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

[Assistant Peter’s note: This post was written back in March by Karen Ahlstrom, but it fell through the cracks while we were working on Oathbringer.]

I just finished the timeline for Oathbringer, and thought you might like to hear about the process. (Spoiler warning: There may be tidbits of information in this article about the plot of Oathbringer, but I have specifically made up many of the examples I use, so you can’t count on any of it as fact.)

I know that some of you think, “Brandon posted that he had finished writing Oathbringer months ago. Why do we have to wait until November before it’s on the shelf at the bookstore?” This is a natural question. I asked it myself years ago when I heard similar news about a Harry Potter book. The timeline is one small part of the reason, but it will give you a small glimpse of what is going on at a frantic pace here at Dragonsteel trying to get the book ready to go to press.

You may know that I’m Brandon’s continuity editor. I keep records of every character, place, spren, and piece of clothing to name just a few. The next time a person appears, I make sure they have the right eye color and eat the right kind of food. There’s so much more to it than that, but it gives you an idea of the level of detail I try to be on top of.

Another thing I track is the timeline of each book. I have a massive spreadsheet called the Master Cosmere Timeline (I can hear some of you salivating right now, and no, I won’t let you peek at certain corners of it).

In some of Brandon’s books, there are a few main characters who spend most of their time together in the same place. For those books, the timeline is simple. Take The Bands of Mourning for instance. It’s about four days long. Nobody goes off on a side quest. The timeline only takes up 32 lines in the spreadsheet because there are that many chapters. On the other hand, the current spreadsheet for the Stormlight books has over 1100 lines.

Here’s a sample of the timeline spreadsheet. The white columns are the dates, which I have an entirely separate post about. In column F we have an event that happens in the book. Column E tells how long it has been since the last event. Then I have the quote from the book that I used to justify the timing, the chapter the quote appears in, and whether the event happened on the day of the chapter, or sometime in the past or future.

The timeline for Oathbringer starts on day 4 of the new year, and ends on day 100. (Which, for those of you who keep track of such things, makes the date 1174.2.10.5). My day count could change by a day or two here and there, but I’m pretty happy with how I got the different groups of people to all end up in the same place at the same time.

Why bother? Well, sometimes Brandon writes a flashback and someone is looking at a cute baby. It’s important to tell Brandon that this particular kid wasn’t born for another four years. A character might think to themselves, “It’s been a month and a half since I was there,” and though it has been 45 days, a month on Roshar is 50 days long, so it hasn’t even been a single month. Brandon often glosses over those conversions in early drafts.

The most important purpose, though, comes when two groups of characters are apart for some length of time. Let’s take Kaladin and Dalinar in The Way of Kings. Kaladin was running bridges for battles where Dalinar and Sadeas cooperated. Were there the same number of days in Kaladin’s viewpoint between those battles as there were in Dalinar’s viewpoint? The answer is no. I was assigned this job after that book was finished, and as much as we squashed and fudged, there is still a day or two unaccounted for. An interesting tidbit from The Way of Kings‘ timeline is that Kaladin’s timeline has 50 days in it before Dalinar’s starts. Chapter 40, when Kaladin recovers from being strung up in the storm, is the same day as the chasmfiend hunt in Chapter 12.

Going back to Oathbringer, sometimes I’m amazed at the power I have. As I go through the manuscript, I can take a sentence like, “He spent four days recovering,” and simply replace the word four with two. Brandon gives me a general idea of how long he wants things to take, and I tell him what it needs to be to fit. It’s a big responsibility, and sometimes I worry that I’ll mess the whole thing up.

Oathbringer is the first book in the Stormlight series where I worked with a list of the storms from the start. Peter tried on Words of Radiance, but Brandon wrote what the story needed and expected us to fit the storms in around that (A perfectly reasonable process, even if it makes my job trickier). In Oathbringer though, the Everstorm and highstorm are each on a much stricter schedule. We need such exact timing in some scenes that Peter (with help from beta reader Ross Newberry) made me a calculator to track the hour and minute the storms would hit any given city.

Yet another thing we needed to calculate is travel time. How fast can a Windrunner fly? How many days does it take to march an army from here to there? Kaladin might be able to do a forced march for a week, but what about Shallan or Navani? How long could they manage 30 miles a day?

