Peter here again. Brandon is back from his tour, but he’s been very active online everywhere except his own website, it seems! First up, last weekend John Scalzi’s Whatever blog featured a guest post essay by Brandon entitled Postmodernism in Fantasy. For people confused about what that might cover, let me say it involves a Jewel music video. (Okay, I know that doens’t help. Just go read it.)

To follow that up, Brandon is joined by hit fantasy writer Brent Weeks over on the Babel Clash blog for this week (and I think next week too), posting back and forth at each other. Brent played off Brandon’s Whatever essay and they went from there, talking about foreshadowing, deus ex machina, and other writing concepts. Go read them.

Three different interviews mostly about THE WAY OF KINGS have gone up recently, from seven prominent review bloggers who pooled questions in three separate groups and submitted them to Tor. I asked Brandon these questions right before his tour started, and his recorded answers took eighty minutes of audio. So they’re pretty detailed and interesting. Check all of them out.

• Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist
• Grasping for the Wind
• Stomping on Yeti
• Mad Hatter’s Bookshelf & Book Review

Tomorrow Brandon will be appearing at the Orem Barnes & Noble Authorpalooza, with over 40 other local authors including people like (um, I can’t find a comprehensive list, so I won’t guarantee this): Dan Wells, Brandon Mull, Jessica Day George, James Dashner, etc. The address is on Brandon’s events page. It’s at 1:00, so if you’re nearby, grab all your books and head down there.

And if you look at that events page you’ll notice that the book tour for TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT has been arranged, and Harriet McDougal will be accompanying Brandon in every city this time around. It’s going to be a shorter tour; Brandon has spent over half a month on tour already and needs a bit of a break. He does plan a much longer tour when A MEMORY OF LIGHT comes out; Brandon has some ideas about how to make that the best tour ever for the fans. But that’s a long way off; Brandon still has to write the book! In any case, for those who will ask, yes, there will be a “Storm Leader”-type program for the TOWERS tour; keep your eyes peeled on Dragonmount for details on the Tower Guards program.

By now you’re probably very familiar with the whole AmazonFail deal that has been going on. Today, Scalzi made a shout-out for author support. I think that was a fine thing to do.

Most of the authors involved don’t care so much about ebook pricing either way. They just want people to read their works. In fact, the majority of writers I know care about money only in so much as it allows them to keep writing books. Money is important because without it, we’d all have to be working in a cubicle somewhere rather than creating the art that we love.

Some will argue that $9.99 is too low for an ebook, others that it’s too high. I’m not really on either side, to be honest. I see it both ways. But I do agree that what Amazon did in pulling physical books was a petulant, annoying move that harms a bunch of people who had nothing to do with the negotiations. Scalzi, in his nefarious evil wisdom, calls for everyone to show support to the authors and get their books someplace other than Amazon.

This strikes me as particularly important for authors who released books either last week or this week. For those of us who had book launches before the holidays, most of you who want our books already have them. But think of Steven Erikson, who had a new book come out a couple of weeks ago. Or heck, Ben Bova, Charlie Stross, and L. E. Modesitt Jr. had books come out today. First week sales, as everyone knows, are very important for a book’s future. What Amazon did to me was annoying; what it did to these folks was downright nasty.

 

On an unrelated note, I’ve been very amused by that picture of Rand holding up an iPad that was over at Engadget. Someone on my Facebook page made a great suggestion that Photoshopping the cover of THE DRAGON REBORN to have an iPad would be an awesome idea, what with the design of the book. That made me laugh out loud to consider.

Therefore, I’m issuing a Photoshop challenge (with prizes) to all of you readers out there. Photoshop a picture of a figure from the Wheel of Time books (it doesn’t matter who, or whether you use official art or fan art) to include iPads, Kindles, Nooks, Sony Readers, or whatever ebook reader you prefer. Then send it to me or post it to my forums.

Be creative. Recreate the Last Battle with ebooks. Have Kindles being Balefired. Whatever you want. Keep it clean, make us laugh, and have fun.

I’m going to give you until Friday at noon my time. My partners in crime (probably Peter and whomever I recruit—maybe Maria and Dragonmount Jason) and I will pick our three favorites. If you win, I will walk to my local bookstore (okay, I’ll probably give Mysterious Galaxy or Sam Weller’s a call) and I will BUY YOU A COPY of a recent Tor release. I’ll also send you a signed hardcover of one of my books.

FIRST PLACE: A hardcover of DUST OF DREAMS by Steven Erikson or ABLE ONE by Ben Bova.

SECOND PLACE: A paperback of IMAGER by L. E. Modesitt Jr., THE REVOLUTION BUSINESS by Charlie Stross, or STEAL ACROSS THE SKY by Nancy Kress which I will buy for you.

THIRD PLACE: Same as second place.

Let the Photoshoppery begin!

The big story over the weekend was that Amazon temporarily stopped selling all Macmillan books, which includes all my books from Tor, to protest Macmillan’s new ebook terms. There’s not a lot I have to add to this discussion, except to say that Tor’s publicity department thought the illustration accompanying Engadget’s article on the affair was hilarious. Still, if you haven’t heard about what’s been happening, or if you’ve emailed me asking why you suddenly can’t buy my books from Amazon, check out the following links for a thorough rundown.

My evil nemesis John Scalzi probably said it best in the following blog posts (especially the last one): 1, 2, 3, 4. Other comments come from Cory Doctorow (1), Toby Buckell (1, 2, 3), Charles Stross (1, 2, 3, 4), Jay Lake (1, 2, 3, 4), and Scott Westerfield (1). As you might expect, these include quite a bit of cross-linking and cross-commenting. I also made a few comments on my Facebook page.

The current situation is that Amazon has said they “will have to capitulate,” but so far they are still not selling any Macmillan books. If there are books of mine you were planning to buy in the near future, I’ve got a number of non-Amazon links for you here. Or, of course, stop by your local independent bookseller!

Now for a completely different controversial topic. In this week’s Writing Excuses podcast, Howard, Dan, and I talk about whether a writer needs an agent. This is partially in response to Dean Wesley Smith’s recent posts about the writer/agent relationship (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). It’s a complex topic, all sides of which writers should explore.

While I was in Los Angeles during the GATHERING STORM tour, I sat down for an interview with the folks from Mythmaker Films. Yesterday they posted an 18-minute film that includes footage from that interview as well as from my Los Angeles signing. If you’re interested in how I got started writing and how I became involved in completing A MEMORY OF LIGHT, check out the video.

Finally, in the most recent MISTBORN 3 annotations, I have a discussion of Vin’s interactions with Ruin while imprisoned and the first of a three-part annotation on Spook’s climactic chapter.