I come into contact with a lot of people who are looking for a good book. Of course, being the nerd I am, Brandon immediately comes to mind, and I recommend him to most everyone I meet. Many of those people go on to start their own pockets of nerdom, finding a new passion in Brandon’s books. It’s always fun for my friends and I to discuss which book is our favorite. My answer has always been the same: Mistborn.
I love Mistborn as a series, and tend to treat it like one big book with three pa
It should come as no surprise to you that I am something of a nerd. It’s a humbling experience to be so closely associated with the object of your fandom. I’m willing to bet a large number of you have met Brandon in person at least once, and he is an awesome guy, to say the least.
It’s been a neat experience, getting to see him grow as an author. I’ve been a big SanderFan from almost the beginning (See blog post # 1 for a more detailed account), and I like to think I have a closer relationsh
This is an article I wrote as a submission to a contest in the Waggie, the vet school newspaper. Essay guidelines were write a 500-word humor article relating to vet school. So here's a sample of how dorky and weird I get. xD
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Many new veterinary students struggle with gaining unwanted pounds during their stressful first year. Juggling the rigorous curriculum and the emotional demand of a veterinary education with a new nonexistent social life, coupled with easy, unlimited acce
The short list of six nominees for the David Gemmell Legend Award is out, and for the second year in a row I have two books on the list. Towers of Midnight and The Way of Kings join Brent Weeks's The Black Prism, Pierre Pevel's The Alchemist in the Shadows, Peter V. Brett's The Desert Spear, and Markus Heitz's The War of the Dwarves.
Once again I'm honored to have two books nominated for the award named for David Gemmell, as he was such a fantastic author. (My favorite of Mr. Gemmell's titles i
Thank you all for helping me out with the Delta situation (and for helping my brother win his goofy contest.) I wanted to do something nice, so I dredged up the chapters I wrote of "I Hate Dragons" as a writing exercise a few months back.
I had originally written these as part of a dialogue exercise, writing no narrative. After I finished them, as a second part of the exercise, I went back and added narrative to fill them out. (Though they're still heavily dialogue.)
Enjoy!
Source
I think it’s safe to assume that most everyone reading this blog has also read Mistborn. If you have an overactive imagination like I do, I’m willing to bet that you’ve fantasized about lifting a car while burning pewter, flying through the darkness wearing a mistcloak, or overhearing a private conversation with the use of tin.
These fun little daydreams invade my daily life. My inner child yearns for the powers of a mistborn. However, even in the world of Scadrial, mistborn are rare, so the y
Two big updates for today. The first is related to a tweet I made last night. I'm scheduled to fly to France later this month, and that trip is going to be smack-dab in the middle of working on the last WoT book. I worry that the trip is going to throw me out of my momentum writing the book. I was really hoping to be able to spend my skymiles to get myself a business class seat, where I could work the entire way and not worry about my laptop running dry or the seating keeping me from working.
U
Hello my dear readers,
My name is Austin (aka Nehex), and I'll be your blogger for today. I've been thinking about writing a blog for some time now, and finally decided to do it. Seeing as this is Brandon Sanderson's official fansite, I think it's fitting for me to write about about the first time I picked up a Brandon book.
Sherman, set the Way-Back machine to 2006. I was in my junior year of high school, and obsessed with fanfiction. At the time, I was writing a Sonic the Hedgehog/Young Wiz
This weekend I'm a guest of honor at Penguicon, which is a hybrid convention for science fiction/fantasy and open source software. Howard Tayler is the toastmaster, so it should be a lot of fun. If you're in the Detroit area, consider registering at the door if you haven't preregistered.
PenguiconTroy Marriott200 W Big Beaver RdTroy, MI 48084
FRIDAY
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m., Dennison 1Attack of the Plot!Ferrett Steinmetz, Brandon Sanderson, Christian Klaver, Charles ZaglanisHow authors attack th
First off, there's a new Warbreaker annotation that covers Vasher sneaking into the God King's palace. It also talks about why one character doesn't just kill another character.
This week's Writing Excuses episode, season 5 episode 34, covers story bibles. Dan, Howard, and I talk about different ways to collect the background information on your story that you need in order to keep things straight as you're writing it (or the sequel). Give it a listen.
The big news is that the previous season
Last week I talked about the charity auction to get your name in the next Stormlight Archive book. Well, the auction is now over. The winner is Jason Lynn Pittman, and his winning bid was $1,825, which will go to support Utah's science fiction and fantasy symposium Life, the Universe, and Everything. Once I sit down to plan out the book (after I've written the first draft of A MEMORY OF LIGHT), I'll figure out where Jason's character will fit in and how to adapt his name to Roshar.
If you're in
Tomorrow my assistant Peter and I are off to JordanCon in Atlanta. Their full schedule is listed here. My panels are below. Please pay special attention to the details of the Magic draft on Friday night, if you want to participate.
