Happy New Year, everyone! Brandon here, thanking you once again for supporting my writing. You’re getting this because you signed up for the newsletter on my website. We send around three or four of these a year. If you’d rather not get the letter, just send a reply asking to unsubscribe.

In this newsletter:

• Introduction
• Firefight is out!
• Legion: Skin Deep (in case you missed it)
• Altered Perceptions
• Welcome Adam to the team
• Conventions and tours for this year
• Writing Excuses Master Class
• Newsletter exclusive contest
• Newsletter exclusive preview

Introduction

Last year was a pretty crazy one. As I wrote in my State of the Sanderson blog post (look here if you missed it), I’m worried that I’m touring too much. That said, it was exciting to get to meet so many of you around the world.

I’ve got some tours and convention appearances coming up this year as well. You’ll find those below, as well as some discussion of what’s happening around here at Dragonsteel headquarters. (Also known as my basement.) However, if you’re just here for the sneak peek, look to the bottom of the newsletter. I’ve pasted the first chapter of a certain long-awaited sequel.

Just let me reiterate here, however, my appreciation for you all. Over twenty years ago now, I got this crazy idea for an interconnected fantasy universe called the Cosmere, with an intricate timeline and dozens of stories happening on a multitude of planets, all building toward epic crossovers.

I thought back then that my dream of three dozen books all linked together into a massive uber-series was something no publisher or group of readers would ever go for. My first attempts to explain it to my editor were met with stunned silence, followed by the wisecrack, “Well, you certainly will never be accused of thinking too small, Brandon.”

Now that idea—once a farfetched dream—is actually coming together, and better than I could have hoped.

You make all of this possible. My dreams become reality because of you. You have my most sincere thanks.

Firefight is out!

Tuesday, January 6th, was launch day for my newest novel, Firefight (in the UK/Australia it’s Thursday, January 8th). This is the sequel to Steelheart, which is in turn a near-future science fiction / superhero mashup about a world where people start gaining super powers, but those powers corrupt the people who gain them.

As many of you already know, release week is the most important week of a book’s life. One oddity of the entertainment business is that week one often determines the entire life of the project. Whether it be a film, a book, or an album, the first week usually becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy to reflect future sales.

I hope you all will take the time to check it out—or, if you haven’t read Steelheart, to look into that book. Sample chapters for both novels are just below.

If you liked Mistborn, I think you’ll like Steelheart as well, as they share a lot of stylistic choices. Also, I’ll be touring for Firefight these next three weeks or so. Come see me for a chance to get a die-cut figure from the books, like the one I did for Szeth on my Words of Radiance tour! (Or look below in this newsletter for a chance to win some sent to you in the mail.)

• Steelheart sample chapters
• Firefight sample chapters

Legion: Skin Deep

Also, speaking of stories that have come out: just in case you missed it, I released a second Stephen Leeds novella a couple months ago, and this is the first newsletter since that time.

Though we do release limited edition print versions of these stories, they’re mostly intended to be ebooks. This is me experimenting with style as I read and incorporate other genres into my work, something I think is essential for a writer to grow. (And extra important in the types of epic fantasies I like to write, which require intertwining plots that make use of a variety of narrative structures.)

In this case, I was looking into contemporary detective narratives, and decided to mix that with one of my screwy Brandon magic systems. Stephen Leeds has a bizarre kind of schizophrenia (maybe) where his hallucinations help him solve problems. They’re fun, short reads, and are available on a variety of digital platforms.

• Legion sample chapters
• Legion: Skin Deep sample chapters

Altered Perceptions anthology

In the May 2014 newsletter I spoke about the Altered Perceptions IndieGoGo campaign to benefit Robison Wells, who was crippled by debt caused by his mental illnesses. The campaign was successful, and backers should have received all or most of their perks by now. For those who weren’t involved in the campaign, the resulting anthology is available as an ebook. Sales of this ebook edition will go to charity, with 90% of the net proceeds benefiting Bring Change 2 Mind. The ebook is sold by the Waygate Foundation by arrangement with Fearful Symmetry.

My contribution to the anthology is six chapters from the original 2002 version of The Way of Kings, where Kaladin made a choice opposite the one he makes in the completely rewritten published novel.

For more information, see this page.

Welcoming Adam to the team

We’ve added another employee here at Dragonsteel, Adam Horne. It’s kind of ridiculous that a guy writing books needs so many employees, but we like to do weird things like release con-exclusive books and have die-cut figures to give away. I’ve kept Isaac and Peter so busy working on things like the Writing Excuses anthology and promotional material, that I felt it was time to hire someone whose entire job was to be my executive assistant. (Or, as my wife calls it, “executive minion.”)

