication in late 2018.

Alcatraz

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

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

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

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

Status: Outline to be written in 2018.

Elantris and Warbreaker

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

Status: Keep waiting. (Sorry.)

White Sand

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

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

Status: Graphic novel 2 coming in early 2018.

The Rithmatist

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

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

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

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

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

Status: Not yet. We’ll see.

Updates on Minor Projects

The Reckoners

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

Status: Trilogy complete. Series done, for now.

Adamant

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

Status: Still possible in the near future.

Dark One

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

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

Status: Exciting developments in the works!

Death by Pizza

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

Status: No movement.

Soulburner

Random space opera thing I worked on for a while.

Status: No movement.

Potential Cosmere Stories List

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

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

Movie/Television Updates

Mistborn and Stormlight Films

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

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

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

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

The Reckoners

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

Snapshot

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

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

Other Properties

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

Updates Conclusion

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

Projected Schedule

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

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

Conclusion: Birthday!

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Sanderson
December 2017

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon

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

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

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

Brandon

Hey, all! I’ve been deep into revisions on Oathbringer. Turns out, big books don’t just take a long time to write—they take a long time to revise. (Who knew?)

Last year during my trip to the United Arab Emirates, I took a break from working on Oathbringer to write a novella, as is my habit to refresh myself now and then. Other than Edgedancer (the Stormlight novella in Arcanum Unbounded), this is the only thing I had time to write last year that wasn’t Oathbringer.

Snapshot is one of those stories that, once I had the idea, wouldn’t leave me alone. I wrote it furiously, having only about a week’s time to finish it, and I’m very pleased with the product: a kind of cyberpunk–detective thriller mashup. As we’ve posted earlier, Hollywood quickly snatched this one up, and it’s currently under option to MGM.

I think you’ll like it! The print edition is only available in a special edition leatherbound from Vault Books that will be released soon (though we will also have a cheap hardcover toward the end of the year). But as is our tradition, we’re simultaneously releasing an ebook for a few bucks, DRM-free, in all markets. So you can choose whether you want the expensive collector’s edition, or the quick ebook. (Audible has also released the audiobook today.)

Please give the story a look on its explanation page, where you’ll find a synopsis and links to the first two chapters. Also, note that if you buy the print edition in any format, we’ll happily send you the ebook for free at your request. (This will be handled via a coupon for my store.)

On Short Fiction

This seems a good time to take a moment and talk about the various editions I have out for my short fiction.

There are several motives that war within me when it comes to producing editions of my work. The first is that I really don’t want people to feel they have to pay multiple times for the same piece of fiction. I figure once you’ve paid me for it, you’re good, and you should have access (at least in ebook form) to that story for the rest of your life, whenever you want to read it.

At the same time, I want to provide different distinctive editions of the works for people who like them. This sometimes conflicts with my first impression because of additional costs involved. For example, doing an audiobook is more expensive than a print book as—once all the work is done for the print book—you then have to hire another team to take that text and make an audio version. I haven’t realistically found a way to bundle audio, print, and ebook together. (Though I do think the industry will need to figure this out eventually.)

I think the best I can do for now is give away ebooks of the books I myself publish for free, once you have a print edition. (Note the emphasis—I don’t have the legal right to do this for books like Mistborn and The Way of Kings, which were published by Tor. I can only do it for my self-published ventures, like most of my novellas.)

In addition, however, I can talk about in what formats these novellas will be available, and when. This at least lets you know whether you want to hold off getting one until your preferred format is available. So here is what I see us doing with these for the foreseeable future.

Option One: Individual cheap ebook
Available DRM-free from most ebook vendors on launch day.

Option Two: Individual audiobook
These depend on Audible or some other company wanting to release an edition. (They did so for the Legion books, for example, but not others.)

Usually, individual audiobooks for shorts are a bad value for readers—as the Audible economy depends on people using credits on stories, and there are no “half” credits. Which means a credit can be applied to a three-hour novella or a full-length novel at twenty-plus hours.

So you can’t depend on these existing. Sometimes they will, but not other times.

Option Three: Individual leatherbound hardcover
I’ve done these for most novellas, partnering with places like Subterranean and Vault Books. These are meant mostly as collector’s items, and usually have a short and limited print run. For those who want each individual novella separate and in its own book, this is your best option.

