About 2/3 of the way through Mistborn. Not bad. Nothing incredible or Earth shattering though. I'll keep reading either way.
Just finished shadows of self finally. Really enjoyed it. I need to reread the mistborn series because I forgot a ton.
My bad. First book. Finished that one and started Well of Ascension. I enjoyed the end of Final Empire.
State of the Sanderson 2015 December 18, 2015 Articles, Blog Introduction We are approaching Koloss Head-Munching Day—the day of the year that happens, by utter coincidence, to coincide with my birthday. (December 19th.) I’m turning forty this year, which isn’t as dramatic for me as it might be for some others. From the way I act, people have been joking for the last twenty years that I was “born forty.” I guess I’m finally just catching up. It’s been almost twenty years since I finished my first book. I can remember joking with my friends in college (whom you might know as Lieutenant Conrad from Mistborn and Drehy from Bridge Four) that by forty, we were all going to be rich and famous. The thing is, I always intended to make that dream happen. Not necessarily for the “rich” part or the “famous” part, neither of which interested me a great deal. I just knew that without a solid, stable writing career, I’d never be able to make the Cosmere happen. Perhaps that’s where this whole “born forty” thing came from in the first place. I basically spent my twenties writing, slavishly trying to figure out how to craft stories. Friends would tell me to relax, but I couldn’t, not when these dreams of mine were so big. It should be mentioned that despite what our society would like to believe, hard work doesn’t always equate with success. For me, luck played a huge part in my being able to sit here and type this out for you. Still, here I am, and I honestly can’t imagine things having gone better. People often seem bemused by my productivity; when I get together with fellow authors, they sometimes jokingly refer to me as “the adult” in our group. I get this—for a lot of them, writing is more of an instinctual process. Sitting and talking about the business side of things, or their goals for writing, flies in the face of the almost accidental way they’ve approached their careers. And it works for them; they create great books I’m always excited to read. However, sometimes there’s also this sense—from fans, from the community, from us authors in general—that whispers that being productive isn’t a good thing. It’s like society feels artists should naturally try to hide from deadlines, structure, or being aware of what we do and why we do it. As if, because art is supposed to be painful, we shouldn’t enjoy doing our work—and should need to be forced into it. If there’s one thing that has surprised me over the last ten years, it’s this strangeness that surrounds my enjoyment of my job, and the way my own psychology interfaces with storytelling. People thank me for being productive, when I don’t consider myself particularly fast as a writer—I’m just consistent. Fans worry that I will burn out, or that secretly I’m some kind of cabal of writers working together. I enjoy the jokes, but there’s really no secret. I just get excited by all of this. I have a chance to create something incredible, something that will touch people’s lives. In some cases, that touch is light—I just give a person a few moments to relax amid the tempest of life. In other cases, stories touch people on a deep and meaningful level. I’ll happily take either scenario. Almost thirty years ago now, I encountered something remarkable in the books I read. Something meaningful that I couldn’t describe, a new perspective, new emotions. I knew then that I had to learn to do what those writers were doing. Now that I have the chance to reach people the same way, I’m not going to squander it. I guess this is all a prelude to a warning. I’m working on a lot of projects. Many of these tie together in this epic master plan of mine, the thirty-six-(or more)-book cycle that will be the Cosmere. Even those books that aren’t part of the Cosmere are here to challenge me in some way, to push me and my stories, to explore concepts that have fascinated me for years. These last ten years have been incredible. I thank you, and I thank God, for this crazy opportunity I’ve been given. I don’t intend to slow down. I’m not embarrassed to be “the adult.” Even if I’ve only just hit the right age for it officially. My Year 2015 was a bit slower than last year was, as I spent a lot of time editing. January–May: Calamity The bulk of my writing time this year was spent on Calamity, which I’d been putting off last year in order to write the two new Mistborn novels. Looking back at my records, I finished the last chapters in early May. This was interrupted, on occasion, for revisions of various books—and for the Firefight tour, along with a trip to Sharjah in the UAE. Busy times. So busy, in fact, that it’s taken me all the rest of the year to give full feedback to the writers who took my class. I managed to grade their papers in May, somehow, but promised them each a personalized look at their final story submissions, which I’m only now finishing up. June–August: Stormlight Three I did squeeze in some writing time for Stormlight in here, though not a whole ton of it got done. I had to stop for revisions, touring, and travel through most of September and October. September–October: Revisions and a Secret Project Traveling so much made it difficult to do Stormlight 3 writing, which requires a lot of time investment. So between revisions, I managed to finish a project I’ve been working on for about a decade now. (Yes, a