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

Hey, all! I’ve got some interesting tidbits about Stormlight Three to share, relating to what I’ve been writing this month.

Before we get to that, though, I do want to draw your attention to the items we have in the store. In addition to the Elantris leatherbound, as usual we’ve got most of my books for sale, signed and personalized, shipped to your door. This includes the brand new hardcover double of the novellas Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell and Perfect State, which we just put up. (We also have both Legion books, with new covers.) We also have a couple of new T-shirts, Mistborn and Stormlight lanyards, a new Roshar map poster, Bridge 4 jewelry, and all the usual fun stuff. Have a look! And do please note the holiday shipping deadlines!

It’s rare that I get to fully participate in National Novel Writing Month. (The month of November, for the uninitiated, is a kind of challenge month for writers. During November, participants try to complete fifty thousand words of material, which is roughly 200 pages.)

The true spirit of NaNoWriMo is to start a brand new story on the first of November, and write on it all month. The life of a professional novelist doesn’t lend itself well to this kind of schedule—you often have revisions due at inopportune times, or have to be on tour in November, etc. However, when I can, I like to participate in spirit by trying to write the 50k words—even if I don’t begin a new project at the start of the month.

This was a year where I was able to do this, as I had minimal touring this month (only two events) and no big revisions due. (Though my editor is still waiting on Alcatraz 5, which I’ll need to get to ASAP, now that the month is over.) It was a fun year to do NaNo though, as it was very nostalgic for me.

You see, thirteen years ago in 2002, I was doing NaNo as an unpublished author with many of my writer friends. We posted our wordcounts on a forum we all frequented, making a friendly competition of it. The book I was writing? The original draft of The Way of Kings.

One of the images from that time, burned into the back of my brain, is sitting in the guest room at my mother’s house on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, which fell very late in the month that year. That Saturday was the last day of NaNo—and I hit a frenzy of activity. While I hadn’t started a new project during the month (even then, I didn’t really need challenges like NaNo to get me moving on my writing) I was near the end of one.

I finished The Way of Kings that night, writing more in one day by far than I’d ever written up to that point—and more than I’ve ever written since. My wordcount ended up being so high that I severely underreported it on the forums, to not make others feel bad. (Which reminds me of the time when in high school, during the very early days of image manipulation before most people knew it was possible, I edited my report card to wipe away all my A grades and make them much lower—all to trick my mother.)

That time in 2002 was a special time for me, one I’ve talked about before. Writing The Way of Kings was a relieving experience for me, as I was writing exactly what I wanted rather than worrying about what the market wanted to read. I still feel it’s no coincidence that a year later I got my first book deal. After writing Kings, I was ready.

Well, this year I’ve been working on Oathbringer, the third volume of the Stormlight Archive. It was both nostalgic and exciting to be at my mother’s house again, thirteen years later, working with the same characters as a much more mature writer (and in a much more mature version of the world).

This month, I posted my wordcounts on Twitter and Facebook, rather than on a forum with my friends. I managed to get the 50,000 words done, though I didn’t have any crazy wordcount days. This may come as a surprise to some of you, but I’m actually much slower now than I was all those years ago. There is a lot more to watch for in these books now, a lot more continuity now that I’m actually releasing them for the public. The writing just doesn’t go as fast as it did when I was more carefree. That said, here are some quick facts about NaNo this year for me:

1. Writing 50k words in a month is still hard (in fact, it’s harder) as a professional. There are a lot of demands on my time these days aside from writing. Having a family is certainly one—but so is touring, answering emails, doing marketing meetings, talking to my agent, and signing huge stacks of books to fill orders from the store. (Not that I mind.)
2. Quality doesn’t suffer from adding a few extra hours of writing a day. I’d already known this, as there are times in the past when I’ve written longer than I do now. But it’s still nice to know. In fact, I’m more fond of many of the scenes I wrote this month than I am of many I wrote earlier. Which leads me to my next point.
3. Being very focused on one project, eliminating distractions, can really help me figure out tough scenes. This month reminded me of the days when I was first working on the Wheel of Time books—where I had a single-minded focus, and was determined to nail the project and do right by the fans. There’s a certain excitement to times like this, and I fully intend to keep this focus on Stormlight 3 as I roll forward. (I don’t have anything else I have to do, other than the revisions on Alcatraz, until Stormlight 3 is done.)
4. I really love these characters. There’s a reason I have been writing about Dalinar since I was fifteen—there’s something about him, a voice I need to share. It’s great to be back on Roshar, and I’m having a blast.

