Below I have info on a contest that’s Steelheart-related (sorry, for the US and Canada only). But first some updates.

This week’s Writing Excuses podcast episode covers chapter breakdowns—what determines our chapter breaks? How do we handle POV shifts, scene/sequel balance, and other considerations when we’re carving our stories into chapters?

My assistant Peter has uploaded another Twitter posts archive, this one covering the past month. And Tor.com has put up another Ecology of Roshar post, about purple and orange blood.

I’m pleased to announce that my novel The Alloy of Law (or L’Alliage de Justice in French) has won France’s Imaginales Festival prize for best translated novel. I’m deeply honored. I feel overwhelmed by the respect I’ve been paid by the French science fiction and fantasy community. Having spent my teenage years studying and learning French, it’s particularly gratifying to me to find such a welcome home among the community there.

When I got back from the The Rithmatist tour, I found this waiting for me from Delacorte, the publisher of my upcoming YA novel Steelheart.

This is the Random House Mega Vault. Random House has graciously donated three of them to be given away. And yes, that case is real metal. Not sure what type, but I suspect an Allomancer could make use of it.

Opening the Mega Vault:

Inside are copies of the first books in three new series releasing this fall. The Eye of Minds by James Dashner releases October 8th. Teardrop by Lauren Kate releases October 22nd. And of course, Steelheart, my post-apocalyptic young adult novel about normal people assassinating the powerful evil Epics who rule mankind. Steelheart releases September 24th.

I’m sure the other two books are also appetizing reads. Though Dashner’s book could use some salt.

Want to get your hands on one of our three Mega Vaults? Here’s what you do.

Step 1: Read the prologue to Steelheart at this link.

Step 2: Create some awesome fan art based on the prologue. Let’s keep it to the visual arts. So, original illustrations, sketches, comic book panels, Photoshopped images, etc. Even videos, if you want to get that ambitious. Please keep the images tasteful and “safe for work.”

Step 3: Log in to the Brandon Sanderson fan forums at The 17th Shard. I know making an account somewhere can be a hassle, but other methods we considered for organizing this were just too complicated logistically.

Step 4: Post your image in their Steelheart Mega Vault Contest gallery. To post, click the black “upload” button in the upper right-hand corner. Click “choose file” and upload as usual. Click “review and publish.” Add a title and description if you want, then finish and publish it. The webmasters on the forums will approve all images before they are posted.

Step 5: You’ll have a week to submit—the deadline is July 15th. After the deadline, the webmasters and my assistants Peter and Isaac will narrow down the submissions to ten unannounced semifinalists. From those ten, I’ll pick my three favorites, whose creators will each receive one of the Mega Vaults from Random House. Note that they can only ship to the United States and Canada, so please accept my apologies if you live outside these areas.

I’m looking forward to seeing what you all come up with! Good luck!

This week’s Writing Excuses episode features Janci Patterson and talks about writing contemporary YA fiction. I mentioned Janci’s book CHASING THE SKIP a couple of weeks ago. She has a lot of great insights, so give it a listen!

I’ve got a rather random collection of links for you today. First up, my friend Brent Weeks’ book THE BLACK PRISM is on sale as an ebook for $1.99 with all vendors—and the sale ends today. Now, I actually haven’t read this book yet since I’ve been so busy, but my assistant Peter says it’s the best book he’s read in the last year aside from a certain book that’s not out yet. He thinks its characters and magic system will really appeal to people who like my books, and I trust his judgment. The sequel is also out already and he says it’s just as good. There is a bit of a content warning, so do keep that in mind.

Badali, the company that makes the official Elantris, Mistborn, Wheel of Time, Kingkiller Chronicle, and Middle-earth jewelry is holding a costume contest (with costumes based on those series) until November 2nd with some cool prizes. For details, check out their page. I look forward to seeing what cool costumes you come up with. (I’m not judging but I’ll be sure to look at some photos.)

My friend Stacy Whitman who’s the Editorial Director at Tu Books, which publishes fiction for kids and teens that features multicultural characters and settings, let me know that Tu is holding a writing contest. The NEW VISIONS AWARD will be given for a middle grade or young adult fantasy, science fiction, or mystery novel by a writer of color. The contest has been running since June and will finish up at the end of October. For more details, see their site.

Also, another reminder that my friend and frequent artist Isaac Stewart has the Mistborn Feruchemical Table fine art print available at InkWing (which also does my T-shirts). Limited edition numbered prints signed by me and Isaac are not yet sold out.

