Adam here. I just wanted to give all of you a little reminder that the Hugo Award voting deadline is tomorrow (July, 31st). Voting is open to all supporting and attending members of Worldcon 76. If you’re wanting to cast your vote but aren’t a Worlcon member, it’s not too late. You can still register and vote online.

I have some exciting news for Audible members: The Emperor’s Soul, Steelheart, Elantris, and Warbreaker are all part of Audible’s Sci-Fi & Fantasy Sale and are only $4.95 (at least in the U.S.) each! So, if you’ve been tinkering with the idea of trying a new book or series, this is the perfect opportunity.

In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, Project in Depth, THE CALCULATING STARS, with Kjell Lindgren, Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Kjell Lindgren—who is a current NASA astronaut and one of Mary’s consultant readers on The Calculating Stars: A Lady Astronaut Novel. If you haven’t read it yet, you may wish to rectify that prior to listening.

Like most of their project-in-depth episodes, this one runs long. Longer still because we were at JPL in Houston, which was incredibly cool for all of us, so nobody was watching the clock.

Last week, in Tor.com’s continuing reread of Oathbringer, we were able to follow Puuli, Ellista, and Venli in the first three interludes. This week, in chapter thirty-three, Shallan makes her way to the room where she scared off the Midnight Mother, looking for Jasnah. She finds her and the two have a brief conversation about why Jasnah didn’t contact anyone to let them know she was still alive.

The Twitter Archive for July is up to date.

I found this week’s featured cosplay of a Shallan Davar, by lyra256, on reddit.

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

I have some exciting news for you: after months of waiting, our special leatherbound edition of The Well of Ascension has finally shipped from the printer. Huzzah!

Like our edition of Elantris, and Mistborn: The Final Empire the Dragonsteel edition of The Well of Ascension 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 Howard Lyon, gilded pages, and two-color foiling on the cover. A 24-page art gallery starts off the edition and features never-before-seen artwork, a feruchemical chart, and three maps of the Final Empire. The Dragonsteel Leather edition of Mistborn: The Well of Ascension is 797 pages.

A few things you should know: These are going to be put on my store today at 12:00 (MST). If you’re wanting signed, numbered, and personalized copies we probably won’t be able to get them out in time for Christmas, but I’ll do my best. If you just want the book itself, we should be able to get that to you in time for Christmas with priority shipping.

Along with being able to order it from my store, we’re also sending it to several independent bookstores around the country where you may be able to acquire one.

• Murder by the Book
• BYU Bookstore
• Mysterious Galaxy
• Borderlands Books
• The King’s English
• Weller Book Works
• Subterranean Press
• University Bookstore

For those of you who have been waiting to get your hands on the first leatherbound volume, Mistborn: The Final Empire, we also just received the second printing of these and will add them to our website at the same time we add The Well of Ascension.

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

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.

Introduction

Hello, and welcome! I hope the holiday season is treating you all very well. Around this time each year, I write a blog post called State of the Sanderson. I usually post it on or around my birthday, which happens to be today. (So, happy Koloss Head-Munching Day to you all.)

These posts run long and are extensive essays that go over what I did during the year, updating you all on the projects I’ve been working on, then doing a rundown of projects that I’m planning. (Find past year’s State of the Sanderson right here.)

I hope you’ll find this helpful and interesting. Storytelling is not an exact science, and things don’t always go as planned. At the same time, I believe it important to be up-front with you all. I know what it’s like to wait for years to read the ending of a favorite series, and I appreciate your longsuffering support when I jump between projects.

In teaching my university lectures and workshop, I interact with many, many hopeful and talented newer writers. Their excitement, and worry about the future, reminds me how fortunate I am to be able to do what I love for a living. In the story of the ants and the grasshopper, I get to spend my life making music—but instead of letting me starve in the winter, you bring me in and give me something warm to eat, then you listen while I tell you a story.

It’s strange to consider what might have been. How many plausible variations of life are there where I’m not a professional novelist? Did I hit on the one perfect sequence of events that brought me here, or would I have muddled my way through even if Moshe hadn’t agreed to look at Elantris back at a party in Montreal in 2001?

Though I deal in the fantastic as my daily labor, the scene where I’m not a writer is one scene I have difficulty conjuring. Would I be a professor perhaps? I do enjoy teaching, though only in moderation. (When I had to teach the same class multiple times in a day, I found the experience monotonous. One course a year is just about right for me—exciting, vibrant, and involving new things to teach and talk about.)

Indeed, early in my graduate studies, I realized I’d never make it as an academic. Ironically, I discovered that doing all the things in my writing program that would prepare me for a good Ph.D. or MFA course (being on the staff of journals, assisting professors, traveling to conferences) would prevent me from actually writing—so I threw all of that up in the air and doubled down on my novels. Some of my colleagues went on to professorships, but I was never really headed that direction.

