Adam here. In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, Handling a Large Cast, Brandon, Mary, Amal, and Maurice discuss their favorite techniques for managing large casts of characters, and how their processes differ from when writing small casts. What does “large” and “Small” mean?

Last week, we looked at foolish oaths, broken oaths, and the necessity of oaths to the fabric of society. This week, in chapters five and six, we’ll walk the last few miles with our favorite (only?) Windrunner and his lovely spren while they journey to Hearthstone to protect his family from the Everstorm.

Brandon recently had a signing for his newly released White Sand Vol. 2 graphic novel at Dragons Keep in Orem, Utah. He was able to sign and number some extra copies for them. If you’re wanting signed/numbered copies for your collection, that is the only place to get numbered copies–and they ship! Give them a call at 801.225.7623.

With just under three days to go on Nauvoo Games Kickstarter for the cooperative board game based on The Reckoners has reached well beyond their goal. If you haven’t had a chance to give it a look, you can check out their Kickstarter page, or give this post from a few months ago a look and check out the trailer and gameplay overview.

There are a few sales going on this week for some of Brandon’s books. If you’ve been wanting a hardcover edition of Oathbringer but haven’t purchased one yet, Barnes & Noble currently has them for 37% off list price. If audiobooks are more your style, you can get The Rithmatist and Firefight are being featured in Audible‘s “Listens you Love Sale” for only $6.95 each.

The Twitter Archives for February and March are up to date.

This week’s featured cosplay is Vin (actual size) from Emerald City Comic Con.

Firefight, from the Reckoners series, was selected to be featured in Audible’s Much Loved Listens 2-for-1 sale, which began this Sunday and runs until Monday, August 22nd. You can check the entire selection of titles available for Audible members to get 2 books for only 1 credit here.

In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, Crossover Fiction, with Victoria Schwab (who also writes as V.E. Schwab), she joined us in Phoenix to talk about books that target a given demographic but which have a much broader appeal, or books which straddle the line between age demographics. We discuss some good crossover examples, and how some of the boundaries work, and then we cover some of the techniques we use when writing crossover works.

With the completion of the Words of Radiance reread, Tor Books is offering readers and Brandon Sanderson fans a free download of The Stormlight Archive Pocket Companion through the Tor/Forge Blog.

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

In this year’s Goodreads Choice Awards, Shadows of Self is nominated in the Fantasy category and Firefight is in the YA Fantasy & SF category. The first round of voting wraps up this weekend. Congratulations to all of the nominees!

And for those of you who didn’t see the post on my Twitter and Facebook the other day, I recently participated in a podcast while on tour for Shadows of Self at The Tattered Cover in Denver. Give it a listen here.

Some exciting news coming out of New York City today; Steelheart has been placed on the ninth-grade list for the NYC Department of Educations: NYC Reads 365, aimed at supporting independent reading all year long. As many of you know, I was fourteen years old when a teacher reached out to me and suggested Barbara Hambly’s Dragonsbane, a book which changed my life and set me on the course I am still traversing today. So I am honored for one of my books to be part of such a great program.

In this week’s episode of Writing Excuses, How Do I Fix What is Broken?, we start this months discussion on “Revision” as we continue the Writing Excuses Season 10 Master Class. While many of you may be tempted by NaNoWriMo, there’s a different kind of work to be done! Delia Sherman joins us again, this time for a frank talk about the tools and techniques we use during our revisions.

Last week, in Tor.com’s continuing reread posts for Words of Radiance, Szeth sat on top of Urithiru, feeling sorry for himself and working himself up to go find better answers. This week, in Interlude 11, Eshonai reveals more of the difference in her character after her transformation to Stormform; as expected, this is not a cheerful event.

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

For those who were not aware, I ran some contests through Facebook and Twitter a few weeks ago. Winners receive a set of Epic stand-up die-cut cards, and all are collected below!

One contest was for people to tweet their favorite of David’s bad metaphors from Steelheart and Firefight. Here are the winners (selected randomly). You can find a bunch more at the #steelhunt hashtag on Twitter.

• Kierstin Scharnitzke: “Megan’s eyes could have drilled holes through butter.”
• Andrew Means: “Like a washing machine at a gun show.”
• Holden R Johnson: “They looked so dangerous, like alligators. Really fast alligators wearing black. Ninja alligators.”
• Tim Bunker: “An off balance washing machine filed with a hundred epileptic monkeys.”
• Robert Fowler: “The bed as large as a really, really big piece of toast.”
• Chase Wheatley: “I feel like a brick made of porridge.”
• Midobal: “That’s an answer in the same way that ketchup can be hair gel.”
• Lisa Roush: “Like a catapult that shoots enormous grapes.”
• Hanna Mae: “I’ll be quiet as a buttered snail sneaking through a Frenchman’s kitchen.”
• Roy: “The sensation felt like an unbalanced washing machine with a hundred epileptic chimpanzees.”

