Hello, Sanderson fans! This is Emily, Brandon’s wife and business manager. Brandon is on tour for Words of Radiance (tonight and tomorrow he’s in Arizona), so I’m posting on his behalf today. The purpose of this post is to say thank you.

People are so kind to Brandon at signings, and I’m grateful for that. He comes home with all types of clever, unique, and even delicious gifts from readers. Often some of those gifts are addressed to me! I want you to know that we really appreciate your thoughtfulness.

This is a tricky subject to tackle, though, because I don’t want anyone to read this and get the idea that they ought to bring things to Brandon at signings! That is not expected, or necessary. Really, the best gift you can give Brandon is to enjoy reading his books and share them with others.

However, we also want those who have been generous with their talents to know that we are grateful, and it would be impossible for us to send individual thank-you notes. So, if you’ve ever given Brandon anything, a drawing, a letter, a treat, a late night spent reading, or just your time waiting in line to talk to him, THANK YOU!

We can’t thank everyone personally for everything, not just for the gifts, but also for your kindness. We’ll try to highlight these things every so often. Some of the items below are from previous tours and other events.

(Also, if you have a shardhunt code, or know someone who does, make sure it gets entered here. I’ve been told I’m not allowed to see the awesome bonus material until you guys unlock it.)

Everyone, I come to you today deeply humbled and appreciative. Over the weekend at Worldcon in San Antonio, I was honored with not one, but two Hugo awards. Though I’m thrilled to have Writing Excuses finally win after several years of losses, I’m beyond flattered to have been given a fiction award in the novella category for The Emperor’s Soul.

I shared a little of what I was thinking during the acceptance speech, but I prefer to keep things like that short. I’ll go into a little more depth here. Many of you know the story of how I discovered fantasy novels as a young man. My first experience with fandom isn’t one I’ve talked about as often.

I was seventeen or eighteen when it happened. A teacher (a different one from the one who handed me my first fantasy novel) waved me over after class. He’d noticed a flyer for a science fiction convention called Andromeda One, which had a writing contest. Now, this teacher was not a fan of sf in the least—he had us reading Faulkner—but he was a teacher, and an excellent one. He held up the sheet to me and said, “You should check this out, Brandon. I think you’ll like it. And try submitting one of your stories.”

I’d never heard of literary science fiction cons before. I figured it was something like a Star Trek con. I was wrong, as this was something so much more. A welcoming home, a place for thoughtful discussion, and a place of learning. I spent that weekend in panels, listening to REAL writers who wrote stories like I liked to read. Katherine Kurtz was guest of honor, and I remember my utter amazement at how—when I asked her a question about writing—she sat me down and didn’t just answer, but talked to me and encouraged me for a good half hour while she waited for her next panel.

I found my home among these people. I was immediately adopted into the fold by the other teens there, and was carted from one activity to another by people whom I’d never met before that day—but who wanted to make certain I had a good convention experience. It was amazing.

As I mentioned, the convention had a student writing competition. In fact, I remember the exact words of the flyer my teacher showed me. It had a line I have never forgotten, written in big letters, proclaiming, “Andromeda One student writing contest! Join us as we search for what may be future Hugo and Nebula Award winners!”

I managed to win that contest. Granted, I think there were only five or six submissions. But I actually won. The award was a certificate, a $50 savings bond, and a handshake. The presenter said to me, “Keep writing, kid! Maybe someday you’ll win yourself a Hugo.”

Ladies and gentlemen, almost twenty years later, here it is. My Hugo.

Photo by Eddie Schneider.

How can I explain my emotions? I’ve had writing successes, but for twenty years—ever since I saw that shiny award sticker on the copy of Ender’s Game I was buying, and looked up what it meant—this has been one of my profoundest, most personal goals in life. To write something worthy of that beautiful statue. I haven’t talked about it a lot because I believe strongly in the integrity of the award, and believe authors should avoid doing more than making people aware of deadlines and eligible works. But now I can talk about it.