Adam was someone we met through my sister, and he’s always impressed me with his “go do it” attitude. So far, he’s been awesome. You might see him joining me at conventions or on tours in the future, making certain I don’t get lost writing a book in my hotel when I’m supposed to be going to a signing or some such.

Just a quick rundown, then, here is “Team Sanderson” as it stands right now:

• Brandon Sanderson: Yours truly, and writer of all the things.
• Emily Sanderson: Business Manager and executive president in charge of making Brandon get his hair cut.
• Peter Ahlstrom: Vice President and Editorial Manager. He does things like maintain continuity for my books, run beta and gamma reads, and edit stuff like this here newsletter. He also watches my social media, where you might see him responding to people’s questions when I can’t get to them.
• Kara Stewart: CFO/Shipping Manager. Kara runs the store on our website, and comes up with most of the promotions and many of items we put up for sale. If your order wanders off, she’s the one to talk to.
• Isaac Stewart: Art Director. Isaac is the brilliant cartographer who did the maps for Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive, and he also manages the other art projects we do. (Which are multitude these days.)
• Adam Horne: Brandon’s Executive Assistant. He basically does whatever we need him to. (And does it very well.)

A big operation, all things considered, particularly when you add Peter’s wife Karen (who keeps my internal wiki sorted part-time) or Emily’s assistant Kathy. The whole idea is that anything I don’t have to do we give to someone else, so I can be writing. I think this is a good team, though, and I feel we’ve settled into the number of people we’re going to have for the near future. But who knows?

Conventions and tours for this year

I should be doing two tours in the United States this year—one right now for Firefight, and another for Shadows of Self (the new Mistborn book) in October. (If you’re wondering, Stormlight 3 comes in 2016.)

The Firefight tour is set, and that is posted just below. In addition, I’ll be doing international events in Taiwan in February and Sharjah (in the United Arab Emirates) in April.

Other North American convention appearances are listed below. For most, we don’t yet have details on the specific events I’m doing at the convention—so watch coppermind.brandonsanderson.com/events for details as they become available. Those of you who listed a city for us when you sent your newsletter request should get an email a few days before I attend a convention or do a signing near you. If you didn’t list a city, you can reply to the newsletter and let us know.

Firefight tour

Wednesday, January 7: Seattle
Thursday, January 8: Miami
Friday, January 16: Portland, OR
Saturday, January 17: Bay Area, CA
Tuesday, January 20: San Diego
Wednesday, January 21: Phoenix
Friday, January 23: Houston
Saturday, January 24: Atlanta (sort of)
Monday, January 26: Lexington, KY
Tuesday, January 27: Philadelphia
Wednesday, January 28: Boston
Saturday, February 21-ish: Chicago (details TBA)

Convention appearances

January 31: Salt Lake Comic Con FanXperience
February 13–16: Taipei International Book Exhibition
April 2–5: Minicon 50, Minneapolis
April 22–May 2: Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival, United Arab Emirates
May 22–24: ConQuest 46, Kansas City
August 19–23: Sasquan, Worldcon 73, Spokane
September 4–7: Dragon Con, Atlanta (tentative, I might end up not going)
November 13-14: YALLFest, Charleston (also tentative!)

Writing Excuses Master Class

Writing Excuses is on its tenth season! During that time, we’ve won a Hugo Award and released our own anthology, but for Season Ten, we wanted to try something new. We visualized the episodes this year taking a slightly different format, encompassing a year-long master class in writing a story.

So, instead of jumping topics in our usual random fashion, this year we’re going to be picking a general topic (like prewriting) and digging into it for an entire month. (Though one week out of the month we still intend to do a “wildcard” episode to shake things up.) The idea is that someone who wants to write a book, but doesn’t know where to start, could pick up this 52-week course and use it as a guide.

So if you’ve never listened to Writing Excuses, and you have a hankering to write a story of your own, starting now makes for an excellent entrance point to the podcast. Just go to the website and hit play!

Newsletter exclusive contest

As I mentioned above, I’m giving out die-cut character cards as part of my Firefight tour. (You can see a photo of them in this blog post.) I want to give newsletter subscribers a chance to get some, so: Surprise! You were all entered into a contest. Here are the first 5 winners, chosen randomly from subscribers:

• Scott McVey
• Keith Luck
• Leland Hart
• Amanda Wan
• Mark Buckley

My assistant will contact you for shipping information.

