The Hugo Voter Packet (including all of the Wheel of Time ebooks) is now available. If you’re a Worldcon member, go to this link to download it. It’s not too late to join—Supporting Memberships to Loncon 3, the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon)—with voting rights—are £25 or $40 until July 13th, and anyone who joins before the voting deadline on July 31st can vote. Or if you’re going to be in London, an Attending Membership for £125 or $205 (there’s also a reduced Young Adult price). As I have discussed before, please only vote in a category if you’ve read the nominees, and please don’t vote unless you’re willing to vote in multiple categories. Thanks for participating in the Hugo Awards process!

The Writing Excuses crew and I will be guests at Westercon in Salt Lake City from July 3rd through 6th this year. Westercon membership also gets you into Fantasycon across the street, and both conventions have a large number of luminaries attending. Westercon has a special price until June 1st: $25 now plus $25 at the door (paying $50 now is also fine). This convention will see the release of a special Writing Excuses project (we’ll announce details later), so Dan, Mary, Howard, and I hope to see many of you there. We’ll also record live episodes of the show, and we hope to have some very cool guests.

Finally, here’s the press release about the White Sand graphic novel that was announced this week at Book Expo America:

Dynamite announces deal with Brandon Sanderson for “White Sand”
Graphic novel trilogy to launch beginning in 2015

May 29^th, 2014, Mt. Laurel, NJ: Dynamite Entertainment is pleased to announce its agreement with New York Times Bestselling Author Brandon Sanderson for a brand new project titled “White Sand.” Sanderson gained renown for hisMistborn series of novels and his work in completing Robert Jordan’s epic Wheel of Time fantasy series. His current YA series The Reckoners commenced in 2013 with Steelheart, a #1 NY Times Young Adult bestseller, and his most recent novel, Words of Radiance, was a #1 NY Times Hardcover Fiction bestseller, continuing his Stormlight Archive epic fantasy series.

A brilliant, new fantasy world, White Sand is split into two halves: on one side are the Daysiders, and on the other the Darksiders. Daysiders have a unique ability to control and manipulate sand, bending it to their will to attack, or protect, as they wish. Darksiders have their own unique abilities and culture, and must wear thick dark lenses while on the Dayside. Generally speaking, Daysiders and Darksiders do not get along…and White Sand follows the adventures of one particular Daysider, a boy named Kenton.

The White Sand Graphic Novels are based on Brandon Sanderson’s manuscript, and the graphic novels are the first published work to explore these worlds. As with Brandon’s other fantasy novels, White Sand takes place in his larger universe called the Cosmere, where consistent rules and themes are followed. The White Sand Graphic Novels will be as integrated into the Cosmere as any of Brandon’s other novels with many “Easter Eggs” for Brandon’s large fan base.

Dynamite plans to produce White Sand as a series of 3 original graphic novels, the first of which will be published in 2015. Look for more details on this exciting new project later this year!

“So far this has been a fantastic experience. I’m super excited to be doing this. For years we’ve wanted to do a graphic novel of one of my books, but I dragged my feet because I knew that my fans would want something new, not just an adaptation of one of the stories they’ve already read. It took us years to find the right project, but we finally settled on White Sand, which is one of the books in the Cosmere that I haven’t published yet. We’ll be doing it exclusively as a graphic novel, and this is awesome. I love graphic novels, and I love the company Dynamite. We took our time finding the exact right product, which I can endorse enthusiastically. I’ve hand chosen the artist and the writer who will be working on this. I hope that you will all really love the product we’re producing. I look forward to showing you White Sand, the graphic novel,” said author Brandon Sanderson.

“I can’t express how excited we are that Brandon is entrusting us with creating original gns from his manuscript,” said Dynamite CEO/Publisher Nick Barrucci. “It’s an incredible responsibility, and we’re working hard to execute the best trilogy of Graphic Novels possible. As his fans know, Brandon’s worlds are interconnected and build on each other. His characters and universe truly are the ‘Marvel Universe’ of prose. This series of Graphic Novels continues to build on his mythos. The best part, is that Brandon is completely vested in the project and overseeing it. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“LIKE” DYNAMITE’S FACEBOOK PAGE TODAY!
http://www.facebook.com/dynamitecomics

Join the conversation on Dynamite Entertainment’s twitter page at http://twitter.com/DynamiteComics.

To find a comic shop near you, call 1-888-comicbook or visit http://www.comicshoplocator.com/.

For art and more information, please visit: http://www.dynamite.com/.

About Dynamite Entertainment:

Dynamite was founded in 2004 and is home to several best-selling comic book titles and properties, including The Boys,The Shadow, Vampirella, Warlord of Mars, Bionic Man, A Game of Thrones, and more. Dynamite owns and controls an extensive library with over 3,000 characters (which includes the Harris Comics and Chaos Comics properties), such asVampirella, Pantha, Evil Ernie, Smiley the Psychotic Button, Chastity, Purgatori, and Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt. In addition to their critically-acclaimed titles and bestselling comics, Dynamite works with some of the most high profile creators in comics and entertainment, including Kevin Smith, Alex Ross, Neil Gaiman, Andy Diggle, John Cassaday, Garth Ennis, Jae Lee, Marc Guggenheim, Mike Carey, Jim Krueger, Greg Pak, Brett Matthews, Matt Wagner, Gail Simone, Steve Niles, James Robinson, and a host of up-and-coming new talent. Dynamite is consistently ranked in the upper tiers of comic book publishers and several of their titles – including Alex Ross and Jim Krueger’s Project Superpowers – have debuted in the Top Ten lists produced by Diamond Comics Distributors. In 2005, Diamond awarded the company a GEM award for Best New Publisher and another GEM in 2006 for Comics Publisher of the Year (under 5%) and again in 2011. The company has also been nominated for and won several industry awards, including the prestigious Harvey and Eisner Awards.

All characters, names, logos, etc. are and © their respective owners.

About Brandon Sanderson:

Brandon Sanderson was born in 1975 in Lincoln, Nebraska. By junior high he had lost interest in the novels suggested to him, and he never cracked a book if he could help it. Then an eighth grade teacher, Mrs. Reader, gave him Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly.

Brandon was finishing his thirteenth novel when Moshe Feder at Tor Books bought the sixth he had written. In 2005 Brandon held his first published novel, Elantris, in his hands. Tor also published four books in Brandon’s Mistborn series, along with Warbreaker and then The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance, the first two in the planned ten-volume series The Stormlight Archive. Four books in his middle-grade Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians series were released by Scholastic. Brandon was chosen to complete Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series; the final book, A Memory of Light, was released in 2013. That year also marked the releases of YA novels The Rithmatist from Tor and Steelheart from Delacorte.

Currently living in Utah with his wife and children, Brandon teaches creative writing at Brigham Young University. He also hosts the Hugo Award-winning writing advice podcast Writing Excuses with Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Tayler, and Dan Wells.

www.brandonsanderson.com