decade.) You’ll see this soon. It’s a novella. November–December: Stormlight Three Again I plan to keep on this one until I finish it, as I’ll talk about below. However, if you want to read a little about my writing time in November, you can read this other blog post. Big List of Things I’m Working On Now, let’s get to it. Each year around this time, I take stock of my many projects. You can read last year’s post here, to compare and see how things have been progressing. (And to see how well I did in my plans for 2015.) Thank you in advance for continuing to give me the freedom I feel I need to jump between different worlds. While I know it’s frustrating sometimes that I’m not working on your world, the greater plans I have for all this require me to approach things in a certain way. Both for my health as a writer, and to bring about some large-scale awesomeness. I’m going to go down the list of projects I’m working on, starting with what I consider my “main” projects. These are getting the focus of my time right now. From there, I’ll move on to things that I’m still toying with doing sometime soon. Then it gets a little more speculative. Enjoy! Main Book Projects The Stormlight Archive Stormlight is going very well. I’m working on Book Three, which I’m calling Oathbringer. (That is likely at this point to be the final title.) This is my main project, and I won’t be writing any new prose on other stories until it is done. You can follow the progress bars! Release dates for this book are still in flux. Even if I finish it early next year, it could be a year or more until you see the book. The amount of editing, continuity, and art that these books require creates a need for a long lead time. I’ve told people that Fall 2016 is the earliest they’d see it, but my team has been warning me that’s not realistic. We’ll see, but for now you should assume on a 2017 release. What does this mean for my once optimistic “one Stormlight book every eighteen months” goal? The more I work on these books, the more uncertain I am about that. The outline for Oathbringer, for example, took about a year for me to nail down. Considering how many moving pieces there are in these books, it’s tough to judge how long they will take to write. And while there are books I can force through if some things aren’t right, I can’t afford to do that on this series. I’ll continue to write Stormlight books at as quick a pace as is reasonable. I consider this my main project for the next decade or two, and am dedicated to it. But each book, as I’ve said before, is plotted as four books in one. So even if I release them once every three years, you’re getting four “books” in three years. We’ll see. I’ll try to pick up the pace. In the meantime, I’ll try to get some short stories in the world out for you. (More on this later.) Status: Book Three in Progress The Reckoners The last book of the trilogy is complete, revised, and turned in. It’s coming out in February, and is—indeed—the ending. I have not closed the door on doing more in the world, but it will not be for a while. If I do return, it will be like a Mistborn return, where the focus of the books shifts in some way and I create a new series. I like leaving endings as endings, even if the world and some of the characters do progress. I’m extremely pleased with the last book. I look forward to having you all read it, and I am grateful to you all for supporting this series. There were voices that told me something outside the Cosmere would never sell as well as something inside—but this series is neck-and-neck in popularity with Stormlight and Mistborn. It’s a relief, and very gratifying, to see that people are willing to follow me on different kinds of journeys. Status: Completed! Mistborn And speaking of Mistborn, how is Scadrial doing? My current plan is still to have the Mistborn books stretch throughout my career, establishing stories in different eras of time with different sets of characters. The original pitch was for three trilogies. The Wax and Wayne books expanded this to four series. (You can imagine Wax and Wayne as series 1.5, if you want.) This means there will still be a contemporary trilogy, and a science fiction trilogy, in the future. I have one more book to do in the Wax and Wayne series, and I’m planning to write it sometime between Stormlight books three and four. Until then, Wax and Wayne three—The Bands of Mourning—comes out in January! Status: Era 1.5 book three done; book four coming soonish Secondary Book Projects Elantris I do still intend Elantris sequels. (And the enthusiasm for the leatherbound edition proves that people are still interested in the world.) Right now, I have them scheduled to be slotted in once Wax and Wayne is done. We’ll take a break from Scadrial at that point, go back to Sel and do some Elantris books, then hop back to the 1980s era Mistborn series. This slots an Elantris sequel into the spot between Stormlight books 4 & 5. It is coming, just more slowly than I’d once hoped. Status: Delayed, but coming before too long The Rithmatist Book two of The Rithmatist (called The Aztlanian) is another thing on my schedule that I need to get to soon. If you didn’t read last year’s update on the book, I tried writing this—and found I didn’t have a strong enough grasp on the historical period and culture to do it justice. So I stopped and did a bunch of research, but by the time I finished, I needed to be back to work on my main projects. Therefore, I’ve slotted this in after Stormlight 3 as well. Hopefully it won’t get pushed back again. Usually I try to do about equal in pages to a Stormlight book between Stormlight books. That gives me