Hopefully now you can see why we’ve needed months of work to get this far, and will need months more to get it finished in time. At some point, we’re just going to have to call it good and turn the book over to the printer, but even though you think you want to get your hands on it now, it will be a much better read after we have the kinks worked out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best Novel

• The Bands of Mourning
• Calamity
• The Dark Talent

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

Best Novella

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

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

Best Series (Hugo Awards only)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adam here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you were unable to get your hands on a signed and numbered copy of The Bands of Mourning, now is your chance! Weller Book Works has announced that they have some available to purchase, and they ship worldwide. Click here to see more details and order your copy. They also have a few copies of The Stormlight Archive Pocket Companion available for free—all you have to pay for is shipping. For more information on the pocket companion, email books@wellerbookworks.com.

Also, Audible just released their “Best of the Year (so far!)” list, and The Bands of Mourning is included in the Sci-Fi & Fantasy category. Check out The Bands of Mourning and all the other customer favorites and editor picks.

In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, Stakes!, we talk a lot about “raising the stakes” in our writing. When we say “stakes,” we’re referring to the things that keep our characters involved in the conflict, rather than just walking away and doing something else. We dig into what this really means, and how everyone in the story must be driven by things that they have at stake.

Last week, in Tor.com’s continuing reread posts for Words of Radiance, Shallan located a gate, Adolin made good use of a slain rock, and Kaladin struggled to stand between Elhokar and Moash. This week, in Chapter 84, Shallan begins to figure out the gate, Adolin proves his dueling prowess, and Kaladin stands.

My assistant Adam has updated the Twitter post archive for June.

On Monday night we had a very successful release party for the newest Mistborn novel, The Bands of Mourning. It’s now available worldwide in print, audio, and ebook, and you can find links to where to get it in the tabs at the upper right of the post. If you have already read Shadows of Self (which came out in October), then check out the sample chapters of the new book. (They do have spoilers for the previous books!)

There’s also a surprise novella that came out at the same time, ebook-only for now. If you haven’t finished The Bands of Mourning yet, it’s best to pretend the new novella doesn’t exist until you finish Bands. But it’s something I’ve been hoping for years to be able to share with you, and I’m very pleased that now is the right time.

I talked about both of those, plus a Stormlight 3 update and something about what my writing space is like, in the January 2016 Brandon Sanderson Newsletter. If you don’t want to miss a newsletter in the future, sign up here.

On a different topic, it’s time again to consider your nominations for awards in the genre.

Nominating for the Nebula Awards is the privilege of active members of SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. (To join SFWA, you need to be a qualifying professional.) To nominate for the Hugo Awards this year, you need to be a member of the 2016 World Science Fiction Convention in Kansas City, or be a member of the 2017 Worldcon in Helsinki, Finland, or have been a member of the 2015 Worldcon in Spokane. (Anyone can join Worldcon; see the bottom of this post.)

It has become traditional in the field for writers like myself to provide a list of which works of theirs are eligible, so that people who are interested in nominating can look into them and give them consideration. As always, it is better to nominate a work because you love it in particular, rather than because of your general preference for a specific author. (Except in certain cases where the creator is instead the focus of the award, such as is the case with the Campbell Award.) The Hugo Awards have only the strength, and prestige, we give them. Please consider my works below, but nominate them only if you sincerely think they are among the best works you read last year.

Brandon Sanderson’s Award-Eligible Works for the 2015–2016 Season

Best Related Work (Hugo Only)

• Writing Excuses Season 10

Best Novel (Hugo or Nebula)

• Shadows of Self (Tor/Gollancz)
• Firefight (Delacorte/Gollancz)

Best Novella (Hugo or Nebula)

• Perfect State (Dragonsteel Entertainment)

As I’ve done the past few years, where I send out a review copy of one work to eligible nominators, this year I’ll be doing the same for Perfect State. So if you have a membership for the 2015, 2016, or 2017 Worldcon, feel free to drop me an email through my website requesting an ebook of Perfect State and saying which Worldcon you’re a member of (or saying you’re an active SFWA member), and we’ll respond with a copy of the novella.

If you don’t have at least a supporting membership for Worldcon, you should totally consider getting one (currently $50). With a supporting membership, you get voting rights on the Hugo Awards, and will be sent ebook copies of most (if not all) of the nominated books and stories (last year, the publisher of several of the novels decided not to include them in the packet). To nominate, you must have your membership by January 31st (or be a member of the 2015 or 2017 Worldcons by that date). Nominations close on March 31st. To vote on the final ballot, you must be a member of the 2016 Worldcon specifically, by the voting deadline (sometime in July).

