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

For those of you who follow my social media channels, this won’t come as a surprise but Sixth of the Dusk is being featured in StoryBundle’s annual Truly Epic Fantasy collection which is curated by Kevin J. Anderson.

Along with my work, this bundle will also feature pieces from the legendary author R.A. Salvatore, Michael A. Stackpole, and many many more.

Not only do you get to fill your e-reader with epic stories that will last half a year–at a bargain-basement price–but you also get to support charity. You name your price for the bundle, and a portion of the proceeds will go to support the Challenger Learning Centers for Space Science Education.

This bundle promotion will only last for two more weeks so pick up your copy while you can!

How it works

• Support awesome indie authors by paying however much you think their work is worth!
• Pay at least $15 to unlock TEN more books from R.A. Salvatore, Brandon Sanderson, Kim May, William Heinzen and more!
• Read all our books on just about any tablet, ereader, laptop or
  even your smartphone.

The initial titles in the The Truly Epic Fantasy Bundle 2017 (minimum $5 to purchase) are:

• Knight of Flame by Scott Eder
• A Hero Born – Realms of Chaos Book 1 by Michael A. Stackpole
• Joanna Crusader by Hilary Benford
• The Fallen – The Greatest Sin Book 1 by Lee French and Erik Kort
• The Education of Brother Thaddius and Other Tales of DemonWars by R.A. Salvatore

If you pay more than the bonus price of just $15, you get all five of the regular titles, plus TEN more!

The initial titles in the The Truly Epic Fantasy Bundle 2017 (minimum $5 to purchase) are:

• Obstacles by Ryan English
• Blood of Akhilles by R.M. Meluch
• Blood Curse by Quincy J. Allen
• Warrior of Light by William Heinzen
• The Moonflower by Kim May
• Shadowguard by Gama Ray Martinez
• Sixth of the Dusk by Brandon Sanderson
• Spearwielder’s Tale – The Woods Out Back by R.A. Salvatore
• The Sword of Bedwyr – The Crimson Shadow by R.A. Salvatore
• Unwilling Souls by Gregory D. Little

Why StoryBundle? Here are just a few benefits StoryBundle provides.

• Get quality reads: We’ve chosen works from excellent authors to bundle together in one convenient package.
• Pay what you want (minimum $5): You decide how much these fantastic books are worth. If you can only spare a little, that’s fine! You’ll still get access to a batch of exceptional titles.
• Support authors who support DRM-free books: StoryBundle is a platform for authors to get exposure for their works, both for the titles featured in the bundle and for the rest of their catalog. Supporting authors who let you read their books on any device you want—restriction free—will show everyone there’s nothing wrong with ditching DRM.
• Give to worthy causes: Bundle buyers have a chance to donate a portion of their proceeds to The Challenger Center For Space Education
• Receive extra books: If you beat the bonus price, you’ll get the bonus books!

For those of you who have been paying attention to my various feeds on my social media channels this won’t come as a surprise, but for those of you who are just seeing this, Humble Bundle has put together a collection which includes many of my shorter works as well as the Graphic Audio edition of a few others. I will get to more on that shortly. Many of you may not know how Humble Bundle works and I don’t think I could say it any more succinctly than they have listed on their website.

Brandon Sanderson’s the man. So we’re bringing you a bundle of some of his highlights – and some lesser-known titles, too. Some are audiobooks and some are ebooks, but all are awesome.

Pay $1 or more. All together, the novellas, audiobooks, game guides, and graphic novel in this bundle would cost over $174. Here at Humble Bundle, though, you name your price of $1 or more and increase your contribution to upgrade your bundle!

Read them anywhere. The books are available in PDF, ePUB, and MOBI formats (instructions are here); the adventure game and supplements are available in PDF; the comic is available in PDF, ePub, and CBZ formats (instructions are here); and the audiobooks are available as MP3 and FLAC files (instructions are here).

Support charity. Choose where the money goes – between the publishers, The Moth Education Program (Storyville Center for the Spoken Word), and, if you like, a second charity of your choice via the PayPal Giving Fund. For details on how this works, click here. If you like what we do, you can leave us a Humble Tip too!

So, What’s Included?

Pay $1 or more

• Firstborn/Defending Elysium
• The Emperor’s Soul
• Legion
• Legion:Skin Deep
• Warbreaker Part 1 – Graphic Audio
• Elantris Part 1 – Graphic Audio
• Mistborn Adventure Game

Pay $8 or more to also unlock!

• Sixth of the Dusk
• Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell
• Perfect State
• Warbreaker Part 2 – Graphic Audio
• Elantris Part 2 – Graphic Audio
• Terris: Wrought of Copper Player’s Guide

Pay $15 or more to also unlock!

• Snapshot
• Dreamer
• The Hope of Elantris – Graphic Audio
• Warbreaker Part 3 – Graphic Audio
• Elantris Part 3 – Graphic Audio
• White Sand – Graphic Novel
• Alloy of Law: Mistborn Campaign

There are a few regional restrictions that we couldn’t work around, so a few items will vary from one region to another so use the link at the top to check the specifics for your locale.

Hey, all! It’s the time of year again when nominations have opened for the Hugo and Nebula Awards. To nominate for the Nebula Awards, you need to be a member of SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. To nominate for the Hugo Awards this year, you need to be a member of the 2015 World Science Fiction Convention in Spokane, Washington, or be a member of the 2016 Worldcon in Kansas City or have been a member of the 2014 Worldcon in London (some of you became London Worldcon members when The Wheel of Time was on the ballot last year).

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.

That said, I do have a particular request this year. Although all of the stories in Shadows Beneath: The Writing Excuses Anthology are indeed eligible on their own in the fiction categories (and I’m certain each writer would love them to be considered on that merit), we at Writing Excuses (Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Tayler, Dan Wells, and I) consider the main purpose of the anthology to be an aid to aspiring writers.