The next contest we did via Facebook was the easiest; all people had to do was share a link the events page on my website and say what event they were going to or wished they could go to.

• Caitlin Schanaker
• Jean Verney-Carron
• Ross Newberry
• Benny Junker
• Brian Bowersox
• Jeremy Guebert
• Becca Horn
• Heather Kirby
• Sarah Casey

This next group of winners found out about this contest through my newsletter. So if you don’t want to miss out in the future, sign up here.

Grant Montoya

Becca Horn

Ross Newberry

Jeremy Guebert

Grant Wheeler

Jeff Wakefield

Gary Singer

Josh Mock

Karen Clarke

Mario Kadastik

The final contest was open to the readers of the Gollancz ediition (in the UK, Australia, or elsewhere)

@CrimL

@jimjollings

@12inater

@aussiekinga

@jgl_beer

@Un0ri

@ithilestante

@futuredreams35

@katernz

@scottcody88

@simpsonseattle – This guy is obviously in the US but we had an extra set so we’re sending it to him anyway.

Congratulations to all the winners! Check your Facebook messages or Twitter direct messages for info on how to get your prize.

There was also a separate Steelhunt fan art contest that was run by the Adonalsium Tumblr page. You can see the results of that here.

Greetings from Taiwan! I will be attending the Taipei International Book Exhibition (TIBE) this week. I’ll have more information on my exhibition schedule later this week. Watch this space for details. For those who want to attend, here’s address:

Taipei World Trade Center
10F., No.180, Section 1, Keelung Road
Taipei City, Taiwan 110

The Writing Excuses writing advice show has a new episode this week, The Worldbuilding Revolves Around Me (The Magical 1%). Dan, Mary, Howard, and I were lucky enough to have Max Gladstone sit in with us and talk to us about worldbuilding and how genre settings seem to revolve around whatever gifted, magical or otherwise special sort of people our heroes and villains happen to be.

Tor.com continues reread posts on The Way of Kings. Last week Carl commiserated with Adolin’s discovery of the shallowness of his friends, balanced by the depth of his bond with his lovely Ryshadium, Sureblood. This week, in Chapter 27, Alice Arneson returns to Shallan’s past in the pleasant, homey estate of the Davar family in Jah Keved.

My assistant Adam has updated the Twitter posts archive for February.

In this week’s Writing Excuses episode, What Do You Mean My Main Character Is Boring?, we lead off February’s Master Class with the exploration of a common problem: the main character is often the least interesting person in the story. It’s something that each of the hosts has struggled with, and we talk about the solutions we’ve arrived at (insomuch as we’ve managed to solve the problem) and what sorts of things you can do in order to solve them too.

Tor.com is continuing their reread posts on Words of Radiance. Last week, Alice got to play with all the pretty ponies. This week, Carl Engle-Laird discusses Chapter 26, and only gets to play with one of the pretty ponies. Luckily it’s Sureblood who is prettiest of them all!

My assistant Adam updated the Twitter posts archive for January.

I finished the Firefight tour a few days ago. While at signings or cons I am often surprised by my readers who bring me small gifts or make elaborate and time-consuming costumes. I’m deeply grateful for the time and thought put into these, and I try to post photos of them from time to time (at least the photos that manage to focus properly). My Firefight tour was no exception. Here are some of the small gifts and cool things I saw while on tour!

Hey everyone in Utah, I’ll be at FanX on Saturday, so you should come on down. I know a lot of you want to get Firefight signed—the booth I’m signing at won’t have copies (though we will have some of my older big titles), but the Shadow Mountain booth will have Firefight, or you can bring your own. I’ll be happy to sign any of my books you bring.

I’m doing a panel with Dan Wells where we shoot the breeze and take a bunch of audience questions. My most significant panel of this convention will be the Infinity Blade panel I’m doing with the folks from ChAIR. We’ll also have a very limited number of convention exclusive hardcovers of Infinity Blade: Redemption for sale at the signing.

I hope to see many of you there! Here’s my full schedule.

1:00–1:50 p.m. Room 250A
The Brandon and Dan Show
Brandon Sanderson and Dan Wells on writing and anything else.

