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  1. I'm retiring this mirror blog, after the launch of my new website. I'm pretty sure very few people actually followed this mirror. My new blog is right on my new site's front page, and it has a new RSS feed. You can also get more frequent updates from me on Twitter and Facebook. <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/09/retiring-this-mirror-blog.html">Source</a>
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  2. My website debuted a major redesign yesterday. I kick it off with a post about winning two Hugo Awards this past weekend. <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/09/website-redesign-launch.html">Source</a>
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  3. Hey, all! I had an exciting time at Worldcon, as you might have heard. I'm working on a long blog post about the experience, and it will go up tomorrow. (Actually, be sure to check my site tomorrow, regardless...) For today, though, I wanted to announce the release of my second and final Infinity Blade novella! It's out now on the iBookstore, with a short exclusive period for them. It will move to other ebook platforms next week. If you aren't familiar with this project, these are based on a game series made by some friends of mine in Salt Lake City. The games are awesome, and have been bestsellers on iOS devices. I did one other novella bridging the first and second games, and now have written one taking place after the second game. It's been a fun experience; they've really let me onto the team, and I've been able to have a lot to do with the story development of the entire series. Pictures of Hugo Awards tomorrow! In other news, my assistant Peter has uploaded another Twitter posts archive, covering August. A bit of catch-up on the Writing Excuses podcast: We did episodes on making non-human characters relatable, survivorship bias, and a guest episode with Jeph Jacques of Questionable Content about digging yourself out of holes. Brandon <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/09/infinity-blade-redemption-updates.html">Source</a>
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  4. Hey, all. This is a post that may not be relevant for everyone, but I thought it was an important one to make anyway. I had the pleasure of being Guest of Honor a few weeks back at SpoCon, a sf/fantasy convention in Spokane, Washington. Well, it turns out that the same group who run SpoCon have a bid out for Worldcon in 2015. The voting will happen this weekend at Worldcon in San Antonio, which I'm attending. (Though kind of last-minute.) Voting costs $40, and unfortunately it's too late to mail in ballots; it has to be done in person. Voting also gets you a supporting membership to whichever Worldcon wins for 2015—meaning you can vote in that year's Hugos as well (and get that year's Hugo Voter Packet), for cheaper than it will cost to buy a supporting membership once 2015 rolls around. And a supporting membership can be upgraded to an attending membership very easily. Since I was just hosted by these people, I think I'm in a unique position to give them—and their Worldcon bid—a shout-out. The guest liaison team was top-notch, and the entire convention was extremely well organized. I was surprised by how pretty Spokane was this time of year to boot. If anyone is debating where to put their vote for Worldcon, let me nudge you toward Spokane. I don't know anything about the other Worldcon bid teams, and I'm sure there are plenty of great people on them—but I know for certain the team in Spokane knows what they're doing. The city itself is pushing hard for the convention, even going so far to send city representatives to Worldcon this year to lobby. Hats off to the entire crew. I had a wonderful time, and would love to return in two years for Worldcon. This is a bid to take very seriously. Brandon <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/08/spokane-2015.html">Source</a>
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  5. I just want you all to know, before I begin, that I’ve been hyped about writing this literally since I posted the last one. I’ve mulled over what to say, tried to remember parts...yeah. So that’s fun. (Despite this, I’m still managing to write most of this way too late at night.) I’m posting it both in a status update and in my blog as a way of transitioning this tradition to my blog in the future. I’ve only done it once before, so does it need a transition and can I call it a tradition yet? Who knows. With that out of the way...another year happened. Which is a decently big deal on the Shard, for those of us who haven’t been around for ages, at least. It’s now been two years since I read the