Adam here.

Yes, you read that right. Snapshot, Brandon’s forthcoming novella, was just optioned by MGM. Broken Road Productions and Entertainment 360 (Office Christmas Party) are to produce.

If you’re not familiar with Snapshot, you can find a brief synopsis below. You can use the widget to the right to see preorder options in your region. It will also be available on Audible, but their preorder link is not yet live.

Now, as always, this option news doesn’t mean that a film will definitely be made—they don’t yet have a director or actors, and many film options never make it that far. But I for one hope it happens, because this story would be great to see on the big screen!

If you could re-create a day, what dark secrets would you uncover?

From New York Times #1 bestselling author Brandon Sanderson comes a detective thriller in a police beat like no other. Anthony Davis and his partner Chaz are the only real people in a city of 20 million, sent there by court order to find out what happened in the real world 10 days ago so that hidden evidence can be brought to light and located in the real city today.

Within the re-created Snapshot of May 1st, Davis and Chaz are the ultimate authorities. Flashing their badges will get them past any obstruction and overrule any civil right of the dupes around them. But the crimes the detectives are sent to investigate seem like drudgery—until they stumble upon the grisly results of a mass killing that the precinct headquarters orders them not to investigate. That’s one order they have to refuse.

The hunt is on. And though the dupes in the replica city have no future once the Snapshot is turned off, that doesn’t mean that both Davis and Chaz will walk out of it alive tonight.

Adam here. Sorry about missing last week’s update post; I have been traveling in Europe with Brandon (mostly, but I will get to that in a minute) and didn’t have good internet access. So if you have been lost—or as I like to imagine it, wallowing in the pit of despair—without my weekly update, for this I am sorry. I will try to make it up to you.

Weekly Update

Humble Bundle has put up a fantasy/sf RPG ebook bundle that features three of Crafty Games’ Mistborn Adventure Game books. This is running for only two weeks, so if you haven’t had a chance to pick up these RPG books yet, this is a good chance.

The first round of this year’s Goodreads Choice Awards is now open for voting, and Brandon has two books nominated: The Bands of Mourning in Fantasy, and Calamity in Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction.

In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, Horrifying the Children, with Darren Shan, the Writing Excuses crew with the aid of Darren Shan (Cirque du Freak or any of fifty other books), breaks down writing horror for children and young adults.

Last week, in chapter one reread for Warbreaker, we met the Idrian royal family and were introduced to the political tensions that drive much of the plot. This week, in chapter two, the sisters express their dissatisfaction with the exchange in no uncertain terms, and another plot-critical decision is reached.

And with the announcement last week that DMG Entertainment has optioned the entire Cosmere series for film, with a movie for The Way of Kings fast-tracked for production, Tor.com has put up a dream cast post for that movie. Check it out.

The Twitter post archive for October is up to date.

Hey all. I found out about this recently, and it looks pretty cool to me. A couple of fans want to make a live-action fan film for the Infinity Blade story. (If you’re not familiar with Infinity Blade, it’s a series of iOS games by ChAIR Entertainment/Epic Games that I also wrote two novellas for, Infinity Blade: Awakening and Infinity Blade: Redemption.)

They have a script and have some actors lined up. I’m not familiar with their actors for Raidriar and Isa, but they also have Christopher Judge who played Teal’c on Stargate: SG-1. My assistant Peter is a big fan of his work on that show, so that’s a great endorsement there.

I also found out that David Powell, who is one of Badali Jewelry’s jewelers (they do the Stormlight, Mistborn, Elantris, and Wheel of Time jewelry), is making armor for the Infinity Blade fan film project. They do awesome work, so I’m sure it will look really good!

Since this is a fan film, neither I nor the ChAIR folks are involved in any official capacity, but it’s still very cool. I hope you will check it out. There’s a lot more information on their Kickstarter page.

As many of you know, a Mistborn film has been in the development stages for several years now. The producers, Paloppa Pictures, were wonderful to partner with and worked very hard to bring a Mistborn vision to the big screen. However, their rights have just lapsed. They’re still interested in the project, but we’re in this strange place where the Mistborn rights after five or six years are finally available again.

So, this is a word of announcement to those out there who may have been watching out for this. The Mistborn rights are available to option. Any offer would need to be very serious in order for us to consider it, but if you are in the film industry and you have an interest in the Mistborn film rights, be aware that you should contact the office of Joel Gotler at Intellectual Property Group.

It has been quite a busy time these last six or seven months. Too busy, maybe? A lot of great experiences, but it has cut into my time to be at home writing. Let me give you a little update of what I’m doing writing-wise.

First off, of course, is Words of Radiance. If you weren’t watching, I finished the rough draft of this book (the second book of the Stormlight Archive, and sequel to The Way of Kings) late June. I sent it off to my agent and editor for commentary and advice. I got back my editor’s notes last week, my agent’s notes today, and Peter just finished assembling everything together and doing a tight, continuity-focused copyedit of the entire manuscript. At 360k words, it’s roughly the length of A Memory of Light.