room for three smaller books. Right now plans are for these three books to be The Lost Metal (Wax and Wayne 4), The Atzlanian, and a new project. (See below.) Status: Delayed, but maybe coming soon Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians Here’s another one we’ve been able to clear off my list. With Tor republishing the first four books of this series throughout the spring next year (starting in February), I am at last able to get the fifth book (and the final one Alcatraz will write) out to you fans. The new art for these editions has me very excited. For once I think we have covers that indicate to readers the tone of the books. Book Five should be out in the summer, though I believe Tor is scheduling it for August instead of June. It is written, and I’m doing final edits on it right now. (In the evenings after I feel I’ve hit my wordcount goal for Stormlight.) If you haven’t read these books, give them a browse once they come out again in the spring. They’re very fun, but very different from my other books. They’re insane, fourth-wall-breaking comedies, so they’re certainly not for everyone. They have been an excellent way for me to blow off steam and refresh myself between longer, more ponderous books. Status: Book Five Completed! White Sand For those who don’t know, this is a book I wrote around the same time as Elantris—but which I didn’t ever sell. Once I was published, I considered releasing it, but felt it needed a solid revision before I could do so. Well, that revision was delayed time and time again, until the point where I decided I probably would need to just rewrite the book from scratch if I ever did release it. An interesting opportunity came along a few years later, however, and that changed my perspective. You see, the comic book company Dynamite Entertainment had come asking if I had anything, perhaps an unpublished novel, that would make a good graphic novel. This seemed the perfect opportunity to make use of White Sand. I didn’t have time to do revisions, but another writer could take my words and adapt them (really, what the book needed was a trim anyway) into a graphic edition. We said yes, and started into the process. I’ve said before, Dynamite has been excellent to work with. Rik Hoskin, the person hired to do the adaptation, is a fantastic writer—and he really managed to preserve the core of my story, using my own dialogue and descriptions, while cutting out all the chaff. The artist Julius Gopez, the colorist Ross Campbell, the letterer Marshall Dillon, and the editor Rich Young have all done a fabulous great job. The novel is big (no surprise), so it’s going to be released as three graphic novels. The first of these is almost ready, and we’re expecting a release sometime next year. The fine folks at Dynamite have given me permission to post some teaser pages here, so here you go! The first look at White Sand, the graphic novel: Tertiary Book Projects Now we move on to some of the projects that are itching at me, and I do intend to do someday—but which are delayed indefinitely until I figure out the right time to do them. Warbreaker While some characters from Nalthis have made appearances in other books, I still don’t have a specific timeframe for when I’ll go back and write the second Warbreaker book. (Titled Nightblood for the time being.) I know a lot of people really want this book, and I intend to do it, but I have to find time for the Elantris sequels first. So you’re unlikely to see it until Elantris is finished. (Sorry.) Status: On Hiatus Legion I owe people another (and final) Legion novella, and I plan to do this as well. Novellas aren’t as big a commitment as novels, obviously—that’s part of why I do them. But I don’t know when I’ll squeeze this in, with all the things I’m doing right now. It could happen literally at any time—but I don’t expect it in 2017, to be honest. Status: On Short Hiatus Cosmere Short Fiction Collection For a while I’ve been thinking that I need to collect all the various pieces of Cosmere short fiction and put them into a single collection, for those who don’t like hunting around for them. This might be the year to do that. If Stormlight doesn’t make it into 2016, we might be able to get a collection (with a Stormlight novella) out by the end of the year instead. Something to tide you over, at least, until book three comes out. If we do this, my goal will be to have it include every piece of short fiction from every source up until now and bind it together in a handsome hardcover that will look nice on the shelf next to your other books. This will give you multiple options for the short fiction, if you want to collect it. We will continue to do our little two-novella collections (like the Perfect State and Shadows for Silence double that we just released.) So if you’d prefer to collect those in the smaller size, I anticipate everything eventually being released in that format too. However, if you’d like one thick tome, every ten years or so you should see a bigger collection. More on this as it develops. Right now I’m toying with the title Arcanum Unbound, and would love to include a star chart of all the cosmere worlds in it. Projects in Development These are projects you might have heard of, but for which no solid evidence of them ever being released is out there. On occasion I might do readings from them, and I might tinker with them—but I don’t have much specific to tell you about release dates. New YA Series I am developing a new YA series to be released after the Reckoners with the same publisher. I can’t say much about it right now, though we will probably do some announcements regarding it