About 17th Shard and Brandon Sanderson

What is 17th Shard?

17th Shard is a fan-run website dedicated to all of the works of fantasy author Brandon Sanderson. Though Brandon does not operate the site, he has given us permission to be his official fansite. As such, we are the most rabid of rabid fanboys. We like to think we’re fun to be around.

Who is Brandon Sanderson?

He’s the writer of Elantris, Mistborn, Warbreaker, and the Stormlight Archive. Those adult epic fantasies are set in the same universe, known as the cosmere, but it is by no means necessary to know that to enjoy the novels. He has also written the Alcatraz novels, which is a hilarious middle grade series. In 2007, he was tapped to finish Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time.

Brandon is known for excellent worldbuilding, very deep and original magic systems, great characters, and superb endings. If you haven’t read any of his works, the final version of Warbreaker is actually available for free on his website. And because it's a standalone, you won't feel obligated to read a bunch of books for a satisfying conclusion. (It’s also great, but we’re not exactly unbiased.) You can download it here.

He has a podcast with Dan Wells, Howard Tayler, and Mary Robinette Kowal called Writing Excuses, which deals with writing advice and giving people excuses to write. It’s fifteen minutes long, but don’t let that fool you! It’s been going since 2008, and there is several hours of awesome material if you are an aspiring writer.

To our knowledge, Brandon does not come to 17th Shard, but his assistant, Peter Ahlstrom, occasionally stops by.

For a more extensive description, check out his slightly outdated bio on his website.

History

Our site began originally as Hoid’s Compendium, created by Mi’chelle Walker. She lives in Utah, and actually had taken Brandon’s Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy class at Brigham Young University. When Brandon learned of this fansite, he recommended that instead of naming it after Hoid (a character who is present in all of his adult epic fantasies), naming it after the Seventeenth Shard, an organization of world hoppers with members from all of the cosmere planets. With Brandon’s blessing, we became the official fansite of all of his works.

With Mi’chelle’s husband, Josh, and her friend Eric from Brandon’s forums on Timewaster’s Guide, work began on 17thshard.com. Eric asked Will, another member on Timewaster’s Guide’s writing group, to help with graphics. Eric’s co-administrator on the Mistborn RPG, Kerry, also joined our team.

The site opened its doors in a rocky state in the summer of 2010, and the Mistborn RPG was quickly folded into 17th Shard. In February 2011, we upgraded our software, and made the site about fifty times better (just ask about our initial main page--it was bad). The site has a surprisingly large community, given how young it is, and receives over four thousand unique visitors and over 500,000 hits per month.

Our mission

17th Shard (also referred to as 17S) is an online community, home to people who love Brandon Sanderson and his books. We offer a large group of zealous theorizers about the cosmere, a wiki, a fan gallery, member blogs, and Mistborn: The Inquisition, an RPG set a hundred years before the fall of the Final Empire, home to many writers. Combined, we want to be the premier place to discuss Brandon, and the center of his fandom.

Though Brandon is finishing The Wheel of Time, we are not a Wheel of Time fansite. However, their fanbase is extremely active online, so there are plenty of options for that.

Our staff

We have seven main administrators:

Rubix, otherwise known as Josh Walker. He is one of the co-founders and the owner of the site. He and his wife, Mi’chelle, both live in Utah and primarily stalk Brandon.
firstRainbowRose, otherwise known as Mi’chelle Walker. We lovingly refer to her as Mi’ch. She’s the founder of the site, our public relations person, and moderates us in meetings. She likes making cryptic comments on the forums.
Chaos, otherwise known as Eric Lake. He is the day-to-day site administrator. When the site breaks, it is usually his fault. He spends all day on the forums and theorizes about the cosmere a lot. Sometimes, he works on the wiki obsessively, and is a co-admin on the Mistborn RPG.
Shivertongue, otherwise Will Raboin. He's our senior graphics design monkey and created all of our art on the site.
KChan, otherwise known as Kerry Stuart. She’s the Highprince of Stuff, and it’s hard to pinpoint something on the site she hasn’t worked on. She’s the co-admin of the Mistborn RPG, works on the wiki, and also skins the site.
zas678, otherwise known as Zach Stay. Actually, he is a cousin-in-law of Peter Ahlstrom, and Zach does great work with the Interview Database, theorizing, and is an all-around quote-fetching god.
Comatose, otherwise known as Matt Wiens. He's the Canadian, which lets us claim that we're an international corporation. Obviously. Oh, and he's a Mistborn RPG administrator. He's rad.

In addition, we have other staff groups:
Global moderators manage all areas of the forums. We have one global mod, Eerongal.
Ardents focus in the Book Discussion boards, as well as General Theories. Our ardent is Windrunner.
Obligators moderate the Role-Playing boards--including the Mistborn RPG--and the fan fiction area. We have one obligator, Kuri Shardweaver.
Radiants moderate the community areas on the site, such as General Discussion. We have no radiants at this time.
Returned moderate the galleries and do random artwork. Our two Returned are E. Hyde and MerryBerry.
Soulcasters are our coding backups. Our two Soulcasters are Ryan and Moru.
Worldbringers are wiki administrators and moderate the Coppermind forums. Our one Worldbringer is Joe_ST.

The final user group isn’t a staff group, but you definitely want to pay attention to them: Team Sanderson. I shouldn’t have to tell you what people in this usergroup represent.

Contact and networking

For general inquiries, you can email staff@17thshard.com. For any inquiries on site issues, contact Eric/Chaos either via the forums, through instant messaging, or you can email him at eric@17thshard.com.

You can follow us on Facebook and Twitter (our Facebook feed draws from Twitter). We have recently been using Google+ Hangouts occasionally, and if you’d like to join in, either add Eric Lake, Josh Walker, or any of our other administrators to your circles. When Google+ opens pages for companies, you can be assured we will get that soon as well.

Brandon is great (then again, we aren't unbiased), and he makes effort to communicate with his fans. He's very busy, of course, but he does read all of his email. You can use his Contact form on his website, or just email him at brandon [AT] brandonsanderson.com. He is on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Twitter is probably the quickest way Brandon could respond to you, but he doesn't answer everything due to his busy schedule.

Shameless plugging

There are no ads on 17S, and if we ever have them, it will be tasteful. However, we’re all poor college students, so if you’d like to donate to our cause, you can do so here! Our server hosting is pretty awful, and we’d love to upgrade. Hint hint.

We promise not to pocket it and laugh maniacally. Probably.