Sanderson Memes and Sanderfan threads during school, then decided this place was pretty cool. In the last year I’ve gone from thirty-one followers to fifty-four, thirteen days won to fifty-seven, and 1,038 reputation points to 3,904 of them. I made a blog and submitted my crappy art to the gallery. (Be glad I never submitted my Inquisitor sculpture...) I started some more forum games and some more roleplays too - who’s surprised - and the old ones have been just as fun. I even participated in a few discussions about the actual books. (I also joined Discord, which in my case is essentially an extension of the Shard, and that let me meet and talk to even more wonderful people. I don’t regret that choice.) This means it’s also been two years since I started gradually meeting some of the best people in the world. Because really, you are. Again, I can’t list all of you because I will literally run out of original compliments, and it’ll end up as something like “you’re cool! And you can write! I like what you write and how you talk!” for everyone and that’s not very nice of me, so to everyone I didn’t mention - that does not mean I don’t enjoy talking with you, laugh when I read your RP, and overanalyze your member titles. It just means I’m running out of ways to say those things without saying the same thing to all of you and feeling guilty about it. I’m going to begin by saying that it wouldn’t be fair to mention the people I focused on last time again, but also I can’t not because they are amazing too, so consider yourselves mentioned! Archer continued to help me through some emotional death sessions and Mist saved my butt recently. Also Po is Po and I really don’t have words for her. (@Archer, @Mistspren, @Blessing of Potency) Sorana is another storming awesome human being who must be talked about. If someone had told me a couple years ago that I would eventually be friends with a literal angel who also is an adult in Europe, I would have been very confused. But I am! And you are! You’re one of the nicest people I’ve ever met in my entire life, and everything you spend your time on, from sewing/quilting/doing magic with cloth to all types of roleplay, is just so grand. Your writing style is so beautiful and also you’re one of those cool smart people who’s bilingual. I know there are a lot of them, especially in countries that don’t speak English, but that doesn’t make them any less smart. So yeah, you’re awesome. (@Sorana, @bilingual people) Guess who else rocks? Meta. Meta does. You’re so witty that you should be Ene! Also, you write well. No arguments - you do. In addition, I have come and died in your inbox and you just causally revive me and send me off again to keep living in the world. How do you do this? No idea, but I’m convinced you’re a Feelings Sorcerer. Thanks for the Rioting and recommendations; you’re hilarious and way smarter than anyone has a right to be. Please do not stop being these things. If you do I will make sad puppy eyes at you. (@MetaTerminal) Next up on our list of Extremely Fantastic Human Beings is Stick! DoomStick, I will clarify, because this site has a trillion of them! Stick, we’ve been talking for ages and I would like to not stop, because you’re always super fun and clever and interesting. Like seriously, always. You can cook and bake and play an instrument and speak Latin and make epic rainbow loom things...the world is running out of things you haven’t conquered, dude. Every time we chat, whether on the Longest Status Update or in the plethora of other updates or TLPW or our AMAs or anywhere else, you’re a delight to talk to, and RPing with Tourmaline and Olivia is no different. Thank you. (@DoomStick) WYN. YOU’RE A PERSON. A great person who has heartwarming RP, sweet things to say to everyone, and palpable love just...emanating from you. You and your stories are fantastic. James is fantastic - thank you so much for being in TKND. I hope that girl at your school learns how awesome the “janitor man” is. Your faith and humor deserve accolades. (@Wyndlerunner) Silva, for all y’all’s information, is also incredible. I mean, how many named NPCs do you have? And you keep them all organized and write awesomely with them! At this point you can’t convince me your brain could make words go together badly. Maybe if you had a concussion. No matter what we’re talking about, religion or magic dreams or cute deer, you are consistently amazing. (@Silva) Getting on Discord introduced me to Storm, and I am eternally grateful. I already knew you were fairly cool from our small Shard interactions and the fact that you founded TUBA, but now I know your coolness in detail! You’re funny and an epic storyteller, and I really like our conversations. I look forward to RPing with