I'm a Special Guest at Comic-Con International in San Diego next week. My schedule is below. I'll also have a table in Artist's Alley (#II-10) where I will often hang out (and maybe play some Magic if it's feasible) when I don't have a scheduled event. Kara and Isaac from InkWing will be manning my table even when I'm not there, selling books and T-shirts. We're also going to have a convention exclusive hardcover (details to be announced later), so be sure to stop by.
Comic-Con International, S
My good friend and Writing Excuses cohost Dan Wells' new book THE HOLLOW CITY is out today. The release party is tonight at Weller Book Works (the bookstore formerly known as Sam Weller's, at their new location, which has parking!) in Trolley Square.
Mary, Howard, and I are going to be there, and Dan hopes to see many of you there as well to get the new book (or any other book of his) signed. This is also one of the last chances to see Dan before he and his family move to Germany for a year. De
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 definite
InkWing has another T-shirt contest going on at their blog, for a shirt that will be available at Comic-Con in San Diego. They don't have a picture of the shirt yet, but it's going to use Ben McSweeney's image of Szeth from THE WAY OF KINGS.
InkWing has also taken over the Allomantic symbol decals that we have in our store. If you want to get one of these to put on your car, laptop, or whatever, go over to InkWing.
The newest ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS annotation covers chapter seve
My assistant uploaded a new ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS annotation. This one covers chapter sixteen, which has various obscure references including a dinosaur eating the "C" section of science fiction books.
There are two new episodes of the Writing Excuses podcast up. First Mary, Howard, Dan, and I talk about writing time travel. Then we talk about THE WAY OF KINGS in depth. Do keep in mind that this contains huge spoilers!
Benjamin Carlson used a condensed version of my short story I
When Lloyd Alexander (author of many novels including the Chronicles of Prydain) passed away, he left his papers to the BYU library, which has an exhibit that is a recreation of Alexander's home office. BYU student Jared Crossley is making a documentary on Lloyd Alexander, the short version of which will accompany the exhibit and the long version of which will be used by various literary organizations and libraries. To finance the documentary, he is running a Kickstarter campaign. If you're a Ll
Here's my schedule as Writer Guest of Honor of this weekend's BayCon. There's not a signing on the schedule, which means that I'll sign books whenever you catch me somewhere at the con, unless I'm running to get somewhere else.
I'm also doing a Magic: The Gathering draft, probably Avacyn Restored or something in the Innistrad block, Saturday night. See below for details.
BayCon 2012, Santa Clara, CA
Dates: May 25–28, 2012<br/>Place: BayCon 2012<br/>Address: Santa Clara Hyatt<br
The most recent Writing Excuses podcast episode starts a new "Project in Depth" series where Mary, Howard, Dan, and I take a project that one of us has completed and grill the creator about it. These episodes necessarily contain spoilers. The first one covers Howard's Hugo-nominated Schlock Mercenary volume Force Multiplication. In future episodes (not all in a row) we'll do THE WAY OF KINGS, GLAMOUR IN GLASS, and THE HOLLOW CITY. Check the first one out here.
This week's ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EV
There's a new ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS annotation up. This one talks about chapter thirteen, when Alcatraz breaks out of the Librarians' holding cell.
This week's Writing Excuses episode is another one that was recorded at Life, the Universe & Everything in front of a live audience. It's about writing carthartic horror and features Michael R. Collings and Michaelbrent Collings.
Richard Allred sent me a recording of a Mistborn Adventure Game session that he did at Epic Puzzles &a
The most recent ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS annotation covers the chapter where Alcatraz gets tortured. Check it out.
This week's Writing Excuses podcast episode features Q&A with James Dashner at Life, the Universe & Everything. We cover the following audience-supplied questions:
Why is the ARC of James's first book so different from the later books?
How do you handle paragraph- and sentence-level edits?
How do you plot your stories?
How do you craft endings that are both
Right now I'm in Las Vegas for this year's edition of the Superstars Writing Seminar where I'm an instructor. I posted about this several times over the last few months, so I hope it's not a surprise to anyone!
Hal-Con in Halifax, Nova Scotia has been added to my events calendar for October this year. I'm looking forward to meeting lots of Canadian readers! That should be my final convention for 2012, and then will come the book tour in January, which is in the planning stages. For my current s
Hey, all! This weekend is the Avacyn Restored prerelease, and as with the previous two sets, Dan and I are going to head up to Epic Puzzles & Games for their midnight release party. We're hoping you are all interested in playing with us again, because as long as we have a small crowd, Epic will rent us our own room to play in again.
We won't be participating in the Helvault promotion, as that is a closed thing that only a certain number of people can join. (And I'm sure it's full already.)