Option Four: Dragonsteel edition hardcover
These editions are often printed as “doubles” around the holidays, and sometimes (before official publication) go with me to conventions as convention exclusives.

This is the economical way to get a print edition, as they usually cost $20 and have two stories. (Snapshot, for example, is being published with another story called Dreamer this fall, and will be at conventions with me all summer.)

However, there’s a windowing of a few months on most of these, meaning you can’t get it immediately. This is by request of the publishers of the leatherbounds, who want a small exclusivity window.

Option Five: Collection version (ebook, audio, print)

I will be doing two types of collections moving forward. Cosmere stories (in the Arcanum Unbounded tradition, likely named Arcanum Unbounded II, III, etc.). These will collect in a single edition all the stories that haven’t been collected so far. (Arcanum Unbounded, for example, contained every Cosmere piece of short fiction that had been published up to that point.)

These are for the completionists who want everything, but who don’t mind waiting. They’re also very economical, as if you wait for the paperback edition, they will probably give you a dozen stories (of various lengths) for around ten bucks.

I do anticipate doing a non-Cosmere collection within a year or two, which will include stories like Snapshot and Perfect State. (And probably the Legion novellas, unless they become their own thing.)

Option Six: Dragonsteel collection leatherbound

If there is interest, we might do a leatherbound edition for the 10th anniversary of the collection, like we’ve done with Elantris and are currently doing with Mistborn. So if you like leatherbounds, but miss the initial limited edition, these will eventually be available—but they are a looong way off.

Anyway, I hope that lets you plan! Thank you for your interest in these smaller stories. Your enthusiasm for them is part of what keeps me so productive, as I don’t feel locked into doing one type of story. Overall, this makes even things like Stormlight move faster, as I remain engaged and excited as an author moving between projects.
And do please consider giving Snapshot a look!

Best,

Brandon

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.

Adam here. You may remember a post that Brandon wrote this past summer regarding a novella he finished on his trip to the United Arab Emirates. It is called Snapshot and is a science fiction detective thriller. Normally when Brandon releases a novella he starts promotion at the time of release. This time, however, he is working with some of his long time colleagues (including a bookseller who long ago organized Brandon’s first real signing) who just started a specialty press. Snapshot doesn’t release till February but is available for pre-order now at the Vault Books website. Let me give a little warning here: the leatherbound collector’s editions are expensive. If the price tag makes your eyes bulge, realize there will be a simultaneous ebook, and then later in 2017 we will have a non-limited-edition hardcover available on Brandon’s website store. Without further adieu, here is your first look at the cover of Snapshot.

It’s here, and it’s beautiful! This is the official launch, so feel free to retweet, blog, or otherwise share this post with people you know who are fans of Elantris!

I made a little preview post last week, because of shipping deadlines, but here is the official (with pictures) post about the Elantris Leatherbound edition! Below you’ll find shots of what makes this book so great.

Colored endpapers.

Full color inserts showing off some of my favorite covers from around the world.

New maps.

Beautiful leather binding with an Aon stamped in silver on the cover.

The entire book is two-tone, with a soft blue highlights for things like the Aons and chapter headings.

All the content of the Tenth Anniversary Edition is included in this book, and each book will be signed and numbered! (As long as they’re ordered before the end of the year. After that, if supplies last, we’ll sell the book signed without numbers.)

In addition, Michael Whelan let us include the painting of his, Passage: Verge, that inspired me to start working on Elantris many, many years ago. (And prints are available in his store, which you should totally buy. This is my all-time favorite of his paintings.)

So, where can you get this? Glad you asked! It’s available on my store and in select, awesome bookstores around the country. Please note that in my store, we also have plenty of cool things for the holidays. Most of my books signed in hardcover, this year’s con exclusive being sold for the first time to the general public, jewelry, T-shirts, stickers, a new Stormlight map poster, etc. So check it out!

For my store, we have the following order deadlines.

Note that these are the deadlines given us by the shipping companies; it’s on them to actually get you the books on time. But do let us know if you order before the deadline, but then something happens and it looks like yours isn’t going to make it on time. (I don’t think this happened a single time last year, so we should be okay.)