you. (@Stormblessed Dolphin) Lunaaaaaaaaa!!! I’m not sure why I typed your name like that, but! Whatever! You’re exciting! Having adventures with you is a highlight of my Sharding experience, and you seem to be able to just make fun nonsense happen through sheer force of being you. Also you can write! “Well I’ve never RPed before” *proceeds to make characters who I fall in love with instantly* (@Lunamor) (You can probably tell I’m tired by now, and this is getting long, but spike it I’m gonna rapid-fire verbally hug you all in no particular order fight me) Invo, you are obviously The Cool Kid but also you’re really thoughtful and you give smart advice. I’m glad I know you. (@Invocation) Salad, you are literally the best in every way! I love talking with you, and also we are the same in like fifteen different ways. Everything you say, I can relate to or agree with, with the sole exception of your British spelling. You’re a writing ace. hahahahaha worst pun ever we’re gonna pretend that didn’t happen okayyyyy I am so sorry but also I’m leaving it in so how sorry am I really (but seriously you are a good writer) (@The Awakened Salad) Ele, you were the first person to welcome me to the Shard, but I only really got to know you on Discord. You’re friendly and funny and I’m sorry I haven’t watched that one general man’s video you gave me yet, but I’m happy to know it’s there if I need encouraging. (@ElephantEarwax) Per, you’re supportive and cool and I am so sorry I haven’t been around to watching RWBY with you, it was fun! Jay, it’s great talking to you and I’m going to buy your books someday! (@Emperor Stick, @Jaywalk) Lith, you break my brain with your creativity! Zinc, your art and writing are frighteningly good! Star, your enthusiasm for your art is inspiring! Xino, you know how great you are at worldbuilding! (@ShadowLord_Lith, @ZincAboutIt, @Shard of Thought, @xinoehp512) Venture, you are steadfastly amazing and brave! Jac, you have really great ideas and chatting with you is a pleasure! Rebecca, I love talking with you in TUBA PMs and thank you for being a great Maid of Honor, even though it went nowhere! Same goes to Ash, who also killed me with her ships! (Condor will never be resolved...nooooooo...) (@Butt Ad Venture, @bees?, @Rebecca, @Ashspren) Mac, I marvel at your advice and wisdom! Truthless, I’m sorry I left HAHAR (hold up, that was its acronym? Ha har, a laugh? That’s gold lol) but RPing with you was fun! Honorless, your discussions are always great! (@MacThorstenson, @Truthless of Shinovar, @Dreamer) To everyone I have ever roleplayed with, I sincerely thank you. Let me get really serious for a sec. A common phrase when people are expressing love is “I love you to death.” Which makes some sense: “I’ll love you even past death.” “I’d kill for you.” It could also be interpreted as “I love you so much I want to kill you.” (Let’s hope not.) And...”I would die for you.” The thing is, I do love all of you, as friends, sometimes as much as family. Honestly, more than my own family in some cases. And I will continue loving you in the afterlife that I believe in. I would not, however, kill for you in most cases, nor would I kill you. Or die for you. But the last year or so has just hit me so hard that I don’t even want to think of a good enough metaphor. Sometimes the Shard was the problem, or made the problem worse. But most of the time, you guys have saved me. I’m not suicidal, that’s not part of my depression portfolio. But I’m living emotionally and mentally as well as I am because of some of you people. So I don’t love you to death. I love you to life, because that’s what your love did for me. *hopes that wasn’t as stupid as it sounds in her head as she pulls out a root beer and proposes a toast to another year*
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  6. Put together this spreadsheet based on the Statistical Analysis data on Coppermind: Stormlight Analysis (2018-9-7).xlsx. The Oathbringer data I entered myself when the book was released, so I feel pretty confident in that. Not certain about the other two, but I expect they're fairly accurate. Had to enter in the Edgedancer data for this myself, along with character genders. Otherwise it was just minor edits, separating the data, etc. Some fun charts I put together with it below. Let me know if you'd like to see any other interesting comparisons and don't feel like doing it yourself. Spoilers: There aren't any real spoilers below, UNLESS you don't want to know which characters appear in future books or how much screen time they get. If you don't want to know that, you've been warned. (as someone pointed out on Discord, I've lumped femalen listeners in with female. might be some other odd cases that I overlooked.)