So where do we stand as this month ends? Well, I got my 50k, but the book is still sitting at only 137k words. That’s roughly 1/3 of the way completed—assuming it’s around the length of Words of Radiance, which I’m hoping will be the case. (I’m not sure how much longer Tor will let me go.) There’s still a great deal of work to do on this book.

I can’t really project a release date. Peter and Isaac have been very clear with me that we need more time for editing, revision, continuity, and art than we had on Words of Radiance. We’ll make a call on release dates sometime around when I turn the book in next spring or summer. It could be out next year, but Peter and Isaac want you all to be ready for a 2017 release instead. We’ll know more once I actually finish.

As for other projects, I’ll do my yearly State of the Sanderson post sometime around my birthday (otherwise known as Koloss Head-Munching Day) late December. That will catch you up on everything I’m doing.

Either way, I hope that those of you doing NaNo benefited from seeing my daily wordcount posts. Writers make up a grand (if somewhat neurotic) community, and I’m proud to be a card-carrying member.

Brandon

BONUS: I recently dug up the notes I took when submitting the first chapters of The Way of Kings to my graduate writing class while getting my Master’s. I’ll transcribe them here, though be warned, they were reading an earlier version of the book from the one that got released. In this draft, the opening chapter was a battlefield seen through Dalinar’s eyes, showing him and Adolin using their shards to defeat an enemy army.

CHAPTER ONE

• Compound words. They complained that there are a lot of them. (NOTE: Yup, I still use a lot of these! I think all the talk of Shardblades and Shardplate overwhelmed them.)
• They had a major gripe with the fact that there were a ton of characters to keep track of. It got really hard to keep track of who was who. They complained that I would introduce a character for a paragraph, then he would drop out. (NOTE: They weren’t ready for the “epic” part of “epic fantasy” I guess. To be fair, this original draft of KINGS did have too many viewpoint characters—but that was a problem for later in the book. These early scenes weren’t nearly as bad as the published version for keeping track of names. I’d love to see what the class would say about THIS version, with four different main characters in the first four scenes.)
• They liked it when I gave give a character a philosophy. Wanted to see that a little more. Also, they wanted more physical descriptions—they wanted to reconnect with characters through their physical characteristics. Wanted a physical quirk for everyone.
• They suggested I consider writing a piece with an adviser to the king. They think that the way I write would work well with a character like that. (NOTE: I have no idea what’s going on here. I’m assuming they were confused, and were suggesting a new character to be viewpoint to the sequence. This is why it’s best not to offer solutions to writers, only outline problems. I suspect that adding a new character, one who is not participating in the action but standing around describing everything, would not improve the book in the way the class thought.)
• They would like more of the big monsters. Chulls. (NOTE: Chulls were much larger in this draft, capable of pulling huge siege equipment. And really, who wouldn’t want to see more of that?)

CHAPTER TWO

• They liked this better, because I didn’t summarize as much and it had more action. They still wanted more visual details.
• Steve wanted to know more about the ‘nifty gadgets.’ Wanted me to flesh the ideas out. (NOTE: I think this references Shardblades and Shardplate, like the next note.)
• They ask: Where did the armor and swords come from? (NOTE: This is a good sign. It doesn’t mean I should answer it here; it just means they were curious, which is what I want.)
• Fighting styles were very cool—wondered if I could do more with it. They wonder if I could spent more time on the battle—a couple more chapters.
• Horse stuff. Hair on the hooves, black, stout forehead.
• 1. Give physical characteristics.
  2. Use more senses.
  3. More graspable feel of the world’s battle tactics and philosophies.
• Blood in mouth from biting tongue.

There you go! A glimpse back in time to before I’d sold any books. It was always an interesting experience submitting my work to these graduate courses, as nobody really knew what to do with me. Professors would tell me not to write fantasy, and I would anyway, telling them to fail me if they thought it was bad. Students would have critique sessions where for one piece, they’d discuss some short and obtuse poem—then move on to this enormous (and maybe obtuse) epic fantasy novel.