You can absolutely order the Elantris leatherbound (personalized or not) after the deadlines above, and we’ll do what we can to get it to you on time. We just want you to know the cutoffs the shipping companies gave us.

Now, you all should know by now that I love bookstores. Particularly the stores that invited me in to do signings early in my career, when certain other stores weren’t interested in having me. These are stores with excellent staff who work hard and are passionate about books. That’s why I sent them something special to sell. They have the low numbers. A lot of people like getting numbers under 100, and so I sent numbers 1–50 to these stores, split among them.

Please consider supporting these stores, especially if you live near them or have ever gone to a signing at their location. They are awesome! Some might even have the books going on the shelves today. (If not, they should be there very soon.)

University Book Store, Seattle

One of my favorite stores ever, the person to talk to is Duane Wilkins (though he should have prepped everyone for this). He can be found in the Children’s Department or the Science Fiction department.

Mysterious Galaxy, San Diego

No need to have a specific contact here—they’ll be on the ball and know what’s up. They also tend to carry a lot of first editions of my books, many signed, so you might want to ask them for anything else they might have in stock of mine. (Or from other writers you love.)

Borderlands Books, San Francisco

This was actually the first store outside of Utah to invite me specifically to do a signing for them. They are incredible, and will take good care of you if you go in or call wanting one of these. Note that for sponsors of the store, I’ve sent two leatherbound copies for them to give away free at an upcoming sponsor party.

Powell’s Books, Portland area

I’m not as sure for this one how you get the books, as they took a large order to be split among their several locations. I’m sure you’ll be able to find them, as Powell’s is great—but if you have trouble, you can have them look up the book by its ISBN, which is 978-0-7653-8807-0 (a different book ID number from the regular 10th anniversary).

Murder by the Book, Houston

They ordered the most copies of anyone on this list, so you should be able to find them here! In addition, they have a web form where you can order the book. Be sure to give them so love. They’re an excellent community store who has invited me in to sign time and time again.

BYU Store, Provo

My alma mater. If you can’t find the books, talk to Tammy. She’s the one who ordered them from us, and is really on the ball. But they should be right in the SF section, I would bet. I’ll also make sure they have some in stock for my release party for The Bands of Mourning next month.

Okay, now for a quick FAQ.

Q: Will these sell out?
A: The first printing looks likely to sell out fairly soon. We sold about a quarter of our stock last week, and will probably sell another quarter of it this week. We will reprint this (I plan to keep it in the store for at least a year, maybe forever, if it is popular enough), but shipping takes a good month or so to get new stock to us. You shouldn’t have trouble getting one later—but if you do want one for the holidays, you might want to jump on it soon.

Q: What about your other books?
A: If this is popular (and it looks like it will be), then we will do the other books. Our goal will be to have them sell at around the same price, and to make them match on the bookshelf, so you can have an entire Cosmere sequence of leatherbound books.

The goal will be to proceed with the 10th anniversary idea, doing Mistborn: The Final Empire next year, The Well of Ascension the year after, and The Hero of Ages the year after that. From there, Warbreaker would be next. That’s all I’m willing to commit to now, but we would eventually like to do Stormlight in this treatment. (Assuming people like these editions we’re doing.)

Q: Will you do your short stories in leatherbound?
A: The awesome Subterranean Press has done leatherbounds of some. (And is doing one for Perfect State and Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell, the two novellas from this year.) So I have no plans to do other leatherbound editions. However, do be aware that it’s likely I’ll do an anthology of all the Cosmere shorts in the near future. We might end up doing that too.

Q: Ah! I can’t afford $100! What do I do?
A: Don’t worry. The tenth anniversary edition is available in regular hardcover, in trade paperback, or in ebook (with the color maps!) right now. If an expensive collector’s edition isn’t something that interests you, you can get all of the same material that way.

As always, thanks for reading. Happy holidays! May you spend some vacation time spent curled up with a good book.

Brandon

Kara here with an update on Brandon’s store, just in time for the holidays. We’ve been busy putting together several new products, and I’m excited to tell you about them.