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  7. Worldcon in San Antonio (LoneStarCon 3) starts tomorrow. Here's my schedule! There are hundreds of industry luminaries at the convention, so be sure to check out all the great programming. World Science Fiction Convention, San Antonio Place: LoneStarCon 3 Address: Henry B. Gonzales Convention Center 200 E Market St San Antonio, TX 78205 Schedule: August 29th–September 2nd, 2013 SATURDAY 6:00–7:00 p.m., 006A Brandon Sanderson Reading SUNDAY 1:00–2:00 p.m., Autographing Area Autographing: John Maddox Roberts, Brandon Sanderson, John Scalzi, Laura Underwood 8:00 p.m., Grand Ballroom The Hugo Awards The Emperor's Soul is nominated in the Best Novella category, and Writing Excuses in the Best Related Work category. Best of luck to all the nominees! You can also watch the awards live on UStream. Notes: The "Firstborn"/"Defending Elysium" convention exclusive hardcover will be available in limited numbers at Howard Tayler's booth in the dealers' room. <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/08/worldcon-this-weekend.html">Source</a>
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  8. Tomorrow and Saturday I'll be at Gen Con. My schedule is below. See you there! But first, if you haven't seen the STEELHEART teaser trailer, the prologue, or teaser chapters, please go give them a look! The release date is fast approaching, so think about preordering the book from your favorite vendor. (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, Audible, Apple, Kobo, Google Play.) If you would like a signed and numbered copy, Weller Book Works will begin accepting orders TODAY for delivery on or very shortly after September 24th. (Or you can come to the release event at the Orem Barnes & Noble on September 24th. More details later.) Mysterious Galaxy and Shawn Speakman's The Signed Page will also have signed books available to preorder, but they won't be shipped until I sign them in October. Steelheart Signed & Numbered Copies Weller Book Works is excited to offer signed and numbered copies of Brandon Sanderson's Steelheart. A maximum of two copies may be ordered per customer. The price is $15.19 per copy plus tax and/or shipping if applicable. That's 20% off the cover price of $18.99. United States shipping is via USPS Priority Mail. You may choose to have orders for a single copy shipped in a padded envelope or in a box. Orders for two copies will be shipped in a box. Shipping prices are as follows: US Domestic padded envelope - $7.00 US Domestic box - $13.00 In addition, orders picked up in-store or shipped to destinations in Utah will be charged sales tax of $1.04 per book. International shipping is via USPS 1st Class or Priority Mail for single copies. You may choose to have single copy orders shipped in a 1st Class padded envelope, a Priority Mail padded envelope, or a Priority Mail box. Orders for two copies will be shipped in a Priority Mail box. Unfortunately, we are not able to ship two copies 1st Class due to weight limits. Please note that 1st Class orders will not arrive until significantly after the release date. Shipping prices are as follows: Canada & Mexico 1st Class padded envelope - $16.00 Canada & Mexico Priority Mail padded envelope - $21.00 Canada & Mexico Priority Mail box - $ 42.00 All other international 1st Class padded envelope - $23.00 All other international Priority Mail padded envelope - $25.00 All other international Priority Mail box - $62.00 Orders may be paid for with credit card or Paypal only. All orders must be placed via e-mail by e-mailing [email protected]. When you order, please let us know how you would like your copy personalized. Tell us "signature only" if you just want it signed and numbered. If you would like it signed to you or to a friend, say, e.g., "Sign it 'to John.'" If you are paying by Paypal, please include your paypal email in your order so that we can invoice you. Please include your shipping address when ordering. This promotion is limited to 500 copies of Steelheart, and all orders must be received and paid for by August 31, 2013. E-mail [email protected] to order today! Gen Con Indy Place: Gen Con Indy 2013 Address: Indiana Convention Center 100 S Capitol Ave Indianapolis, IN 46225Schedule: August 16–17, 2013 FRIDAY 11:00 a.m.