Don’t get me wrong—I loved being in the program, and felt it was well worth my time. But the critique sessions could sometimes go interesting places.

Introduction

Hello, all! I recently turned in Shadows of Self, the new Wax and Wayne Mistborn novel. (And, well, something else too. More on that below.) In addition, tomorrow is December 19th—known with fondness as “Koloss Head-Munching Day.” Also my birthday. (I’ll be 39.)

This seemed like a good chance to take a step back and give you all a long-form update on what I’ve been doing lately, and where I am looking for the future. I like to be accountable to you, my readers, for what I’m doing. You are the ones supporting me in this, my lifelong dream of being a professional writer.

2014 was an excellent year for me. Words of Radiance has been very well received, and enthusiasm for the Stormlight books is very high. As this series is my baby, it feels awesome to see people getting to know characters like Dalinar and Kaladin, whom I’ve known for decades. At the same time, I’ve been jumping back into teen books again after the Alcatraz books. (Which kind of fizzled back in 2010 or so, though we’re planning a relaunch.)

Having two publishers made for a very challenging tour schedule. I’ve been away from home far more than I want to be, mostly because of the need to add more touring (along with things like school visits and appearances at teacher/librarian conferences) for Steelheart and The Rithmatist.

I’m still struggling to find a balance I like. On one hand, I enjoy visiting you all and going cool places. On the other hand, my real love is writing the books—and I don’t want to get so busy that the stories fall by the wayside. Anyway, the following is an account of my 2014 writing experience for those who are curious.

What I spent 2014 doing

January–March 2014: Firefight

Though I had hoped to have Firefight (The Reckoners 2) done long before January, the touring last year made that impossible. It snuck over into 2014, which is why you’re getting the book in January 2015 instead of the originally scheduled fall of this year. In March, I also did the Words of Radiance tour, which really cut into my writing time.

April 2014: Legion: Skin Deep

In April, once all the chaos was done, I took the time to finish up Legion: Skin Deep (sequel to Legion from a few years back), which I’d been working on during plane flights the year before. If you haven’t checked these two novellas out, you might want to consider it! They’re very fun, though the second book is not yet out in the UK and associated territories such as Australia and New Zealand. (Note that in those territories, Legion 1 and The Emperor’s Soul were released together in a very handsome paperback.)

We will eventually have regular hardcover copies of Legion 2 available. That will probably come sometime in the first half of next year. Our contract with Subterranean Press, who produced the very attractive limited edition hardcovers of Legion 2, says that we’ll wait until their edition sells out before we release a competing one.

May 2014: The Aztlanian (Rithmatist 2)

Next, I dove into research for a sequel to The Rithmatist. This is going to be a tough book to write, as it takes place in a fantastical version of Central and South America, and deals with things from Aztec (Mexica) mythology. (In The Rithmatist, a lot of the geography is shifted around in bizarre ways.)

Dealing with another group’s culture in this way is rife with opportunities for stuffing my foot in my mouth, and so I wanted to be very careful and respectful. This meant spending time devoted exclusively to doing extensive research. I didn’t actually get any writing on the book done, though I read some very excellent history books.

(As an aside, if anyone out there is an expert in the Aztec/Mexica culture—particularly if you yourself are a Native American—I’d love to have your help on this book.)

At the end of the month, I decided I needed to do way more research than a month afforded, so I put the book off for now. I still intend to write it, but I need more time to do it right.

June 2014: Alcatraz

Having spent a month with no writing, I wanted to jump into something fun and quick to refresh me before moving on to my next book. So, I dug out my outline for the Alcatraz series and at long last did a rough draft of the fifth book. These are fast, fast books to write—as I improvise them—but they are very slow to edit.

I finished the book, and am pleased with it, but I have no firm date yet for when I’ll be publishing it. Tor is rereleasing the series starting next year with new covers and extensive interior art. I believe these launch starting about a year from now. (If you want them before then, your best bet for getting them is the UK omnibus of the first four.)