First off, you might’ve heard rumors about our continuing the line of books we began with our leather edition of Elantris last year. This year, I’m officially announcing the release of our Tenth Anniversary leather edition of Mistborn: The Final Empire. These are signed and numbered and go on sale December 1st. Numbers are first-come, first-serve, though like last year, many of the low numbers will be sent to independent bookstores like: University Book Store (in Seattle), BYU Bookstore, Murder by the Book, Mysterious Galaxy, Subterranean Books, Powell’s, Borderlands Books, Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Weller Book Works, and the King’s English.

Due to printing delays and Brandon’s touring schedule, we will not be able to guarantee delivery of this item in time for Christmas.

Like our edition of Elantris, the Dragonsteel edition of Mistborn is bound in premium bonded leather, and the pages are smyth-sewn, not glued like most regular books. Mistborn is printed in black and red inks on quality, acid-free paper, includes a bound-in satin-ribbon bookmark, full-color endpapers by Steve Argyle, gilded pages, and two-color foiling on the cover. A 24-page art gallery starts off the edition and features never-before-seen artwork and a new 2-page map of the Final Empire. We’ve made this the most beautiful edition of Mistborn yet, taking the best from the designs of the Era 1 and Era 2 books and melding that with what we began with the leather edition of Elantris. The Dragonsteel Leather edition of Mistborn is 672 pages.

A few months back, Steve Argyle revealed one of his Vin paintings, which we commissioned for the endpapers of our edition of Mistborn. We’ve created a large 18 x 24 poster of Steve’s beautiful illustration to adorn your walls. This same image is available in other formats—including as a playmat—at Steve’s store.

In addition to the Vin poster, we’ve also printed up full-color posters of some of the maps from our latest releases: a 12 x 16 of the Cosmere Constellations endpaper from Arcanum Unbounded, a six-pack of the star charts of the systems discussed in Arcanum Unbounded (each map 8 x 12) in print for the first time in color, a 12 x 18 of the map from the White Sand graphic novel, and an 18 x 24 of the new map of the Final Empire found in the leather edition of Mistborn.

One last item I want to highlight is our 2016 Holiday Cards, featuring original Mistborn Santa artwork by Shawn Boyles, who created the Dragonsteel logo and the map for Warbreaker. Printed on pearlescent cardstock, these cards sparkle just a little bit, like the morning sun on new-fallen snow. Yes, they are just that cool, and I hope you enjoy sending them to friends and family over the holidays. Comes in a 12-pack with matching pearlescent envelopes.

Watch the store over the next few weeks because we might be adding one or two new decals as well.

Just a few words on holiday shipping. Here are the deadlines for ordering items in order to receive them by December 24. Ordering earlier than this is even safer.
November 20: Personalized books, for international delivery.
December 1: Non-personalized items for international delivery.
December 5: Personalized books for US delivery.
December 15: Non-personalized items for US delivery.

We give these dates only as recommendations. If you order by these times, we promise we will do our best to get your order to you in a timely manner, but because of the many factors outside of our control, we cannot guarantee deliveries will arrive by December 24th.

Happy Holidays from the Dragonsteel Team. May you have a great December and look forward to a bright New Year!

Introduction

We are approaching Koloss Head-Munching Day—the day of the year that happens, by utter coincidence, to coincide with my birthday. (December 19th.) I’m turning forty this year, which isn’t as dramatic for me as it might be for some others. From the way I act, people have been joking for the last twenty years that I was “born forty.” I guess I’m finally just catching up.

It’s been almost twenty years since I finished my first book. I can remember joking with my friends in college (whom you might know as Lieutenant Conrad from Mistborn and Drehy from Bridge Four) that by forty, we were all going to be rich and famous.

The thing is, I always intended to make that dream happen. Not necessarily for the “rich” part or the “famous” part, neither of which interested me a great deal. I just knew that without a solid, stable writing career, I’d never be able to make the Cosmere happen.

Perhaps that’s where this whole “born forty” thing came from in the first place. I basically spent my twenties writing, slavishly trying to figure out how to craft stories. Friends would tell me to relax, but I couldn’t, not when these dreams of mine were so big. It should be mentioned that despite what our society would like to believe, hard work doesn’t always equate with success. For me, luck played a huge part in my being able to sit here and type this out for you.