during the Calamity tour. If all goes well, the first book of this trilogy will be the third shorter novel I write between Stormlight 3 and 4. I always need to have something new to be working on, if only in the back of my mind, to help prevent burnout. I’m excited about this series right now, and actively working on the outline. But I won’t be digging into writing it until next summer or fall, depending on when Stormlight Three is done. So I don’t expect a release for a while yet. Status: Outlining Adamant Some of you have heard readings from, or seen excerpts of, this epic science fiction series that I’ve been working on. I finished one novella in the world, and am pleased with it, but I have no immediate plans for writing the rest. Perhaps I’ll feel different once Stormlight is done and I’m satisfied with it. (It’s always possible I’ll need a break between projects where I can do something very different.) We shall see. I have no plans to release this in 2016. Status: On Hiatus Dark One A perennial favorite on the State of the Sanderson is this YA series about a boy who discovers he’s the Dark One, a figure from prophecy fated to destroy the world. My outlines are looking okay for this one, but it doesn’t feel like the right time to do it. I pitched it to my editors at Random House along with the new YA series above, and we all agreed the other project was a better follow-up to the Reckoners. Dark One is bound to get done someday. That day isn’t now. Status: No Projected Start Date Death by Pizza I had a nice breakthrough on this book recently, making the main character far more interesting. (For those who don’t know, this is about a necromancer who owns a pizza joint.) However, this remains a very out-of-left-field project for me, and something I did mostly for fun. (I have a nearly complete draft of the entire book.) I don’t anticipate doing this anytime soon, though I did briefly consider it as an alternative to the new YA series listed above. It’s still just too strange for me to want to do right now. Perhaps eventually. Status: On Hiatus Dragonsteel/Liar of Partinel This is Hoid’s origin story, a prequel to the entire Cosmere. The time is not right. It’s going to happen eventually, but I feel that I shouldn’t dig into this until Stormlight is completely done. (All ten books.) So don’t hold your breath on this one. Status: Loooong way off Silence Divine This story (which is the one about a world where catching a disease grants you magical talents) is another perennial State of the Sanderson participant. I did some work on a short story in this world a while back, and liked it, but didn’t have time to finish. (This is the thing I did readings from during the Words of Radiance tour, I believe.) It’s set in the cosmere, and I have plans to someday write this—but I’m not sure when I’ll do it. Could be a long way off still. Status: On Hiatus Soulburner This is an outline I developed last year during a lull—a kind of space-opera-fantasy-hybrid like Dune or Star Wars. The setting is awesome, one of my favorites. Very distinctive. I don’t have a story for it yet though. I’m just putting it on here so that you know that wacky things are still bouncing around in my head, looking for a way out. It’s not something I’m going to release anytime soon, but if I ever do, you can point here and say, “Hey, I saw this first!” Status: No Projected Start Date Aether of Night Another of the books I wrote around the time of Elantris, and another one that’s not half bad—but still in need of a solid revision. I’ll likely do something with it someday. In the meantime, if you want to read it, you can send us an email to ask for a copy. (Consider it a thank you for getting this far in this huge post.) I’d ask that you’d consider signing up for my mailing list when you do email me, as that’s how I get the word out on when I’m doing signings and when I have cool new things to release. But that’s not required in order to get the book. Projected Novel Release Schedule There’s a good chance I won’t hold to this, but just so you know, here’s how I view my upcoming novel release schedule (not including any novellas or short stories that may or may not appear during moments when I need to do something new): January 2016: Wax and Wayne 3 February 2016: Reckoners 3 (final book) June 2016: Alcatraz 5 Sometime 2017: Stormlight 3 Sometime 2017: Rithmatist 2 Spring 2018: New YA project 1 Fall 2018: Wax and Wayne 4 (final book) Sometime 2019: Stormlight 4 Sometime 2019: New YA project 2 Sometime 2020: Elantris 2 Sometime 2020 New YA project 3 (final book) Sometime 2021: Stormlight 5 (ending of first arc) Sometime 2022: Elantris 3 (final book) Conclusion Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you that the list was big. It’s been quite the year. Lots of travel, lots of meeting people and signing books. My tenth year doing this. I’ve spent the last decade kind of looking at myself as one of the new kids in the fantasy market, but I suppose it’s time to admit that I’ve become—albeit not a member of the old guard—one of the genre’s more established names. As always, you make this possible. Here’s looking to another excellent year. Merry Christmas, and a Happy Koloss Head-Munching Day, to you all. Brandon Sanderson December 2015
Bands of Mourning is released in about two weeks. Interesting that, according to his blog, it'll be about a 2.5 year wait until #4 even though #2 just came out a couple of months ago. He wrote them together, but you'd think the publisher would want to space it out some
The Blackfish are you going to order a signed and numbered copy of bands? I want to but money is a little tight right now.