Everyone else on this mailing list also gets another chance to win. Between right now and the end of Sunday, January 11th, follow these steps:

1. Take a photo of yourself holding Firefight at your favorite bookstore.
2. Post the photo on Facebook with a caption like “Here I am holding Firefight by Brandon Sanderson at my favorite bookstore, BOOKSTORE NAME.”
3. Tag the bookstore’s Facebook page (if one exists, and if that’s possible) as well as tagging me (facebook.com/BrandSanderson — if you have trouble tagging me, send a message to my assistant Peter, facebook.com/ahlstrom.peter and he will fix this).
4. Mark your photo public.
5. Don’t mention that you’re doing this for a contest or that you want to win character cards. (Unless you win—then you can mention it!)

On Monday, January 12th, Peter will randomly select 5 winners from among contest entrants, and then he will message you asking for your shipping address (anywhere in the world). The message might get sorted into your “Other” folder on Facebook, so be sure to check that folder on Monday.

Good luck! There will be a few other ways for people to get the die-cut cards, but this particular method is exclusive to newsletter subscribers.

Newsletter exclusive preview

Fiction for you! Note: this is a rough draft, and it could change substantially before it’s released! Thanks so much for subscribing, and have a wonderful new year!

Brandon

(The preview was just for newsletter subscribers. Sign up for free.)

Earlier this year I told you about an IndieGoGo project to produce an anthology that would contain chapters from my original 2002 version of The Way of Kings (sometimes called Way of Kings Prime). Well, the anthology is finished, and IndieGoGo backers received their ebook copies a few weeks ago. The hardcovers have also been printed and right now I’m signing the ones that I was supposed to sign. The books will ship out this week and next.

For those of you who weren’t involved in the IndieGoGo campaign, an ebook of the finished Altered Perceptions anthology is now available. You can buy it at the usual ebook stores—links are to the upper right. The ebook sale is being run by Waygate Foundation, a public charity that was founded by prominent Wheel of Time fans, for which I sit on the Board of Directors. Waygate Foundation, in turn, will donate 90% of the net proceeds from the ebook sale to Robison Wells’s chosen charity, Bring Change 2 Mind.

Thirty-one different authors (including Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Tayler, Shannon Hale, Larry Correia, Brandon Mull, and Seanan McGuire among many others) came together to make this anthology happen. It contains original stories, deleted scenes, and essays from the contributors about how mental illness has affected their lives and the lives of their loved ones.

I talked more about the concept for the anthology here, and you can read a snippet of my Way of Kings Prime excerpt here. Included in the book are six chapters totaling 31,000 words (or a little shorter than The Emperor’s Soul). In the first, the young spearman whose name I later changed to Kaladin made a choice that was opposite a pivotal choice Kaladin makes in the version of The Way of Kings that was eventually published. The next five chapters chronicle his adjustment to his new way of life, including his training under a certain grumpy swordmaster who you met in Words of Radiance and elsewhere.

I do want to make clear that these chapters are not even close to canon and can’t be considered to be very good. It’s obvious that I made the right choice to shelve this version of The Way of Kings and rewrite it from scratch years later, after I felt my writing skills had improved to the extent that I could do justice to the ambitious project that is the Stormlight Archive. These chapters are meant, like all my other deleted scenes, as a curiosity, a look at what might have been.

More important is the Altered Perceptions anthology’s glimpse at how the lives of so many people, including people I care about deeply, are affected by mental illness. There are some fantastic and heartbreaking essays here, and I hope you read every one.

Hey, all! Brandon here. It’s been a few months since the release of Words of Radiance, and the book was a smash success. Thank you all for your continued support and enthusiasm.

I’m unlikely to tour again until early next year, so I wanted to drop you all a newsletter and let you know what I have going on in the next six months or so.

In This Newsletter

• Convention Appearances
• Writing Excuses Anthology
• Legion 2
• Firefight
• Stormlight 3
• Altered Perceptions Anthology

Convention Appearances

I’ll be attending a few conventions the remainder of this year, starting off with this weekend. I hope to see you at one of them! See my events calendar for details.

Baltimore: May 23–26, Balticon
I’m doing a blog post about my Balticon schedule on Thursday, so if you’re local, check it out!

Salt Lake City: July 3–6, Westercon
This convention will also feature the release of the Writing Excuses Anthology. See below.

Spain: July 30–August 2, Celsius 232 in Avilés
This is my one stop in continental Europe for the year.

London: August 4–6
Details of my UK appearances are still being worked out, but these are the dates I’ll be there. Check my calendar for the locations and times as August approaches.

Calgary: August 8–10, When Words Collide
I’ve almost gotten to Calgary once before, but this time you won’t be able to avoid me.

