Dragonsteel art director Isaac here. If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably seen me post about the maps for the latest Osten Ard books by Tad Williams: The Heart of What Was Lost and The Witchwood Crown. The original trilogy was what hooked me on epic fantasy in the late 80s/early 90s, and the maps for the series were part of what got me into cartography. So to be able to create new maps of Osten Ard has been something of a dream project.

These books were also foundational in Brandon’s early reading in the genre. He gave the newest books this quote:

“Tad Williams is a master storyteller, and the Osten Ard books are his masterpiece. Williams’ return to Osten Ard is every bit as compelling, deep, and fully-rendered as the first trilogy, and he continues to write with the experience and polish of an author at the top of his game.”

I was thrilled when Brandon supported the Indiegogo campaign for merchandise based on Tad’s worlds by buying the map of Osten Ard. I’ve tried to make this the essential map for the series. Remember those foil Middle Earth maps from when the movies were big? Well, I was able to get a hold of the original supplier, and that’s who’s printing the Osten Ard map. It’s going to be gorgeous, and the only way to get it is through Tad’s Indiegogo campaign. We might have a few left over after that, but I wouldn’t risk it if you really want one. There’s only a little over a week left.

For those of you waiting for a foil version of the latest Roshar map found on the back of the dustjacket for Oathbringer, keep an eye on the store over the next month or two. I hope you’ll enjoy these, as I’m quite excited for them. Thank you for reading the books. Thank you for enjoying the maps in them. You make it possible for me to do something I absolutely love.

Adam here. In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, Q&A on Heroes, Villains, and Main Characters, Brandon, Valynne, Dan, and Howard answer your questions about heroes, villains, and main characters. Here are the questions:

• How do you make planned power increases not seem like an ass-pull¹?
• What do you do when your villain is more interesting/engaging than your hero?
• How do you know when a character is unnecessary and needs to be removed from the story, or killed off in the story?
• What tricks do you use when you want the reader to mistakenly believe a character is a hero, rather than a villain?
• Which is more fun for you: creating a villain, or creating a hero?
• How many side characters can you reasonably juggle in a novel?
• What are the drawbacks to making your villain a POV character?
• If your villain doesn’t show up until late in the story, how do you make their eventual appearance seem justified?
• How do you get readers to like a character who is a jerk?

Last week, we continued on with Kaladin’s heart-wrenching homecoming before he headed off to hunt Voidbringers. This week, in chapters eight and nine, we return to Urithiru for disturbing drawings, cooperative cartography, international intrigue, and mystifying murder.

The Twitter Archive for March is up to date.

This week’s featured cosplay is of Syl and Kaladin from Emerald City Comic Con.

Brandon’s art director Isaac here with some insights on the art process for Oathbringer. We add a lot of illustrations to most of Brandon’s books, but the Stormlight Archive gets a special amount of attention. We fill each volume with sketches from Shallan and Navani, maps of cities and other locations, chapter arches and icons, color endpapers, and all sorts of in-world ephemera. As with other volumes, we hope you enjoy the extra work we put into this book in the series.

For Part 1 of this roundup, let’s talk a bit about the full-color art. While I work as Brandon’s personal art director, the amazing art directors at Tor—Irene Gallo and Seth Lerner—do an excellent job commissioning art for the covers of Brandon’s books. No discussion of the color art is complete without mentioning the fantastic job Michael Whelan did working with Tor on the cover for this book. Tor.com detailed the process here.

For a couple years now, Brandon has been talking about commissioning illustrations of the Heralds, meant to be in-world artifacts. For this book, we finally got to do just that. Dan dos Santos and Howard Lyon worked with us to create the front and back endpapers, and the results are fantastic.

There’s already been a lot of hype about these pieces online, and Howard will be posting process videos at some point, so there’s not much I can say about these that hasn’t already been said. Suffice it to say that both Dan and Howard are professionals to the core, and working with them was a great experience. Their thumbnail drawings were spot-on and approved with minimal amount of changes, and the end results are striking. Thanks to both of them for their attention to detail in illustrating the world of Roshar.

Speaking of the endpapers, here’s a side note from Brandon: “Some people found the Shalash painting to be a little too risque for their tastes, so at our request, Dan put together a slightly more opaque version for those who would rather have it for desktop wallpapers. We ended up really liking this one, so it will be the one on my website. But if you prefer the original, you can still find it in this post at Tor.com.”