Obviously, there’s a lot left to do here. Tor keeps talking about January as a publication month, and I’d like to meet that, if at all possible. That’s going to require me to do several drafts of the novel over the next two months. More updates as we progress, but I’m pleased with the book. It has only a few large flaws, and I think they can be fixed fairly quickly.

During July, I took time off from major projects to have a breather. If you aren’t aware, I prefer to do smaller projects between big epics as a means of helping me stay fresh. This month’s “breather” stories include a novelette (9k words) piece set in the Steelheart world, which should be published as an e-original around Christmastime. I also did some work in the Infinity Blade world. (More on that later. If you aren’t aware, this is a video game that friends of mine make. I’ve enjoyed being involved to practice my video-game writing chops, with an eye toward doing Mistborn video game writing.)

My next major writing project will be the sequel to Steelheart, which is called Firefight. (And if you haven’t seen the trailer, Prologue, or teaser chapters for Steelheart, please go give them a look! We’re hoping for big things from this novel.) As you might be aware, I will often be preparing for/writing one piece while I do revisions on another. I generally can only do new prose on one piece at a time, but I like to be revising and writing on two different things at once. So, for the foreseeable future, I’ll be writing Firefight and revising Words of Radiance.

What does this mean for future projects? Well, let me go down the list of sequels in order of current urgency.

1. Rithmatist Sequel. I will hop on writing the next one very soon.
2. Shadows of Self. (The next Wax and Wayne Mistborn novel.) I’ve finished some sample chapters of this and have a fairly solid outline. Expect to see me writing on this sometime early next year.
3. Book Three of Stormlight. I don’t want to let this series languish with three year gaps between books, as I was forced to do between books one and two. Because of this, I’ll try to be doing them at 18 month or 24 month intervals at the most. Do note that the books, at around a thousand pages each, are HUGE undertakings. The way I write, I have to space out projects like this. They’ll be regular, I promise, but part of the reason I’m so productive is because I allow myself freedom to work on different projects, instead of being beholden to one series.
4. Calamity (Book Three of Steelheart.) This will be the final of that trilogy.
5. Elantris Sequel. (This is getting close. Should be doing this in the relatively near future.)
6. Legion Sequel. I have sample chapters of this done, but as it’s a side project, it can’t command prime writing time. I will probably slip it in between some of the books above somewhere, but I can’t promise when.
7. Final Rithmatist book. (I’m not 100% sure this will be a trilogy. It might just be two books.)
8. Nightblood. (Warbreaker sequel.) This one is still fairly far off.
9. Alcatraz 5. Still planning to write this. We have to find a home for the series, however, as I bought the rights back to it from Scholastic earlier this year. Within the next couple of months, my US readers will be able to buy my British publisher’s omnibus edition of the first four books.

As for non-sequel, original projects, here’s what might be coming in the future, as they stand now.

1. “Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell.” Cosmere novella set on a new world. Find it in GRRM and Gardner Dozois’s anthology called Dangerous Women, which I believe is coming out Christmastime. Read an excerpt on Tor.com.
2. “Sixth of the Dusk.” Cosmere novella set on a new world. Written following a Writing Excuses brainstorm. Still needs a revision, but should be released later this year.
3. The Silence Divine. Standalone Cosmere Novel. Modestly far off, but maybe not too far. I don’t want to be stuck writing only sequels. Though, since I did release two new books this year (Rithmatist and Steelheart) in new worlds, starting new series, I will probably wait on this one until those series are done.
4. The Liar of Partinel. Cosmere Novel, set on the original planet of Yolen and dealing with Hoid’s origin story. Very far off right now.
5. Skyward. (Working title.) Young Adult cosmere novel. In the early stages of development. Probably a few years off.
6. Dark One. Non-cosmere YA novel. Still haven’t been able to get this one off the ground. I had a chance, but The Rithmatist worked better, and I wrote that instead. Don’t hold your breath on this one, though someday I might post the sample chapters that I wrote a few years back.
7. Death By Pizza. (Urban Fantasy.) This book was fun, but not remotely good enough to publish. We’ll see if I ever get the bug to go back and fix it.
8. White Sand. Cosmere trilogy. Some fun things are happening here, but I can’t really talk about them right now.

And finally, media properties.

1. Mistborn: Birthright. (Video Game for consoles and maybe PC, cross platform.) We’re looking at 2015 for this right now. (Sorry.) The new console generation made us push it back. I’m still planning to write it, and development is still moving. It’s far from dead.
2. Mistborn film. Option runs out in January. I’ve had a very good experience with the producers, but so far, we do not have funding for the film. We’ll have to see where we are in another six months.
3. Legion television show. Lionsgate still has this under option!
4. Steelheart Film. I had lunch with the producer at Comic-Con. It’s still early in the process, but they’re very engaged and very excited.

That’s it for updates. For now, I should get back to work on the Firefight outline. As always, thank you all for reading!

