ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE SHATTERED LENS has now been released in the UK (and presumably also in Australia and New Zealand). That means all four books are now out, and since they all came out this year, it should be relatively easy to find them on shelves and in ebook form. (Note that all four books are still out of print in the US, though the audiobooks ARE currently available in the US.).

The most recent Writing Excuses episode is a microcasting episode touching on the following questions. Give it a listen!

• What’s your first step in the rewriting process?
• How do you write Artificial Intelligences as characters?
• Tactful promotion: how do you get nominated for a Hugo or Nebula?
• How do you decide whether or not to take an offer from a publisher?
• Do you use a writing notebook? How, and for what?
• What methods do you use to test the “coolness” and/or viability of a story idea?
• What genre or style do you read that is outside of the one(s) in which you write?

Tor.com’s reread of THE WAY OF KINGS continues with chapters 13 and 14, the battle with the chasmfiend and Kaladin’s first attempt to change Bridge Four.

Readers have been asking if my forthcoming novellas LEGION and THE EMPEROR’S SOUL will be released in audio versions. The answer is that they will be—we have deals made for these, but I’m not sure how quickly the audiobooks will be released compared to the book versions. I’ll let you know when I have more details.

Another question commonly asked is whether Michael Kramer and Kate Reading will return to voice the audiobook for A MEMORY OF LIGHT. The answer is yes, and the audiobook will definitely be released the same day as the hardcover.

All of my books are now out in audio editions, including the last three Alcatraz books that were missing audiobooks for a few years. There are two different kinds of audiobooks of mine that have come out: standard unabridged readings (from Macmillan Audio and Recorded Books) and full-cast dramatizations (from GraphicAudio). Which type each book has depends on how contracts were negotiated.

Recorded Books has unabridged readings of Elantris, Warbreaker, and all four Alcatraz books.

GraphicAudio has full-cast dramatizations of Elantris and Warbreaker.

Macmillan Audio has unabridged readings of Mistborn 1, 2, 3 and The Alloy of Law; The Way of Kings; and The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight.

Amazon has most of the above for sale. Audible has everything except for the GraphicAudio editions. iTunes also has many of the books.

Tor.com has a free unabridged reading of the novelette “Firstborn.”

Hugo Award nomination season began this month, so I thought I’d let you know what categories my works are eligible in. If you don’t know what the Hugo Awards are or how nominating and voting works, I also talk about that below. If you want to nominate, the registration deadline is January 31st. (You can also use this list when considering nominations for any other award that’s out there, but for the purposes of this post I’m focusing on the Hugos.)

ELIGIBLE IN CATEGORY: BEST RELATED WORK

• Writing Excuses Season Four

The Hugo definition for this category is:

Awarded to a work related to the field of science fiction, fantasy, or fandom, appearing for the first time during the previous calendar year or which has been substantially modified during the previous calendar year. The type of works eligible include, but are not limited to, collections of art, works of literary criticism, books about the making of a film or TV series, biographies and so on, provided that they do not qualify for another category.

Season four of the Writing Excuses podcast that I host with Howard Tayler and Dan Wells ran from January 2010 through August 2010, starting with this episode. If you have not listened to it, you may download the episodes to consider why it might be worthy of a nomination. Transcripts of every episode in the season are also available here. (Thanks to Mike Barker.)

ELIGIBLE IN CATEGORY: BEST NOVEL

• Towers of Midnight
• The Way of Kings
• Alcatraz Versus the Shattered Lens

All three of these novels were released in 2010 by major publishers and are longer than 40,000 words, so they are eligible for nomination.

You may be interested to hear that no Wheel of Time novel has ever gained enough nominations to make a final Hugo ballot. Nor has a Wheel of Time novel ever made the short list for one of the traditional genre awards such as the Nebula or World Fantasy awards. (Though The Gathering Storm did make the short list for the second David Gemmell Legend Award, last year.) Guy Gavriel Kay spoke about this at the World Fantasy Awards ceremony in 2007, shortly after Robert Jordan passed away. I recommend that every fantasy fan read his speech. He doesn’t posit that Robert Jordan should have necessarily been nominated, but he believes the contribution that bestsellers like the Wheel of Time make to the genre as a whole should be recognized.

OTHER CATEGORIES
I don’t have works eligible in other categories this year, but I do have a vested interest in a few other possible nominations. My editors Moshe Feder and Harriet McDougal are both eligible in the Best Editor (Long Form) category. Cover artists Michael Whelan, Darrell K. Sweet, and Todd Lockwood are eligible in the Best Professional Artist category. Howard Tayler’s Schlock Mercenary book Massively Parallel is eligible in the Best Graphic Story category. Dan Wells’ books I Am Not a Serial Killer and Mr. Monster are eligible in the Best Novel category, and Dan himself is eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (not a Hugo, but nominated on the same ballot).