Salt Lake City: September 4–6, Salt Lake Comic Con
I’m not sure yet which days of the convention I’ll be there. Possibly just one day. Details are subject to change, and will firm up as the convention approaches.

Writing Excuses Anthology

I haven’t mentioned this anywhere else yet, but the newsletter gets a sneak peek. We’ll be debuting something cool at Westercon—an anthology collecting the stories we at Writing Excuses brainstormed on air a while back. My contribution to the anthology is a Cosmere novella titled “Sixth of the Dusk,” and you can read a preview here. Aside from being released in hardcover, the anthology will also be available as an ebook. More news on this is coming in June!

Legion 2

Revisions aren’t done yet, but Legion: Skin Deep is finished and I expect the book to come out later this year. (If you haven’t read the first Legion yet, you might want to hold off on grabbing a copy until June, as we should be running it as part of a StoryBundle where you can grab it and other books for a discount. Look for an announcement on my website on June 18th.)

Firefight

The release date for the Steelheart sequel is January 6th. I’ve finished the second draft and have feedback from my editor on the whole book. The book turned out really, really well, but there are some issues with the ending that still need to be fixed. I expect to be done with the next draft in June, and then it will start going into production. You can preorder Firefight here.

Stormlight Three

I know that the sequel to Words of Radiance is the book that many of you want most to hear about. I plan to start writing it late this summer, and you can watch the progress bars on my website as I do so! You shouldn’t have to wait nearly as long for book three as you did for book two.

Altered Perceptions Anthology

While you’re waiting for Stormlight Three, you’ll be able to read five chapters from the original version of The Way of Kings that I wrote back in 2003. They’re very different from the published novel. On tour, I mentioned that originally Kaladin made a very big decision in the first version of the book that took him in a completely different direction.

You also may want to in Stormlight Three yourself—to have your name used for a member of Bridge Four or someone else in another of my worlds. For three generous people, this will be possible. Read on.

What Is Altered Perceptions?

The Altered Perceptions anthology will collect “altered” versions of published stories—deleted scenes, alternate endings, original concept chapters, and that sort of thing. This anthology is where you’ll be able to find the five chapters of the original version of The Way of Kings. You can see a brief preview at the end of this newsletter.

These chapters are quite fun, as I consider what happened in The Way of Kings Prime (as I now call it) to be an “alternate reality” version of the events in the published books. The characters are almost all exactly the same people, but their backstories are different, and that has transformed who they are and how they react to the world around them. Roshar is similar, yet wildly different, as this was before I brought in the spren as a major world element.

If you’re a fan of the Stormlight Archive, I think you’ll find these chapters quite interesting. The anthology also includes a lot of very cool scenes, chapters, and stories from awesome authors, so please check it out.

Why Are We Doing It?

This anthology was my idea, conceived to benefit my friend Robison Wells, a writer who has nearly been crushed by the weight of severe and unexpected mental illness. The money will help him pay his debts, which came upon him as a result of losing his job following the advent of his difficulties. They came upon him quite unexpectedly, and his story serves as a reminder to all of us that mental illness—though something we speak about far less often—can come upon a person as unexpectedly as cancer or heart disease.

Rob is a great guy, and a great member of my local writing community. He has published several novels nationally, all of which are quite good, and was the primary force behind the founding of the Whitney Awards, created to honor LDS writers. He’s also the brother of Dan Wells, my podcasting buddy.

The anthology is being launched via an IndieGoGo campaign, which you can read more about here. There’s also a video with a bit more from Rob on his condition, and I talk about the idea for the anthology at around the 3:09 mark. As for what you get for contributing to the campaign, a simple ten bucks will get you the ebook of every contribution to the anthology, DRM-free, to be used on any platform you desire. However, there are also other cool things up for grabs. (Critiques, dinners, signed editions, and Larry Correia blowing things up with a big gun. Three truly generous donors will also be able to have their names appear in one of my future books. See here for details.)

Rob has been spectacular at getting a handle on his illness and learning to manage it. He has written new books and has them on submission. We’re confident that if we can help him dig out from underneath some of this debt, he will be able to cope long-term. We hope that you’ll be interested enough in this project to lend a hand and get something cool in return.

The IndieGoGo funding campaign ends in three days, and it’s still short of its goal. The anthology will be released and all perks will be delivered even if the goal isn’t met, but the funding goal is an accurate measure of what will dig Rob out of his current hole.

Local Utah television station KSL put an article about the anthology on their website today. Check it out.

And now, enjoy the following preview of the 27,000 words from the first version of The Way of Kings that will be included in the anthology.

Brandon

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