There are also a couple of other updates. TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT has made it to the semifinals of Audible's Tournament of Audiobooks, but it is currently behind in votes to MATTERHORN by Karl Marlantes. If you liked the TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT audiobook, consider giving it yo
Ever since I started announcing on Twitter the names of fans that I was adapting to go into THE GATHERING STORM and TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT, readers have been asking me how to get their names put into the next book. Well, there will be another oppoturnity to participate in a charity drive and have a chance to get your name put into A MEMORY OF LIGHT, but that's not what I'm talking about today. Instead, I'm talking about how one person can get his or her name (or most likely a variation thereof; see
Here is today's prompt. I'm going to give it a shot:
Today’s prompt is a bit of a smorgasbord, and reflects the fact that we are at day seven. It asks you to write a poem with seven different phrases, ideas, or just plain old “things” in it. These are:
1) an example of synasthetic metaphor — one that describes one sensory perception using adjectives more naturally suited to a different sense (e.g., “a red noise,” or a “a bitter touch”)
2) a fruit
3) the name (first or last) of someone you k
When I was in high school, I took an AP English course. In our poetry section, I was introduced to the villanelle, an interesting poetic form. The poem we read was "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas. It remains, to this day, my favorite poem ever.
We also were given the assignment of writing our own villanelles; everyone liked mine but I lost it ages ago, and anyway I should write a fresh one as it's NaPoWriMo, not "Show off Poems You Wrote Ages Ago Month."
So here I g
If you're in the UK, Australia, or New Zealand and have been wondering how the cover art of Gollancz's version of the next Mistborn book will appear, look no further.
If you missed the US Tor cover and the cover flap synopsis, head over to Tor.com to see both.
The book comes out in November. Amazon is currently saying November 8th in the US/Canada and November 17th in the UK (and I assume Australia and New Zealand). This could shift around by a week or so by the time November rolls around.
Poem 1: Much Younger Men
I don't see how
Age matters in the end
Isn't it maturity
That makes all the difference?
If that's the case,
Then I'm not a cougar
Because everybody knows
I'm the least mature of all.
Poem 2: Treetops
Sunshine, warm and bright
Birdspecks lofting high
Wondrous is the sight
Of trees beneath the sky
Poem 3: Delicious Terror
This delicious terror
Welling up in me
Tastes of adrenaline
Of racing breath,
Pounding heart,
Fear of life-ending death;
Thrilling
Want your name to appear as a character in the Stormlight Archive? There's going to be an auction for just that starting on Wednesday to benefit the Life, the Universe, & Everything (LTUE) symposium. I'll post more details when the auction begins.
This year's LTUE hosted the recording of a number of episodes of the Writing Excuses podcast, one of which aired this week. In it, Dan and Howard are joined by Robison Wells and Sarah Eden to talk about writing romance.
The most recent WARBREAKER
Day 1
a winter morning
yields to autumn winds, and spring
falls further away
For today's poem, I went with a haiku (because it was a long day) about the obnoxious weather. I know, how pedestrian could I get, right?
We woke up and there was snow covering the ground (not to mention falling from the sky), and the rest of the day was full of crisp winds! It only began feeling like spring right before sunset. Nature's little April Fools joke, I guess.
Day 2
Strange that
a lifetime spent
imag
This is just a quick note to say that my Writing Excuses cohost Dan Wells's final John Cleaver book in the trilogy that began with I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER is out in both hardcover and trade paperback. The title is I DON'T WANT TO KILL YOU, and it is brilliant. [Assistant Peter says: I liked the first book and thought the second took it up just a notch, but the third book blows both of them away.]
Dan has posted his tour schedule on his site. He'll be at the Barnes & Noble in Orem tonight,
Before I delve into the writing/editing of roughly 95 Elantris wiki entries, I've decided to reward myself for the good work I've done so far. So, I'll be reading the Alcatraz series as well as finally reading the end of the Wheel of Time series. (This reward inspired by a conversation here.)
Alcatraz
I once half-listened to the audiobook of the first novel, and really enjoyed it. So, there's that. (I'm also reasonably sure that the characters' voices in my head will inevitably be those of tha
Tor has donated a few of my books for auction at Genre for Japan, a charity drive to support the British Red Cross's Japan Tsunami Appeal. The auctions include a THE WAY OF KINGS audiobook, hardcovers of THE GATHERING STORM and TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT, and a Mistborn boxset. You can go to those links to bid (in UK pounds); bidding and auction rules are here. There are over 130 other items up for auction as well, so check it out.
A couple of years ago, I was an instructor at the Writing & Illustr
Back in January I posted about nominating and voting for the Hugo Awards. Well, if you're eligible to nominate (you needed to be a registered Worldcon member by the end of January, or have been a member of last year's Worldcon), the nomination deadline is tomorrow night. If you didn't register quickly enough to nominate, now is a good time to register so that you'll be eligible to vote on the final ballot, which should open fairly soon. The convention itself will be in Reno, Nevada from August 1