WHO NOMINATES FOR THE HUGO?
Recipients of the Hugo Award are nominated by and voted on by members of each year’s World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon). There are two types of members: Attending and Supporting. Attending means what you’d expect: you get to go to the convention. Supporting is a type of membership that may be unfamiliar to you, but it’s generally for people who will be unable to attend the convention for one reason or another but still want to financially support it. Supporting members can nominate and vote for the Hugos and can also vote on where a future Worldcon will be held, and they can pay to upgrade to Attending at any time. Attending or Supporting members of the previous year’s convention may also nominate for the Hugos, but cannot vote on the final ballot unless they become members of the current year’s convention.

This year, Worldcon will be held in Reno, Nevada, from August 17th through 21st. The name of this year’s convention is Renovation. Anyone who registers before January 31, 2011 will be able to nominate for the Hugos. Attending memberships are currently $180 ($100 if you’re age 21 or under, and $75 if you’re age 16 or under) and Supporting memberships are $50 (rates will go up on February 28th). Nomination ballots will be accepted through March 26, 2011.

HOW ARE NOMINATIONS AND VOTES COUNTED?
Each person may nominate up to five works in each category (or individuals, if the award is for a person rather than for a work). All nominations are weighted equally; it doesn’t matter which order you put them in. All nominations are totaled, and the top five go to the final ballot (or more if there is a tie for the 5th slot, or fewer if a nominee gets less than 5% of nominating votes).

Voting on the final ballot is a bit different. It uses a weighted voting system called instant-runoff voting (sometimes known as an Australian ballot, since IRV is used in Australian parliamentary elections, but not to be confused with the older definition of Australian ballot, which simply means secret ballot). In this system, you rank the choices by order of your preference. This means that you can vote for the nominee you actually want to win, whether you think it has a chance of winning or not–there are no “wasted” votes. Vote splitting is also not an issue; if there are three separate Doctor Who episodes nominated for a Best Dramatic Presentation (short form) award, for example, the IRV system does not make it more likely that something else will win because Doctor Who fans can’t decide which episode to vote for. See an example below.

HOW MANY PEOPLE NOMINATE AND VOTE?
This depends on the category, since eligible nominators are encouraged to nominate only in categories they feel they have enough experience with. Last year when Worldcon was in Melbourne, Australia, there were 700 nominations for Best Novel. So if each person nominated five novels, that could have been as few as 140 nominating ballots. (Except that The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi received 142 nominations, so clearly many people nominated fewer than five titles.) Julian Comstock tied with Palimpsest for fifth place with 62 nominations, so both made it to the final ballot.

In the Best Related Work category last year, there were 259 nominations. The top nominee received 56 nominations, and there was again a tie for fifth place, with 29 nominations. (Writing Excuses received eight nominations last year.)

The final vote totals exhibit similar differences. 875 ballots were counted for Best Novel, and there was a tie for first with 380 votes for both China Mieville’s The City & The City and The Windup Girl. 548 ballots were counted for Best Related Work, and This is Me, Jack Vance! won with 251 votes.

Here’s a sample voting breakdown for the final ballot, from last year:

Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form

Doctor Who: “The Waters of Mars” (winner) 172 172 204 212 350
Dollhouse: “Epitaph 1” 199 201 205 243 278
Doctor Who: “The Next Doctor” 144 144 173 203
FlashForward: “No More Good Days” 123 125 127
Doctor Who: “Planet of the Dead” 70 70
No Award 59

The first column of numbers indicates what people ranked as their #1 choice. 199 people picked “Epitaph 1” as their favorite, and only 172 people picked “The Waters of Mars” as their favorite. Yet 199 was not above the 50% threshold necessary to win. So the instant runoff began: the lowest vote-getters were eliminated and those voters’ preferences reassigned. Of people who voted “Planet of the Dead” #1, when that was eliminated, their #2 moved up to #1 and the votes were counted again; four had voted “Epitaph 1” as #2 and 32 had voted “The Waters of Mars” #2. “Epitaph 1” was ahead by a vote, but still didn’t have enough to win. This process continued until eventually all but the top two were eliminated, and “The Waters of Mars” was declared the winner, even though it was behind in every round but the last.

You’ll also notice the “No Award” listing. If you’re voting and think none of the entries on the final ballot deserve your vote, you can pick No Award. I know that No Award won in the Dramatic Presentation category in 1977, but this is rare. There are more details on the Hugo voting system here.

