Michael Whelan has put up an awesome post on his process for painting the cover of A MEMORY OF LIGHT. Very, very cool. If you're at all interested in art or illustration you should check it out. You can also buy signed prints in his store.

If you want to be able to nominate works for the Hugo Awards this year (I talked about this a couple of weeks ago) you need to be a supporting or attending member of this year's Worldcon (or last year's or next year's Worldcons) by Thursday, January 31st. The actual nomination deadline is in March, but if you aren't a member and want to nominate, now's your last chance to become eligible.

Here's something cool: a fantasy calendar featuring fantasy writers. Lauren Zurchin of Lytherus is putting together this calendar featuring authors Holly Black, Gail Carriger, Cassandra Clare, Lauren Kate, Gregory Maguire, Tessa Gratton, Maggie Stiefvater, Brenna Yovanoff, Brandon Mull, Lauren Oliver, Chrisopher Paolini, Patrick Rothfuss, Tad Williams, and me. We will all be dressed in fantasy costumes of Lauren's design. Once the calendar is for sale, the proceeds from the calendar will go to the First Book and Worldbuilders charities. To fund the creation of the calendar, the costumes, and traveling to the authors to dress us up and take our pictures, Lauren is running a Kickstarter campaign. Just to be clear: Kickstarter doesn't allow charity campaigns, so the Kickstarter campaign itself is not a charitable endeavor, but it will go to fund creation of a calendar that when sold WILL have its proceeds donated to two charities. There are various things you can get for pledging various amounts, including a photo of me in my costume, signed by me, or a similar photo for each of the other authors. I think this is a cool idea, and I'm wondering what sort of costume Lauren will dress me up in. We'll never find out unless the Kickstarter campaign reaches its goal.

As many of you know, I adapted a large number of readers' names for use in TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT and A MEMORY OF LIGHT. Linda over at the 13th Depository has an article that lists all of the names that were chosen for characters and how they were adapted into the books, including some character names adapted by Robert Jordan in previous books. Note that I also adapted some people's names as place names and other non-character names, and the list doesn't include those. There will probably be another list later.

Last Wednesday I did a Tor chat on Twitter. All of the questions I answered (the questions and my answers include a lot of spoilers, especially for A MEMORY OF LIGHT, so be warned!) are now up in these two Twitter post archives: one, two.

This week's Writing Excuses podcast episode discusses side-character arcs. Mary, Howard, Dan, and I talk about which side characters might need an arc, which might not, and what you might take into consideration when writing these characters.

George R. R. Martin has announced the authors & stories for the DANGEROUS WOMEN anthology, including a novella from me. It's a spectacular group that I'm very honored to be included in. The table of contents will look like this:

INTRODUCTION, by Gardner Dozois

SOME DESPERADO, by Joe Abercrombie

MY HEART IS EITHER BROKEN, by Megan Abbott

NORA'S SONG, by Cecelia Holland

THE HANDS THAT ARE NOT THERE, by Melinda Snodgrass

BOMBSHELLS, by Jim Butcher

RAISA STEPANOVA, by Carrie Vaughn

WRESTLING JESUS, by Joe R. Lansdale

NEIGHBORS, by Megan Lindholm

I KNOW HOW TO PICK 'EM, by Lawrence Block

SHADOWS FOR SILENCE IN THE FORESTS OF HELL, by Brandon Sanderson

A QUEEN IN EXILE, by Sharon Kay Penman

THE GIRL IN THE MIRROR, by Lev Grossman

SECOND ARABESQUE, VERY SLOWLY, by Nancy Kress

CITY LAZARUS, by Diana Rowland

VIRGINS, by Diana Gabaldon

HELL HATH NO FURY, by Sherilynn Kenyon

PRONOUNCING DOOM, by S.M. Stirling

NAME THE BEAST, by Sam Sykes

CARETAKERS, by Pat Cadigan

LIES MY MOTHER TOLD ME, by Caroline Spector

THE PRINCESS AND THE QUEEN, by George R.R. Martin

The book has been turned in to Tor as of last week, so Tor will now pick a more firm publication date. When I hear more I'll let you know. There are a few more details at the link.

I'm starting a new weekly bonus content feature for the next few months as a bit of an experiment. Right now I'm writing the sequel to THE WAY OF KINGS, and I've recorded my writing process for one chapter using Camtasia (which was provided to me by the folks at TechSmith). The chapter I've recorded is the new interlude featuring Rysn (who was in one of the interludes in the first book). I've split the recording up into multiple videos that I'm uploading to

. The first one is up now, and it covers the prewriting/outlining for the chapter. For now, the videos are in real time, but once they're all uploaded I'll make a high-speed version of the whole chapter for those of you who don't want to sit and watch my normal typing speed.

Some of you are wondering if this video will have spoilers for STORMLIGHT 2. As an interlude, it takes place away from most of the action of the rest of the book, so you shouldn't see more than hints. This first video has the interlude's outline in it, so it will partially spoil the rest of the videos, but you'll find that the outline is very sparse. It's probably more likely to make you more interested to read more than to spoil you for the rest.

The main point of these videos is to show you my writing process, which is something I get a lot of questions about. Enjoy. STORMLIGHT 2 should come out before Christmas if I can get the first draft finished in April. I'm working hard on it right now, so we'll see if that happens.

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