Worldcon is one of the most chill ways I know of to hang out with authors. It’s not like a comic con; there’s no frantic air of merchandising or enormous crowds. (Though I do enjoy comic cons.) Worldcon is about interacting with fellow fans and with writers. You can nominate and vote on the Hugo Awards with just a supporting membership, but to attend the convention requires an attending membership.

Tonight is the night! The official launch party for The Bands of Mourning starts tonight at 10:00 pm at the BYU Bookstore. Don’t forget to swing by and get your number before 8:00 so you don’t lose your place in line (bring an ID and your proof of purchase). Just to give you another quick breakdown of the schedule (for full details, check out this blog post):

• 10:00 p.m. Monday, January 25th (doors open). I will be getting there a bit early to pre-sign and number all the books. Then I’ll mingle with the crowd for a while, followed by my reading and Q&A session downstairs.
• 12:00 a.m. January 26th Monday night/Tuesday morning (book released). You can pick up your book and go, or get in line for personalizations, which could take until 3:00 a.m.

Both Calamity and The Bands of Mourning are being featured in Audible’s Winter Preview—books that the editors at Audible are most excited for. You can check out the complete list here.

In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, Newton’s Laws of Writing, we decide to play around with the idea of mapping Newton’s Laws onto the process of writing.

Last week, in Tor.com’s continuing reread posts for Words of Radiance, Kaladin was released from prison. This week, in Chapter 67, Dalinar faces an unsubtle attempt to make him look foolish, and turns the tables to render the attack powerless.

My assistant Adam is has updated the twitter posts archive for January.

At 12:00 a.m. on January 26th, I will be doing the world’s first and only signing for The Bands of Mourning. In past years some readers have enjoyed camping out at the bookstore to get a low-numbered copy. But at the Shadows of Self release for various reasons, we tried something new: a digital line. The experiment worked well, so for this release we’re using a variation on that. Numbers will be assigned by the order you enter the digital line. Further details from the BYU Store and my signing assistant Kara are below. The entry form will become available on January 15th at 10:00 a.m., and closes on January 21st at 11:59 p.m.

As I mentioned yesterday, because of the extensive tour I did for Shadows of Self (and because I’ll be going out on tour again in February for Calamity), I’m not planning to tour for this book. That’s why the midnight release is the only signing. But don’t worry, if you’re unable to get a signed copy at the midnight release or from Weller Book Works, I will always be happy to sign your book in the future. We will do what we can to make sure that my Calamity tour stops also have copies of The Bands of Mourning (as well as the new illustrated editions of Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians and The Shattered Lens).

Only one submission per person. This is a line! (Duplicates will be deleted.)

You will be required to preorder The Bands of Mourning by January 21st in order to be assigned a number and guarantee that a book will be there for you to pick up on January 25th. Books can be ordered online at byubookstore.com (choose the shipping option “Service Desk Pickup” to get your book at the midnight release party), or order in the store. Books ordered through byubookstore.com will not be charged to your credit card until January 22.

You must pick up your number in person from the BYU Store on Monday, January 25, between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. Bring a photo ID and your receipt or proof of purchase.

The BYU Store will reopen at 10:00 p.m. to host the book release party with some fun activities as well as prizes to be given out throughout the evening.

Around 10:45 p.m. Brandon will hold a reading and Q&A downstairs.

At 11:45 p.m., guests will be asked to begin lining up in numerical order in preparation for the distribution of books at midnight.

Once guests have picked up their signed & numbered book, they are free to leave or to get into a separate line to have their books personalized by Brandon.

If you do not pick up your number before 8:00 p.m., your number will be given to someone else. If you show up after this point to pick up your book, you will be given a different number or a refund.

Cash registers will close at 1:00 a.m. All purchases must be made by this time.

Can’t attend? See the previous post about ordering from Weller Book Works, or you can preorder a book from the BYU Store and they will send you a signed and numbered copy of The Bands of Mourning after the Midnight Release Party. You must purchase your copy by January 21st, and the numbers for these copies will be assigned after the event. Please do not sign up for the Digital Line if you’re not attending.

The bookstore has asked me to get there a bit early so I can be finished signing and numbering all the books by 10:00 or so. Once I am done, they will let everyone in and we’ll have a meet & greet where you can talk to me, ask me your burning questions, take pictures, etc. (The idea is that this will help the personalization line move more quickly after midnight.) There will also be things like trivia contests going on during this time.

