Edgedancer, a novella that was originally published last year as part of Arcanum Unbounded, was just released in eBook and (gorgeous) small hardcover yesterday.

For those of you who don’t know, the events that take place in Edgedancer occur between the closing of Words of Radiance and the forthcoming Oathbringer and is often referred to as Stormlight 2.5. The new release of Edgdancer also includes Lift’s interlude from Words of Radiance as a prologue so you can read all of her story in one place.

Here is a brief introduction to Edgedancer for those of you who haven’t read it yet.

Three years ago, Lift asked a goddess to stop her from growing older—a wish she believed was granted. Now, in Edgedancer, the barely teenage nascent Knight Radiant finds that time stands still for no one. Although the young Azish emperor granted her safe haven from an executioner she knows only as Darkness, court life is suffocating the free-spirited Lift, who can’t help heading to Yeddaw when she hears the relentless Darkness is there hunting people like her with budding powers. The downtrodden in Yeddaw have no champion, and Lift knows she must seize this awesome responsibility.

If you want to read the first few chapters of Edgedancer, Tor.com released the first 3 chapters as a preview last year.

Enjoy!

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

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:

My new book is out today! Supposedly, it’s a short story collection, but I’m not known for the “short” part so much as the “story” part. So, really, it’s a collection of long stories, with some shorter pieces gluing them together.
Almost a decade ago, I decided I wanted to be better at short fiction. Until that point, I’d written almost exclusively novels in my attempts to learn to be a writer. But there’s something magical about short(er) fiction. I love it when I’m able to sit down, pick up a book, and read a complete story in one sitting. Some of the most powerful works of literature, including A Christmas Carol, and Animal Farm, are actually short fiction, a form we call the novella.
Over the last ten years, I’ve fallen in love with writing novellas. While I have written a few true short stories (you’ll find a couple in the collection) my true talent is in my ability to set a world, populate it, and drag a character through it to see how it leaves them changed. Novellas are, essentially, short novels–and boy, they are fun to write.
The cornerstones of this collection, then, are its novellas: one set on the world of Elantris (The Emperor’s Soul), another on the world of Mistborn (Secrect History), and the third on the world of The Stormlight Archive (Edgedancer). Two other worlds (Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell and Sixth of the Dusk) will give many of you something new to taste, so the collection doesn’t just revisit what has come before.
One of the fun things about this collection is the chance you have to watch my progress as a writer. you can read some of my earlier short stories (Hope of Elantris and the Eleventh Metal) to give you something to compare to things like my most recent work (Edgedancer), written exclusively for this collection.
Even if you’re so-so on story collections, please give this book a try. I think it will change your mind. If you hate them with the white hot burning passion of the sun…um…Oathbringer is almost done. You can read that next year.
Before I leave you, let me mention the coolest part about the collection: in-world star charts and essays about the planets by Khriss, one of the great scholars in the cosmere, and the one who has been writing the Ars Arcanum section in many of my books (hence the title Arcanum Unbounded). I’m very happy with the illustration of her on the cover. All the new art in this collection is great, including star charts and full-color end pages in the American edition. You’ll find it to be a handsome book, well deserving of a place on your shelf.
Many people have asked me where they can read more about the cosmere–the connectivity between the planets of my epic fantasy works. Well, you’ll find that here – secrets, hints, and even some outright explanations.
This contains every scrap of cosmere short fiction I’ve done so far, so if you’ve been a little overwhelmed trying to collect it all, you can find it here. We stuck it all in, including things like Hope of Elantris and Allomancer Jak, which were never intended to stand alone, just so you’d have it, if you wanted it. Now you don’t have to worry about being confused or left out when other fans discuss them.
The collection is in ebook, audiobook, and gorgeous hardcover. Enjoy, and thanks for giving it a chance!
Also, don’t forget my release party tonight, and my short tour starting next week.

If you’re hungry for Oathbringer updates, check out this reddit thread from last week.