I’ll want to release the fifth one once the series has been rereleased, so maybe summer 2016. If you’ve never read these, they are very different from my other work. They’re bizarre and sarcastic comedies that are self-referential and offer commentary on fantasy as a genre along the way. Those who love them absolutely love them. Those who don’t tend to find them insulting. That dichotomy alone is part of what endears them to me.

July–December 2014: Mistborn

The last half of the year was dedicated to Shadows of Self, the new Mistborn novel. And I have a confession to make.

I also wrote the sequel.

Now, before you start wagging your finger at me for being a robot, there was a really good reason I did what I did. You see, I was having real trouble getting back into Shadows of Self. I had written the first third of it in 2012 between revisions of A Memory of Light. (I was feeling Wheel of Time overload.) However, it can be very hard for me to get back into a book or series after a long time away from it. (This is another issue with the Rithmatist sequel.)

So, jumping into Shadows of Self was slow going, and I found it much easier to go write the sequel to refresh myself on the world and characters. That done, I was able to move back to Shadows of Self and finish it up.

So a week or two back, I turned in two new Wax and Wayne Mistborn novels. They’re titled Shadows of Self and Bands of Mourning, and Tor decided to publish them in quick succession: the first in October 2015, the second in January 2016. So, if you have read the original trilogy but haven’t tried The Alloy of Law yet, you might want to give it a look! From the beginning, I’ve planned Mistborn to be a continuum series, showing off Allomancy in different time periods. I think you’ll find the Wax and Wayne books to be fun, quick reads—and they introduce some very, very big things coming in the Mistborn world.

There will be one more Wax and Wayne (early 1900s-era) Mistborn book. Back after I finished The Alloy of Law, I sat down and plotted out a trilogy with the same characters. The Alloy of Law was more of a happy, improvised accident. The follow-up trilogy is meant to be more intentional. So in the end, we’ll have four total. (The final one is tentatively called The Lost Metal.) From there, I might jump to the second “big” trilogy, which is 1980s tech. Or I might dally a little more in something 1940s-era instead. We’ll see.

Amusingly, doing these two Mistborn books together totaled only about half as much writing as a Stormlight book. Perhaps you can see why it takes even me quite a long time to finish Stormlight novels. (And it’s why you might want to lay off Pat Rothfuss a little. I believe The Wise Man’s Fear was even longer than Words of Radiance.)

Tor did their announcement about these books earlier today. You may now commence wisecracks about me secretly writing extra novels when nobody is looking.

Next Projects

I’ve now begun Calamity, last of the Reckoners series. My goal will be to rough-draft it over the next three months. I have a tour between now and then (for Firefight) and a trip to Taiwan as well, so who knows if I’ll make that deadline. We’ll see.

Once that is done, I will dive into Stormlight 3. I’m still waffling on whether this will be Szeth’s book, Eshonai’s book, or Dalinar’s book. The original outline calls for book 3 to have Szeth’s flashbacks, but I am feeling that another character might match the events better.

I did some exploratory scenes for it this summer, though these may or may not end up in the actual book. I have been tweaking the outline, and am starting to feel very good about it. Writing the book should consume the entire rest of 2015, with a 2016 release. I do plan the Stormlight books to be an every-other-year thing.

Follow along starting next spring as I write the book and post updates on my website. I’ll even try to do some screen capturing with Camtasia as I write, for those who are interested in watching for them.

That wraps up current and finished projects. 2014 was partially about me getting my feet underneath me after finishing The Wheel of Time and going right into Stormlight 2. I’ve caught my breath now, and feel good moving forward.

And, speaking of moving forward, it’s time for a State of the Sanderson tradition—we’re going to play “What about the sequel to this book I love, Brandon!”

Here comes the big list.

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The big list of projects I want to do

Elantris sequels

The Emperor’s Soul is now two years old, so it is probably time to get back to Sel and do some more there. We should be releasing a trade paperback of Elantris in the next year or two, with revised (and new) maps and a better Ars Arcanum. (Read: an Ars Arcanum.)

The full sequels will need to be finished before I can do the contemporary (1980s tech) Mistborn novels because of behind-the-scenes Cosmere bits, so I will do my best to find a place to squeeze these in. At the very least, I will write them following the end of Stormlight 5. So, these are distant, but not too distant.