The Emperor’s Soul is by far the best short piece I’ve ever written, and it rivals the best of my novels in quality. It is the perfect piece to win, one I’m exceptionally proud of. I’m amazed, gratified, honored, and deeply grateful that so many people found it worthy. This is the perfect news to use as the first post on my new website, which you may have noticed has finally come online.

Thank you to all who have believed in me and my writing. Thank you to my 3-year-old, who—upon seeing me on the video stream from home—apparently said, “Why is Daddy on the big TV?” Thank you to Emily for her love and support, to my parents for all they have done for me. To people like Moshe Feder who discovered me, to the Tachyon folks who did such a great job editing and packaging this book, and also to my wonderful agent and my dedicated assistants.

Most of all, thank you to all who voted. Thank you so very much.

Tachyon has printed a small print run of hardcovers of The Emperor’s Soul, and we were planning to put them up for sale this Christmas. Well, I don’t think that will do any longer! I’m therefore proud to offer, for sale as of now, hardcover editions of The Emperor’s Soul.

 

They are a little pricy at $25 (on sale for $20 until the end of September), because of the nature of doing small hardcover print runs—this is intended as a collector’s item. The trade paperback will continue to be sold at many wonderful locations, as will the ebook. All print copies entitle you to a free copy of the ebook as well, mailed to you directly by me in a DRM-free format. (Details here at the bottom of the page.)

So now what? Well, onward, I guess! Some of the masters of this genre collected a good dozen or so Hugos during their lifetimes. I’ve got a lot of work to do.

 

Recently I got back from the The Rithmatist tour, so it’s time for me to post some pictures of some of the cool things I saw and some of the neat things you all gave me. I appreciate the time and thought put into the gifts.

Take a look at this Steel Inquisitor sculpture Meghan Etzel-Hardman gave me. Wow! You can take a look at more of her work at her site.

These awesome Mistborn costumes came from the hard work of Sarah Levinson, who came with her pals to Phoenix Comicon. From left to right: Karen as Tindwyl, Varouj as Sazed (I think I saw him dressed as Aang from Avatar one of the other days), me dressed as myself, Brian as Elend, and Sarah as Vin. The attention to detail on these costumes is amazing!

Here’s a beautiful bookmark I got from the Tattered Cover when I signed there, beads from New Orleans, the A Game of Thrones card game, and a silver spoon and expertly knitted animals for Baby Melvin (not his real name).

At one of my tour stops back east, I met fellow Tor author David Walton. He was kind enough to give me a copy of his latest book Quintessence, which I enjoyed reading during my flights.

One reader, lmlnewburg, created some fan art for a story idea the Writing Excuses cast helped me brainstorm about psychic birds in the jungle, “Sixth of the Dusk.”

And as usual, the various assortment of Magic cards:

Emily Grange knitted this koloss based on Ben McSweeney’s illustrations. The detail on this guy is amazing!

The event put on June 3rd by the King’s English Bookshop and hosted by the Provo Library was a great success. With nearly 500 people in attendance, this was probably the second-largest non-release-party event that I’ve had for one of my books so far.

At the signing, I received this beautiful glass ornament from the folks at Gomm Studios (check out their gallery of stained glass).

There were some nice T-shirts for those working the event. They gave me one too.

Take a look at that enormous gear decoration! Incidentally, the picture below was chosen by Publishers Weekly as their photo of the day on June 6th.

In addition to the book store signings, Phoenix Comicon and BookExpo America were all part of the tour. It made for a crazy time, but as always, I want to thank you all for coming out to the signings and other events. Because of you, The Rithmatist debuted at #6 on the New York Times Bestseller list.

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.

I arrived home from Australia yesterday to find that yet another surprise home makeover had taken place. (The previous one was after my New York Comic-Con trip.)

In this week’s Writing Excuses podcast episode, Larry Correia joins Mary, Howard, Dan, and me in front of a live audience at Life, the Universe & Everything to talk about guns in fiction. If you don’t know much about guns and want to use them in your writing, give it a listen.