hmm, read way of kings and words of radiance...fast. loved them. I want to read more sanderson but I'm worried I messed up by starting with what most people seem to claim as their favorite. What do I read next?
reviews for mistborn are so up and down...which is good. I like to try and enter things with low to no expectations so I can be blown away. I think i'll give it ago
I just finished book two of mist born and am enjoying it. But it's not the most amazing thing ever. 7/10 imo
Yeah I read Mistborn first which I believe is the correct way to do it. Love Mistborn. On a related note, I received notification that my signed copy of Bands of Mourning has been shipped
I will probably get to it in February. Loved The Alloy of Law but thought Shadows of Self was just solid. The way he wrote them is interesting (first part of SoS while writing Memory of Light, started writing again but couldn't get into the world, wrote a sequel--BoM--to cure writers block, finished SoS, submitted them both to Tor).
I enjoyed SoS but yea I like AoL more. Here is a review that has me very excited for BoM. It has no BoM spoilers, but does have AoL and SoS spoilers. *Take it with a grain of salt as it is a review written by TOR so of course its glowing, but the part about the cosmere has me excited Spoiler Digging in to the Cosmere: The Bands of Mourning Non-Spoiler Review Martin Cahill Tue Jan 19, 2016 9:19am Sanderson returns to the world of Wax and Wayne with what is probably the best in the series so far. Taking the threads of the first two novels—the various conspiracies, divine machinations, and character arcs—Sanderson puts the pedal to the metal and roars through the world of Scadriel, making every thread come together and sing. Not everything is answered, but there are many satisfying answers in The Bands of Mourning, from the smallest character decisions to the massive Cosmere-level moments. Sanderson has really hit his stride with this world and these characters, and everything, from the action to the humor, works. Spoilers for Alloy of Law and Shadows of Self to follow. The Bands of Mourning opens six months after Shadows of Self, and Wax is in a dark place. Killing Lessie, the woman he loved who was revealed to be a mad kandra, was awful enough. But discovering that Harmony himself threw her in Wax’s path, just so her death would encourage him to return to Elendel? It broke something in Wax, and for the past six months he’s tried to heal. It hasn’t been working. Even with Wayne, Marasi, and Steris all doing their best to bring him back, Wax isn’t happy, despite the arrests he’s made and his upcoming wedding. But when a kandra archaeologist approaches Wax with evidence of an ancient artifact found and a colleague missing, Wax finds himself being dragged back into the fight, whether he likes it or not. Now, he and his team must find and recover the Bands of Mourning—ancient allomantic and feruchemical bracers bestowed with the power of their previous owner, The Lord Ruler—before Wax’s uncle Edwarn can take them and wreak havoc. Strong Character Arcs It’s here that Sanderson finally starts pushing his characters to the limits they need to go, and he begins to reel them back up from the depressing and shattering ending that was Shadows of Self. At the end of that book, Wax is distraught that his life has been a lie, Marasi is trying to cobble the city back together, Wayne is trying to help his best mate without succumbing to his own demons, and Steris is troubled that she just can’t relate, unable to have confidence in herself. But here is where Sanderson takes our characters at their lowest, and gives them the opportunities to pull themselves up. Wax, Wayne, Marasi, and yes, even Steris, all get the glowing characterization they need, and work towards identifying things in their life that are holding them back from some place better. They examine their lives through dialogue, action, revelations, and power, and each of them in their own way breaks through to what they truly need, and not just want, in their lives. Cosmere Implications Sanderson has always said that at a certain point, all of the background Cosmere workings were going to start bleeding into the foreground of the novels. And while I don’t think we’ve made that jump fully, the bleed has begun here in The Bands of Mourning. If you’re new to Sanderson’s work, it’s just going to be one more thing you need to figure out and research, making it difficult to ease into his newer works. However, if you’ve been following Sanderson and the Cosmere from the beginning, holy Allomantic Jak, will you love this book. Sanderson begins to address the Cosmere in a large way, revealing information, characters, and raising questions, but never at the expense of the plot. You can tell he’s finally ready to start telling the reader things, and given the way he goes about it, he seems incredibly excited. There’s not much more I can say without spoilers, except keep your eyes peeled, and let the theories begin! A Barrel of Monkeys Guys, this book is just FUN. It is. Alloy of Law had to set everyone up. Shadows of Self had to tear them down. The Bands of Mourning lets them run loose. Our heroes are pulling themselves up and out of the mire, and while there are