Brandon Sanderson's Blog, page 36

Italy! Lucca Comics & Games Festival This Weekend

I’ve mentioned this a few times, and you’ve seen this if you check my upcoming events page, but today through Monday I’m at the Lucca Comics & Games Festival in Lucca, Italy. I’ll be doing a lot of panels and signings, so I hope to see many of you there! Here’s my full schedule:

Friday, October 28th

Mistborn – The Trivial

15:15–16:00, B3 – Room Ingellis

As you know the saga Mistborn? Test yourself with a series of questions that only the true fan can overcome. A judge nothing less than an exceptional guest: Brandon Sanderson himself.

Signing

16:00–18:00, Carducci pavilion

Brandon will be at the Fanucci Booth

Saturday, October 29th

Inside the Cosmoverso with Brandon Sanderson

12:30–13:15, B3 – Room Ingellis

Considered one of the best fantasy authors of the moment and at the same time one of the most promising since 2005 has published 27 books and stories: on the official website you can see the completion of his work in progress bars. Most of his novels are set in Cosmoverso.

Signing

13:15–14:45, Carducci pavilion

Brandon will be at the Fanucci Booth

Signing

17:00–18:30, Carducci pavilion

Brandon will be at the Fanucci Booth

Sunday, October 30th

Signing

11:00–12:30, Carducci pavilion

Brandon will be at the Fanucci Booth

The Plot Thickens

14:00–16:00, Room 2 – Villa Gioiosa

Brandon Sanderson explores all kinds of plot-related questions in this two-hour workshop. Workshop are limited and by reservation. For information see Educational program or write to educational@luccacomicsandgames.com. All requests must include a short CV relating to personal experiences in the field of interest of the meeting.

Monday, October 31st

Brandon Sanderson and Steve Argyle: writing, drawing … what else?

16:00–16:45, Room 2 – Villa Gioiosa

Two great friends, two giants of art and fiction fantasy: un’inedito dialogue on the craft of writing in the drawing, in which each of the two is at interviewer and interviewee turn.

Signing

17:00–19:00, Carducci pavilion

Brandon will be at the Fanucci Booth

Tuesday, November 1st

The Fantasy Wizards

10:30–11:30, Si1 – Teatro del Giglio

Five very large fantasy authors, five different ways to create fantastic worlds, five world successes compared: all at the same table to tell us the secrets and dispel the myths of the most loved by the public of Lucca Comics & Games genre.

The Fantasy Magicians – Autograph session

11:30–1:00, Si1 – Teatro del Giglio

Terry Brooks, Philip Reeve, Brandon Sanderson, Steven Erikson and Joshua Khan.

Signing

16:30–18:00, Carducci pavilion

Brandon will be at the Fanucci Booth

European tour starts now + Arcanum Unbounded tour next month

I’m in the process of flying to Paris, where I will have a signing on Saturday. Please see my events page for full details.

Here’s a breakdown of my European tour:

Paris – Sat Oct 22nd

Lucca, Italy – Fri Oct 28th–Tue Nov 1st

Barcelona – Thu Nov 3rd–Sat Nov 5th

Lisbon – Mon Nov 7th (details coming soon)

In addition, Tor.com has announced my short tour for the release of Arcanum Unbounded. We don’t have these dates up on my events calendar yet, but for now they’re at Tor.com.

Provo – Tue Nov 22nd

Fort Collins – Tue Nov 29th

San Francisco – Wed Nov 30th

Seattle – Thu Dec 1st

Hoboken – Sat Dec 3rd

Chicago – Tue Dec 6th

Warbreaker prologue reread + Writing Excuses on Elemental Drama

In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, Elemental Drama as a Sub-Genre, the Writing Excuses crew turns their focus on elemental drama. This can be tricky as it’s basically “character change,” and a great many stories use character change in some way—it’s almost ubiquitous. In this episode they pick at the ubiquity, and look at the many different ways in which character change can be featured, and what sort of tools writers have at their disposal to make this happen in stories.

In case you missed Alice Arneson’s first post introducing Tor’s continuing reread for Warbreaker, you can find it here. This week, in the prologue, we see Vasher and Nightblood escape a Hallandren dungeon.

