Words of Radiance has made it past the first round of voting for the 2015 David Gemmell Legend Award and is one of five nominees on the short list. (You may remember that The Way of Kings won this award back in 2011.) The polls are open from now until July 17th, and anyone can vote. The UK cover for Words of Radiance by Sam Green is also nominated for the Ravenheart Award on the same page. Good luck to all of the nominees!

The good news continues as Michael Kramer and Kate Reading were presented an Audie Award this past week for Words of Radiance. It has been a dream come true to work with these two amazing people who bring my characters to life.

My publisher in Israel just informed me that both The Way of Kings and A Memory of Light have been nominated for the Geffen Award for Best Translated Fantasy Novel, given out by the Israeli Society of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Awesome!

In last week’s Writing Excuses episode, Q & A on Worldbuilding, we went to you for questions about worldbuilding and you had some really good ones:

• Has there ever been a piece of worldbuilding that you didn’t include, and regretted not including?
• How do you remain consistent?
• How do you decide between writing a secondary world fantasy, and creating an historical fantasy?
• Can you avoid cultural appropriation while still using elements inspired by other cultures?
• What’s the minimum amount of worldbuilding required?

In this week’s episode, Project-in-Depth: Of Noble Family, we discuss Mary’s latest novel, so if you haven’t read it yet be warned. This episode contains many, many spoilers. You will get more out of our discussion if you read (or listen to) the book before listening to this episode.

Last week, in Tor.com’s continuing reread posts for Words of Radiance, we reach back in time to Shallan’s happy childhood home on the Davar estate. This week, in Chapter 40, Alice Arneson is with Shallan as she finds her temporary home in the warcamps. In case you missed it, here are the links for chapters 37 and 38.

My assistant Adam had updated the Twitter post archives for May.

Some quick updates today. But first, if you haven’t seen the STEELHEART teaser trailer, the prologue, or teaser chapters, please go give them a look! The release date is fast approaching, so think about preordering the book from your favorite vendor. (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, Audible, Apple, Kobo, Google Play.) If you would like a signed and numbered copy, Weller Book Works will begin accepting orders on August 15th for delivery on or very shortly after September 24th. Mysterious Galaxy and Shawn Speakman’s The Signed Page will also have signed books available to preorder, but they won’t be shipped until I sign them in October.

Waygate Foundation has a new charity auction to benefit the Wounded Warrior Project. They’re auctioning off a rare production sample of a Ta’veren Tees t-shirt featuring Perrin Aybara, signed by Team Jordan and me. You can’t buy a shirt with this exact design. The auction ends on August 21st.

The Kindle Daily Post has an interview with me about STEELHEART and other topics. Also, Inspiring Insomnia is giving away (US-only) an ARC of STEELHEART. I often mention giveaways like this on Facebook and Twitter when I see them, but sometimes the giveaways are over by the time I compile a blog post. So if you want to keep track of things like that, Facebook and Twitter are the best places to follow me.

The most recent Writing Excuses podcast episode is another microcasting one where we touch on the following topics:

• How do you manage your workload?
• Are writing contests worth it? Which ones are good?
• How do you make it clear that the weird aspects of your world are done on purpose rather than just being bad science?
• How do you know when to take a break from your writing?
• What are your word count suggestions for various markets?

SF Signal asked me to name two or three authors I feel haven’t received the recognition they deserve. So I had to keep the list short, but you should check it out!

Tor.com’s newest THE WAY OF KINGS reread post covers chapters 27 and 28. Chasm duty, Horneater stew, and smashing a lot of rock with a hammer.

The ebook for UNFETTERED, which contains the A MEMORY OF LIGHT deleted sequence “River of Souls,” has now been released. Details below.

Tor.com’s reread of THE WAY OF KINGS reached chapters 16 and 17, the first flashback with Laral and Tien, and Kaladin leading Bridge Four from the front. Also, Writing Excuses’ latest podcast episode features us talking about middle grade fiction with E.J. Patten, author of RETURN TO EXILE and THE LEGEND THIEF.