moments of horror, pain, and violence, the overall tone is more hopeful and shot-through with themes of friendship, self-worth, humor, and love. As bad as things get, the focus on these powerful elements always centers the book around something a little lighter and brighter than its predecessors. Not every question is answered, and not every bit of darkness gets its fair share of light, but The Bands of Mourning is a fun book filled with adventure, intriguing reveals, meaningful character development, and humor that works much better than that in SoS. Where Do We Go From Here? The Bands of Mourning is the perfect combination of the first two Wax and Wayne novels, and serves up a healthy amount of humor, action, Cosmere revelations and more. It will satisfy fans of all kinds, and will make the forums explode with the things it has to reveal. With The Lost Metal farther off than the recent bevy of Mistborn literature we’ve been privy to, there’s plenty of time to theorize how the adventures of Wax and Wayne will end come the fourth and final book. After the rollicking good time of The Bands of Mourning, though, I can honestly say I don’t want them to wrap up any time soon. Martin Cahill is a publicist by day, a bartender by night, and a writer in between. When he’s not slinging words at Tor.com, he’s contributing to Book Riot, Strange Horizons, and blogging at his ownwebsite when the mood strikes him. A proud graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop 2014, you can find him on Twitter @McflyCahill90; tweet him about how barrel-aging beers are kick-ass, tips on how to properly mourn Parks and Rec, and if you have any idea on what he should read next, and you’ll be sure to become fast friends. http://www.tor.com/2016/01/19/brandon-sanderson-the-bands-of-mourning-non-spoiler-review/[/spoiler]
So Sanderson just tweeted about releasing a new Mistborn novella: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01B0NS93U?tag=brandsande-20
The man must write 10 hours a day. It's absurd. Maybe he just doesn't take a long time to edit? First draft best draft. Whatever his process is, I'm not complaining.
He sent out his newsletter today and touched on that. He said he isn't really that fast, just very consistent, writing every day.
January Newsletter The Bands of Mourning Is Out! This is one of those books that just zipped out of me. Though I had all kinds of trouble writing the previous book (Shadows of Self,) this one was a blast from start to finish. Both books have a certain air lent to them by the process. Shadows of Self has emotion and thick characterization, born out of my own struggles to find the book’s voice. The Bands of Mourning, on the other hand, is just plain fun. It mixes the more classic Mistborn themes of epic storytelling with the newer Wax and Wayne themes of investigation and adventure. It also changes (well, expands) the Mistborn world in a huge way. It is both my agent’s and editor’s favorite book in the series. So I hope you’ll be willing to check it out! If you want a teaser, your newsletter exclusive fiction is the prologue, posted below. After that, Tor has posted chapters 1–6 on their website. Enjoy! Mistborn: Secret History The Bands of Mourning also marks the release of something I’ve been hiding from everyone, something I’ve been very tight-lipped about. I don’t want to say much here, as it’s supposed to be something of a surprise. (Unfortunately, news of it started leaking out a few weeks ago.) Mistborn: Secret History is a digital novella set in the Mistborn world. It’s a companion story to the first three Mistborn books, and shouldn’t be read until you’ve finished those. It contains some very small spoilers for The Bands of Mourning also, so if you’re caught up on the Wax and Wayne books, I’d read Bands first. Then it will be safe to go check out Secret History. A few warnings about this novella. First, it is long for a novella—the longest I’ve ever written (in fact, by some definitions it would be called a short novel). Second, it will be released in print form as part of the Cosmere short fiction collection, which we’re hoping to release later this year. Finally, the ebook of Secret History may go away sometime in the summer, as Tor will gain the rights to the story for the collection. So if you want the solo ebook (which is only five bucks—store links are here), make sure you pick it up before then. We’ll post warnings when it’s about to go down, but you should have six months or so. Stormlight Update Book three of Stormlight is going very well, but the books are very big and take a lot of effort and time to write. If you’re interested in some detailed talk about it, I posted a thread on reddit discussing it. In short, I’m about halfway done with the writing of the book. I plan to finish it in the first half of this year, but the realities of publishing these books (the art needs, the continuity checking, the editing) mean that it probably won’t be out by the end of the year. Because of this, I’m planning to write a Stormlight novella and include it in the collection coming out later this year, so you can get your Stormlight fix. (Right now, plans are for the novella to be about Lift—with maybe a Lopen short story as well, if I can find time for