While I was in Australia, I did an interview for ABC Radio. You can find it here. My assistant has also uploaded a new Twitter posts archive.

The most recent ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS annotation covers chapter ten, where I torture the reader some more by interrupting cliffhangers.

One of my students has started releasing my creative writing class lectures from this year online. Eventually you’ll be able to find them all on this page.

The site that has hosted my forums for years, the Official Time-Waster’s Guide, has now officially gone offline. The front page hadn’t really been updated in years as staff members moved on to other projects, and few areas of the forum were still active, so it’s not a big loss. My official forums will now be hosted by the official Brandon Sanderson fansite, 17th Shard. (They also just posted a writeup of the Q&A from my recent West Jordan signing, covering both my books and the Wheel of Time.) Dan Wells is also moving his forum over there, and the Reading Excuses forum is also there. The admins are currently looking into moving over a read-only archive of relevant TWG posts, so we’ll see if that happens.

The catalyst for TWG going offline now rather than some other time is that the old forum software it was running was vulnerable, and a hacker exploited that vulnerability to harvest email addresses and salted/hashed passwords. That means that if you had an account there, you may see an uptick in spam, and if your password was an easily crackable one that you used elsewhere (especially if it was the same password you use for your email account), someone may break in to your accounts elsewhere. So it’s a very good idea to change the passwords you use on any other site that shared the login you used at TWG. Because the passwords were salted and hashed they should still be fairly secure if you picked a robust password in the first place, but it’s a good idea to err on the side of caution and change your passwords anyway. (If you’re wondering, the forum also used a lot of custom code which made updating it difficult, and we decided the effort it would take to secure everything again wasn’t worthwhile in the face of its diminished activity and the other available options.)

Remember when I said last fall on Twitter that I had just written the most awesome Allomantic gunfight ever? (Okay, it was also the first Allomantic gunfight ever written.) Well, that gunfight appears in THE ALLOY OF LAW chapter six, now up on Tor.com. This marks the end of the short story that I originally planned, which turned into the new Mistborn novel coming out on November 8th. If you read the six preview chapters that have been released, you’ll understand why this really was the only good place to end the preview. I wanted you to get a comprehensive sample of what this novel was really about, and with this chapter all the elements come together. But now the book doesn’t come out for more than two months, and there won’t be any more preview chapters. Please try to be patient. Anyway, to find out how to get signed copies of the book when it does come out, see here.

I’m very pleased with how THE ALLOY OF LAW turned out. On the other hand, I’m very displeased with how my draft of MYTHWALKER turned out way back in 2001, which is why I stopped writing it. But if you’re a glutton for punishment you can check out chapter one. Some of its elements will look familiar, since I cannibalized them into later books.

The newest episode of Writing Excuses is up, and it covers revision focusing on description. This past weekend at the World Science Fiction Convention in Reno, Writing Excuses was beaten in the Hugo voting for the Best Related Work category by a fine book called CHICKS DIG TIME LORDS. Mary contributed one of its essays (among many great women authors). She also won a Hugo for her short story, “For Want of a Nail.” (Dan lost the Campbell to Lev Grossman, author of THE MAGICIANS.)

Also at Worldcon a group of us attended the Girl Genius Steampunk Ball in costume. Here’s a sample photo, taken by Pemberly’s assistant Kathy. I’m dressed as an Elendel Allomancer and my assistant Peter is Allomancer Jak from the Elendel Daily broadsheet. Pemberly and Peter’s wife Karen are dressed to accompany us to the wedding dinner in chapter four of THE ALLOY OF LAW. (Not that Allomancer Jak was there.)

You can see a few more photos on Facebook. I’ll try to get more tagged soon.

Time to sit down and talk about some things. I hope this doesn’t get too rambly for you, but I’ve been getting a lot of questions about TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT and THE WAY OF KINGS, so I thought I’d give you some updates regarding what’s been happening over here at Dragonsteel Entertainment HQ. (Also known as my basement.)