–12:00 noon, ICC Room 244 (SEM1345269) Panel: Worldbuilding: Magic & Mysticism Learn to weave magic into your setting in a way that drives the story and satisfies the reader. Elizabeth Vaughan, John Helfers, Lou Anders, Dave Gross, Brandon Sanderson 2:00–3:30 p.m., ICC Room 500 Ballroom/Reception (ENT1350579) Event: Epic VillainsBestselling authors Brandon Sanderson (STEELHEART, Sept. 2013) and James Dashner (EYE OF MINDS, Oct. 2013) introduce their new series and discuss the creation of the most horrifying villains within their fiction—past and present. For a chance to win an epic prize, collect some cool swag, and receive a limited edition signed poster, come check out this sneak peek! Cost: $2.00 4:00–5:00 p.m., ICC Room 245 (SEM1345264) Panel: Writer's Craft: Novel Outlines Discover the techniques and tricks for creating effective, compelling, and pitchable novel outlines. John Helfers, Jerry Gordon, Saladin Ahmed, Brandon Sanderson, Erik Scott De Bie 7:00–9:00 p.m., ICC Room 244 (SEM1350944) Panel: Writing Excuses: Live Audience Session 1 Join Writing Excuses hosts Brandon Sanderson, Howard Tayler, and Mary Robinette Kowal for a live audience recording session Friday evening. The team will record four to six episodes of their popular podcast between 7pm and 9pm, interviewing special guests from the symposium and VIG's and others from the wider convention. During this session at least one episode will be a rapid-fire Q&A using questions taken from the audience, so be sure to bring some stumpers. 9:00 p.m.–2:00 a.m. VIG Lounge, ICC Rooms 116–117 (TCG1352591) VIG: Magic: The Gathering draft and tournament with Brandon Sanderson Come draft and play MTG with Brandon Sanderson, author of the Mistborn series and the continuation of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time saga. Prizes awarded! VIG and VIG Companions only. Cost: $24.00 SATURDAY 12:00 noon–2:00 p.m., Exhibit Hall Booth 1749 Signing: Brandon Sanderson at Howard Tayler's Schlock Mercenary booth Brandon's books (including this year's convention exclusive hardcover) will be available for purchase, or you can bring your own books. Howard Tayler, Jim Zub, and Tracy Hickman will also be at the booth at various times throughout the day. And you can also ask Brandon to sign your books any other time during the convention that you can catch him between panels. 2:00–3:00 p.m., ICC Room 245 (SEM1345288) Panel: Exploring Genres: Young Adult Get the inside scoop on what it takes to write fiction for the lucrative YA market. Kelly Swails, David Farland, James Dashner, Ari Marmell, Brandon Sanderson 3:00–4:00 p.m., ICC Room 245 (SEM1345289) Panel: Exploring Genres: Dark Fantasy Explore techniques for writing fantasy with an edge as we discuss the darker side of the genre. Paul Genesse, Kelly Swails, Chris Pierson, Lucy Snyder, Brandon Sanderson 4:00–5:00 p.m., Crowne Plaza Grand Central Ballroom D (SEM1343796) Panel: Scheming through Scadrial: Making Mistborn Yours The Final Empire is hard on Crews but it's also tricky for Narrators. Join the creators of the Mistborn Adventure Game for an interactive panel about adventuring in Brandon Sanderson's unique world. NOTE: This panel is a two-hour panel beginning at 3:00. Brandon will show up for the final hour of the panel. Patrick Kapera, Brandon Sanderson 7:00–9:00 p.m., ICC Room 244 (SEM1350945) Panel: Writing Excuses: Live Audience Session 2 Join Writing Excuses hosts Brandon Sanderson, Howard Tayler, and Mary Robinette Kowal for a live audience recording session Friday evening. The team will record four to six episodes of their popular podcast between 7pm and 9pm, interviewing special guests from the symposium and VIG's and others from the wider convention. During this session at least one episode will be a rapid-fire Q&A using questions taken from the audience, so be sure to bring some stumpers. NOTE: Brandon's books (including this year's convention exclusive hardcover) will be available for purchase at Howard Tayler's Schlock Mercenary booth 1749 in the Exhibit Hall. <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/08/my-gen-con-schedule.html">Source</a>
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  9. This comes up in conversations occasionally and I've been meaning to write up a concise and simple explanation for a while now. So here we go. But before I say anything else, I feel like I need to emphasize that I don't want to come across like I'm complaining about the books. Stormlight Archive is my absolute favorite series and this is such an obscure detail. Astronomy and orbital mechanics is a low-key passion for me (I blame Kerbal Space Program, mostly), so when I'm reading a book that I love and see information about this topic I can't help but dig into it. Brandon and his team do a LOT of work to make all of his fantastical worldbuilding make sense. They can't knock it out of the park every time. Maybe they'll look into this when doing the Stormlight leatherbounds and find a way to "fix" it. Maybe they won't--Roshar's moons are really imaginative, so why throw that out over some minor issues that 99% of readers will never even stop to consider? I'm just writing this up because I enjoy exploring the "science" of these books. Sometimes it doesn't work out nicely... and that's okay. It's fun to do the math regardless, and I'm just thankful Brandon put enough into the books that I can overthink it this much. The Situation I want this to be accessible for people who know very little about astronomy, so let's start with some quick basics. Below is a simple image of Roshar from "above". We're looking "down" on the North pole here.You can see which way it rotates relative to the Sun. You can see where the sun is