If you haven’t heard about UNFETTERED before, here’s a bit of an introduction. When I was on tour probably for THE ALLOY OF LAW, Shawn Speakman (webmaster for Terry Brooks and Naomi Novik, and who also runs the booksigning service The Signed Page), approached me about an anthology he was putting together (at the suggestion of Terry Brooks) to help defray Shawn’s medical bills stemming from his 2011 diagnosis with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Shawn has been a friend and supporter to the careers of a lot of writers, so I was interested in helping out. The question was what to contribute to the anthology. The title Shawn gave it was UNFETTERED, because he didn’t want to put any restrictions on whatever the authors wanted to contribute.

When I was writing A MEMORY OF LIGHT, there was a sequence of viewpoints I was working on that were somewhat more daring than some other viewpoints I had done. The character I’m talking about is known as Bao in the book, and if you’ve read it you’ll know who that is. I wanted to try to give some deeper backstory to Bao, but after I showed the scenes to Harriet, though we all liked them, we decided they they didn’t fit in the book. Harriet felt that these scenes were distracting and derailing the narrative too close to what was to be the climax of the entire series, because of the new elements I was adding and fleshing out. So after some discussion, we decided that they should be cut.

Though I saw the need for this, the fact that this was necessary left me feeling kind of sad. I felt the scenes were strong and added a lot to the character, giving a lot of extra motivation and poignancy to some of the things going on in A MEMORY OF LIGHT. So when the opportunity for Shawn’s anthology came along, I began to think this would be the place for them. I approached Harriet, and she said that was a good idea.

The result is “River of Souls,” labeled as a Wheel of Time tale by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. Since it’s actually a sequence of deleted scenes, it’s meant to be read as a companion to your read of A MEMORY OF LIGHT. It’s not going to make a whole lot of sense if you haven’t read at least the rest of the Wheel of Time, but it’s a complete arc and I find it very exciting. I think you’ll really like it, and I think this anthology is a good place for these scenes because they won’t be distracting from the rest of the story.

UNFETTERED also has stories from lots of other wonderful writers in it. I’m honored to have a story in there, to be alongside the names that appear in this anthology. It’s great to see so many people pulling together to support someone in the community, and I wish Shawn the best.

The anthology is available now in ebook form, and as a hardcover direct from Shawn’s Grim Oak Press website. He’ll be shipping books out over the next three weeks (he has a very small operation and it will take him time to get through so many orders). Also note that the long-sold-out special edition signed by every single author will take even more time to deliver. The signing pages are currently being shipped around the country from author to author for all of us to sign, and that will take a while. Once all of those are back with Shawn, the pages will be bound into the books, which will then be delivered.

Here is the complete list of stories appearing in UNFETTERED:

• Imaginary Friends by Terry Brooks (a precursor to the Word/Void trilogy)
• How Old Holly Came To Be by Patrick Rothfuss (a Four Corners tale)
• River of Souls by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson (a Wheel of Time tale)
• The Old Scale Game by Tad Williams
• Game of Chance by Carrie Vaughn
• Martyr of the Roses by Jacqueline Carey (a precursor to the Kushiel series)
• Dogs by Daniel Abraham
• Mudboy by Peter V. Brett (a Demon Cycle tale)
• The Sound of Broken Absolutes by Peter Orullian (a Vault of Heaven tale)
• The Coach With Big Teeth by R.A. Salvatore
• Keeper of Memory by Todd Lockwood (a Summer Dragon tale)
• Heaven in a Wild Flower by Blake Charlton
• The Chapel Perilous by Kevin Hearne (an Iron Druid tale)
• Select Mode by Mark Lawrence (a Broken Empire tale)
• All the Girls Love Michael Stein by David Anthony Durham
• Strange Rain by Jennifer Bosworth (a Struck epilogue tale)
• Nocturne by Robert V. S. Redick
• Unbowed by Eldon Thompson (a Legend of Asahiel tale)
• In Favour With Their Stars by Naomi Novik (a Temeraire tale)
• The Jester by Michael J. Sullivan (a Riyria Chronicles tale)
• The Duel by Lev Grossman (a Magicians tale)
• Walker and the Shade of Allanon by Terry Brooks (a Shannara tale)
• The Unfettered Knight by Shawn Speakman (an Annwn Cycle tale)

If you missed it, here’s the video where I explain my part in this anthology.

I got back from JordanCon a few days ago. Often times at cons and signings, my readers bring me small gifts. I’m deeply grateful for the time and thought put into these, and I try to post pictures of some of them from time to time. JordanCon was no exception. Here are some of the cool things you all gave me.