Nightblood (Warbreaker sequel)

This is still on the back burner, but it is coming. Probably after the Elantris sequels. I’ll squeeze it in someplace. I’m very excited about it, but now (while I’m juggling multiple teen series) is not the time.

Dark One

This is a series I’ve talked about for a long, long time about a boy who discovers he’s the “Dark One.” Basically, it’s the classic epic fantasy story told from the eyes of the dude destined to try to destroy the world instead of save it. I’ve made good progress on the setting, which is going to be awesome. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the teen series I do once the Reckoners and the Rithmatist are both done.

As a note for fans, this is a Cosmere story.

Silence Divine (this will be renamed sometime)

I did readings from this on my last tour (you can probably find them on YouTube; it was the Words of Radiance tour). I only have a few pages done, playing with the primary concept. (Diseases grant magical talents for as long as you have the disease—you lose the power when you get over it.) This one has probably been downgraded from full novel to novella, as I feel that something more Emperor’s Soul-esque will do a better job with the themes I want to explore.

Legion 3

Legion 2 is out! Are you tired of me mentioning that yet? I’m sure that someday there will be a third adventure for Stephen and his aspects, but I don’t have an outline or plan yet.

The Lurker (now renamed Adamant)

I’ve finished a novella set in this science fiction world. For those who want more SF from me along the lines of my two novelettes, this should be coming someday. I don’t have time for revisions right now, but I plan to tinker with the story again next year sometime between Stormlight 3 drafts.

White Sand

The graphic novel adaptation of this Cosmere book is coming along very well. The first volume’s script adaptation is finished, and pencils for the first chapter are done. We should have pages to show you before too long. Expect a lot of talk about this on the blog come 2015.

Dragonsteel

Hoid’s backstory series is still going to be one of the last Cosmere sequences I do, so don’t expect this until Stormlight is completely done. (Both sets of five books.)

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That’s the list of things people often ask me about. Unsurprisingly, I have other projects in the back of my mind. For example, I have two more Cosmere series that will need to be written before we can get to the third “big” Mistborn trilogy. (The sf one.) But that’s the long, long-term plan.

For now, my goal is to get Calamity and Stormlight 3 finished. As always, I appreciate all of the enthusiasm you show for this crazy thing that I have somehow managed to do with my life. Thank you for sharing my books with others, and for being willing to try the more unusual projects (like Legion) that I do.

I feel humbled to have a great crowd of fans who are willing to put up with my eccentricities as a writer—particularly my desire to not work on just one project, but to have an entire body of varying stories. You guys are awesome. May you have a happy holiday season, and do go munch some heads tomorrow in my name.

Brandon

p.s. If you aren’t on the newsletter mailing list, please consider signing up! In the summer, the newsletter included exclusive looks at some of the Stormlight 3 scenes I was working on. We plan to do more of this sort of thing in the future. As always, if you include your city, we’ll send you notifications when I’m going to be doing signings in the area.

Hey, all. Brandon here with a quick newsletter. I’ll be heading out to the Writing Excuses retreat very soon, and after that will be at New York Comic Con. But before I go, I wanted to mention a few books to keep your eyes out for. (And at the end, there’s a surprise for you, as thanks for being on the mailing list.)

Paperback of Steelheart is out!

First item of business is the Steelheart paperback, which launched this past week with brand-new cover art. I’m very excited about this book, and the sequel is coming out in January, so I hope you’ll give it a look if you haven’t already.

Here’s the blurb:

There are no heroes.

Every single person who manifested powers—we call them Epics—turned out to be evil.

Here, in the city once known as Chicago, an extraordinarily powerful Epic declared himself Emperor. Steelheart has the strength of ten men and can control the elements. It is said no bullet can harm him, no sword can split his skin, no explosion can burn him. He is invincible.

It has been ten years. We live our lives as best we can. Nobody fights back . . . nobody but the Reckoners. A shadowy group of ordinary humans who spend their lives studying powerful Epics, finding their weaknesses, then assassinating them.

My name is David Charleston. I’m not one of the Reckoners, but I intend to join them. I have something they need. Something precious, something incredible. Not an object, but an experience. I know his secret.