The newest Writing Excuses podcast episode is called “What The Avengers Did Right.” It has a bunch of spoilers for that movie and talks about it from the point of view of a writer.

I’ve uploaded all of Ben McSweeney’s awesome illustrations for THE RITHMATIST. This includes the map (which isn’t in the ebook right now) and a couple of doodles that didn’t make it into the final book. If you have the audiobook, we prepared a script for Michael Kramer that included the text from the diagrams so you shouldn’t be missing anything essential, but it will probably still help quite a bit to be able to see these illustrations.

If you haven’t seen them, I also have interior illustration galleries for THE WAY OF KINGS and THE ALLOY OF LAW.

Tor.com’s reread of THE WAY OF KINGS has reached the end of part one. The most recent post covers the first set of interludes and talks about the search for Hoid.

This week I will be at Book Expo America in New York. Here’s my schedule:

Date: May 30-31, 2013
Place: Book Expo America
Address: Jacob K. Javits Convention Center
655 W 34th St
New York, NY 10001

THURSDAY, May 30th

2:00-3:00 p.m.
Author Signing at Meeting Room MR 3211 (Tor Table #17)
The Way of Kings, The Rithmatist
(Note: This event is ticketed.)

4:00-5:00 p.m.
RHCB Booth Signing
Booth #3940, Table #1
Steelheart

FRIDAY, May 31st

3:00-4:00 p.m.
Signing at Tor Booth 1557
The Way of Kings, The Rithmatist

4:00-5:00 p.m.
Audio Publishers Association Author Tea
Janis Ian, Bill Bryson, Louise Penny, Brandon Sanderson
(Note: This event is ticketed.)

Hey all, this is just a quick post to let you know about the Spectre Kickstarter from Jason Denzel. Remember this awesome Towers of Midnight trailer from a couple years ago?

Jason (founder of Dragonmount & all-around cool guy) was responsible for making that trailer. Well, he has also filmed a short epic fantasy called Spectre, and he’s doing a kickstarter to raise enough money for postproduction. See the video below:

As with other Kickstarters, there are various pledge levels and cool things you can get for pledging. See the full details on the Kickstarter page. I’ve kicked in some money myself, so give it a look.

Two big updates today!

First off, we at Writing Excuses are proud to be Hugo nominated in the Best Related Work category for our second year in a row. Huzzah! Thank you to all who nominated. (You can see the other nominees in all categories here, and you can also watch recordings of the live announcement here. If you want to vote on the Hugos, buy at least a supporting membership to Worldcon here.)

Secondly, I figured I’d give you all an update on the status of the Mistborn film. Years have passed since I mentioned it had been optioned, and those years have not been spent in vain. The producers, Paloppa pictures, have done numerous drafts of a screenplay. They showed me each one, asking for input, and this latest screenplay is just fantastic. I’m very excited. It stays true to the soul of the story, yet at the same time adapts that story in a way that works better on film. I’m extremely excited.

Now that we have a great screenplay, we face a greater challenge: pitching the story to studios. I picked a smaller production studio when selling the rights because of their passion and their willingness to let me be part of the process. That means, however, that we face an uphill battle getting the film into production.

What can you do to help? Well, right now, the best thing to do is have a look at the “mood trailer” Paloppa has released. Note that this is not a true trailer, but more of a “fan trailer”-style clip. They’ve cut up different films and stitched them together in an effort to show what kind of film they want to make. It’s pretty cool. If you feel like sharing it and showing it off, I’m certainly not going to complain!

Otherwise, keep your fingers crossed for me and stay tuned. Paloppa is going to be pitching the film to studios during the next few months. (And, you know, if your uncle happens to be the head of Warner Brothers Pictures or is second cousin to Christopher Nolan and you want to give them the screenplay, feel free to drop me an email…)

Just a quick update for today. I’m currently flying to Australia.

Yesterday’s Writing Excuses episode is all about writing excuses—all those handy tricks that the great authors use to prevent themselves from finishing any book before its time.

There are a couple of quotes from me in an article on CNN’s Geek Out about media adaptations of fantasy.

The most recent ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS annotation covers chapter seven. I discuss crossbreeding Summa Theologica with Little Women, and Alcatraz making a girl’s shirt fall off.

This week’s Writing Excuses podcast episode covers film considerations, and Mary Robinette Kowal and Dave Wolverton/David Farland join Dan and Howard to discuss the topic. Appropriately, this episode was also filmed by Moses Siregar III of Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing, and the video is up on YouTube.

The most recent WARBREAKER annotation covers Siri bullying Treledees and getting her hair color under control. It also explains something about the God King’s tongue that’s a big spoiler to anyone who hasn’t read the book.

There’s another new Twitter posts collection up. Note that I’ve changed my Twitter name from @BrandSanderson to @BrandSanderson. There’s a 15-character username limit on Twitter, and I hope this one will look less like an error and will lead to fewer people trying to reach me at @BrandonSanderson.

Today’s the last day to register for Worldcon if you want to nominate for the Hugos. Read my previous post if you want to know why that matters.