A highlight of the con for me was going to lunch with one of my idols, Michael Whelan. (For more on how much I love his work, see here.) He gave me one of the signed limited editions of The Art of Michael Whelan, which includes a beautiful original illustration (below). The book and the illustration are absolutely gorgeous. I can’t wait to see what Michael comes up with for the cover of Words of Radiance.

Together Jennifer and Jimmy Liang head up JordanCon each year and do a smashing job of it. This year Jimmy wanted to get me Magic cards in Korean. Instead, his search turned up these cards in Chinese:

Of course, readers brought me all sorts of other goodies: mac and cheese, more Magic cards (vintage!), books, an awesome wooden baby rattle, traditional songs rewritten with Wheel of Time-inspired lyrics, and a book of letters from the Black Tower Social Group from Dragonmount.

Matt Hatch from Theoryland brought me a shirt and art print with a symbol based on the Dusty Wheel from Towers of Midnight. As a cool side note, the pipe drawing is based on one of Robert Jordan’s actual pipes. If you’re interested in buying one of these shirts, they’re available at InkWing. (Also note that Ta’veren Tees has many types of Wheel of Time shirts.)

One reader, a student of various languages—including American Sign Language—is working on putting together a sign language based on Aiel maiden handtalk. Check out her blog to follow her research.

I should also mention that two of my readers, Kalyani and Rahul, cooked me a wonderful meal of traditional southern Indian food. Seriously, the food was better than what you might find in a restaurant.

Again, I had a wonderful time at JordanCon. It’s really the people and the hospitality that makes this a great convention every time I’ve gone.

Brandon

This weekend I’ll be at JordanCon in Atlanta. My schedule is below, and the full schedule is here.

Guests of Honor this year are Seanan McGuire (a.k.a. Mira Grant) and Michael Whelan. Team Jordan will also be participating.

Stormlight/Mistborn/Rithmatist artists Isaac Stewart and Ben McSweeney will also be there. They have a panel with Michael Whelan called Art of the Stormlight Archive that you might want to check out.

JordanCon will mark the release of my hardcover edition of FIRSTBORN and DEFENDING ELYSIUM. I will also bring it to other conventions this summer, and then it will be available on my signed books page in the late fall.

FRIDAY April 19th

1:00-2:00 p.m., Great Oaks A
JordanCon Opening Ceremonies
Leigh Butler

4:00-5:00 p.m., Boardroom
Signing
Brandon Sanderson

5:30-6:30 p.m., Great Oaks A
Religion in Your World
Brandon Sanderson, Delilah S. Dawson, Stuart Jaffe, Seanan McGuire, Anthony Taylor, Alex Bledsoe
What roles can and should religion and spirituality play in your world, whether secondary or Earth?

SATURDAY April 20th

11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m., Goulding A-B
Reading
Brandon Sanderson

1:00-2:00 p.m., Boardroom
Team Jordan Signing
Brandon Sanderson, Harriet McDougal, Maria Simons, Alan Romanczuk
The final Wheel of Time book.

4:00-5:00 p.m., Great Oaks A-B
A Memory of Light
Harriet McDougal, Maria Simons, Alan Romanczuk, Peter Ahlstrom, Brandon Sanderson, Leigh Butler

7:00-8:00 p.m., Great Oaks A-B
Costume Contest
Leigh Butler, Brandon Sanderson, Maria Simons, Harriet McDougal

9:00-10:00 p.m., Goulding A-B
Magic the Gathering Draft with Brandon
Brandon Sanderson
Details on this are still being worked out. Check back later.

SUNDAY April 21st

1:00-2:00 p.m., Great Oaks B
Steampunk Hour
Emilie P. Bush, Brandon Sanderson, Jana Oliver, Delilah S. Dawson
An Hour of STEAM by the folks who write it best!

2:30-3:30 p.m., Boardroom
Kaffeeklatsch
Brandon Sanderson
Sign up for this ahead of time. Ask at Registration.

This week’s Writing Excuses podcast episode is called “Fake It Till You Make It” and in it Mary, Dan, Howard, and I talk about the things we do or have done to feel professional.

