Kara here with an update on Brandon’s store, just in time for the holidays. We’ve been busy putting together several new products, and I’m excited to tell you about them.

First off, you might’ve heard rumors about our continuing the line of books we began with our leather edition of Elantris last year. This year, I’m officially announcing the release of our Tenth Anniversary leather edition of Mistborn: The Final Empire. These are signed and numbered and go on sale December 1st. Numbers are first-come, first-serve, though like last year, many of the low numbers will be sent to independent bookstores like: University Book Store (in Seattle), BYU Bookstore, Murder by the Book, Mysterious Galaxy, Subterranean Books, Powell’s, Borderlands Books, Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Weller Book Works, and the King’s English.

Due to printing delays and Brandon’s touring schedule, we will not be able to guarantee delivery of this item in time for Christmas.

Like our edition of Elantris, the Dragonsteel edition of Mistborn is bound in premium bonded leather, and the pages are smyth-sewn, not glued like most regular books. Mistborn is printed in black and red inks on quality, acid-free paper, includes a bound-in satin-ribbon bookmark, full-color endpapers by Steve Argyle, gilded pages, and two-color foiling on the cover. A 24-page art gallery starts off the edition and features never-before-seen artwork and a new 2-page map of the Final Empire. We’ve made this the most beautiful edition of Mistborn yet, taking the best from the designs of the Era 1 and Era 2 books and melding that with what we began with the leather edition of Elantris. The Dragonsteel Leather edition of Mistborn is 672 pages.

A few months back, Steve Argyle revealed one of his Vin paintings, which we commissioned for the endpapers of our edition of Mistborn. We’ve created a large 18 x 24 poster of Steve’s beautiful illustration to adorn your walls. This same image is available in other formats—including as a playmat—at Steve’s store.

In addition to the Vin poster, we’ve also printed up full-color posters of some of the maps from our latest releases: a 12 x 16 of the Cosmere Constellations endpaper from Arcanum Unbounded, a six-pack of the star charts of the systems discussed in Arcanum Unbounded (each map 8 x 12) in print for the first time in color, a 12 x 18 of the map from the White Sand graphic novel, and an 18 x 24 of the new map of the Final Empire found in the leather edition of Mistborn.

One last item I want to highlight is our 2016 Holiday Cards, featuring original Mistborn Santa artwork by Shawn Boyles, who created the Dragonsteel logo and the map for Warbreaker. Printed on pearlescent cardstock, these cards sparkle just a little bit, like the morning sun on new-fallen snow. Yes, they are just that cool, and I hope you enjoy sending them to friends and family over the holidays. Comes in a 12-pack with matching pearlescent envelopes.

Watch the store over the next few weeks because we might be adding one or two new decals as well.

Just a few words on holiday shipping. Here are the deadlines for ordering items in order to receive them by December 24. Ordering earlier than this is even safer.
November 20: Personalized books, for international delivery.
December 1: Non-personalized items for international delivery.
December 5: Personalized books for US delivery.
December 15: Non-personalized items for US delivery.

We give these dates only as recommendations. If you order by these times, we promise we will do our best to get your order to you in a timely manner, but because of the many factors outside of our control, we cannot guarantee deliveries will arrive by December 24th.

Happy Holidays from the Dragonsteel Team. May you have a great December and look forward to a bright New Year!

Just a quick update before the weekend. On Monday I will have a big post for Magic: The Gathering players, so look forward to that!

The latest Writing Excuses writing advice show episode talks about worldbuilding without breaking viewpoint. We’ve also uploaded this year’s submission for the Hugo Voter Packet in the Best Related Work section, where Writing Excuses Season Eight is nominated. It features eight popular episodes from last year, and you can also see the full episode list here. For Hugo Award voters it’s in the Hugo Packet, but anyone can see the page here, and of course anyone can download the episodes for free.

Leigh Butler at Tor.com has posted a “Hugo Refresher” with summaries of each book in the Wheel of Time, along with a favorite passage from each book.

Shawn Speakman’s The Signed Page website has a few signed hardcovers available of Steelheart and The Alloy of Law, left over from when I stopped by Shawn’s place in the past. (And of course, I have many signed books in my website store, along with jewelry, shirts, and other things.)

My assistant Peter has uploaded all of my Twitter posts from May.

Hey, all! I’ve got some interesting tidbits about Stormlight Three to share, relating to what I’ve been writing this month.