The Twitter post archive for October is up to date.

Review of Goldenhand on Goodreads

Goldenhand

Garth Nix

(Note: For an explanation of my Goodreads policy, please see here.)

For Writers

The Short Version

Rating Notes

Bias Notes

Anyone who hasn’t read Sabriel, the beginning of the Old Kingdom books by Garth Nix, is missing out. I consider reading it, during the years I was trying to break in, to be one of the fundamental experiences that helped me shape my philosophy on magic systems and worldbuilding.

Needless to say, I love the magic and worldbuilding of these books—though perhaps someday I’ll do a review of Sabriel itself, and delve into what I love about the worldbuilding in these books. This review is about Goldenhand, a later installment (book five, I believe, though one of those is a prequel) in the series. I found it to be an excellent continuation.

I’m impressed that Mr. Nix has kept my attention and excitement for the series over all these years, doling out new volumes carefully and expanding the magic system at a controlled rate. (And introducing new characters to become the new viewpoints as others close their arcs.) I feel he’s added good flourishes here and there to give the magic depth, but never let it spiral away from him, as was the potential at any given point.

One highlight for me in this book involved Mr. Nix’s continued ability to introduce compelling characters with a variety of backgrounds. Pay attention to how he gives strong, but different, motives to the primary players—and how he quickly establishes those motives and keeps them central to each character’s through line.

I also admire his ability to write a young adult series that is firmly secondary world fantasy, with challenging worldbuilding and politics, while still keeping the narrative focused on younger characters, maintaining the feel that this is correctly shelved in teen. I think the character motivations, the sense that these are people still searching for their exact place in the world, is part of what makes this work.

Finally, I would suggest a study of Mr. Nix’s pacing methods. Sabriel was the first fantasy novel I can remember that used a more intense, “thriller style” method of pacing. (I see this in the works of Jim Butcher and Brent Weeks as well.)

Notice how Mr. Nix writes this book to encompass a relatively short period of time, with constant motion and action. He uses frequent cuts between viewpoints to deemphasize downtime, increase tension, and propel the story. He also consistently employs small chapter-end hooks that are frequently resolved in the early pages of the next chapter, using them to bridge chapter (and character) breaks. I’m not always a fan of this style of cliffhanger, as it can wear thin by the end of a book, but they work very well with the format and structure of this book.

Here’s what I sent the publisher as a blurb for the book. “Garth Nix is one of the best worldbuilders in fantasy, and this book is merely further proof. I love the Old Kingdom series, and Goldenhand is an excellent continuation, packed with the excitement and passion of a storytelling virtuoso at the height of his abilities.”

Highly recommended for anyone. Sabriel, the first in the series, is one of my go-to suggestions, as I feel it does a large number of things very well, and has a broad appeal for a wide variety of readers.

I noticed no content in this book requiring specific warning.

I have met Mr. Nix several times at conventions, and we are on friendly terms. I received this book for free from his publisher, who was pursuing a cover blurb.

Final 2016 Sanderson Lecture + Updates

Brandon’s assistant Adam here. Due to the overwhelming number of people who request for Brandon to work on Oathbringer (Stormlight 3) and nothing else, I asked Brandon if he wouldn’t mind if I took the weekly update posts off his plate to give him more time to devote to the enormous writing endeavor that is the Stormlight Archive. Most of what you see on the website will continue to be written by Brandon, but he gave me leave to periodically post fanart and cosplays across his social media platforms alongside the weekly updates he likes to give to his readers.

The Weekly Update!

The final installment (a catch-all Q&A) of the 2016 Sanderson Lectures is now live! If you missed Episode 11, it was “Dialogue and Agents,” and you can catch up on all the videos here. Enjoy!

In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, The Editor’s Wish List, Navah Wolfe—an editor at Saga Press—sits down with the Writing Excuses crew to discuss the manuscripts she would like to see.

For those of you who followed Tor.com’s reread for Words of Radiance, which recently reached its conclusion, I have some exciting news for you: The great Alice Arneson just introduced Tor’s reread for Warbreaker, which will begin on Thursday.

