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. As the holiday season is here, I wanted to give a shout-out to Worldbuilders, Pat Rothfuss’s yearly, F&SF-themed charity drive. Pat puts a great deal of work into the charity, and I love how it brings the community together to do something great. The charity he supports (Heifer International) is quite worthy, and I’ve participated in one way or another every year I’ve been able.

This year, I wanted to do something a little special. With the help of the Waygate Foundation, the group of Wheel of Time fans who seek to do charitable work, I have offered to Pat a special event for Worldbuilders, if one of his benchmarks is met. (I believe he set it at 100k in donations, which we’re very close to reaching.)

He lists my stretch goal as something like, “Brandon will live-stream a writing session.” But this is going to be so very much more than such a simple sentence indicates. If we hit Pat’s goal, I’m going to get on Twitch.tv (a streaming site with an integrated viewer chat) and then I’m going to brainstorm and write a story according to audience direction.

That’s right, I’ll let you have a say in deciding turning points, descriptions, and general mayhem in the story. I’ll explain what I’m doing each of the way via Twitch’s integrated webcam feature, and will try to do an extended Q&A as well.

I’ll look at doing this for five hours or so: an hour of brainstorming followed by four hours of writing. If we don’t finish the story (which is likely, as I envision four hours getting us somewhere around 2,000–3,000 words) I’ll try to wrap up what I’m doing in some interesting (but open-ended) way, then release the story into the Creative Commons as something like an extended writing prompt. The challenge to all of you will to be to finish it according to your preference.

Either way, it should be a very unique experience. You’ll be able to not only watch me write, but have a hand in what takes place, as well as ask questions about the process while it’s going on. If you’d like to see this happen, all you need to do is donate to Worldbuilders. (I’ll probably use the writing session itself as a mini donation drive as well.)

Now, there will be some limitations. The chat will be heavily moderated by my team to delete abusive or inappropriate language—be aware, therefore, that we’re going to be a little trigger-happy with deleting comments. Something like this could quickly spiral out of control. If we hit the goal prompting me to do this, I’ll look at doing this session in the coming weeks—I promise it will at least happen before Worldbuilders ends on February 2nd. (I’m thinking second week of January is the likely date, though I’ll give lots of forewarning.)

My intent is to release whatever I write during the session to the Creative Commons. Then, I will probably finish the rest of the story on my own time and donate it to Worldbuilders or Waygate to sell (assuming it turns out well enough to be worth paying for) as a digital download, proceeds going to charity. I do have to warn that though the writing process of the story should be a lot of fun—and will hopefully be very interesting to all involved—I can’t promise the story will actually work. I’ve never done anything like this before. You’re going to be able to see me write a rough draft in all of its ugly glory, egregious spelling errors included. Perhaps that alone will be amusing enough to some of you to encourage a donation. But I’ve been toying with trying this for over a year now, and it’s time to offer the chance to everyone out there.

So, please go to Worldbuilders and check out all of the awesome incentives that authors and other creative professionals are offering. Donate what you can. Then, get ready for something distinctly strange as you all create the story, and I do the writing.

Brandon