TO SUM UP
The Hugo Awards have been presented every year since 1953 (except for a gap in 1954). When I was growing up, I knew that a “Hugo award winner!” tag on the cover of a novel like Ender’s Game meant it was going to be a good read. Anything that makes the final ballot is going to be significant and worth your attention.

If you’re interested in nominating and voting for whatever work or person you feel deserves a Hugo Award, consider registering for Worldcon by Monday next week and filling out a ballot sometime in the next two months. I will be attending Worldcon this year along with many other professionals and fans, and I hope to see you there.

One important bit of news is that the fourth Alcatraz book, ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE SHATTERED LENS, was released officially in stores this week. I had reports of it being found on store shelves as early as last week, maybe even the week before. So it’s around.

I’m very proud of this book. I think it’s the best in the series so far. You may remember a tweet from me a while back about a book where the dialogue in one chapter is entirely quotes from Shakespeare. That’s this book. It’s off-the-wall, crazy, funny, and yet (hopefully) still has a moving story. They are fantasy books about a family where everyone has ridiculous magical powers. (Think MYSTERY MEN crossed with a quick-paced adventure fantasy.)

If you’ve never tried one of the Alcatraz books, they all stand pretty much on their own. There is an overarching story, but you could launch into this one if you want. (Alcatraz might make fun of you for it, though.)

These books have been kind of a tough sell to bookstores. They’ve been classified as middle grade, targeted at those around ten years old or so, so you usually won’t find them on the shelf next to my adult fantasy books. However, the humor is very broadly based, and scales much older. They’ve found a dedicated following, but it’s not an enormous one. Because of that, finding them in bookstores can be tough. I don’t think Borders is carrying them at all, though Barnes & Noble took a small order. (I’d say any given B&N has a 50/50 chance of having the book in stock, in the children’s fiction section.)

So, I’d like to suggest that if you haven’t looked into them, you consider giving this one a read. (Or the first one, which is out in paperback.) Call your local bookstore first to find out if they have copies. I think most would be happy to order them in for you.

I’ll be doing local signings starting tomorrow, but I know attending one of those is not an option for many readers. Some stores I know that carry the books, and are willing to ship them, are as follows:

• Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego, (858) 268-4747. (They probably have signed copies of the first three, and are an awesome, awesome store. They’ll ship you signed first printings of most of the books, though they won’t have the fourth signed yet.
• The Barnes & Noble in Idaho Falls, (208) 552-1452, has hardcovers in stock of the first three, maybe the fourth now. They’re willing to ship to you, so if you’ve had trouble finding them, give the store a call and ask for Marybeth’s voicemail. She’ll call you back and take care of you.
• The BYU Bookstore, (800) 253-2578, always has a nice, large stock of Alcatraz books. You can ask for a signed copy for most of them.
• And, of course, there’s always online retailers.

Thank you for considering the books. I’ve got some sample chapters of the first novel right here. Also, here are some for the new book.

Tomorrow I’m going to be signing in Eagle Mountain at the Dragons & Fairy Tales bookstore. They have 20 copies of ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE SHATTERED LENS, and the first one I sign will be numbered #1. I’ll number up through the first 50 copies that people ask me to sign, even if that happens after tomorrow. I’ll be in Murray next weekend and in Bountiful the weekend after that, so each stop will provide another chance for you to pick it up.

By the way, Dan Wells will also be signing there at Dragons & Fairy Tales at the same time. We’ll even both sign Writing Excuses CDs if you have them. (Um, there won’t be any of those available at the signing.)

On a different topic, people have been asking for months how they can buy prints of Michael Whelan’s gorgeous cover art for THE WAY OF KINGS. Well, Mr. Whelan has now put up fine art prints for sale in his online store.

The fine art prints come in two versions: a signed open edition, and a signed limited edition of twelve with remarque. (That’s a small unique drawing to the side, I believe.) The twelve limited edition prints will also be signed by me. Both versions have an art size of 19 1/2″ x 32 1/2″ and a total size of 24″ x 36 1/2″.

I’ve posted my thoughts before on the incredible honor of getting a Michael Whelan cover; now, the idea of my signature being near his on a piece of artwork is rather mind-boggling. I can’t wait to see this print in person.

All,

Let’s do a quick (okay, it’s me, so it won’t be quick) update to let everyone know what’s going on here at Dragonsteel Entertainment HQ. (Also known as me sitting on a chair in my bedroom while my eight-month-old son throws half-eaten graham crackers at me.)

Warning, this is another of my trademarked long and rambling blog posts. So, I’ve put in some arbitrary headings to help break things up and keep it focused. At the bottom, there’s a quick timeline of books I’m working on or plan to work on soon.