Still, here I am, and I honestly can’t imagine things having gone better. People often seem bemused by my productivity; when I get together with fellow authors, they sometimes jokingly refer to me as “the adult” in our group. I get this—for a lot of them, writing is more of an instinctual process. Sitting and talking about the business side of things, or their goals for writing, flies in the face of the almost accidental way they’ve approached their careers. And it works for them; they create great books I’m always excited to read.

However, sometimes there’s also this sense—from fans, from the community, from us authors in general—that whispers that being productive isn’t a good thing. It’s like society feels artists should naturally try to hide from deadlines, structure, or being aware of what we do and why we do it. As if, because art is supposed to be painful, we shouldn’t enjoy doing our work—and should need to be forced into it.

If there’s one thing that has surprised me over the last ten years, it’s this strangeness that surrounds my enjoyment of my job, and the way my own psychology interfaces with storytelling. People thank me for being productive, when I don’t consider myself particularly fast as a writer—I’m just consistent. Fans worry that I will burn out, or that secretly I’m some kind of cabal of writers working together. I enjoy the jokes, but there’s really no secret. I just get excited by all of this. I have a chance to create something incredible, something that will touch people’s lives. In some cases, that touch is light—I just give a person a few moments to relax amid the tempest of life. In other cases, stories touch people on a deep and meaningful level. I’ll happily take either scenario.

Almost thirty years ago now, I encountered something remarkable in the books I read. Something meaningful that I couldn’t describe, a new perspective, new emotions. I knew then that I had to learn to do what those writers were doing. Now that I have the chance to reach people the same way, I’m not going to squander it.

I guess this is all a prelude to a warning. I’m working on a lot of projects. Many of these tie together in this epic master plan of mine, the thirty-six-(or more)-book cycle that will be the Cosmere. Even those books that aren’t part of the Cosmere are here to challenge me in some way, to push me and my stories, to explore concepts that have fascinated me for years.

These last ten years have been incredible. I thank you, and I thank God, for this crazy opportunity I’ve been given. I don’t intend to slow down.

I’m not embarrassed to be “the adult.” Even if I’ve only just hit the right age for it officially.

My Year

2015 was a bit slower than last year was, as I spent a lot of time editing.

January–May: Calamity

The bulk of my writing time this year was spent on Calamity, which I’d been putting off last year in order to write the two new Mistborn novels. Looking back at my records, I finished the last chapters in early May.

This was interrupted, on occasion, for revisions of various books—and for the Firefight tour, along with a trip to Sharjah in the UAE. Busy times. So busy, in fact, that it’s taken me all the rest of the year to give full feedback to the writers who took my class. I managed to grade their papers in May, somehow, but promised them each a personalized look at their final story submissions, which I’m only now finishing up.

June–August: Stormlight Three

I did squeeze in some writing time for Stormlight in here, though not a whole ton of it got done. I had to stop for revisions, touring, and travel through most of September and October.

September–October: Revisions and a Secret Project

Traveling so much made it difficult to do Stormlight 3 writing, which requires a lot of time investment. So between revisions, I managed to finish a project I’ve been working on for about a decade now. (Yes, a decade.) You’ll see this soon. It’s a novella.

November–December: Stormlight Three Again

I plan to keep on this one until I finish it, as I’ll talk about below. However, if you want to read a little about my writing time in November, you can read this other blog post.

Big List of Things I’m Working On

Now, let’s get to it. Each year around this time, I take stock of my many projects. You can read last year’s post here, to compare and see how things have been progressing. (And to see how well I did in my plans for 2015.)

Thank you in advance for continuing to give me the freedom I feel I need to jump between different worlds. While I know it’s frustrating sometimes that I’m not working on your world, the greater plans I have for all this require me to approach things in a certain way. Both for my health as a writer, and to bring about some large-scale awesomeness.

I’m going to go down the list of projects I’m working on, starting with what I consider my “main” projects. These are getting the focus of my time right now. From there, I’ll move on to things that I’m still toying with doing sometime soon.

Then it gets a little more speculative.

Enjoy!

Main Book Projects

The Stormlight Archive

Stormlight is going very well. I’m working on Book Three, which I’m calling Oathbringer. (That is likely at this point to be the final title.) This is my main project, and I won’t be writing any new prose on other stories until it is done. You can follow the progress bars!