Before we get to that, though, I do want to draw your attention to the items we have in the store. In addition to the Elantris leatherbound, as usual we’ve got most of my books for sale, signed and personalized, shipped to your door. This includes the brand new hardcover double of the novellas Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell and Perfect State, which we just put up. (We also have both Legion books, with new covers.) We also have a couple of new T-shirts, Mistborn and Stormlight lanyards, a new Roshar map poster, Bridge 4 jewelry, and all the usual fun stuff. Have a look! And do please note the holiday shipping deadlines!

It’s rare that I get to fully participate in National Novel Writing Month. (The month of November, for the uninitiated, is a kind of challenge month for writers. During November, participants try to complete fifty thousand words of material, which is roughly 200 pages.)

The true spirit of NaNoWriMo is to start a brand new story on the first of November, and write on it all month. The life of a professional novelist doesn’t lend itself well to this kind of schedule—you often have revisions due at inopportune times, or have to be on tour in November, etc. However, when I can, I like to participate in spirit by trying to write the 50k words—even if I don’t begin a new project at the start of the month.

This was a year where I was able to do this, as I had minimal touring this month (only two events) and no big revisions due. (Though my editor is still waiting on Alcatraz 5, which I’ll need to get to ASAP, now that the month is over.) It was a fun year to do NaNo though, as it was very nostalgic for me.

You see, thirteen years ago in 2002, I was doing NaNo as an unpublished author with many of my writer friends. We posted our wordcounts on a forum we all frequented, making a friendly competition of it. The book I was writing? The original draft of The Way of Kings.

One of the images from that time, burned into the back of my brain, is sitting in the guest room at my mother’s house on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, which fell very late in the month that year. That Saturday was the last day of NaNo—and I hit a frenzy of activity. While I hadn’t started a new project during the month (even then, I didn’t really need challenges like NaNo to get me moving on my writing) I was near the end of one.

I finished The Way of Kings that night, writing more in one day by far than I’d ever written up to that point—and more than I’ve ever written since. My wordcount ended up being so high that I severely underreported it on the forums, to not make others feel bad. (Which reminds me of the time when in high school, during the very early days of image manipulation before most people knew it was possible, I edited my report card to wipe away all my A grades and make them much lower—all to trick my mother.)

That time in 2002 was a special time for me, one I’ve talked about before. Writing The Way of Kings was a relieving experience for me, as I was writing exactly what I wanted rather than worrying about what the market wanted to read. I still feel it’s no coincidence that a year later I got my first book deal. After writing Kings, I was ready.

Well, this year I’ve been working on Oathbringer, the third volume of the Stormlight Archive. It was both nostalgic and exciting to be at my mother’s house again, thirteen years later, working with the same characters as a much more mature writer (and in a much more mature version of the world).

This month, I posted my wordcounts on Twitter and Facebook, rather than on a forum with my friends. I managed to get the 50,000 words done, though I didn’t have any crazy wordcount days. This may come as a surprise to some of you, but I’m actually much slower now than I was all those years ago. There is a lot more to watch for in these books now, a lot more continuity now that I’m actually releasing them for the public. The writing just doesn’t go as fast as it did when I was more carefree. That said, here are some quick facts about NaNo this year for me:

1. Writing 50k words in a month is still hard (in fact, it’s harder) as a professional. There are a lot of demands on my time these days aside from writing. Having a family is certainly one—but so is touring, answering emails, doing marketing meetings, talking to my agent, and signing huge stacks of books to fill orders from the store. (Not that I mind.)
2. Quality doesn’t suffer from adding a few extra hours of writing a day. I’d already known this, as there are times in the past when I’ve written longer than I do now. But it’s still nice to know. In fact, I’m more fond of many of the scenes I wrote this month than I am of many I wrote earlier. Which leads me to my next point.
3. Being very focused on one project, eliminating distractions, can really help me figure out tough scenes. This month reminded me of the days when I was first working on the Wheel of Time books—where I had a single-minded focus, and was determined to nail the project and do right by the fans. There’s a certain excitement to times like this, and I fully intend to keep this focus on Stormlight 3 as I roll forward. (I don’t have anything else I have to do, other than the revisions on Alcatraz, until Stormlight 3 is done.)
4. I really love these characters. There’s a reason I have been writing about Dalinar since I was fifteen—there’s something about him, a voice I need to share. It’s great to be back on Roshar, and I’m having a blast.