On Tuesday, November 22^nd at 7:00 p.m., I will be doing the world’s first signing for Arcanum Unbounded. Please note that this is not a midnight release, as we’ve done in the past, though there will likely be midnight release parties for future books, just not this time around. We’re using the Digital Line again, as it’s worked well for the last few releases, so mark your calendars for November 10th at 10:00 a.m., which is when the digital line’s entry form will become available. Numbers will be assigned by the order you enter the line, which closes on November 20th at 11:59 p.m. Further details from the BYU Store and my signing assistant Kara are below.

Let me tell you about a cool new thing we’re trying out for this event. When you pre-order Arcanum Unbounded, you will have the option to purchase a Cosmere-themed t-shirt, which will be exclusive to this event and not available anywhere else, including my store, for at least six months. This t-shirt is awesome, as you can see in the pictures here. The front features the newly-release Cosmere symbol, and on the back is Sanderson’s Zeroth Law: Err on the Side of Awesome. (See, I wasn’t just saying the shirt is awesome.)

Now, there will be other ways to get signed copies of Arcanum Unbounded. I’ve got a short tour planned, and signed books will be available at my various stops. The events page has details. You can also order a signed copy online from the BYU Store or from Weller Book Works. (Details on the Weller Book Works signed copies can be found at the bottom of this link. Please read all the way to the bottom to see how these editions help the Waygate Foundation. This is the only way to get a signed, numbered, and personalized book outside of the actual signings. Books ordered to be shipped from BYU will only be signed and numbered.)

Release Party Details:

November 9, 2016: Arcanum Unbounded Book Bundles become available for pre-order on byustore.com

• 1 copy of Arcanum Unbounded = $25.19 (10% off list price)
• 1 Cosmere T-Shirt = $25.00 (only available for purchase through byustore.com)
• 1 book + 1 t-shirt = $45.04 (15% off list price)

November 10, 2016 at 10:00 a.m.: Digital Line Opens

Only one submission per person. This is a line! (Duplicates will be deleted.) Please do not sign up for the Digital Line if you’re not attending the release party.

You will be required to preorder Arcanum Unbounded by November 20th in order to be assigned a number and guarantee that a book will be there for you to pick up on November 22nd. Books can be ordered in person at the BYU Store or online at byubookstore.com (choose the shipping option “Service Desk Pickup” to get your book at the release party). Books ordered through byubookstore.com will not be charged to your credit card until November 21.

You can pick up your number in person from the BYU Store starting on Monday, November 21, at 2:00 p.m. Bring a photo ID and your receipt or proof of purchase. If you do not pick up your number before 6:00 p.m. Tuesday, November 22^nd, your number will be given to someone else. If you show up after this point to pick up your book, you will be given a different number or a refund. The BYU Store will close at 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, November 22.

At 6:30 p.m., fans will be able to enter the Wilkinson Student Center (WSC) and go to Room 3228 (third floor by the bookstore) which is where we will be holding the release party. Official start time is 7:00 p.m. for Games and Trivia. Prizes will be awarded throughout the evening.

Around 7:45 p.m. Brandon will hold a reading and Q&A in Room 3228 WSC. At 8:30 p.m., guests will be asked to line up in numerical order in preparation for the distribution of books in the BYU Store itself. Once guests have picked up their signed & numbered books, they are free to leave or to get into a separate line to have their books personalized by Brandon.

Cash registers will close at 10:00 p.m. All purchases must be made by this time.

Can’t attend the release party? See the previous post about ordering from Weller Book Works, or you can preorder a book from the BYU Store and they will send you a signed and numbered copy of Arcanum Unbounded after the Release Party. You must purchase your copy by November 20^th (to ensure a numbered/signed copy). The numbers for these copies will be assigned after the event. Again, please do not sign up for the Digital Line if you’re not attending.

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

So, for this event, we strongly encourage you go to the website and order your book ahead of time. It will save you money and will make things easier for us. Let me say one more time, however, that you do not get your number based on when you preorder, though you do have to have paid for the book before you can get your number. You get the number based on when you signed up for the digital line. Preordering just guarantees that you get a copy, not that you get a low number.