As another note, prints of Howard’s Jezrien and Vedeledev paintings are available on his website. He also went into a bit more detail on the Muddy Colors blog. Dan will also be offering prints of his Heralds paintings and hopes to have them available in time for the holidays.

Many of you have already noticed this, but for Oathbringer we moved the color map from the back endpaper to the opposite side of the dust jacket. (The final version can be found here.) We first tested this out with the reissues of the Alcatraz books, and it worked so well that Tor was gracious enough to let us carry this over to the Stormlight books.

Because I’m still relatively new to painting in oils, my good friend Howard Lyon offered his expertise. So, for over a week, I worked out of his studio so he could look over my shoulder and make some suggestions. (You’ll see some of Howard’s amazing art hanging on the walls in the video below.) The map got as far as it did in part because of his great direction. I found the whole process of mixing paint, matching colors, and applying it to the canvas extremely satisfying, and I can’t wait to get back to painting at some point. Take a look at the time-lapse video below, please ignore that I look like I’m rocking out, and have fun trying to figure out what show I binge watched on my iPad as I painted.

At the beginning of the video, you’ll notice that the canvas isn’t blank at all. There are a few early steps I was unable to capture a time-lapse for. I transferred my digital version of Roshar to the canvas using a printout and tracing paper; after that, I created an underpainting in acrylics to help get a rough idea of what colors I wanted in the right spots. Then I set to work on the oils.

Where’s part two of the video? Well, that’s forthcoming. See, as with the Alcatraz map, I had the chance to paint Roshar in acrylics and oils. And also as with the Alcatraz map, I didn’t finish the physical art in time and had to finish everything up digitally. We’ll eventually create a new art print for this one, but in the meantime, the Roshar map from Words of Radiance is still available.

Next week I’ll go into more detail concerning the new interior art we produced for the book.

Assistant Isaac here with a cornucopia of cosmopoietic cartographies. (Yes, I searched the dictionary for that second word. I’m pretty sure it has something to do with worldbuilding.)

When I started working directly for Brandon, I pretty much finished up all my freelance projects and suddenly had my evenings free again. I had to learn to relax and watch TV shows. I learned my kids’ names and actually started doing things with them (see the Lego section later in this post). But the occasional freelance project does tend to sneak through. In fact, January and February of this year have a few non-Brandon books with my maps in them. Here they are! Cartography for the main course and Legos for desert!

Woven Map Reveal

A few years ago I received an email from David Powers King and Michael Jensen about the possibility of doing a map for their young adult fantasy. I was trying to clear off my freelance plate and was a little skeptical of being able to fit another map into the schedule, but I agreed to meet them at a local convention and hear about their book.

Over lunch they described what they were looking for and told me about their novel. The magic system intrigued me, and the authors’ vision of a map woven from threads to form a tapestry further hooked me. Before I was done eating, I was already thinking of ideas and making notes. So I agreed to make the map. I had a great time working with David and Michael, and I’m quite pleased with the result.

And now for the reveal! Here’s the color version of the map that appears in their book Woven, which was just released today by Scholastic.

As an aside, I’m happy to recommend the book, especially to young adults. The writing is tight, the dialogue crisp, the magic intriguing, and the characters fun. If you’re going to read the book, don’t bother reading its description. Wait for the twist round about the end of chapter 3. That’s what grabbed me. And you don’t have to worry about content on this one. It’s squeaky clean.

Brian McClellan’s The Crimson Campaign

I’ve known Brian McClellan almost as long as I’ve known Brandon. In fact, I think we might’ve been in Brandon’s class together, but I didn’t get to know him all that well till Worldcon of that same year. I’d graduated college but still spent evenings on campus doing a little writing of my own. I don’t remember how, but Brian and I started hanging out a few times a week in an alcove of the English building. We’d just sit there and write. Sometimes we read each other’s stuff, and man, Brian was good.

Fast-forward a few years. Brian and I kept in touch, and he called to tell me he had a book deal and he wanted me to do the maps and symbols. I was thrilled at the news, and doubly thrilled that he’d ask me to do the maps. That first book was Promise of Blood, a flintlock fantasy that I highly recommend.