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.

In the most recent Writing Excuses podcast episode, Dan, Mary, Howard, and I talk about characters who do dumb things. There are a lot of traps that writers fall into involving this, and we talk about how to avoid them.

InkWing has a limited number of Mistborn- and Stormlight-themed gamer bags for sale. They’re also running another T-shirt giveaway contest

This week’s chapter of my abandoned 2001 novel MYTHWALKER features Siri’s wedding. And there’s a new Twitter posts archive uploaded.

Several of the stores I’ve signed at recently have autographed copies of my books that they can ship to you. Forbidden Planet in London, Murder by the Book in Houston, Joseph-Beth in Lexington, UBooks in Seattle, among others. Check my Facebook past events page and give the store nearest you a call. (You don’t have to be a Facebook member to see the info.)

And I’ll be signing throughout the UK all the rest of this week, so check out my events page to find the signing nearest you.

Also, this year’s Great Hunt is still going, even though industrious readers have already pretty much decoded the entire excerpt. So we’ve added some new surprises that further codes will unlock.

I’m in the middle of my tour for THE ALLOY OF LAW right now; I’m in Houston today and will be in London by Saturday. If you want email reminders when I’ll be near you, sign up and tell me your city. Meanwhile this year’s Great Hunt continues, and readers have gone a long way toward deciphering the encoded file from Robert Jordan’s notes.

By the way, THE ALLOY OF LAW was one of five write-in candidates to be added in its category as a 2011 Goodreads Choice Award semifinalist. If you think it deserves the award, you can vote for it here. Competition is pretty stiff, though!

This week’s Writing Excuses episode features Andrew P. Mayer joining Howard, Mary, and Dan at Dragon*Con to discuss taking ridiculous-seeming over-the-top concepts and using them to create brilliant literature.

In the newest chapter of MYTHWALKER, my abandoned novel from 2001, the switch is on. You knew it was coming.

Yesterday on Twitter I participated in a #torchat. The first half of it is also up in my newest Twitter archive post, and I’ll put up the rest next week.

Several readers have reported that the ebook version of THE ALLOY OF LAW has images that are hard to read. Tor is working on a solution right now, but in the meantime, I’ve uploaded all of the images to their own page here. You can see them below. I’m including a color version of the Elendel city map (by Isaac Stewart, who also runs the Mistborn and Stormlight Archive T-shirt store) that doesn’t appear in the book. And you can download a full-resolution broadsheet PDF if you are a Tor.com member. By the way, broadsheet (and Shallan’s sketchbook) artist Ben McSweeney will be with me at my Houston signing today, so fortunate readers there can get his autograph as well.

Ta’veren Tees has a new T-shirt available for preorder. I think I’ll let it speak for itself.

Well, I’m off on my tour. The THE ALLOY OF LAW release party was a blast, even though the bookstore was a little light on copies. We managed to get everyone a book, I think. So huzzah, and forward.

One of the things I announced yesterday on Twitter and Facebook was another Great Hunt to coincide with my tour. If you aren’t familiar with it, this is a concept from the Wheel of Time books which I (very loosely) adapted into a scavenger hunt to hold while on tour. I leave codes hidden around the world for Wheel of Time fans to locate, and they collectively input them into a web page which slowly unlocks text for everyone to see. (You can read a recap of last year’s Great Hunt here.)

I have some thirty codes to reveal, hide, or otherwise give out while on tour this time. I may hide some inside books in certain bookstores. I might give them to individuals (like Tor employees) for safe keeping, and require you to figure out who they are. Or, perhaps, you might have to do something else. Whatever strikes me.

Before we go farther, however, some ground rules:

1. The codes are inside envelopes this year, with a label requesting that a bookstore employee NOT open the envelope and read the code over the phone. I’ll probably prepare the bookstore employees for what is coming. You are required to fetch the codes yourself, or at least send someone you personally know to get the code. I don’t want you bothering employees of any store—whether it be bookstores or someone from a store next door—to do the work for you. They aren’t being paid to fetch codes. If you know someone in the area and can send them, go for it. Avoid bothering strangers.
2. All but four of the codes need to be entered in order to reveal the secret, but each one inputted will reveal small bits. This is a collective endeavor. Share information, work together. Once you find a code, input it on this page. Everyone else, feel free to watch the page and try to figure out what the secret is going to be as more is revealed.
3. It is okay to try to guess codes. They have something in common. In a way, they are some fun information themselves.
4. If you want to get involved, both Theoryland and Dragonmount (among others) are likely to have threads where you can post, participate, and see what codes have been found and what others have been tried. You can follow the hunt’s progress by searching for the hashtag #wotgh on Twitter.