Just a quick note that my good friend and Writing Excuses cohost Mary Robinette Kowal will be appearing tonight in Salt Lake at Weller Book Works. This is Sam Weller's new store in Trolley Square, where there's actually parking unlike at their old location. Go see her and get your copy of GLAMOUR AND GLASS signed!
Location: Weller Book Works<br/>607 Trolley Square<br/>Salt Lake City, UT<br/>801.328.2586<br/>Reading, Signing, & Shadow Puppet Show<br/>7:00 p.m. A
I arrived home from Australia yesterday to find that yet another surprise home makeover had taken place. (The previous one was after my New York Comic-Con trip.)
In this week's Writing Excuses podcast episode, Larry Correia joins Mary, Howard, Dan, and me in front of a live audience at Life, the Universe & Everything to talk about guns in fiction. If you don't know much about guns and want to use them in your writing, give it a listen.
While I was in Australia, I did an interview for ABC R
This week's Writing Excuses continues our discussion of Mary Robinette Kowal's outline of a middle-grade novel she planned back in 2003. At twenty-five minutes it's a lot longer than our typical episode, but if you're wondering about outlining, a listen will be worth your while.
My assistant has put up another of my annotations for ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS. This one covers chapter nine, when the talking dinosaurs show up.
He also put up another Twitter posts collection. If you're in
Today marks the release of Writing Excuses cohost Mary Robinette Kowal's novel GLAMOUR IN GLASS, which you should read. On this week's podcast episode, Mary offers up an outline from 2003 (of a middle-grade fantasy Mary was planning) for us to dissect, and it's an educational process.
The most recent ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS annotation covers chapter eight. It explains why elevators are more primitive than stairs, and talks about the hidden continents that the Librarians don't want y
Two big updates today!
First off, we at Writing Excuses are proud to be Hugo nominated in the Best Related Work category for our second year in a row. Huzzah! Thank you to all who nominated. (You can see the other nominees in all categories here, and you can also watch recordings of the live announcement here. If you want to vote on the Hugos, buy at least a supporting membership to Worldcon here.)
Secondly, I figured I'd give you all an update on the status of the Mistborn film. Years have pa
I'll be hanging out on Google+ from the Google offices in Sydney, Australia on Wednesday, April 18th at 1:00 p.m. Australian EST. (In US Eastern Time, that's 11:00 p.m. on April 17th.) If you would like to join the Hangout, post a question in the comments of this post on Google+ and let me know what you'd like to hear about in the Hangout. The best questions win a place in the Hangout, with preference going to my Australian readers.
Don’t worry if you miss out—this will be a Hangout on Air, whi
All! I just wanted to give an extra shout-out for Swancon this weekend, particularly for what's happening this Friday. The convention has been given a grant to run Friday as a "gold coin day" where you get into the convention for the day by paying a single dollar. (I think it's normally $75 for a day pass, or thereabouts. So this is a real discount.)
By all accounts, this is an excellent convention full of great things to do. So, if you live near Perth, come by and say hello this weekend. My sc
When editor John Joseph Adams invited me to contribute a story to his ARMORED anthology focused on power armor, I naturally thought of Ethan Skarstedt, a friend in my writing group who specializes in military science fiction and has the combat experience to back it up—he's served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, among others. So we collaborated on a short story that appears in the anthology, which is out now. An excerpt is below.
You can buy the print version from the usual places; the ebook is a
Just a quick update for today. I'm currently flying to Australia.
Yesterday's Writing Excuses episode is all about writing excuses—all those handy tricks that the great authors use to prevent themselves from finishing any book before its time.
There are a couple of quotes from me in an article on CNN's Geek Out about media adaptations of fantasy.
The most recent ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS annotation covers chapter seven. I discuss crossbreeding Summa Theologica with Little Women, and
On Sunday my flight leaves for Australia, and I arrive on Tuesday. It's a long flight.
My schedule is below. I hope to see many of you there!
Doom-Con, Swancon 37, Perth, Australia
Date: April 5–9, 2012 (Easter weekend)<br/>Place: Doom-Con, Swancon 37<br/>Address: 207 Adelaide Terrace<br/>Perth, Western Australia 6000<br/>Australia<br/>Type: Convention<br/>Schedule: Specific events are located here, but are subject to change.
Supanova Melbourne 2012, Austr
If you missed it on Twitter or Facebook, here's the link to my Suvudu Cage Match writeup of Moiraine vs. Kelsier. Don't expect an epic battle. I don't have the time to spare to write something like that in this case. Instead, I played it very tongue-in-cheek. I flipped a coin to decide who won, then wrote something that made it seem logical. Warning: it not only contains huge spoilers for both series, but a lot of Wheel of Time and Mistborn in-jokes. If you disagree with the results of my coin f