So where do we stand as this month ends? Well, I got my 50k, but the book is still sitting at only 137k words. That’s roughly 1/3 of the way completed—assuming it’s around the length of Words of Radiance, which I’m hoping will be the case. (I’m not sure how much longer Tor will let me go.) There’s still a great deal of work to do on this book.

I can’t really project a release date. Peter and Isaac have been very clear with me that we need more time for editing, revision, continuity, and art than we had on Words of Radiance. We’ll make a call on release dates sometime around when I turn the book in next spring or summer. It could be out next year, but Peter and Isaac want you all to be ready for a 2017 release instead. We’ll know more once I actually finish.

As for other projects, I’ll do my yearly State of the Sanderson post sometime around my birthday (otherwise known as Koloss Head-Munching Day) late December. That will catch you up on everything I’m doing.

Either way, I hope that those of you doing NaNo benefited from seeing my daily wordcount posts. Writers make up a grand (if somewhat neurotic) community, and I’m proud to be a card-carrying member.

Brandon

BONUS: I recently dug up the notes I took when submitting the first chapters of The Way of Kings to my graduate writing class while getting my Master’s. I’ll transcribe them here, though be warned, they were reading an earlier version of the book from the one that got released. In this draft, the opening chapter was a battlefield seen through Dalinar’s eyes, showing him and Adolin using their shards to defeat an enemy army.

CHAPTER ONE

• Compound words. They complained that there are a lot of them. (NOTE: Yup, I still use a lot of these! I think all the talk of Shardblades and Shardplate overwhelmed them.)
• They had a major gripe with the fact that there were a ton of characters to keep track of. It got really hard to keep track of who was who. They complained that I would introduce a character for a paragraph, then he would drop out. (NOTE: They weren’t ready for the “epic” part of “epic fantasy” I guess. To be fair, this original draft of KINGS did have too many viewpoint characters—but that was a problem for later in the book. These early scenes weren’t nearly as bad as the published version for keeping track of names. I’d love to see what the class would say about THIS version, with four different main characters in the first four scenes.)
• They liked it when I gave give a character a philosophy. Wanted to see that a little more. Also, they wanted more physical descriptions—they wanted to reconnect with characters through their physical characteristics. Wanted a physical quirk for everyone.
• They suggested I consider writing a piece with an adviser to the king. They think that the way I write would work well with a character like that. (NOTE: I have no idea what’s going on here. I’m assuming they were confused, and were suggesting a new character to be viewpoint to the sequence. This is why it’s best not to offer solutions to writers, only outline problems. I suspect that adding a new character, one who is not participating in the action but standing around describing everything, would not improve the book in the way the class thought.)
• They would like more of the big monsters. Chulls. (NOTE: Chulls were much larger in this draft, capable of pulling huge siege equipment. And really, who wouldn’t want to see more of that?)

CHAPTER TWO

• They liked this better, because I didn’t summarize as much and it had more action. They still wanted more visual details.
• Steve wanted to know more about the ‘nifty gadgets.’ Wanted me to flesh the ideas out. (NOTE: I think this references Shardblades and Shardplate, like the next note.)
• They ask: Where did the armor and swords come from? (NOTE: This is a good sign. It doesn’t mean I should answer it here; it just means they were curious, which is what I want.)
• Fighting styles were very cool—wondered if I could do more with it. They wonder if I could spent more time on the battle—a couple more chapters.
• Horse stuff. Hair on the hooves, black, stout forehead.
• 1. Give physical characteristics.
  2. Use more senses.
  3. More graspable feel of the world’s battle tactics and philosophies.
• Blood in mouth from biting tongue.

There you go! A glimpse back in time to before I’d sold any books. It was always an interesting experience submitting my work to these graduate courses, as nobody really knew what to do with me. Professors would tell me not to write fantasy, and I would anyway, telling them to fail me if they thought it was bad. Students would have critique sessions where for one piece, they’d discuss some short and obtuse poem—then move on to this enormous (and maybe obtuse) epic fantasy novel.

Don’t get me wrong—I loved being in the program, and felt it was well worth my time. But the critique sessions could sometimes go interesting places.

We’ve had quite the time getting the Elantris leatherbound in stock! It was supposed to be here a week and a half ago—but the shipping company lost the crates. (Yes, lost them.)