Release dates for this book are still in flux. Even if I finish it early next year, it could be a year or more until you see the book. The amount of editing, continuity, and art that these books require creates a need for a long lead time. I’ve told people that Fall 2016 is the earliest they’d see it, but my team has been warning me that’s not realistic. We’ll see, but for now you should assume on a 2017 release.

What does this mean for my once optimistic “one Stormlight book every eighteen months” goal? The more I work on these books, the more uncertain I am about that. The outline for Oathbringer, for example, took about a year for me to nail down. Considering how many moving pieces there are in these books, it’s tough to judge how long they will take to write. And while there are books I can force through if some things aren’t right, I can’t afford to do that on this series.

I’ll continue to write Stormlight books at as quick a pace as is reasonable. I consider this my main project for the next decade or two, and am dedicated to it. But each book, as I’ve said before, is plotted as four books in one. So even if I release them once every three years, you’re getting four “books” in three years.

We’ll see. I’ll try to pick up the pace. In the meantime, I’ll try to get some short stories in the world out for you. (More on this later.)

Status: Book Three in Progress

The Reckoners

The last book of the trilogy is complete, revised, and turned in. It’s coming out in February, and is—indeed—the ending.

I have not closed the door on doing more in the world, but it will not be for a while. If I do return, it will be like a Mistborn return, where the focus of the books shifts in some way and I create a new series. I like leaving endings as endings, even if the world and some of the characters do progress.

I’m extremely pleased with the last book. I look forward to having you all read it, and I am grateful to you all for supporting this series. There were voices that told me something outside the Cosmere would never sell as well as something inside—but this series is neck-and-neck in popularity with Stormlight and Mistborn. It’s a relief, and very gratifying, to see that people are willing to follow me on different kinds of journeys.

Status: Completed!

Mistborn

And speaking of Mistborn, how is Scadrial doing? My current plan is still to have the Mistborn books stretch throughout my career, establishing stories in different eras of time with different sets of characters.

The original pitch was for three trilogies. The Wax and Wayne books expanded this to four series. (You can imagine Wax and Wayne as series 1.5, if you want.) This means there will still be a contemporary trilogy, and a science fiction trilogy, in the future.

I have one more book to do in the Wax and Wayne series, and I’m planning to write it sometime between Stormlight books three and four. Until then, Wax and Wayne three—The Bands of Mourning—comes out in January!

Status: Era 1.5 book three done; book four coming soonish

Secondary Book Projects

Elantris

I do still intend Elantris sequels. (And the enthusiasm for the leatherbound edition proves that people are still interested in the world.) Right now, I have them scheduled to be slotted in once Wax and Wayne is done. We’ll take a break from Scadrial at that point, go back to Sel and do some Elantris books, then hop back to the 1980s era Mistborn series.

This slots an Elantris sequel into the spot between Stormlight books 4 & 5. It is coming, just more slowly than I’d once hoped.

Status: Delayed, but coming before too long

The Rithmatist

Book two of The Rithmatist (called The Aztlanian) is another thing on my schedule that I need to get to soon. If you didn’t read last year’s update on the book, I tried writing this—and found I didn’t have a strong enough grasp on the historical period and culture to do it justice. So I stopped and did a bunch of research, but by the time I finished, I needed to be back to work on my main projects.

Therefore, I’ve slotted this in after Stormlight 3 as well. Hopefully it won’t get pushed back again. Usually I try to do about equal in pages to a Stormlight book between Stormlight books. That gives me room for three smaller books. Right now plans are for these three books to be The Lost Metal (Wax and Wayne 4), The Atzlanian, and a new project. (See below.)

Status: Delayed, but maybe coming soon

Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians

Here’s another one we’ve been able to clear off my list. With Tor republishing the first four books of this series throughout the spring next year (starting in February), I am at last able to get the fifth book (and the final one Alcatraz will write) out to you fans.

The new art for these editions has me very excited. For once I think we have covers that indicate to readers the tone of the books. Book Five should be out in the summer, though I believe Tor is scheduling it for August instead of June. It is written, and I’m doing final edits on it right now. (In the evenings after I feel I’ve hit my wordcount goal for Stormlight.)