Also, as I mentioned earlier this week, Writing Excuses has been nominated once again for the Hugo Award for Best Related Work! Our announcement on that is here. And if you missed my announcement of THE EMPEROR’S SOUL being nominated for Best Novella, it is here. Howard’s Schlock Mercenary: Random Access Memorabilia is also nominated for Best Graphic Story. If you want to be able vote for the Hugo Awards, I talk about that in my previous post.

Mary’s new book WITHOUT A SUMMER is also out this week. The first two books in the series were excellent, so you’re sure to enjoy this one too!

Tor.com has put up chapter 2 and chapter 3 of my forthcoming YA fantasy THE RITHMATIST. (If you missed them, the prologue and chapter 1 are here.) The book comes out next month. Tor has also announced a mobile campaign involving (at the moment) the Wheel of Time and THE RITHMATIST. On your mobile phone text “EPIC” to 555111 to receive facts, trivia, and more (and no, that’s not an April Fools joke, though it was announced on April 1st). Or you can sign up at this link.

Irene at Tor also sent me this beautiful poster (the scale may not be obvious in the photo, but the frame is about 22″ by 30″) with a long quote from chapter 4 of THE EYE OF THE WORLD. Robert Jordan truly was a master at making a story come alive before our eyes.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Tor.com has also started a reread of THE WAY OF KINGS in preparation for the release of the sequel, WORDS OF RADIANCE, hopefully later this year. Two reread posts have gone up so far, the first one covering the prelude and the second talking about the prologue. And the ebook of KINGS is still $2.99 for the next week or so.

This week we received copies of the new German edition of ELANTRIS. We also received copies of WRITING FANTASY HEROES: POWERFUL ADVICE FROM THE PROS. I wrote an essay in this book, about writing cinematic fight scenes. There are also contributions from other SF luminaries including Alex Bledsoe, Jennifer Brozek, Orson Scott Card, Glen Cook, Steven Erikson, Ian C. Esslemont, Cecelia Holland, Howard Andrew Jones, Paul Kearney, Ari Marmell, Janet and Chris Morris, Cat Rambo, and C.L. Werner.

And here’s the newest video of me writing a chapter from WORDS OF RADIANCE.

For those who missed the news and are wondering about the A MEMORY OF LIGHT ebook, I talked about it at the bottom of my blog post last week.

Patrick Rothfuss’s Worldbuilders charity is auctioning off a signed first edition hardcover of THE GATHERING STORM. The auction includes dragon and sword pins from Badali Jewelry and a T-shirt of your choice from Ta’veren Tees that will be signed by the members of Team Jordan. Worldbuilders is a great charity and they also have lots of cool stuff you have a chance of getting by donating, so check out Pat’s blog posts about it.

On this week’s episode of the Writing Excuses podcast, Mary, Howard, Dan, and I discuss the Hero’s Journey. This is an episode that we’ve talked about doing for years and have finally gotten around to. Enjoy!

For Mistborn fans, World of Warcraft is adding a “Survivor’s Bag of Coins” to the 5.2.0 patch. See details here. I think this is awesome! (Also note that the Mistborn action RPG MISTBORN: BIRTHRIGHT is still in development, but right now it looks like the release might get pushed back to 2014 instead of this year. There hasn’t been an official announcement though.)

On my tour I’ve been stopping to sign books in airport bookstores as usual. Years ago some of my fans nicknamed this “Brandalizing.” Grammar Girl did a quick blog post about the term this week.

Here’s a video of Harriet reading the wind scene from A MEMORY OF LIGHT at our signing this past weekend at the College of Charleston. Thanks, Jessica Crout! The Addlestone Library there is the home of Robert Jordan’s papers. They had on display this very early draft of THE EYE OF THE WORLD with Jordan’s handwritten edits on it.

Last week I appeared on Wired’s Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast talking about AMoL. And USA Today had a cool Robert Jordan sidebar in the paper. Here’s a photo:

My assistant has also uploaded two more Twitter archive posts. [Assistant Peter’s note: The first one is spoiler free, but there are plenty of spoilers for A MEMORY OF LIGHT in the second one. Brandon tries to keep spoilers out of his Twitter feed, but there are major spoilers in several of the questions that Brandon answered.]