PART ONE: WHEEL OF TIME BOOKS PUBLICATION TIMELINE

I posted earlier that Towers of Midnight is done, turned in, and ready for a November second release. I’m feeling pretty good (though a little frazzled) at managing to get it in on deadline, by the promised date I gave you all in the blog post I made regarding splitting the novels. I stand by what I said there. I’m not expanding the outline left to me; I’m telling the same story I would have, even if the book hadn’t been split. The order of chapters will be different in some cases, but nothing will be deleted or added.

Current projections are for the final book, A Memory of Light, to be about the length of the other two. (Around three hundred thousand words, or eight hundred pages in hardcover.) There are some who are hoping for it to be huge, the biggest in the series, but I will write it at the length it needs to be. I’ve finished two books, and have done two-thirds of the outline. So that gives a good indication that the final chunk will be the same length as the other two.

However, I do have to acknowledge that this is going to be the hardest chunk, for several reasons. The number of plots to be dealt with, the number of characters that need to be balanced, the sheer tactics and logistics of the Last Battle . . . there is a lot going on in this book, and it will be orders of magnitude more difficult than the previous two novels.

PART TWO: BUFFERS AND MY WRITING SPEED

Because of this, and because of my writing style, I need a little bit of a break before I tackle it. I pushed myself very hard to get both Towers of Midnight and The Way of Kings ready for publication this year. Even then, it was only possible because I had written a sizable chunk of Towers of Midnight while working on The Gathering Storm AND because I’d already finished an early version of The Way of Kings.

People have mentioned before that I am somewhat prolific. Some of this is an illusion. For a while now, I’ve been warning people that we’ve been chewing through my buffer at a frightening rate. Once upon a time, I would turn in a book three years before it was scheduled to come out. This gave me a lot of wiggle room. If a book wasn’t working, I could shelve it and think about it, then get back to it. Working that far ahead prevents most big crunches.

However, the books I’ve been working on lately were a little more high profile than previous ones—and high-profile books get released when they get turned in, not three years later. So, though I took eighteen months finishing The Gathering Storm, it looked like I finished it very quickly. (I turned it in during the summer of 2009, and it came out in the fall of 2009. Warbreaker came out that same year, though I’d turned it in back in 2006.) The very long write of that book was invisible to a lot of readers because books I’d written years before continued to come out while I was working on it.

The buffer is gone now. I’ll talk more about that later. However, I want to mention something else that helps me be productive—and that’s allowing myself deviations to keep myself interested. I’ve told people before that I wrote the Alcatraz books to give me a break between Mistborn novels. If I’m able to refresh myself on other projects, I don’t get burned out on the big epics. (Which are my true love, but can be very demanding on me mentally.)

PART THREE: WARNINGS

And so, we’re entering the “refresh and work on side projects” stage of the writing process. I did this after The Gathering Storm, and I really need it now. I am therefore taking time off between now and January first. I get to write anything I want. It will probably be bizarre and unexpected; things that keep me fresh, things I haven’t tried before.

I ask your forbearance. I do believe that as a writer who has begun series, it is my responsibility to see that the other pieces of the story are written in a timely manner. However—and it may seem odd—I need to work on these other things to keep my next Wheel of Time and Stormlight installments good. It’s how my process works.

So, that’s the first warning. I’m taking a break for three months. The second warning is that I can’t promise I’ll hit the final deadline on the Wheel of Time series. (The last one was supposed to be out in November 2011.) The problem is this: starting January, it will have been three years since I read the Wheel of Time series start to finish. That’s too long. I’m starting to forget things. I won’t feel comfortable starting the final book until I’ve done another re-read, and this is going to slow me down by three or four months. It’s an unexpected delay I didn’t fit into my original projections of how long it would take me to write the books.

If I miss the deadline (which is more likely than not) it won’t be by much. A few months, likely the same amount of time it takes me to do the re-read. But it is what must be done. So, I’d suggest that we set MARCH 2012 as the expected date of A Memory of Light. I suspect there will be some grumbling about this, but I feel I should let you know now, rather than later. It won’t be an enormous delay, however. If my previous track record earns me anything, I hope it is the benefit of the doubt when it comes to me promising the release dates of books. I won’t leave you hanging too long.

PART FOUR: STORMLIGHT ARCHIVE PUBLICATION SCHEDULE

Now on to Stormlight Two. (The title was originally Highprince of War, but I’m feeling in my outlining that this book needs to be weighted more toward Shallan, so a different title is likely). I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place here on this one. Writing a Stormlight book, like writing a Wheel of Time book, is a huge undertaking. Getting one of each out in the same year required fourteen-hour days, six days a week, for a good year and a half. I can’t ask my family to go through that again. Beyond that, the buffer is gone. (I still had a little bit of it when working on Towers of Midnight—not to mention the first version of The Way of Kings that I’d written in 2002. I threw it away and started over, but having written it once before sped the process a great deal.)