As of this morning, they’ve been found, and we’ve been promised that they’re going to arrive tomorrow. We’ll be doing a real “official launch” blog post about these books, with pictures, on Monday next week. So if you’re on the fence, then please wait until then. This is a high price item at $100, and I don’t want anyone ordering without feeling sure it’s what they want.

We have to act a little quickly, however, as our Christmas deadline for people overseas to order personalized books was yesterday. We don’t want you to miss out, so just for the leatherbound and just for overseas customers, we’re going to extend that deadline.

We’re putting the Elantris leatherbound up on the store right now—but we intend this to be for people overseas. This post is mostly intended to give a heads up to international customers (because their deadline is soon approaching), but orders are open to anyone who wants one. If you live in the States, there is a list at the end of this post saying which stores are going to be carrying the books in stock. If you’re lucky enough to live nearby, you can go look the books over in person! And I always prefer that you support your local booksellers.

Anyway, details for those overseas: If you order a leatherbound edition to be shipped outside of the US or Canada, and you put in an order by 11:59 MST (Mountain Standard Time) Thursday night, I will still personalize your copy. As long as you order by 11:59 MST Monday night without a personalization, it should arrive by Christmas. (Though, as our experience lately proves, we can’t guarantee that it won’t get lost or something.)

You are welcome to order after that, and even ask for a personalization. It’s just much less likely to get to you by Christmas. (If, for some reason, your book doesn’t look like it will arrive in time, drop me an email and I’ll write up an apology for the person, along with a thank-you, that you can print off and box up instead.)

Numbering Info:
I will be numbering all the copies of this edition ordered before New Year’s Day. After that, the copies will just be signed. I’ll be randomizing the numbers, which is the only fair way to do it (I feel) since I’m forcing the US/Canadian customers to wait in line behind those overseas. So your chance of getting a low number doesn’t go up if you order fast. (With one exception. See below.)

For those of you in the States, I have a special treat. A number of stores have agreed to carry this book in stock, and we’re going to be sending them copies ASAP. (Hopefully they’ll be in the stores by Monday.) If you live local to one of these stores, I would ask you to consider supporting them, rather than ordering from me. These are stores who have long supported me as a writer, and I want to make sure they have a good experience with the leatherbound.

So, I’ll be sending numbers 1–50 to bookstores on the list, in a randomized order. If getting a low number is very important to you, then make sure to look at these stores first:
University Book Store, Seattle (Contact Duane Wilkins for details)
Mysterious Galaxy, San Diego
Borderlands Books, San Francisco
Powell’s Books, Portland area
Murder by the Book, Houston
BYU Store, Provo

Thanks! Hope this all makes sense. Sorry it’s a little crazy.

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 hope everyone is having a great Black Friday—as a reminder, my store has some awesome new items. See here for details. And my book Legion: Skin Deep was released this week. See my previous post for details on that.

Tomorrow, I’m signing in Idaho Falls. Details are below.

Idaho Falls, ID – Barnes & Noble Booksellers

Date: Saturday, November 29, 2014
Time: 2:00–4:00 p.m.
Place: Barnes & Noble – Grand Teton Mall
Address: 2300 East 17th Street Suite #1101
Idaho Falls, ID 83404
Phone Number: (208) 552-1452

The bookseller says: Join us for an afternoon with bestselling author Brandon Sanderson. Line tickets will be available to pick up Friday, November 28 at 6:00 a.m. Don’t miss your chance to meet this amazing author!

Notes: I’ll sign any book that I wrote that you bring, but it’s nice to support the store hosting me by buying something in the store while you’re there. I’ll also be doing a reading and a group Q&A.

Check out my calendar to see if there’s another signing that will be more convenient for you.

New Brandon Sanderson Store items are below, but first some updates!

Words of Radiance is in the final round of voting for the Goodreads Choice Awards in the category Best Fantasy of 2014. It’s up against nine other books, so if you’ve read many of them, consider voting for the one you liked best.

Legion: Skin Deep starts shipping out from Subterranean Press next week. You can preorder the signed, leatherbound limited edition hardcover plus ebook combo here. And now, you can also preorder the Audible audiobook edition here—for free. For the first month, Legion: Skin Deep will be free on Audible, so you don’t have to use a credit. After the first month is over, the price goes up. (But if you get it while it’s free, it stays free for you.)