In past years, we’ve been nominated as a podcast for a Hugo Award in the Best Related Work category, and we won that award in 2013. This year, we would ask potential nominators to consider Shadows Beneath in this category instead of the podcast. We are very proud of the anthology, and think it does things that no writing textbook has before attempted. If you are eligible to nominate for the Hugo Awards, we will happily send you a copy for review. Please drop me an email through my website, and we will get one to you ASAP.

Now, on to the list:

Brandon Sanderson’s Award-Eligible Works for the 2014–2015 Season

Best Novel (Hugo or Nebula)

• Words of Radiance (Tor/Gollancz)

Best Novella (Hugo or Nebula)

• Sixth of the Dusk (From Shadows Beneath: The Writing Excuses Anthology)
• Legion: Skin Deep (Subterranean Press)

Best Related Work (Hugo Only)

• Shadows Beneath: The Writing Excuses Anthology (Dragonsteel Entertainment)
  (Note, if you are eligible to nominate, please feel free to request a review copy through my email contact form here.)

As an aside, if you don’t have at least a supporting membership for Worldcon, you should totally consider getting one (currently $40). 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 three 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 2014 or 2016 Worldcons by that date). To vote on the final ballot, you must be a member of the 2015 Worldcon only, by the voting deadline (sometime in July).

I’m going to be attending Worldcon this year in Spokane. I visited there for a different convention a few years back, and was impressed by how well the committee—many of whom are working on Worldcon this year—ran the convention. It should be a great time, and it’s one of the most chill ways I know of to hang out with authors. Worldcon is 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.

Hope to see many of you there!

Brandon

Brandon’s assistant Isaac here to talk about the process of creating the ebook cover for Sixth of the Dusk.

We knew from the beginning of the Shadows Beneath anthology project that at some point we wanted to release Brandon’s story by itself, especially for those who just wanted the story apart from the extra content about the writing process. Even as I searched artists and images for the anthology cover—and eventually settled on the now-Hugo-Award-winning Julie Dillon’s lovely kaiju illustration—I was on the lookout for something we could eventually use for Sixth of the Dusk.

For the anthology interior, we commissioned a black-and-white illustration from the talented Kekai Kotaki, so in looking for a cover image, I wanted to find something that could complement Kekai’s vision of the story. We’re not quite looking at a tropical paradise here, so I wanted something that said beautiful, lush, and tropical, yet rugged and adventurous at the same time.

Often we commission art for our interiors and covers, but in this case during my search for the Shadows Beneath cover image, I’d set aside an image that I thought might work. I showed it to Brandon, and he agreed, and afterward I contacted the artist, Jorge Jacinto, who let us license the image from him. Going above and beyond, Jorge also touched up the illustration to match the text, adding Dusk and his birds as the foreground figure. This bit of customization only improved upon an already wonderful painting. In the final cover I wound up tilting it a bit to 1) fit all the elements in that I felt portrayed the story and 2) add a few dynamic diagonal lines to the final cover composition.

Typographically I wanted to tie Sixth of the Dusk to its mother publication, Shadows Beneath, so I returned to those earlier files and lifted the style we’d created for the anthology and began adapting it to an ebook-only release of Sixth.

Sometimes we create two different covers. In the case of Shadows Beneath, we altered the text size from the print to the ebook version in order to make the image and title more legible at thumbnail size. In ebook covers, bigger, bolder, more contrast, and less visual noise often work for a more successful image. The thumbnail needs to be attractive and legible to readers looking for a particular book, or a particular kind of book. Here you can see the difference between the print book and the ebook.

Hardcover:

With Sixth of the Dusk, I jumped right into the “make it big and legible” mindset. I wanted readers to see the title and be intrigued, I wanted Brandon’s name prominent so that his fans would recognize that this is a story for them, and I wanted those same readers to know that this is a story that takes place in Brandon’s connected universe, the Cosmere.

The straight porting of the beveled text wasn’t quite working for me. It was looking too busy visually, and I didn’t like what was going on with the bevel on the X in particular, so I stepped back. The fonts worked fine for me, so I returned the text to its raw form and began building up from there, eventually settling on a flatter, cleaner look, which I think links the story to the original anthology while at the same time working well within the world of the new illustration.

I haven’t mentioned yet how much I love Sixth of the Dusk. It’s a beautiful, engaging story, that not only expands Brandon’s Cosmere, but also poses some interesting questions worthy of contemplation. I hope you enjoy reading it!

There are two new Writing Excuses episodes to talk about:

• Fan Writing, with Chris Garcia
• The Convention-Author Relationship, with Deirdre Saoirse Moen

Both episodes were recorded at Westercon/FantasyCon earlier this year in front of a live audience. Chris has worked in fanzines for years (and won a Hugo Award for Best Fanzine), and Deirdre runs conventions. Both have lots of great stuff to say, so check the episodes out.

The Writing Excuses anthology, Shadows Beneath, is still included in the NaNoWriMo Writing Tools Bundle of DRM-free writing advice ebooks, as well as through the standard ebook vendors that you can see above. We also still have some copies of the hardcover (with the ebook included).

Writing Excuses also announced last week that the September 2015 Out of Excuses Writing Workshop and Retreat will take place not in Chattanooga as in previous years, but on a cruise ship in the Caribbean, with many more participant slots available. If that sounds interesting to you, check out the description and the registration page.

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

Paperback of Steelheart is out!

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

Here’s the blurb:

There are no heroes.

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

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

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

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

I’ve seen Steelheart bleed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Legion: Skin Deep preorder

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

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

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

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

Bonus for newsletter readers!

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

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

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

Brandon

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