Well, we added a new map and updated the previous ones for the sequel, The Crimson Campaign, and let me tell you, Brian just keeps getting better. Yes, I know I’m biased, but we hired Adam as Brandon’s new assistant a few months ago, and Adam and I were talking books, and he asked me, “Have you heard of Brian McClellan? I love his books.” Adam kind of drew out the word “love” in the way that’s usually reserved for saying you love sleek convertible roadsters. So I asked Adam to gush about The Crimson Campaign.

Adam here, ready and willing to gush about The Crimson Campaign. I was fortunate enough, in my former employ, to have a job that required a good deal of driving about. I was always looking for a good book to occupy my time, as driving can be tedious, when a friend suggested that I read Brian McClellan’s Powder Mage books. So I went to Audible and downloaded Promise of Blood and The Crimson Campaign. I was hooked. Very few books drag me in so quickly or so completely as did this series. I found myself taking longer routes in order to hear just a bit more. Or, after arriving at my destination, finding myself just sitting in my car to hear what happened next. Let me tell you, it was terrible for my productivity at work and it was worth every second.

Very few authors have given me that awful emptiness when finishing a book when suddenly you are ripped out of this amazing world. A world filled with; an awesome magic system, complex social constructs and cliffhangers so intense you feel your arms hurting. Only to be brought back to boring old reality. You all know what I mean and that’s why we love reading. I give this book series six out of five stars, a rating I have previously reserved for Patrick Rothfuss and our own Brandon Sanderson.

Not to rub it in or anything, but we got our hands on an early copy of the third book in the trilogy, The Autumn Republic, which will be released on February 10th. Watch for our thoughts on that one on release day.

You might be wondering about content on this one. Imagine Brandon’s books with about 15% more grittiness.

Brian Staveley’s The Providence of Fire

Earlier this month Tor released the second book in Brian Staveley’s Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne, The Providence of Fire, which I have to say is just a very cool title. Tor reached out to me to do the map in the first one, which was carried over into the second one. Here’s a post I wrote for Tor.com about the process behind the map.

Brian Staveley is top notch. His writing flows. I really care about his characters, and when I’m reading his novels, I feel like I’m in the hands of a master craftsman. I look forward to seeing where the series goes. It went over my language and brutality threshold a few times, so I’m going to put a strong content warning on this one.

No Starch LEGO Space and The Art of LEGO Design

One of the awesome parts of my job is getting to see the art-related things that come into our office. Months ago the good people at No Starch Press sent us a few of their Lego-themed books. I’m a sucker for Legos. Have been since this Lego set when I was just a wee lad. Everyone at work knows I love them too. In fact, when Brandon saw The Lego Movie, his review included the words, “and the part where the Dad shows up reminded me of Isaac.” I have since repented of my ways. Ask my kids. Now they spend hours in the Lego room playing and building, and they don’t have to worry about the Kragle anymore. So, everything is pretty dang cool.

I admit I didn’t read all the text in LEGO Space: Building the Future. That’s because I was trying to read it out loud to a five-year-old. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s not a bedtime story. The real genius of this book is that it’s an alternate history of space exploration. It starts with real events, portrayed in Lego, like Sputnik and the moon landing, and then basically asks the question, “What if the future of yesteryear’s space program looked a lot like the progression of the Lego Space line?” So the early years look like they could fit into Lego’s Classic space lineup (only coolor). If you’ve followed the evolution of Lego Space sets over the years, you’ll recognize the branding from some of the other eras too, like Blacktron and those white and blue sets that I’m not sure have a specific name.

Peter Reid and Tim Goddard are master builders. If you’re a fan of Lego Space, especially the Classic sets, do yourself a favor and lose yourself in this one for awhile. (As a side note, the Exo Suit portrayed in LEGO Space: Building the Future was adapted into a real set through Lego Ideas. I built it over Christmas break and had a blast of nostalgia hit me square in the face.

The Art of LEGO Design is a really great overview of building techniques. It doesn’t go into a lot of depth, but instead favors a broad approach that covers a lot of material, devoting a few pages to each style, technique, or what have you. The cool thing about this book is the photos taken from the author Jordan Schwartz’s collection and from other master builders’ original creations. Who knew that that piece could be used in that way? Who knew that there’s a whole subset of Lego builders who use the pieces to create mosaics? The level of creativity is astounding! Since I’m likely never to dive into Lego building as deeply as these masters, this is the sort of book where I can just sit back and enjoy the spectacle.

At the end of the day, I still have to try my hand at a few less time-consuming Lego projects, if only to stave off the building bug long enough so I can make some more maps. Behold my latest creation!