For me, it was always write or bust. I don’t know what busting would look like—but I do know that, barring something truly insane, it would involve me ending up with a closet full of dozens and dozens of unpublished manuscripts.

As an aside, for those who didn’t hear the story on tour this year, my second son (who is six) has started to figure out what it means that I’m an author. He came up to me a few months ago and said, “Daddy. You write books!”

I said, “Yes!”

“You sell them, so we have money for food and our house!”

“That’s right.”

“And when people visit, you give them books from the garage! That’s how you sell them!”

I often give copies of the books to friends who visit, and in his six-year-old understanding, this was how we made our living. But hey, there are worse things to be than a garage novelist with a trunk full of demo manuscripts.

In any case, you have my sincere thanks for your support! I’m glad we’re not in the alternate, dystopian Sanderson timeline where I have a goatee and have to spend my life selling people insurance.

My Year

This year was almost completely dominated by the writing of Oathbringer, Book Three of the Stormlight Archive. The first files I have for the book were Kaladin scenes, written in June 2014. But the book didn’t really start in earnest until July 2015, when I wrote the Dalinar flashback sequence. (See State of the Sanderson 2015.) I had those done by October, but November was when I really dove into the novel.

I spent most of 2016 working on it, with only a few interruptions. It was an extremely productive year spent writing on something I’m very passionate about—but it was also a monochrome year, as I poured so much into Stormlight. There were far fewer side projects, and far fewer deviations, than the year before.

I’ve come to realize I can’t do a Stormlight book every year, or even every two years. You can see that this one took around 18 months of dedicated writing time (though that does include some interruptions for edits and work on other things.) My process is such that, when I finish something like Stormlight, I need to move on for a while to refresh myself.

That said, Oathbringer is done as of last week! Here’s a quick breakdown of the year.

January: Oathbringer

A lot of this month was revisions. I decided to do something unusual for me, and revise each chunk of the book as I completed it, which let me get my editor working on his notes early in the year—rather than making him wait until this month, when the whole thing finished. That means I’ll soon have a second draft of the book completed, though I only completed the first draft a little bit ago.

Also squeezed into January was a trip to Bad Robot, where I had a cool meeting with J.J. Abrams. (In conjunction with a video game my friends at ChAIR Entertainment are making—the Infinity Blade guys. I just gave a few pointers on the story; I’m not officially involved.)

February: Calamity Tour

I toured for Calamity, the last book of the Reckoners. The whole series is out now, so check it out! There is a nice hardcover boxed set of all three available in most bookstores, and it makes a great gift.

While on tour, I read from Stormlight 3, and some kind person recorded the reading for you all. Also, here’s another version from FanX in SLC.

As to be expected, there were a huge number of awesome costumes shown off during the tour. (More than I can reasonably put in this post.) Here are a few:

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

The new Elantris maps poster set is now available in my online store for those who have been asking. These maps were composed by Isaac Stewart for the 10th anniversary and leatherbound edition of Elantris.

The seventh installment of the 2016 Sanderson Lectures, “Character,” is now live! If you missed last week’s episode, “The Business of Writing,” you can catch up on all the videos here. Enjoy!

In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, Futurism, with Trina Marie Phillips, she joins us at Phoenix Comicon to talk about her work as a futurist. Futurism, for those unfamiliar with our use of the term here, is related to science fiction, but it remains rooted in existing technology and trends, then seeks to be predictive in useful ways.

Last week, in Tor.com’s continuing reread posts for Words of Radiance, the secret societies began to reveal their purposes in aftershocks from the climax. This week, in Chapter 87, Adolin gets angry and the Radiants gather in conference.

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

Many of you have been asking for details about the release of 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. It needed a solid revision before I could send it out, and there were so many things I had to work on that the revision kept getting delayed. When the comic book company Dynamite Entertainment came along a few years ago asking if I had anything that would make a good graphic novel, it seemed the perfect opportunity to make use of White Sand.

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 unnecessary stuff. The artist Julius Gopez, the colorist Ross Campbell, the letterer Marshall Dillon, and the editor, Rich Young, have all done a wonderful job.

The novel is big (no surprise), so it’s going to be released in three volumes. The first of these comes out today!

I’ll be doing two release events for volume 1 of White Sand. See below, or the upcoming events page on my website. All copies of White Sand will be signed and numbered at both of these events.

White Sand Release and Signings

Tuesday, June 28th

Time: 7:00-9:00 p.m.
Address: Barnes & Noble Jordan Landing
7157 Plaza Center Drive
West Jordan, UT 84084
Phone: (801) 282.1324

Wednesday, June 29th

Time: 5:00-8:00 p.m.
Address: Dragon’s Keep
48 West 300 North
Orem, UT 84606
Phone: (801) 225.7623