Now, as to the secret itself, I feel I should manage some expectations. Last year, we revealed a chapter from the upcoming Wheel of Time book. There are no chapters that are ready this time; they’re all in first-draft stage. So the secret this time will not be something quite so earth-shattering. (Sorry.)

I still think it is cool, though it is more in the ‘cool curiosity’ category rather than the ‘sneak peek’ category. This is something that was written by Robert Jordan himself, and is taken directly from his notes. People have frequently asked us to show some of the notes, and Harriet agreed to let us show you this chunk. It is illustrative of the kinds of things you’d find in the notes themselves.

So, swear the hunter’s oath and get to it! Let’s have some fun. I plan to give away some of these in each city I visit, so UK Wheel of Time fans, you should have plenty of opportunities this year to help out.

Best,

Brandon

Want your name to appear as a character in the Stormlight Archive? There’s going to be an auction for just that starting on Wednesday to benefit the Life, the Universe, & Everything (LTUE) symposium. I’ll post more details when the auction begins.

This year’s LTUE hosted the recording of a number of episodes of the Writing Excuses podcast, one of which aired this week. In it, Dan and Howard are joined by Robison Wells and Sarah Eden to talk about writing romance.

The most recent WARBREAKER annotation is a long one covering chapter forty-nine. It talks about Vasher’s temper and using the priests as scapegoats, among other things.

In Suvudu’s cage matches, Vin managed to hold off Jon Snow and Perrin was defeated by Quick Ben. Which sets up two matches, as Suvudu announced here. Starting on Wednesday, Vin will face Quick Ben and Perrin will have a consolation match against Jon Snow. Suvudu is accepting writeups for consolation match; see the announcement for details. They also have a forum where you can make suggestions about future cage matches. And superfan Terez is holding her own contest for best Vin vs. Quick Ben writeup.

Some people have sent me links to their music recently. Joey Maker has a passing reference to Rand Al’Thor in a rap song of his here. And Darin Porter wrote a whole song about Kaladin called “You Can’t Go Back.”

Over at Suvudu, Vin is up against Zedd from Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series. Here’s how I think the match would go down.

There you go. If you think this is the way the match would play out, go cast your vote. The poll closes tomorrow.

I blogged briefly yesterday about the Suvudu cage matches. I thought I’d dig into it a little further today, as I consider Monday updates (normally) to be more “Here’s what’s going on” updates. I prefer to move more in-depth posts to other days.

So, the Suvudu cage match. First off, I’d like to say that I’m impressed by the improvements made to the format this year. For one thing, the editors made a conscious effort to even out the power level of the combatants. That goes a long way toward making the matchups more interesting, I think—no longer do we have to suspend disbelief to epic proportions in order to pretend that Jaime Lannister would somehow ever NEED to fight Cthulhu, and somehow find a way to win.

There are still some things to gripe about here, as there is still great power-level variety in the matchups. All things considered, this is a good group to battle it out, but do Gollum and Tasslehoff REALLY belong in this? I don’t think they match the others. And what about Pug, Allanon, and Zedd? Three full-blown, deeply trained wizards amid a bunch of melee fighters? Fantasy novels aren’t D&D. (Well, hopefully most of them aren’t.) There’s no reason to force power balance between the arcane and the non-arcane. But anyway, at least there aren’t any Elder Gods running around.

So, what are my thoughts? Basically, thinking of it rationally, Pug and company should end up dominating. Maybe Beowulf too. I mean, really. Beowulf is the proto-hero that almost all of the rest are (tangentially) based upon; the guy was practically indestructible. The others are arguably demi-dieties, and would be better off playing hardball with people like Rand and Gandalf than ending up fighting people like Tally or Druss. (Who, don’t get me wrong, are both totally awesome—but they’re going to have trouble with people who can teleport, call down the powers of the elements, and all-around warp the fabric of reality.)