Based on past events, I should be able to personalize everyone’s books, even if it takes until 3:00 a.m. Since all of the books will be pre-signed and numbered, everyone will get a numbered edition if they come. As I’m local, you can always just come, pick up a book, and leave—then get it personalized at some other signing when things aren’t so crazy. This will probably be a busy event, but it should be very easy to just come, get a pre-signed/numbered book, then buy it and take off without waiting in any lines after midnight.

Now, here’s the important part. It’s hard for stores to judge how many copies to order for this sort of event, and I’m worried that BYU might not order enough. They might run out. Therefore, they are letting you preorder to be assured you get a book. If you preorder, you are guaranteed a book. If you don’t preorder, it’s first come first served. If a lot of people preorder, they will get in more books to make sure everyone who ordered early is covered.

So, for this event, I strongly encourage you go to the website and order your book ahead of time. It will save you money and will make things easier for us. Let me say one more time, however, that you do not get your number based on when you preorder, though you do have to have paid for the book before you can get your number. You get the number based on when you signed up for the digital line. Preordering just guarantees that you get a copy, not that you get a low number. Still—please, please preorder soon so they can be sure to have enough books for the event. They have ordered a ton of copies, but it’s always possible they could underestimate and some readers could go home empty-handed. At the midnight release of A Memory of Light they were able to get a book to everyone only after a dozen people who had reserved more than one copy agreed to put off picking up their second copy until the next shipment came in!

Details:
BYU Store, Provo, UT
10:00 a.m. Friday, January 15th (digital line signups begin at this link)
8:00 a.m.–8:00 p.m. Monday, January 25th (numbers distributed at the BYU Store)
10:00 p.m. Monday, January 25th (doors open)
12:00 a.m. January 26th Monday night/Tuesday morning (book released)
Preorder by going to the BYU Store website. (For the shipping option, choose “Service Desk Pickup.”) You’ll need to bring your receipt or proof of purchase as well as your photo ID to the BYU Store before 8:00 p.m. in order to get your book number.

Full Details can be found on my event calendar here.

Tor announced this week that the ebook for The Alloy of Law, the first book in the second Mistborn sequence, is on sale at $2.99 for the rest of the year. (At least in the US; other countries may see slightly different prices. I’ve heard people say it’s $4.99 on Kindle in some countries, and €2.99 on Google Play in others.)

I know there are many of you who love the first Mistborn trilogy who haven’t yet tried out the sequels. This sale is a great opportunity to check them out, if you’ve been waffling.

The Alloy of Law jumps forward more than 300 years after the events of the original trilogy. An industrial revolution is in full force, and knowledge of gunpowder is no longer suppressed. That means guns. Lots of guns. And magic too.

With Mistborn, from the start I’ve wanted a fantasy world that changed, that grew updated and modernized. I pitched Mistorn as a series of trilogies, which many of you probably already know. Each series was to cover a different era in the world (Scadrial), and each was to be about different characters—starting with an epic fantasy trilogy, expanding eventually into a space opera science fiction series. The magic would be the common thread here, rather than specific characters.

I hadn’t originally planned to do a Mistborn sequence set in the equivalent of the early 1900s, but as I was working on Stormlight, I realized that it was going to be a long time (perhaps ten years) between The Hero of Ages and my ability to get back to the Mistborn world to do the first of the next epic arc.

That’s when I took a step back and asked myself how I really wanted to approach all of this. What I decided upon was that I wanted a new Mistborn series that acted as a counterpoint to Stormlight. Something for Mistborn fans that pulled out some of the core concepts of the series (Allomantic action, heist stories) and mashed them with another genre—as opposed to epic fantasy—to produce something that would be faster-paced than Stormlight, and also tighter in focus.

The result of this conundrum was The Alloy of Law, a shorter story arc in the Mistborn world. I believe it gives you everything you love about Mistborn in a more self-contained package. I started out thinking of these books more as a “fun adventure” rather than a deep epic. I hope you’ll approach it with that mindset. In a way, I’m hoping books like these will balance the Stormlight Archive. Sometimes, you want a 1000-page book with hundreds of different characters. Sometimes, however, you want a quick, fun book with compelling lead characters, good action, and fun banter. That’s what this book is.

Though the story does gain more depth and and breadth in the sequels. The first one, Shadows of Self, was just released last month and The Bands of Mourning, the third book in the second era, comes out in January. So if you check out The Alloy of Law and like what you see, you don’t have to wait to get more of the story!

A few years ago, some fans put together a trailer for The Alloy of Law, which although not strictly accurate is still pretty awesome. (By the way, only the prologues of the first two Wax & Wayne books take place in an Old West-type setting; the main plots take place in the big city.)