First off, TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT. The progress bar has been stopped at 82% for about two months now. Why is that? Well, mid-to-late December, two things happened. First, I decided that I couldn’t work any further on new material for TOWERS until I did some substantial rewrites to the book. This happens frequently with my novels; it’s not something to worry about. I did this twice on HERO OF AGES. The more complex the book and the series, the more often I find myself doing midbook refining drafts like this one, making certain I’ve got the voice, motivations, and plot sequences right.

TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT is going very well. I’m very pleased with how it’s turning out, and I’m confident it will be ready in time for a release later this year as promised. It will be longer than THE GATHERING STORM, which is another reason the progress bar stopped. I’m just not sure how long the book will end up being, so a percentage is harder to judge right now. The actual length of the book right now—after putting together all the pieces I’ve been working on over the last six months—comes to 291,294 words. THE GATHERING STORM was around 300,000 words. I estimate this one at around 320,000 or so after revisions and edits. (It might get as high as 350,000, then get sliced back down. I always trim a lot off books in later drafts when I tighten up the language.)

I figured that since I was doing revisions, and since getting to “100%” at 300,000 words would give the wrong impression, I’d just let the progress bar sit for a time. As long as I turn in the book by this summer, it will still be ready for a late fall release. So there’s no need for anyone to panic yet.

I’m afraid I can’t say much about what I’m working on in the book. Out of respect for Harriet’s wishes, I need to remain tight-lipped. I know it’s not very satisfying to hear, “All is well, please keep waiting.” But . . . all is well, please keep waiting.

I put that progress bar up so that you can keep track of me, and because I feel that readers deserve to see how things are going on my books. It’s just how I like to do things. But don’t let it become too much of a crutch to you, an absolute indication that things are moving or not moving. I’m always working, and these last two months have been no exception. (Arrival of my second son notwithstanding—I sent out a newsletter about that, and if you didn’t get it, you might want to drop me an email through the form on my website and ask to sign up. Be sure to let me know what city/state/country you live in so that I can let you know when I’ll be stopping by on tour.) If you didn’t get it, here are the details on Meatloaf’s arrival:

A baby boy has come to the Sanderson family. Dallin Matthew was born on January 19th, weighing in at 9 lbs. 2 oz. He joins his two-year-old brother Joel as heir to Brandon’s literary legacy. (Though Joel has only recently started speaking much English. He used to talk and talk and talk, but apparently in an alien language with inflections that sounded maddeningly familiar. Anyway, Joel’s favorite word in English is “cars.”)

Emily, Brandon’s wife and business manager for Dragonsteel Entertainment (her official company title is “Queen”), is adjusting to being the mother of two boys. Joel is helping her out by learning not to throw things; I haven’t seen him throw anything off the second-floor balcony in weeks!

Here’s a link to some pictures of Dallin. (Photos by Faith Jennings.) Isn’t he cute?

The other thing that happened in December to slow me is that production from Tor started to get anxious because they didn’t have THE WAY OF KINGS (book one of my new series, The Stormlight Archive) in final form yet. So I had to spend a lot of time working on another draft of that book, along with getting some of the interior artwork done.

Talk has already started to float around the internet about KINGS. I’ll start posting more about the book in the upcoming months. I wanted this update to be focused on the Wheel of Time.

Remember, I do often make little notes on my Twitter and Facebook pages (the two are mirrored) about what I’m doing and how it’s going. So if you’re salivating for info, you can keep an eye on one of the two. There’s not a ton of information there, but there is some.

Welcome to Brandon Sanderson’s first newsletter since, as far as I can tell, July 2006. You’re receiving this because you signed up or sent Brandon fan mail. If you’d prefer not to get emails like this in the future, just reply and ask to be taken off the list.