Just a note: There’s a new Kindle store in the Netherlands, which I believe also works in Flanders. We’ll be adding links to all of the buy widgets on my site, but until then, you can find my books here. Most of my books there are in English, but the first two Mistborn books are available in Dutch.

At Westercon/FantasyCon, Charlie Harmon joined the Writing Excuses crew to talk about Disability in Narrative. We also sat down with bookseller Sara Glassman at the Out of Excuses Workshop and Retreat to talk about her perspective on the book industry. Give them a listen.

The Brandon Sanderson Store has a bunch of new items up for the holidays. Also, The Emperor’s Soul hardcovers are back in stock, along with more posters of the Table of Allomantic Metals.

Here are the new products:

Table of Feruchemical Metals poster

Below you’ll find the holiday deadlines for the Brandon Sanderson Store. But before then, some updates!

Writing Excuses has three episodes I haven’t mentioned yet. All were recorded at Westercon or FantasyCon. First up, Mette Ivie Harrison and J.R. Johannson joined us to talk about writing for the mystery genre. Next, the incomparable Peter S. Beagle joined us to talk about getting in the writer’s mindset. Finally, M. Todd Gallowglass joined us to talk about tools for writing from oral storytelling.

National Novel Writing Month started two days ago, and I will be providing a NaNoWriMo pep talk in week 3. Until then, StoryBundle still has their NaNoWriMo Writing Tools Bundle of DRM-free ebooks available, including Shadows Beneath: the Writing Excuses Anthology.

Holiday Deadlines

Here are the deadlines for ordering items in order to receive them by December 24:

November 20: Personalized books, whether you live in the US or internationally. Ordering earlier than this is even safer.

December 1: Non-personalized items for international delivery.

December 15: Non-personalized items for delivery inside the US.

The Brandon Sanderson Store has signed books, apparel, prints, decals, and jewelry. We’ll also have some new items just in time for the holidays. Expect an announcement on these around November 15.

The SciFi ebook StoryBundle with my novella Legion is available only until Wednesday night, so the clock is ticking. I’m running three giveaway contests (ending very soon!) where you can win the DRM-free ebook bundle: One on Twitter, one on Facebook, and one on Google+. The rules for each are slightly different, so check out the posts and share them! Note that Legion is not available in the bundle if you’re in the UK/Commonwealth (except for Canada).

Later this year Subterranean Press will be releasing a limited edition hardcover of Legion‘s sequel, Legion: Skin Deep, which you can preorder here and read a preview of here. If you haven’t read the original Legion, this bundle is a great way to whet your appetite and get ready for the sequel.

Writing Excuses has aired a couple of episodes that I haven’t talked about yet:

• Side Quests
• Adjusting Character Sympathy
• Adjusting Character Competence
• Prewriting
• Critiquing “Sixth of the Dusk” (part 1)

Before listening to that most recent episode, it’s most useful to read the first draft of my novella “Sixth of the Dusk,” which you can find in the “The Making of Sixth of the Dusk” section of the Writing Excuses Anthology, Shadows Beneath, now available, which I talked about last week. The critique of my story will continue in next week’s episode, and then we’ll move on to critiquing Mary’s and Howard’s drafts of their stories.

My assistant Peter has uploaded another Twitter posts archive for June.

Playing a bit of catch-up, here are some interviews I did for BYU Radio back in March that I don’t think I ever posted. One, two.

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned that the jewelry section of the store now has the Bondsmith glyph and the Oathbringer shardblade pendant. There’s lots of other cool jewelry from Mistborn and Elantris, so check it out. Also, shirts are on sale.

There are a couple of recent awards that books have picked up. The Association of Mormon Letters (AML) has presented the Award for Young Adult Speculative Fiction for 2013 to The Rithmatist. Also, Steelheart won the Whitney Award for Best Youth Novel of 2013. I’m honored.

Speaking of Steelheart, the German version has been released in Germany. Also, this:

The Salt Lake City Comic Con FanXperience starts on Thursday, and I’ll be there this Saturday only. My schedule is at the bottom of the post, but first some updates!

The Brandon Sanderson Store has some new jewelry. One item is the Bondsmith Glyph and another is the Oathbringer Shardblade Pendant.

The most recent episode of the Writing Excuses writing advice show that I do with Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler is on the self-descriptive topic “Coming up with a New Ending Halfway Through.”

Last week I did a live video chat with BookTalk Nation. The recording is below.