I’ve seen Steelheart bleed.

And here’s a link to sample chapters. Give the prologue a read if you’re curious. It stands pretty well on its own!

The Way of Kings is free in ebook in the US!

If you missed the news, The Way of Kings is free as part of a promotion on iBooks in the US for the launch of iOS 8. From now until the end of the year, you can download it completely free in iBooks on your iOS device or a Mac, or just using iTunes even on a Windows computer. And, not to be outdone, Amazon price-matched it for the Kindle in the US, though I’m not sure how long that will last. (Do note also that the book is DRM-free, so if you download it from either place, you should be able to read it on a variety of devices—or even your desktop computer.)

This is pretty awesome, so go grab a book before it goes back to regular price! And if you don’t mind sharing the link with your friends, I’d appreciate it. I figure with Book Three in the works (no release date yet, sorry), the more people who read the first, the better!

A Cosmere story, “Sixth of the Dusk,” in Shadows Beneath

If you follow my blog and social media feeds you heard about this a couple of months ago, but I’ve released an anthology with the Writing Excuses crew (Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Tayler, and Dan Wells) called Shadows Beneath. It includes four pieces of short fiction, as well as:

• Transcripts of the original brainstorming sessions for each story, recorded on Writing Excuses. (You can listen to them here.)
• The first draft of every story, for comparison purposes to the final draft.
• Transcripts of workshopping sessions we did for each story. (These also ran as episodes of Writing Excuses here.)
• A special “visual changes” version of each story, where we compared the first draft with the last one and put a strikethrough on each word deleted and an underline on each word added. (This will allow you to directly see the editing process of each writer.)
• Plenty of other bonus features for each story, including essays on writing and the editing process, other drafts, and other surprises.

If you are a writer or know someone who wants to become one, or if you just love to see things behind the scenes, I can’t think of another resource like this one. In this anthology you can see the step-by-step process of four different writers and follow the journey from ideas to polished works. But even if you aren’t a writer, this collection has four amazing stories that are well worth the value. (And check out the cover by Julie Dillon, who won a Hugo Award this year for her artwork.)

My story in the anthology is a novella set in the Cosmere, the universe shared by Mistborn, the Stormlight Archive, Warbreaker, Elantris, and the novellas The Emperor’s Soul and “Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell.” This new novella, “Sixth of the Dusk,” takes place on a previously unseen planet where people use birds to grant them magical talents, and a solitary island trapper discovers a plot to destroy his way of life—and maybe his entire culture. This story does some things I’ve been playing around with for a while, so I hope you’ll check it out. You can read an excerpt here.

Legion: Skin Deep preorder

Final item of books-coming-out business is Legion: Skin Deep. This is my second novella in a sequence about Stephen Leeds, a man with a very strange brain. This is a bit of a departure for me, a contemporary thriller instead of a fantasy novel, but each story still has its fill of Sanderson craziness.

The first one is a few bucks for digital download, and the second one (which is twice as long) has a limited edition signed leatherbound hardcover for sale on the publisher’s website. It should be released in November, and there will also be a cheap ebook edition released about the same time. (And if you buy the hardcover directly from Subterranean, you get the ebook for free.)

For those wondering, yes, there will be a non-limited-edition version of the hardcover coming probably next year sometime, after the limited edition sells out. We’re not sure when that will be, but it will be coming. (And the first book will go back into print relatively soon, so stay away from the two-hundred-dollar copies on eBay.)

You can read an excerpt of the first book here, and the beginning of the second book is here.

Bonus for newsletter readers!

I want to start adding in little scenes of what I’m working on for mailing list members, as a thank you for letting me email you. So thanks! The following is a scene from Stormlight Three. Yes, it has big spoilers for Words of Radiance, so I suggest not continuing further until you’ve read that book!

Also, do be aware that the chapter is very rough, and hasn’t seen an editor’s eyes (or even had a second look-through by me). So it’s bound to have plenty of errors, and might transform dramatically before it’s in the finished book.

Still, I hope you enjoy it—and as always, thanks for reading!

Brandon

(The preview chapter was an exclusive for newsletter subscribers. Sign up here.)