If you haven’t read these books, give them a browse once they come out again in the spring. They’re very fun, but very different from my other books. They’re insane, fourth-wall-breaking comedies, so they’re certainly not for everyone. They have been an excellent way for me to blow off steam and refresh myself between longer, more ponderous books.

Status: Book Five Completed!

White Sand

For those who don’t know, this is a book I wrote around the same time as Elantris—but which I didn’t ever sell. Once I was published, I considered releasing it, but felt it needed a solid revision before I could do so.

Well, that revision was delayed time and time again, until the point where I decided I probably would need to just rewrite the book from scratch if I ever did release it. An interesting opportunity came along a few years later, however, and that changed my perspective. You see, the comic book company Dynamite Entertainment had come asking if I had anything, perhaps an unpublished novel, that would make a good graphic novel.

This seemed the perfect opportunity to make use of White Sand. I didn’t have time to do revisions, but another writer could take my words and adapt them (really, what the book needed was a trim anyway) into a graphic edition. We said yes, and started into the process.

I’ve said before, Dynamite has been excellent to work with. Rik Hoskin, the person hired to do the adaptation, is a fantastic writer—and he really managed to preserve the core of my story, using my own dialogue and descriptions, while cutting out all the chaff. The artist Julius Gopez, the colorist Ross Campbell, the letterer Marshall Dillon, and the editor Rich Young have all done a fabulous great job.

The novel is big (no surprise), so it’s going to be released as three graphic novels. The first of these is almost ready, and we’re expecting a release sometime next year. The fine folks at Dynamite have given me permission to post some teaser pages here, so here you go! The first look at White Sand, the graphic novel:

Tertiary Book Projects

Now we move on to some of the projects that are itching at me, and I do intend to do someday—but which are delayed indefinitely until I figure out the right time to do them.

Warbreaker

While some characters from Nalthis have made appearances in other books, I still don’t have a specific timeframe for when I’ll go back and write the second Warbreaker book. (Titled Nightblood for the time being.)

I know a lot of people really want this book, and I intend to do it, but I have to find time for the Elantris sequels first. So you’re unlikely to see it until Elantris is finished. (Sorry.)

Status: On Hiatus

Legion

I owe people another (and final) Legion novella, and I plan to do this as well. Novellas aren’t as big a commitment as novels, obviously—that’s part of why I do them. But I don’t know when I’ll squeeze this in, with all the things I’m doing right now. It could happen literally at any time—but I don’t expect it in 2017, to be honest.

Status: On Short Hiatus

Cosmere Short Fiction Collection

For a while I’ve been thinking that I need to collect all the various pieces of Cosmere short fiction and put them into a single collection, for those who don’t like hunting around for them.

This might be the year to do that. If Stormlight doesn’t make it into 2016, we might be able to get a collection (with a Stormlight novella) out by the end of the year instead. Something to tide you over, at least, until book three comes out.

If we do this, my goal will be to have it include every piece of short fiction from every source up until now and bind it together in a handsome hardcover that will look nice on the shelf next to your other books.

This will give you multiple options for the short fiction, if you want to collect it. We will continue to do our little two-novella collections (like the Perfect State and Shadows for Silence double that we just released.) So if you’d prefer to collect those in the smaller size, I anticipate everything eventually being released in that format too. However, if you’d like one thick tome, every ten years or so you should see a bigger collection.

More on this as it develops. Right now I’m toying with the title Arcanum Unbound, and would love to include a star chart of all the cosmere worlds in it.

Projects in Development

These are projects you might have heard of, but for which no solid evidence of them ever being released is out there. On occasion I might do readings from them, and I might tinker with them—but I don’t have much specific to tell you about release dates.

New YA Series

I am developing a new YA series to be released after the Reckoners with the same publisher. I can’t say much about it right now, though we will probably do some announcements regarding it during the Calamity tour. If all goes well, the first book of this trilogy will be the third shorter novel I write between Stormlight 3 and 4.

I always need to have something new to be working on, if only in the back of my mind, to help prevent burnout. I’m excited about this series right now, and actively working on the outline. But I won’t be digging into writing it until next summer or fall, depending on when Stormlight Three is done. So I don’t expect a release for a while yet.