it.) As always, you can watch my website and follow along with the percentage bars in the upper right corner. I should be getting back to Stormlight soon, as I’m not doing a tour for The Bands of Mourning. (Though if you want a signed copy, both Weller Book Works and the BYU Store have an extra hundred or so signed and numbered hardcovers. They both ship worldwide.) I will be touring for Calamity, the final book of the Reckoners series, which comes out on February 16th. So expect another newsletter next month. After that, I probably won’t send one until late summer or fall, as I don’t want to overwhelm you with these things. I appreciate you signing up, and for following along with my crazy career. My Writing Space One of the questions I get that surprises me is what my writing space looks like. Where is it that I do my work? As I’ve been trying to add something more personal to each of these newsletters, I thought I’d talk about this one for a little bit. Because—it being me—it’s actually a long story. The idea of a writing space is a bit different for me than it is for some other authors. When I started at this, I didn’t have much in the way of personal resources. And so I ended up squeezing writing between the spaces in my life—and that meant some fairly unusual writing spots. The first place I can remember working on my first book was in the back of a bus in Korea. On my days off as a Mormon missionary, I would sketch out ideas for worlds, and eventually this just turned into me writing down scenes and ideas. I’d often do it at the side of a gym as my fellow missionaries played basketball, which is what they wanted to do on their day off. There wasn’t a lot of writing time for me in those days, and I didn’t get even close to finishing the book. But after I got back from Korea, I had more time. And so my first stable writing space was in the cab of a pickup truck. You see, my father got me a job that fall selling corn at a street corner in Idaho Falls (where my parents had moved while I was away.) Basically, my job was to go borrow a truck, pick up a load of corn from a farmer in Iona, then park on the corner beneath a sign and sell it to people when they pulled up. This left me a lot of free time during the workday (a theme of jobs I hunted). I didn’t have a computer back then, so I just sat in the cab with a large sketchpad, wearing gloves against the chill, scribbling furiously. The next job I got was a little better: Selling neckties in the mall at one of those seasonal kiosks. Again, I was told I didn’t need to wave people down, I only had to sell when they stepped up to me. So, I brought along the notepad and wrote, and wrote, and wrote. Across from me was a Suncoast Motion Picture Company with huge television sets broadcasting movies (with no sound, fortunately) out into the mall. So, in between writing fantasy novels, I caught glimpses of Arnold Schwarzenegger trying to find a Power Rangers doll for his son for Christmas. I must have seen that film (though I never heard a line from it) eighty times by the end of the holidays. There were a lot of distractions at that job, so it wasn’t as good for writing as the truck—but at least I didn’t have to worry about my fingers getting cold. After that, I moved back to Provo to go to school, and—most amazingly—I inherited my family computer, because my brother went off on his mission and didn’t need it any longer. We’d bought this in ’93. It was now ’98. So . . . it was a little outdated. It ran Windows 3.1 (for you tech people)—and by then, Windows 98 was out. I didn’t have enough money for a desk, so in my little room at college, I put the monitor on the top of my half-sized wardrobe, then pulled a chair up to it and sat with a wooden Xiangqi board on my lap, with the keyboard on top of it, to raise it up high enough that it wasn’t uncomfortable as I typed. I spent hours upon hours typing in my first book, White Sand, from sketchpad pages I could mostly read. It was here that I finished this novel, about three years from the point where I first started it. I typed “The End” and printed off the page with pride. I was now, officially, a novelist. People often ask me about my productivity. I usually explain that I’m actually not that fast, I’m just very consistent. I can credit these days for that—learning to write in a gym in Korea, the cab of a truck in the cold, with a game board on my lap as a substitute for a desk. I just really, really wanted to be a writer—and I had no idea how to go about that, other than to write and hope I could figure it out. I had the misfortune (or perhaps fortune, as it has turned out) to need a lot of practice before I got any good—which means that I learned some very good writing habits in my early years. My next writing space was the one I had the longest before getting published: the front desk of a hotel. (The Best Western Cottontree Inn, it was called back then, just down the road from BYU.) I got a job working as the night desk clerk, a job that was perfect. It let me work full time and go to school full time, while providing six hours in the day to do my writing. I don’t think I could have managed what I did without a job that gave me a lot of writing time. I wrote, standing up, at the front desk