I’m back, and feeling somewhat behind on my writing projects, but I had a wonderful time overseas! (And up north too.) If you missed me, I left signed books in many places I visited. I’ll post a full list below, but do want to give special mention to the Sentry Box in Calgary—who kindly sponsored my Magic draft at When Words Collide—where I hid one of the very last Szeth punch-out figures I have! All of the books they have there are signed, with prizes inside, but one copy of Words of Radiance has the Szeth card. Thank you, Calgary, for a wonderful reception!

The start of this trip was in Avilés, Spain at Celsius 232, where (despite having to fight off Rothfuss fans at every corner) we had a wonderful, and relaxed, convention experience. If you live in Europe, I highly recommend this convention. They were friendly, the weather and scenery were great, and I had a lot of fun. I even worked on a novella on the flight home, much as I did for Legion (written on the flight home from France sevearal years back) and The Emperor’s Soul (done on the flight home from Taiwan). You should see it eventually, though right now I have other projects to get to. (More on that below.)

The next stop was London, at the ever-awesome Forbidden Planet store. I did a new Stormlight reading (if you missed it, Tor posted it here) and afterward headed to a local pub to play a Magic tournament. This one was particularly cool since Wizards of the Coast’s European branch showed up with cards and extra prizes for everyone.

If you’ll indulge me, I want to talk about an epic game we had during this tournament. We played late enough that the pub kicked us out and we headed to my hotel lobby, where I finished up a few games with fans waiting to try their hand against me (and hoping to win one of these cool foil signed cards.)

This was Conspiracy, and I had a really solid [card]Vent Sentinel[/card] control deck. I was dominating the board against the fan, whose name I believe was Jason. (Might be some other J-name. Sorry if I got it wrong!) Well, I was feeling pretty confident and then suddenly, he played [card]Magister of Worth[/card]. This wiped out all creatures, but more importantly, wiped out the little creatures I was using with [card]Secrets of Paradise[/card] to create white mana.

I looked at my hand, which was full of white cards, and made the snap decision to tap one of my guys for mana before they died, then [card]Swords to Plowshares[/card] his Magister. This left us both with completely empty boards, and him with an empty hand.

I was still feeling all right about this. I had almost full life, while he was under ten.

Then, he top-decked a 30/30 [card]Cogwork Grinder[/card], flipped over a conspiracy that gave it haste, and smashed my face. Instant game over. I’d done an okay job of defending the expensive cards Wizards sent (only losing the Foil [card]Brainstorm[/card] so far) but this stomped me flat, and so, I present to you the winner of the foil [card]Dack Fayden[/card].

Hey, all! Brandon here. It’s been a few months since the release of Words of Radiance, and the book was a smash success. Thank you all for your continued support and enthusiasm.

I’m unlikely to tour again until early next year, so I wanted to drop you all a newsletter and let you know what I have going on in the next six months or so.

In This Newsletter

• Convention Appearances
• Writing Excuses Anthology
• Legion 2
• Firefight
• Stormlight 3
• Altered Perceptions Anthology

Convention Appearances

I’ll be attending a few conventions the remainder of this year, starting off with this weekend. I hope to see you at one of them! See my events calendar for details.

Baltimore: May 23–26, Balticon
I’m doing a blog post about my Balticon schedule on Thursday, so if you’re local, check it out!

Salt Lake City: July 3–6, Westercon
This convention will also feature the release of the Writing Excuses Anthology. See below.

Spain: July 30–August 2, Celsius 232 in Avilés
This is my one stop in continental Europe for the year.

London: August 4–6
Details of my UK appearances are still being worked out, but these are the dates I’ll be there. Check my calendar for the locations and times as August approaches.

Calgary: August 8–10, When Words Collide
I’ve almost gotten to Calgary once before, but this time you won’t be able to avoid me.

Salt Lake City: September 4–6, Salt Lake Comic Con
I’m not sure yet which days of the convention I’ll be there. Possibly just one day. Details are subject to change, and will firm up as the convention approaches.

Writing Excuses Anthology

I haven’t mentioned this anywhere else yet, but the newsletter gets a sneak peek. We’ll be debuting something cool at Westercon—an anthology collecting the stories we at Writing Excuses brainstormed on air a while back. My contribution to the anthology is a Cosmere novella titled “Sixth of the Dusk,” and you can read a preview here. Aside from being released in hardcover, the anthology will also be available as an ebook. More news on this is coming in June!