Hi! I’m Peter Ahlstrom, and I’ll be providing the voice of today’s newsletter. I’ve been Brandon’s assistant for the last nine months, and what a nine months it has been! First we had the WARBREAKER release, followed by ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE KNIGHTS OF CRYSTALLIA, and then THE GATHERING STORM and its massive book tour. Many of you who wrote to Brandon mentioned what city you were from, so we were able to send you emails telling you when Brandon was signing within a couple hours of you. At the signings when Brandon asked who had come after getting one of these reminder emails, many people raised their hands. So if you haven’t let Brandon know what city you live in or near, now’s your chance.

UPCOMING BOOKS

THE WAY OF KINGS, the first book in Brandon’s new epic fantasy series The Stormlight Archive, is coming out in August. ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE SHATTERED LENS, the fourth book in the series that began with ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS, is scheduled for an October release. And TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT, book 13 of the Wheel of Time, will come out around November if everything goes according to plan (Brandon is in the middle of major revisions, but he thinks hitting that date is still possible). Tor currently wants Brandon to do a two-week book tour for the release of each book, both THE WAY OF KINGS and TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT. I plan to send out another newsletter with more details on each book as release day approaches, and there will be sample chapters going up (or at least linked to) on the website. The prologue for THE WAY OF KINGS should also be appearing in the back of the WARBREAKER paperback, due out on March 30th.

NEW ARRIVAL

A baby boy has come to the Sanderson family. Dallin Matthew was born on January 19th, weighing in at 9 lbs. 2 oz. He joins his two-year-old brother Joel as heir to Brandon’s literary legacy. (Though Joel has only recently started speaking much English. He used to talk and talk and talk, but apparently in an alien language with inflections that sounded maddeningly familiar. Anyway, Joel’s favorite word in English is “cars.”)

Emily, Brandon’s wife and business manager for Dragonsteel Entertainment (her official company title is “Queen”), is adjusting to being the mother of two boys. Joel is helping her out by learning not to throw things; I haven’t seen him throw anything off the second-floor balcony in weeks!

Here’s a link to some pictures of Dallin. (Photos by Faith Jennings.) Isn’t he cute?

SUPERSTARS WRITING SEMINAR IN PASADENA

Brandon was invited to teach at the Superstars Writing Seminar March 19th through 21st along with fellow writers Kevin J. Anderson, David Farland, Rebecca Moesta, and Eric Flint (whose 1632-series books are some of my personal favorites). Many people write to Brandon asking for writing advice, and besides the podcast Writing Excuses that he does, a seminar like this is one of the only opportunities he gets to help people out.

Brandon and the other instructors at this seminar are all New York Times bestselling authors and all have tons of good advice. I can personally attest to David Farland’s teaching; I was in a class of his that taught me a great deal about the publishing industry (though I took that advice in a separate direction from Brandon, who was also in that class, since my talents lie more in the editorial field than in writing novels). Other writers I know like Eric James Stone and Alethea Kontis attest to Kevin and Rebecca’s instruction. And Eric Flint cultivated many a first-time published writer with his Grantville Gazette and with his editorship of Jim Baen’s Universe.

FREE TICKET DRAWING: This week only, the seminar organizers are holding a drawing for a free pass. If the seminar is a bit out of your price range but you really want to go, this is your chance. The contest ends on February 14th, 2010, so head on over there now! http://www.superstarswritingseminars.com (the drawing has now ended).

OTHER EVENTS

Brandon has a pretty full convention schedule this year, including LTUE in Provo (this week!), Minicon in Minneapolis, ConStellation in Lincoln, ConDUIT in Salt Lake, and JordanCon and Dragon*Con in Atlanta. For a full schedule, check out https://coppermind.brandonsanderson.com/events

FOLLOW BRANDON

Main blog: https://coppermind.brandonsanderson.com/blog
Livejournal: http://mistborn.livejournal.com
Facebook: http://facebook.com/BrandSanderson
Twitter: http://twitter.com/BrandSanderson

That’s it for today’s newsletter. From now on I’ll try for a better frequency than once every four years, but I don’t expect you’ll ever be getting one more than four times in a year. Let me know what you think!

Best,

Peter Ahlstrom
Assistant to Mr. Sanderson