Brandon, while touring in Italy for his European tour last fall, sat down for a few minutes with Isola Illyon –an online publication known in Italy as a central hub for information on fantasy and gaming– to talk about fantasy, and whatever else came to mind.

In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, Project in Depth, “Risk Assessment,” by Sandra Tayler, Brandon, Mary, Dan, Howard, with Sandra Tayler discuss “Risk Assessment”. This Project in Depth episode contains spoilers for “Risk Assessment,” which is included in Force Multiplication: Schlock Mercenary Book 12. The story was written by Sandra Tayler, and illustrated by Natalie Barahona. Howard handled the writing and illustrating for the framing story, but this episode isn’t about that part.

Risk Assessment is a romance wrapped up in an adventure and is very different from most of the rest of Schlock Mercenary. Have a listen, and Sandra will tell you about it.

If you want to learn more about the application process for 2017 WX Retreat Scholarship, you can read today’s post by Dan Wells. If you don’t know the details regarding the Writing Excuses retreat for 2017, Dan also wrote a post about it last week.

Last week, in Tor.com’s continuing reread posts for Warbreaker, Last week, Lightsong learned the theology of his own religion, and Siri discovered that she’d survived the night after all. This week, in chapter thirteen, Vivenna tries to figure out how to keep her skin and her ideals intact, and Siri is prepared for presentation at the Court of Gods.

You can see the January Twitter post archive here.

In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, Variations on First Person, Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard spend a few minutes on the administrative stuff before jumping into January’s structural topic, the first person voice, with a discussion of the variations in how that POV is presented. We cover some of the different first person POV styles, what sorts of stories they’re often best-suited for, and how we go about writing them well.

Last week, in Tor.com’s continuing reread posts for Warbreaker, Vivenna was repeatedly sent spinning as she tried to cope with mercenaries and the death of Lemex. This week, in chapter eleven, we return to a decidedly bored Siri, as she attempts to find something interesting to do with herself—since kneeling naked on the floor for hours is definitely not at the top of the list.

You can see the December Twitter post archive here.