We’ll find out how A MEMORY OF LIGHT did on the New York Times bestseller list later today or tomorrow, but we already know it hit #1 on the Ingram and National Indie lists. (The USA Today listing above was for the week before the book came out.) We also made Shelf Awareness’s Image of the Day for January 16th, which you can see here (taken at Joseph-Beth in Lexington):

Thanks for all of your support, and I hope you’re enjoying the book! It has been an honor.

If you missed it on Twitter or Facebook, here’s the link to my Suvudu Cage Match writeup of Moiraine vs. Kelsier. Don’t expect an epic battle. I don’t have the time to spare to write something like that in this case. Instead, I played it very tongue-in-cheek. I flipped a coin to decide who won, then wrote something that made it seem logical. Warning: it not only contains huge spoilers for both series, but a lot of Wheel of Time and Mistborn in-jokes. If you disagree with the results of my coin flip, feel free to vote however you wish in the cage match poll.

This week’s episode of Writing Excuses features Mary, Howard, and I talking about Man vs. Nature. If you’re as confused about that as Howard was, it’s one of the basic narrative conflict archetypes (along with Man vs. Man and Man vs. Self). Check it out.

There’s also a new ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS annotation up. This one covers chapter six.

Samuel Montgomery-Blinn of Bull Spec interviewed me for Audible SF/F about audiobooks.

Gen Con Indy has announced that I’m their Author Guest of Honor this August. For my full convention schedule this year, see here.

This is the last week to vote on the long list for the David Gemmell Legend Award (the poll closes March 31st). THE ALLOY OF LAW has been nominated, but you should vote for the book you want to win, of course.

In the most recent Writing Excuses podcast episode, Howard, Mary, and I talk about writing the omniscient viewpoint. (Dan wasn’t there; he was off saving his son from ninjas or something like that.)

The newest ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS annotation discusses my use of prison names, the setting, and Bastille. And I’m very pleased to announce that the audiobook for ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE SCRIVENER’S BONES is finally available. The other two audiobooks will follow within a few months. Rutabaga.

This week’s Suvudu Cage Match features Moiraine versus Jardir and Kelsier versus Ray Lilly. If both Moiraine and Kelsier win, they will be up against each other next week, which would mean that (barring fires to put out) I would be inclined to do a writeup of my own. They have to survive this week before you get to see that though, and both have worthy opponents. Voting ends on Thursday.

Next month I’ll be traveling to Australia for SwanCon (a.k.a. Doom-Con) in Perth and Supanova in Melbourne and Gold Coast. Below is a trailer for Doom-Con. Details are on my events page.

Also, this video was shared with me on Facebook: ninth-grader Morgan Nielsen created the following trailer for THE WAY OF KINGS for a book report in her English class. Pretty cool.

Every year for the past several years, NAME OF THE WIND and THE WISE MAN’S FEAR author (and good buddy of mine) Patrick Rothfuss has run a charity drive where he matches at 50% donations to Heifer International through his Worldbuilders team page. Everyone who enters the general drawing gets a chance at a huge number of prizes. There are also individual auctions on several of the most desirable items. Pat explains it best.

I’ve donated various books to the prize pool before, and this year I and Badali Jewelry have teamed up to donate a special Wheel of Time package to the auctions. My contribution is from among my personal leatherbound copies of THE GATHERING STORM and TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT. With each Wheel of Time book that is released, Tor puts out a limited edition of 126 signed copies, 100 of them numbered for commercial release, and 26 of them lettered for publisher and author use. I received copies B and S of both books, and I’m donating the matched set of S copies.

Please see Pat’s description below. The auction itself is here, and you can see the other auction items here. And remember, for every 10 dollars you donate on the Worldbuilders Team Page, you get a chance to win a book from the general prize pool.

• AUCTION: signed, leather-bound copies of The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson with Wheel of Time jewelry.
  

These gorgeous gold-lettered books are leather-bound and designated “S” out of 26 lettered copies. The books come in their own matching leather slipcase, feature a facsimile of Robert Jordan’s signature, and are signed by Brandon Sanderson.

In addition to these stunning best-selling books, this auction includes three lovely pieces of jewelry inspired by Jordan’s series: an Asha’man Dragon Pin, a Dedicated Sword Pin, and a Great Serpent Ring.

We are very grateful to Brandon Sanderson for his donation of these rare books, and to the folks at Badali for making things even sweeter with the addition of the jewelry.

To see more pictures of these gorgeous books, or to place a bid on the auction, click here.