Questions like these make it a little hard for me to figure out just what’s going on here. Is it just supposed to be a popularity contest? If so, Jacob Black wins and we can all go home. (Sorry, but it’s true.) If it’s not supposed to be a popularity contest, and we’re supposed to consider each pairing realistically, why don’t we have more information on the matches? How far apart do the combatants start? It’s a “cage match” by Suvudu’s title, but are they really fighting in a standard-issue wrestling cage? I mean, come ON, guys. We’re nerds here. We can’t make subjective judgments about fictional characters completely outside of canon if you don’t at LEAST tell us how the fights are set up.

Do people with followers get to bring some along? What about Perrin—one of his basic powers is calling on wolves for help. So can we assume he’s got a pack of them with him? Do the sf characters have guns? Can Vin assume everyone she’ll fight will have metal on them, or can we assume they will each know the person they’re fighting and be able to prepare?

Okay, yes, I’m overthinking this. But don’t tell me you weren’t too. Anyway, here’s my input on the two matches I’ve got some responsibility for:

Perrin against Tasslehoff. Really. We’re doing this? Okay, well, here’s what we’ve got. Perrin is an extremely skilled fighter whose very nature (being ta’veren) causes probability to warp around him and bring to him the things and people he needs at the moments he needs them. He has a power-forged hammer, the allegiance of tens of thousands of trained soldiers, and the ability to call upon hundreds of wolves if he really needed to. He is a berserker on the battlefield, and has the power to move in the world of dreams, where he has near-absolute control of his surroundings. He is guarded by Aiel warriors and two powerful Asha’man who can wield the One Power that made Rand such a force in the previous tournament.

Tasslehoff has a stick that throws rocks.

Okay, I’m underplaying it. Tas is a clever, brave little guy. (Actually, I think he may be immune to fear or something.) He’s prone to have a few tricks up his sleeves, magic items stolen here or there. But he’s also got a childlike view of the world, and has nowhere near the ruthlessness that Perrin has been forced by fate to learn. Tas can’t win this fight. I declare that this battle plays out like so: Tas defaults on his match by not showing up. He’s off picking Jon Snow’s pockets. Perrin wins. (And Wheel of Time fans, don’t prove me wrong. We’ll never live it down if Perrin loses to Tasslehoff.)

As for Vin and Logen Ninefingers, this is a far more even battle. To put the duel on better footing, I’m going to say that this is Vin before certain events toward the end of MISTBORN 3 that would make the fight wildly unfair. Also, I’m going to remove atium (which would let her see the future and win any battle she wants) from her repertoire for now. (If she has to fight Zedd, all bets are off.)

So, she’s a very, very talented Mistborn, capable of greatly increased strength, greatly increased speed, near-infinite endurance, supernatural sensory abilities, the capacity to change a person’s emotions at will, virtual immunity to metal weapons, the power to kill at range with coins shot at high speeds with expert precision, the ability to ignore many wounds and heal at an accelerated rate, and telekinetic powers that allow her to vault long distances and remain in the air when needed.

Okay, so maybe it’s not much of a fair fight. (This is what I was talking about.) Logen is a toughened warrior, very careful, but also capable of turning into a crazed berserker who doesn’t feel pain. But that’s not enough to face Vin. She’s out of his league. This fight goes on for a while, but he can’t get to Vin, who hovers outside of his range and flings back any weapons or arrows he uses against her. She pelts him with coins, then takes his head off with a six-foot-long koloss sword.

Peter here again. Today at around 9:00 p.m. in Venice, Italy, intrepid Wheel of Time fan Federico located the final The Great Hunt code’s hiding place . . . and confirmed that the code was no longer there. Maybe someone saw Brandon’s friend Ryan place it on top of this photo booth, perhaps via the prominent security camera, but in any case the clue is gone.

If you have a theory about what happened to the code, post it with the hashtag #wotghfinalcode. However, all is not lost. Brandon suspected things like this might happen, so he made duplicates of all the code stickers. We’ll be mailing Federico the code. But that doesn’t mean you all have to wait to read the unencrypted text . . . by complete coincidence, Membir guessed the code in the last few hours. It’s “An Unexpected Ally” and was code #28. Jordo has now unlocked the code and you can read the full text.

Congrats to all the hunters. Federico was actually the second person to check the photo booth, but the first Wheel of Time fan and the first to get his picture taken by the booth. WoT fan Claire tracked down a tourist (Lori) who was in Venice and convinced her to check the booth earlier in the day. Even before this, not satisfied to wait, intrepid fans started making educated guesses at the partially revealed text. You can see their efforts here and compare them with the final document. Good job, everyone!