Our own Isaac Stewart, cartographer extraordinaire and art director for Brandon, was recently interviewed for the Imaginary World Podcast. This particular episode, Fantasy Maps, talks about the debt modern cartographers owe to J.R.R. Tolkien, who spent decades mapping out Middle-earth on graph paper because everything had to be invented from scratch. It’s a fun podcast and well worth the listen.

The Twitter post archive for October is up to date.

Utah Humanities Book Festival in Ogden on Saturday

As it says on my events page, tomorrow I will be attending the Utah Humanities Book Festival in Ogden, Utah. I would love to see you there this weekend, but if you can’t make it that’s okay. The greatest compliment you can give me is to read my books.

My full schedule is below.

Saturday, October 8th

Place: Ogden High School

Address:

2828 Harrison Blvd.

Ogden, UT 84403

Event Type: Signing

Schedule:

From the event organizers:

Utah Humanities and Weber County Book Links are pleased to present “The Way of Writers: Building Worlds with Brandon Sanderson.” The day will culminate in Sanderson’s talk at 4:00 PM, which will take place in the newly restored OHS Art Deco Auditorium, a National Trust for Historical Preservation award recipient.

Workshops 12:00-3:00

Break 3:00-4:00

Trivia in auditorium 3:30-4:00

Sanderson presentation 4:00-5:00

Book signing, Trivia 5:00-6:00

For more information and a list of workshop facilitators, as well as art and writing competition information, visit sandersonogdenvisit.wordpress.com.

Review of Ink and Ashes on Goodreads

Ink and Ashes

Valynne E. Maetani

(Note: For an explanation of my Goodreads policy, please see here.)

For Writers

The Short Version

Rating Notes

Bias Notes

This excellent YA book sits carefully nestled between several genres. The packaging lists it as a thriller, and that’s not a bad way to present it. The opening chapters focus more on mystery, by my definition, than thriller. (They are more about the characters discovering secrets than they are about people being in danger.) However, as the story escalates, it does move into thriller territory.

However—and few books manage to pull this off as well as Ink and Ashes—it’s also a slice of life drama, mixing family dynamics, friendships, and romance. While many books use these themes as seasoning, I believe that Valynne successfully creates a straight-up hybrid. I was impressed by how well she balanced the growing tension with a girl struggling through day-to-day challenges. Often when someone tries this, one of the two (either the daily life or the mystery) ends up feeling perfunctory. Not so here, and I thoroughly enjoyed the blend.

I can sincerely say this was one of the best books I’ve read this year, and might even be in the top spot. An artful blend of Japanese culture, solid mystery, interesting characters, and an excellent use of viewpoint. I particularly enjoyed how the writer turned a major trope—the single girl in a cast of mostly guys—on its head by making it a feature of the story.

I highly recommend the book to anyone who likes Young Adult fiction.

The first thing I’d highlight for you to examine is how Valynne juggles the genres, and expectations for them, as mentioned above. Pay attention to the solid mystery hook, followed by balancing family life, then the escalation of discovery into true danger. Valynne is very good with promises; watch how she eases the reader through the transitions between family/school life and the action scenes.

I’d say the book’s second strong feature is its use of viewpoint. Many first-person narratives rely on snark from the protagonist to give them personality and make their narrative more engaging, but Valynne goes a different direction, making the character powerfully inquisitive, and reinforcing this with the careful use of questions, curiosity, and impulsiveness from the main character. Valynne is excellent in her use of emotion, and the scenes of tension in particular popped for me—I truly felt that I was in the head of someone who was on the brink of panic, trying to keep herself together. This was done through deft manipulation of the first-person (first-person immediate, as I often call it) narrative.

Also pay attention to the pacing, which is very interesting in this novel. It occasionally uses thriller style (short chapters, end on a moment of tension or cliffhanger that you resolve quickly in the next chapter) but often mixes more of a mystery style (end with a tease about a cool secret or clue to pull the reader along) and more of a traditional style (full arc within a chapter, ending on a short bit of falling action to give closure to issues raised early in the chapter). These help with the transition between action and drama, and vary the storytelling style to allow payoffs and different types of subplots to play out.