2:00–2:50 p.m. Room 250A
The Infinity Blade Universe
Brandon joins Donald Mustard, Creative Director, and Geremy Mustard, Technical Director of ChAIR Entertainment to discuss their collaboration on the Infinity Blade series. The panel will be followed by an autograph signing and release of the limited edition hardcovers for Infinity Blade: Redemption, the latest novel in the series.

3:30–5:30 p.m. Badali Jewelry Booth #1410
Brandon Sanderson, Donald Mustard, & Geremy Mustard Signing
The Infinity Blade: Redemption exclusive hardcover will be available at the signing. There should be a few other books for sale, but if you want to buy Firefight stop off at the Shadow Mountain booth (#2007) before coming to the signing. Badali will also have Cosmere jewelry for sale at the signing.

The expo floor closes at 6:00 p.m.

I have some bleak news for everyone in Philadelphia: The signing tomorrow is canceled due to snow and the airlines canceling flights. I was going to be signing at Children’s Book World in Haverford. Instead, we will be trying to reschedule. But in the meantime, we’ll send them a big box of signed bookplates you can stick in the front of your books, as well as ‪#‎Steelhunt‬ cards. Hopefully those will get there next week. I’ll post again about it when they arrive. (Boston: Right now the signing on Wednesday is still scheduled to happen as planned, but this could change as the situation develops. Stay tuned to my Upcoming Events calendar.)

I will be signing at Joseph-Beth in Lexington, Kentucky tonight at 7:00 p.m. As far as I can tell it’s not a ticketed event, so bring all your books and I’ll sign them, though personalizations will be limited to 3 books per time through the line. It’s also nice to show your support for the store by buying something while you’re there. (Their café has some Reckoners-themed menu items just for the event!)

From the Writing Excuses Out of Excuses Workshop and Retreat comes another live Q&A episode where we premiered the Season 10 concept. Our attendees gave us the questions for this month:

• Ideas are hard! Is it ever acceptable for inexperienced writers to write derivative works?
• How do you keep from being discouraged when something similar to your idea comes out?
• How do you know when your idea is a novel, vs. when it’s a short story?
• Should you only write for themed anthologies if you already have an idea ready in that theme?
• How can you practice description when your idea is set someplace completely unfamiliar to you?
• When should you abandon an idea you love?

In Tor.com’s continuing re-read posts for Words of Radiance, Alice Arneson discusses Chapter 25. Last week it was of cons and curry, this week we turn to Kaladin’s Comedy Corral for your entertainment.

Today is the final day to find The Rithmatist audiobook on sale for just $6.95 (at least in the US) on Audible.

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

My tour for Firefight continues through the rest of this week: Find the full tour schedule and details here.

• Tonight (1/21) at the Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Arizona at 6:00 p.m.
• Friday, January 23 at Murder by the Book in Houston, Texas at 6:30 p.m. (They also have hardcovers of Mitosis available, and they’ll ship signed copies.)
• Saturday, January 24 at the Barnes & Noble in Newnan, Georgia at 3:00 p.m. (possibly actually more like 3:30)

Writing Excuses put up two new episodes. The first one is on Lovecraftian Horror, where we, with the help of Cherie Priest, discuss what it is, the influence it’s had on genre fiction, and the tools if offers to modern writers. The second is a mini-episode talking about Shadows Beneath‘s 2015 Hugo Award eligibility, which I mentioned on the blog earlier this week when I talked about my eligible works.

Tor.com is continuing their series of re-read posts for Words of Radiance. This week, Carl Engle-Laird discusses Chapter 24, which is mostly talk about cons and curry.

A couple months back I was featured on the school library TV show Bookends. You can watch the video here.

The Mistborn dice Kickstarter from Crafty Games is in its final 3 days. They just added Atium and Gold dice to every set, and if 85 more people back it, everyone who gets a dice set also gets a free digital edition PDF of the Mistborn Adventure Game.

My assistant Adam updated the Twitter posts archive for January.

Sign up to my newsletter here.

With the release earlier this week of Firefight, the second book in the Reckoners trilogy, the publishers put the ebook of the first Reckoners novel, Steelheart, on sale at $2.99 in the US and £1.99 in the UK. Well, tomorrow is the final day for that special discount in the US, and then the ebook will go back up to full price. If you haven’t checked Steelheart out, now’s a good chance! Ebook links are to the upper right in the regional tabs. Sample chapters are here, and that page also links to a free ebook of the first five chapters.

If you’ve already read Steelheart but hadn’t noticed that Firefight is out, you can find store links for that here. And I’m continuing my book tour on January 16th; see the full list of cities here. Happy reading!