REPORT: Chicago

My great journey to see Brandon Sanderson started at about 1:00 in the afternoon... I arrived at the signing at about 2:00 and then met up with some fellow 17th Sharders (Shivertongue and his friends) and we hung out at the mall across the street from the Borders where the signing would occur. We got back to the Borders at about 5:30 or so and acquired our wristbands to assure our places in line. From there we commandeered an entire row of seats(not the front row... but we should have) and sat around talking with fellow fans of Brandon for the next hour and 45 minutes or so.

I got to explain the fixing of Elantris to someone. That was fun.

Brandon was late. From what I can tell this is pretty normal for him. The employees at the store said he hit traffic... I think he just didn't want to leave the restaurant where he had dinner because their food is quite awesome.

Brandon then did a reading from The Way of Kings in which he read the prelude. He also explained that the prelude is really a second prologue... and that the book doesn't really start until chapter 2. Also, it is entirely my fault that the reading did not get recorded. The mic I was using to record was a powered mic which I of course forgot to turn on until about halfway through the reading. Way to go me!

Then the Q&A portion of the night happened. I recorded all of this. The audio is available  here...

Listed below are all the questions asked during the Q&A session. They are a little hard to hear on the recording so I wrote all of them down and you can follow along while listening.

I thought it was kind of funny, like centuries they'd all been fighting together and then all of the sudden coincidentally they all decided, I mean well not decided, but something inside them all broke. Was it because they were bound together in some way? Was it coincidence?

When will the next Wheel of Time book come out?

All of your books run on the same cosmology, essentially that all the different planets exist in the same universe. Is there a shot that, considering the size of the Stormlight Archive, is there a chance that we're going to be seeing Surgebinders vs. Allomancers?

That having been said, you have also said that you might maybe write a trilogy of trilogies of the Mistborn series. And you said that last series might be a sci-fi-ish kind of spin on it, how would the different magic systems work off planet and would they interact at that point?

At the end of �Hero of Ages�...

NO SPOILERS!

In �Name of the Wind� [someone] refers to folks as Reshi and in The Way of Kings there is a lake(actually a sea) and a chain of isles known as Reshi. Is that sort of like a literary shadow?

How do you go about choosing the names of your characters in your books? (Long version)

I do books on tape... How do you get them to pronounce words they way you think they should be pronounced?

You've mentioned many times that this is supposed to be a 10 book series. Do you have an outline of the entire series so you can get that idea that it will be that many books?

I mean how particular is it?

In �The Gathering Storm� the character Talmanes, I really enjoyed the personality you gave him. In the previous books that Robert Jordan wrote he didn't really have that kind of personality. I was curious if that whole personality thing that you gave him, which I really enjoyed, was that all you?

How did you come around to using saidar as a verb?

The Seanchan, how does their drawl sound? When I read everyone is like �oh, I couldn't understand them� but when I read it I understand it fine.

How much interaction do you have with other writers?

Are you considering going to WorldCon in Chicago in 2012?

I know you were teaching creative writing at BYU, like how does interacting with aspiring writers... are you still able to teach, and how does that affect your writing?

(some announcements)

Didn't St. Louis kick you out?

Also, while Brandon was signing my books and kindle I asked him a question. I asked if, as I know he is interested in webcomics and comics, if he would ever consider doing something along those lines with an artist. He answered that he had been working on something but neither he nor the artist thought it was going in the right direction, but that yes, he would hopefully be doing something along those lines at some point. This made me very happy.

I also took a few pictures while there which are posted below...

Oh, and one last thing... Brandon was giving out "Epic Bookmarks" to everyone... below are some pictures I took of mine when I got home.