An excellent, fast-paced YA mystery/thriller with an engaging character narrative and a nice mix of action, romance, and family drama.

I noticed no content in this book requiring specific warning.

I’m very good friends with the author’s editor, Stacy Whitman at Tu Books.

Alcatraz: The Big Reveal

Any of you who haven’t read the Evil Librarians series might want to duck out here, because I’m going to talk about the big reveal at the end of the fifth novel. This is a post that’s been brewing since 2006, so I’m eager to talk about it—but anyone who has read stories like Secret History will know that I like to brew surprises over the long haul. I’d rather you discover this on your own, by reading the series. I’ve posted before my pitch on what the books are about, and why you might like them.

For those of you who have read up to the fifth book, it’s time to give a behind-the-scenes look at what happened with this series.

If we look back to 2006, we can find the seed of the first book in a writing prompt I wrote out for myself: “So there I was, tied to an altar made from outdated encyclopedias, about to be sacrificed to the dark powers by a cult of evil librarians.”

Great first line to a story. I typed it into my phone while at a meeting one day, and quickly became enthralled by it. I’d been reading a lot of middle grade, and wanted to try my hand at something in the genre. I discovery-wrote the story, mostly as a writing exercise—and as a break from the Mistborn series, which I felt needed some breathing room before I could work on the next book.

The story turned out great. Quirky, sarcastic, and fun. So I sent it to my agent, and he liked it too. It took us only a few months to get four offers. Each of the editors we were talking to wanted to know, what was my vision for the series?

And this was tricky because the first book had left me in a bit of a conundrum. You see, a big theme of that first book was a character telling their life’s story and warning everyone that he wasn’t a hero, that things ended poorly for him. And yet the series was lighthearted and fun, full of humor and wackiness. It didn’t have the dark tone of Lemony Snicket, despite the main character’s insistence that he was no hero.

I felt I’d promised the audience a fun reversal—that Alcatraz would end up being a hero, even if he didn’t think he was one. This was tricky though, because I had the feeling that if I ended it that way, it would be too obvious. Somehow I had to have an ending that justified Alcatraz thinking he was a huge failure in life, but at the same time indicating to the reader that he was actually heroic.

And that’s when I hit on a structure that would let me do this. I pitched the following to the various editors interested in the books: I’ll write a six-book series that I tell everyone is five books long. The main character will write five, and the fifth will end with the disasters he predicted. This will show exactly why he thinks of himself the way he does.

But then the sixth book will be from the viewpoint of his bodyguard, continuing the story and giving the real ending.

I felt this would work because it played into the themes of Alcatraz being honest about his past, mixed with his feelings of failure. But it would at the same time let us have an ending that wasn’t quite so much of a downer. All it required was that we remain quiet for six years or so (it ended up being ten) about the secret sixth book. (In the intervening years, if people asked me if book five was the end, I tried to always answer, “The fifth book is the last one Alcatraz will write.”)

Some of the editors loved this idea, and others didn’t like it at all. One who loved it was Susan at Tor, who is now publishing the books—so yay!

My initial pitch for the release of book five this year was to have a little envelope inside the back cover that you opened and found a note from Bastille, saying she was going to write the last book. However, that proved to be a problem. First, it’s easy to lose a card from an envelope, which meant that library books and secondhand books risked having the true ending get lost. Second, it seemed like it would just be too much for people to resist opening early. We ended up going with a folded-over page at the ending, which at least can’t get lost. (And in the ebook, Bastille’s note is at the very, very end, past all the footnotes, like a post-credits scene.)

So what does this mean for the future of the series? Well, two years ago I posted a screenshot of my folder showing all of my books in order. It hid a secret project, scribbled out. People assumed this was Secret History, and I didn’t disabuse them (as I was working on it at the time). But it’s actually Evil Librarians Six, which I’ve done a bunch of work on. I’m not sure when I’ll have it out, but it won’t be too long. (I will probably finish it sometime next year.) I’m tentatively calling it Alcatraz Bastille vs. the Evil Librarians: The Worldspire. (Yes, Alcatraz’s name will likely be crossed out on the cover, with hers written over it.) Originally I’d named it Alcatraz vs. His Own Dumb Self, but I think that might be going too far.