So . . . what do I do? I’m feeling right now that I will go straight into Stormlight Two after A Memory of Light. But that means (at very best) it won’t be out until the fall of 2012. I don’t really have a choice, however. The Wheel of Time fans have waited too long for their ending already. I need to do AMoL, and I need to do it right, no matter how long it takes. So I can’t make any promises about Stormlight Two except that I won’t take a break after AMoL, but will go right into it and try to have it done in time for the fall 2012 season.

That means, by a quirk of the publishing business, that I have two epics this year, none next year, and two the following year. (If I meet my Stormlight deadline, which may or may not happen.) Still, this is what I’m planning to do. Barring something unexpected, this is what you should anticipate. I don’t think there will be a book at all from me next year, which punches me in the gut. But that’s what we get for pushing to have two books out last year and two books this year.

So, here’s my official future status, as I sometimes post.

BOOKS YOU WILL SEE SOON

• Towers of Midnight (November 2.)
• Alcatraz Versus the Shattered Lens (December 2010.)
  —A note on Alcatraz. This is the fourth and final of the Alcatraz books in my contract. I do plan there to be more in this series, but I don’t have time for them right now. And so, for now, this is going to stand as the ending of the series. I’ll do Alcatraz Five eventually, I promise.
• Scribbler (Early 2012)
  —A note on Scribbler. This is a shorter steampunk book I wrote in 2007, just before I got the call about The Wheel of Time. It’s quite good, and Tor has decided to purchase it. It involves chalk-based magic and a boy who is the son of the cleaning lady at a school for people who learn the chalk magic. I haven’t had time to give it a revision, but will likely use some of the time in my free months between now and January to do a draft of it. If I turn it in January or February, you won’t see it until a year after that, due to scheduling.

BOOKS YOU WILL SEE SOMEWHAT SOON

• A Memory of Light (March 2012.)
• Stormlight Archive Book Two (Late 2012 or early 2013.)
• Stormlight Archive Book Three (One year after Book Two.)

ANTICIPATED SEQUELS

• Alcatraz Five (Indefinite hiatus.)
• Elantris Two (Planned to be written after Stormlight Three.)
• Second Mistborn trilogy (It’s coming someday, I promise.)
• Nightblood: Book two of Warbreaker (Coming someday.)
  —Some notes here. Elantris has three books in the series, but they are loose sequels of each other. This means that side characters in one become main characters in the next. So while you’ll see Raoden and Sarene in the second book, they won’t be main characters. (Kiin’s children will be.) Warbreaker is two books. Mistborn is a trilogy of trilogies, with the second trilogy in an urban (20th-century-level technology) setting. For Stormlight, I’m planning a pattern of two every three years, with a different epic—a standalone, or one of the sequels mentioned above—in between. Thus the Elantris sequel is next in line after Stormlight Three, which would be followed by Stormlight Four and Five.

MAYBE COMING SOMEDAY BUT ONLY PARTIALLY WRITTEN

• Dark One (YA dark fantasy.)
• Steelheart (Superhero apocalypse.)
• The King’s Necromancer
• The Silence Divine (Shardworld novel, standalone.)
• White Sand (Shardworld trilogy.)
• The Liar of Partinel (Shardworld novel, one of two.)
• Dragonsteel (Major Shardworld epic. Won’t be written until Stormlight is done.)

POSSIBLE PROJECTS FOR MY TIME OFF

• Mistborn short story (Looking likely.)
• Unnamed urban fantasy (This is what I’m working on right now. Watch Twitter/Facebook for updates on this story. It involves a necromancer pizza deliveryman as a protagonist.)
• Scribbler revisions (Will almost certainly be done.)
• Finishing one of the unfinished novels mentioned above (Not likely, but you never know.)

Who knows when/if anything written during my side-project time will get published. Sometimes, these stories are too unformed (as I like to be very free and loose when I write them) to make it. On other occasions, there isn’t time to do revisions on them. (I write initial books very quickly, but spend many months in revision.) For instance, Alcatraz books were my deviations for 2005 and 2006, and the first of those came out very quickly. Scribbler was the one for 2007, and it won’t be published for a year or so yet. I didn’t have time for much in the way of deviations in 2008 or 2009, just the unfinished projects I mentioned above.

We shall see. As always, thank you for reading and supporting me in this compulsive writing addiction of mine.