Legion 2

Revisions aren’t done yet, but Legion: Skin Deep is finished and I expect the book to come out later this year. (If you haven’t read the first Legion yet, you might want to hold off on grabbing a copy until June, as we should be running it as part of a StoryBundle where you can grab it and other books for a discount. Look for an announcement on my website on June 18th.)

Firefight

The release date for the Steelheart sequel is January 6th. I’ve finished the second draft and have feedback from my editor on the whole book. The book turned out really, really well, but there are some issues with the ending that still need to be fixed. I expect to be done with the next draft in June, and then it will start going into production. You can preorder Firefight here.

Stormlight Three

I know that the sequel to Words of Radiance is the book that many of you want most to hear about. I plan to start writing it late this summer, and you can watch the progress bars on my website as I do so! You shouldn’t have to wait nearly as long for book three as you did for book two.

Altered Perceptions Anthology

While you’re waiting for Stormlight Three, you’ll be able to read five chapters from the original version of The Way of Kings that I wrote back in 2003. They’re very different from the published novel. On tour, I mentioned that originally Kaladin made a very big decision in the first version of the book that took him in a completely different direction.

You also may want to in Stormlight Three yourself—to have your name used for a member of Bridge Four or someone else in another of my worlds. For three generous people, this will be possible. Read on.

What Is Altered Perceptions?

The Altered Perceptions anthology will collect “altered” versions of published stories—deleted scenes, alternate endings, original concept chapters, and that sort of thing. This anthology is where you’ll be able to find the five chapters of the original version of The Way of Kings. You can see a brief preview at the end of this newsletter.

These chapters are quite fun, as I consider what happened in The Way of Kings Prime (as I now call it) to be an “alternate reality” version of the events in the published books. The characters are almost all exactly the same people, but their backstories are different, and that has transformed who they are and how they react to the world around them. Roshar is similar, yet wildly different, as this was before I brought in the spren as a major world element.

If you’re a fan of the Stormlight Archive, I think you’ll find these chapters quite interesting. The anthology also includes a lot of very cool scenes, chapters, and stories from awesome authors, so please check it out.

Why Are We Doing It?

This anthology was my idea, conceived to benefit my friend Robison Wells, a writer who has nearly been crushed by the weight of severe and unexpected mental illness. The money will help him pay his debts, which came upon him as a result of losing his job following the advent of his difficulties. They came upon him quite unexpectedly, and his story serves as a reminder to all of us that mental illness—though something we speak about far less often—can come upon a person as unexpectedly as cancer or heart disease.

Rob is a great guy, and a great member of my local writing community. He has published several novels nationally, all of which are quite good, and was the primary force behind the founding of the Whitney Awards, created to honor LDS writers. He’s also the brother of Dan Wells, my podcasting buddy.

The anthology is being launched via an IndieGoGo campaign, which you can read more about here. There’s also a video with a bit more from Rob on his condition, and I talk about the idea for the anthology at around the 3:09 mark. As for what you get for contributing to the campaign, a simple ten bucks will get you the ebook of every contribution to the anthology, DRM-free, to be used on any platform you desire. However, there are also other cool things up for grabs. (Critiques, dinners, signed editions, and Larry Correia blowing things up with a big gun. Three truly generous donors will also be able to have their names appear in one of my future books. See here for details.)

Rob has been spectacular at getting a handle on his illness and learning to manage it. He has written new books and has them on submission. We’re confident that if we can help him dig out from underneath some of this debt, he will be able to cope long-term. We hope that you’ll be interested enough in this project to lend a hand and get something cool in return.

The IndieGoGo funding campaign ends in three days, and it’s still short of its goal. The anthology will be released and all perks will be delivered even if the goal isn’t met, but the funding goal is an accurate measure of what will dig Rob out of his current hole.

Local Utah television station KSL put an article about the anthology on their website today. Check it out.

And now, enjoy the following preview of the 27,000 words from the first version of The Way of Kings that will be included in the anthology.

Brandon

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