Thank you to all the fans who have kept with this series over the years. It’s because of you that I went through all the trouble of buying the series back from the old publisher, when they decided to end it at four books. And it’s because of you that we have the gorgeous new Tor editions, finally with cover art that fits the books. (Not to mention the awesome interior art.)

But book six WILL be the last. You can trust this, because it’s me saying it, not Alcatraz.

Tweets October 2016

BJJaveri Sat Oct 01
Worldwide #RollForNichole Event To Raise Awareness For #Suicide And #MentalIllness link via @jiujitsutimes #jiujitsu

BrandSanderson Tue Oct 04
@BJJaveri I’m heartbroken to hear about this, Averi. As someone with loved ones who have depression, I can only guess at your pain.

BJJaveri Tue Oct 04
@BrandSanderson Thank you so much for your kind words and for dealing with mental illness in your books. It really means a lot.

BrandSanderson Tue Oct 04
@BJJaveri My pleasure. It is humbling to know that, once in a while, the things I try in the books end up doing what I hoped they would.

BrandSanderson Sun Oct 02
My 3 and 6 yr olds are rolling on the ground laughing because a speaker at LDS Church conference said “tutor” and they heard “tooter.”

dylan_gelbard Sun Oct 02
@BrandSanderson WAITING FOR STORMLIGHT TO TICK TO 74% ON YOUR WEBSITE

BrandSanderson Sun Oct 02
@dylan_gelbard Sorry. I decided the book would be longer than originally projected, so the current writing hasn’t budged the percentage.

PockyandSake Tue Oct 04
@BrandSanderson This new show on FX – Legion – How is this NOT related to your story of that same name/premise? link

BrandSanderson Tue Oct 04
@PockyandSake There is a Marvel character with the name. Their powers are very different from Stephen’s, so I’m curious how this plays out.

BrandSanderson Tue Oct 04
I don’t normally retweet fan campaigns, but depression and mental illness are things I specifically deal with in my… link

Ind3pendent7 Tue Oct 04
@BrandSanderson @BJJaveri @jiujitsutimes its horrific…spend my day stressing over being “normal” again.

BrandSanderson Tue Oct 04
@Ind3pendent7

Tweets September 2016

BJJaveri Sat Oct 01
Worldwide #RollForNichole Event To Raise Awareness For #Suicide And #MentalIllness link via @jiujitsutimes #jiujitsu

BrandSanderson Tue Oct 04
@BJJaveri I’m heartbroken to hear about this, Averi. As someone with loved ones who have depression, I can only guess at your pain.

BJJaveri Tue Oct 04
@BrandSanderson Thank you so much for your kind words and for dealing with mental illness in your books. It really means a lot.

BrandSanderson Tue Oct 04
@BJJaveri My pleasure. It is humbling to know that, once in a while, the things I try in the books end up doing what I hoped they would.

BrandSanderson Sun Oct 02
My 3 and 6 yr olds are rolling on the ground laughing because a speaker at LDS Church conference said “tutor” and they heard “tooter.”

dylan_gelbard Sun Oct 02
@BrandSanderson WAITING FOR STORMLIGHT TO TICK TO 74% ON YOUR WEBSITE

BrandSanderson Sun Oct 02
@dylan_gelbard Sorry. I decided the book would be longer than originally projected, so the current writing hasn’t budged the percentage.

PockyandSake Tue Oct 04
@BrandSanderson This new show on FX – Legion – How is this NOT related to your story of that same name/premise? link

BrandSanderson Tue Oct 04
@PockyandSake There is a Marvel character with the name. Their powers are very different from Stephen’s, so I’m curious how this plays out.

BrandSanderson Tue Oct 04
I don’t normally retweet fan campaigns, but depression and mental illness are things I specifically deal with in my… link

Ind3pendent7 Tue Oct 04
@BrandSanderson @BJJaveri @jiujitsutimes its horrific…spend my day stressing over being “normal” again.

BrandSanderson Tue Oct 04
@Ind3pendent7