Details Recap:

BYU Store, Provo, UT

• 10:00 a.m. Thursday, November 10th (digital line signups begin at this link)
• 2:00 p.m. Monday, November 21^st (numbers begin being distributed at the BYU Store)
• 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, November 22^nd (doors open)
• 7:00 p.m. Tuesday, November 22^nd (Party begins!)

Preorder by going to the BYU Store website. (For the shipping option, choose “Service Desk Pickup.”) You’ll need to bring your receipt or proof of purchase as well as your photo ID to the BYU Store before 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, November 22nd in order to get your book number.

Thank you again! We’re excited for you to get your hands on Arcanum Unbounded!

Hey, all. I’m still in Europe on tour. (I’ll be in Barcelona next, followed by Lisbon.) But I don’t want to get so busy with this and writing Stormlight Three that I forget to give you a heads-up on Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection, coming out this month.

When it became apparent that Stormlight Three wouldn’t be ready this year, I talked to my publishers, and we decided that I should write a novella instead, to tide people over. This gave us a perfect opportunity to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a while: release all of the Cosmere short fiction together in a single volume, so you don’t have to hunt it out or worry you’ve missed something.

So this collection, while including a sizable Stormlight story (about Lift), has every bit of published Cosmere short fiction I’ve done up to this point—including all the novellas, as well as some little bits and pieces from here and there. Tor.com just posted the table of contents, and a giveaway sweepstakes for the book started today.

The collection has star charts for the various worlds, and a short essay about each world from Khriss, the scholar who writes the Ars Arcanum for each novel. Tor.com should be putting up a preview example for both of these next week. I’ve also written a short annotation for each story.

Whether you’re a Cosmere scholar yourself and want the juicy details in the essays, or a casual fan who just wants some good stories, I think you’ll love this collection. Standalone stories like The Emperor’s Soul have had fantastic reviews and won awards, while stories like Mistborn: Secret History expand on the lore and characters of books you’ve already read.

I’ll be doing a release party in Utah, followed (after the Thanksgiving holiday) by a short tour. Find the details here!

Thanks! I’ll write something more when the book is actually available, but for now you can preorder it at your vendor of choice.

As always, if you’re planning to see me on tour, I suggest that you buy the book from the store where I’ll be touring. But you certainly don’t have to wait for the day of the signing to do so, particularly since it will be a week after the release when I tour. Just make sure the bookstore knows, when you buy, that you’re planning to attend the signing—some of them do have limited seating or other restrictions that might require a ticket or a receipt.

Thanks so much for all your support over the year! Stormlight Three is coming along well, I promise. Around this time next year, I should be writing a post like this to introduce it to you!

Brandon

It’s time to talk novellas. I commonly do one or two of these a year (this year, I did Mistborn:Secret History and the Stormlight novella Edgedancer, coming out in November in Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection). These shorts are ways for me to explore cool or intriguing ideas in a briefer form, so that my attention isn’t drawn too far away from my main projects.

For next year, I only have one novella scheduled right now: a science fiction detective thriller called Snapshot. I wrote it during my trip to Dubai this year, and I’m quite pleased with it. I think you’ll all enjoy it quite a bit.

Normally when it comes to one of my novellas, I just release it and then start promotion. With this one, however, some of my professional colleagues (including the bookseller who long ago organized my first real signing) are starting a specialty press, and so we wanted to announce this one early to give a little momentum to their company. Therefore, Snapshot is up for preorder at Vault Books right now. (Exciting!) It releases February 2017.

I do want to warn you, however, that their edition is the expensive, leatherbound collector’s edition we sometimes do for these books. If the price tag makes your eyes bulge, realize that there will be a simultaneous cheap ebook (which will also be included for everyone who buys the limited edition), and then later in 2017 we will have a non-limited-edition hardcover on my webstore along the lines of the Shadows for Silence/Perfect State double. (We might publish Snapshot alongside Dreamer, the horror story I did for a Charlaine Harris anthology.)

As always, thanks for reading!

Brandon