on the computers they used there to check people in. I saved my work to a series of floppy disks. (By this point, my desktop computer was dead and buried.) A year or two into this job, my father gave me a glorious gift: a laptop, which I then was able to bring in and work on at the front desk. (The laptop, years later, died on me—but I was able to coax it back to life by removing the hard drive and blowing on it, then copying off the chapter I’d been working on. My computer friends still scratch their heads at that one.) For five years I was there at that front desk, in a suit coat, being friendly to people who came in and getting them rooms—and then scurrying back to my stories. I wroteElantris, Dragonsteel, and the first attempt at Mistborn here. I rewrote White Sandso that it wasn’t terrible any longer. And I wrote The Way of Kings, in its first incarnation. (I printed off my worldbuilding and put it in a giant 3-ring binder, which I left at work under the front desk, rather than lugging it back and forth. Other employees found it a hoot.) The theme of all this was forcing myself to write, regardless of the situation. Because if I waited until I had the perfect writing space, I knew I’d never be able to finish anything. I credit my mother, who taught me early in life to just work, for the way I think. It has certainly served me well throughout my life. About this time I went pro, getting my first deal. (And getting married soon thereafter.) My next writing space returned me to one of my first spaces. I worked in the basement of our little townhome—it was the only place free from the terror of our toddler son, who liked to unplug my computer for laughs. The basement wasn’t finished, so I ended up down there in the cold during the winter, with gloves on again, typing away. (This is eventually where I ended up working on The Wheel of Time.) We moved a couple years later. (Though not until I forced Peter to work for a few months in that cold basement. Sorry, Peter.) And now we finally get to my more normal writing space—and the first that most people would consider sufficient to inspire the creative process. I work in an easy chair recliner, with my feet pointed toward our gas hearth. I’m in the bedroom, next to a window. We keep talking about building me an office as an add-on to the house, and I’m sure we’ll do it someday. But for now, this is paradise. I can put my feet up, turn on some music, grab my laptop, and write. All without wearing gloves or having anyone call and ask me to bring them extra towels. I really ought to have my wife do that to me someday. For old time’s sake. Brandon
I've seen a lot of people say 2k words a day should be the goal. Get the base down and then tweak and edit and rewrite and edit again until it's passable, and then edit some more. One of the biggest issues with being a professional writer, I'd imagine, is possessing the required diligence to actually work every day. That was a cool post.
And then there are guys like Faulkner who (according to him) write As I Lay Daying and don't change a word.
Maybe the nerd in me is showing a bit too much but Secret History was one of the most enjoyable reads I've had in some time.
I'm going to read BoM and SH after I finish Seven Killings. Looking forward to it--your reviews have me pretty excited.
Four hours left in the third Mistborn book. Really excited. Best of the three so far imo (unless the ending blows). What should I read/listen to next? I've done Elantris and the three Mistborns.
He really is. For comparisons sake. Stormlight archives are bigger by page count than all but Dance of Dragons. Sanderson is almost done with the 3rd and has also put out 3 mistborn books, 3 wax and wayne books, Warbreaker, the 3 elantris novels, infinity blade, legion, steelheart, the alcatraz series, some stand alones, novellas, and helped finish the final books on WoT. Martin has done..... fuck i hate that fat bastard.
Max and Wayne series next unless you want to shift gears and do The Way of Kings. Both are good, TWOK is epic but long
Wax and Wayne are good. They're shorter, fun reads compared to the original trilogy. I don't think they're as good, but I still enjoy them (I haven't read BoM yet). If you want to tackle some 400k word books that are his best, Stormlight can be your next choice as posted above. If you want something shorter, his novella The Emperor's Soul takes place on the same world as Elantris. It's quick and won a Hugo--I liked it better than Elantris, personally.
Go ahead and read the Wax and Wayne books, when you finish Bands of Mourning read Mistborn Secret History. Then you'll be fully caught up on Mistborn and can graduate to Stormlight Archive
Any of you read the sequel to Alloy of Law? This guy just keeps bringing the heat EDIT: I'm retarded I didn't know the third book was out. I know what I'm listening to on the way home from KC
Shadows of Self? Yeah, I liked it though I thought AoL was better. Haven't read BoM yet but it's gotten pretty good reviews on here
I can't remember, was this the donation that gets the quote? That's what I got. My quote is: "A different adventure." Starting BoM today.
I had him just write whatever both times. One was "be safe overseas" and the other was "roll tide roll" lol.