Status: Outlining

Adamant

Some of you have heard readings from, or seen excerpts of, this epic science fiction series that I’ve been working on. I finished one novella in the world, and am pleased with it, but I have no immediate plans for writing the rest. Perhaps I’ll feel different once Stormlight is done and I’m satisfied with it. (It’s always possible I’ll need a break between projects where I can do something very different.) We shall see. I have no plans to release this in 2016.

Status: On Hiatus

Dark One

A perennial favorite on the State of the Sanderson is this YA series about a boy who discovers he’s the Dark One, a figure from prophecy fated to destroy the world. My outlines are looking okay for this one, but it doesn’t feel like the right time to do it. I pitched it to my editors at Random House along with the new YA series above, and we all agreed the other project was a better follow-up to the Reckoners.

Dark One is bound to get done someday. That day isn’t now.

Status: No Projected Start Date

Death by Pizza

I had a nice breakthrough on this book recently, making the main character far more interesting. (For those who don’t know, this is about a necromancer who owns a pizza joint.) However, this remains a very out-of-left-field project for me, and something I did mostly for fun. (I have a nearly complete draft of the entire book.)

I don’t anticipate doing this anytime soon, though I did briefly consider it as an alternative to the new YA series listed above. It’s still just too strange for me to want to do right now. Perhaps eventually.

Status: On Hiatus

Dragonsteel/Liar of Partinel

This is Hoid’s origin story, a prequel to the entire Cosmere. The time is not right. It’s going to happen eventually, but I feel that I shouldn’t dig into this until Stormlight is completely done. (All ten books.) So don’t hold your breath on this one.

Status: Loooong way off

Silence Divine

This story (which is the one about a world where catching a disease grants you magical talents) is another perennial State of the Sanderson participant.

I did some work on a short story in this world a while back, and liked it, but didn’t have time to finish. (This is the thing I did readings from during the Words of Radiance tour, I believe.) It’s set in the cosmere, and I have plans to someday write this—but I’m not sure when I’ll do it. Could be a long way off still.

Status: On Hiatus

Soulburner

This is an outline I developed last year during a lull—a kind of space-opera-fantasy-hybrid like Dune or Star Wars. The setting is awesome, one of my favorites. Very distinctive.

I don’t have a story for it yet though. I’m just putting it on here so that you know that wacky things are still bouncing around in my head, looking for a way out. It’s not something I’m going to release anytime soon, but if I ever do, you can point here and say, “Hey, I saw this first!”

Status: No Projected Start Date

Aether of Night

Another of the books I wrote around the time of Elantris, and another one that’s not half bad—but still in need of a solid revision.

I’ll likely do something with it someday. In the meantime, if you want to read it, you can send us an email to ask for a copy. (Consider it a thank you for getting this far in this huge post.) I’d ask that you’d consider signing up for my mailing list when you do email me, as that’s how I get the word out on when I’m doing signings and when I have cool new things to release. But that’s not required in order to get the book.

Projected Novel Release Schedule

There’s a good chance I won’t hold to this, but just so you know, here’s how I view my upcoming novel release schedule (not including any novellas or short stories that may or may not appear during moments when I need to do something new):

January 2016: Wax and Wayne 3
February 2016: Reckoners 3 (final book)
June 2016: Alcatraz 5
Sometime 2017: Stormlight 3
Sometime 2017: Rithmatist 2
Spring 2018: New YA project 1
Fall 2018: Wax and Wayne 4 (final book)
Sometime 2019: Stormlight 4
Sometime 2019: New YA project 2
Sometime 2020: Elantris 2
Sometime 2020 New YA project 3 (final book)
Sometime 2021: Stormlight 5 (ending of first arc)
Sometime 2022: Elantris 3 (final book)

Conclusion

Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you that the list was big.

It’s been quite the year. Lots of travel, lots of meeting people and signing books. My tenth year doing this. I’ve spent the last decade kind of looking at myself as one of the new kids in the fantasy market, but I suppose it’s time to admit that I’ve become—albeit not a member of the old guard—one of the genre’s more established names.

As always, you make this possible. Here’s looking to another excellent year. Merry Christmas, and a Happy Koloss Head-Munching Day, to you all.

Brandon Sanderson
December 2015