setting and where it's rising. Note that the continent is actually in the southern hemisphere (I think it's one of the TWoK maps that shows the equator along the edges in a subtle way). For simplicity, in this post I'm just going to look at points along the equator. Also note that the continent spans about 120 degrees longitude, and Iri/Shinovar are about 90 degrees longitude behind the Shattered Plains. In other words, sunset on the Shattered plains is noon in Shinovar. Midnight in Shinovar is dawn on the Shattered Plains. We know that Roshar's moons orbit the planet once per day (every 20 Rosharan hours) because they rise and set the same time every night. This is something the books are never 100% explicit on, but it's heavily implied and has been confirmed. (Technically, they orbit a *bit* faster and precess slightly so that they keep their position relative to the Sun at all times of the year.) This nearly implies a geosynchronous orbit, where a satellite ends up over the same spot on the ground every day. But it can't be that or the moons would be up all day and night. Viewed from the ground they'd just sort of wobble back and forth around a fixed point in the sky. And that's not the case. They rise in the east, set in the west, and are only up for a few hours. (TWoK 2 & 23, among others) This means they are in a retrograde orbit (they go around clockwise) and it means they're in an elliptical orbit with the low point on the nighttime side of Roshar. This is what you need to get such behavior. Here's a very simplified approximation of one such moon: There are 3 of them of course. The Arcanum Unbounded star chart of Roshar suggests they are all at slightly different orientations relative to the sun. They are also inclined orbits, which is necessary to have the rise/set in the east/west for a viewer in the southern hemisphere. But for this post we're just going to keep it simple and pretend they're on the same plane as the equator. The order and timing of the moons as observed from the Shattered Plains is (and I'm using a 20-hour clock)... Salas rises just after sunset, around 15:00. Salas is up for about 2 Rosharan hours. Salas sets and we have an hour of darkness before Nomon rises. ("the hateful hour") Nomon rises around 18:00 and is up for 3-4 hours. Nomon sets as Mishim rises, around 1:00 or 2:00, and Mishim sets at sunrise (5:00). So why don't they make sense? Let's zero-in on the first moon, Salas. The moon should JUST become visible on the horizon at sunset, so the viewer's line of site looks something like this. Now we skip ahead 2 hours. Roshar turns about 36 degrees during that time (2 / 20 hours = 10%), so I've put an X at our viewer's new location. At this time, Salas is setting behind the horizon. So their line of sight looks like this. So consider what a person at points Y (2 hours behind the Shattered Plains) and Z (Shinovar) are seeing. It's pretty clear that they can't possibly see the moon rise at sunset. In Shinovar, Salas will be high in the sky already in their afternoon. Now, to be fair, the orbital path that I've drawn for Salas is somewhat arbitrary here. But the fundamental problem can't be fixed with a different orbit. If you want to slow the moon down, so that it's simply visible around sunset in Shinovar, that means it's going to be visible longer in the Shattered Plains' night sky. Solutions? I can't help but wonder what could be done differently. If you were going to try and "fix" the books, what approach would you take? (Aside from the option of just ignoring the problem and not thinking about it too much) The simple option is to just make the orbits work for the Shattered Plains and say that they ARE indeed not visible for some of western Roshar. Maybe they are visible during the day. The problem with this is that Szeth seems to suggest they don't do that. The Shin are actually where we get a name ("hateful hour") for the time between Salas and Nomon. But that could be changed. And there are some other timings that would need to be adjusted, but not too many. Alternatively, you might be able to push all of them back in their orbits a bit so that they all show up in the night sky for everyone across the continent. This would probably result in them moving faster across the sky. And it would probably mean that eastern Roshar has a few hours of darkness between sunset and Salas while western Roshar has a few hours of darkness between Mishim and sunrise. Another option is to have them move more slowly. It wouldn't be hard to have them set to all rise at roughly the same time, if you turn the orbit the right way. It simply means they're going to be relatively high in the sky for that portion, and that means they're going to be visible for much longer. Their movement would almost be more from Roshar turning than from the moons' own movement. (i.e. more like the way our own moon moves across the sky) This means their visibility will overlap and it means we have to toss out the hateful hour. Of course, if someone sees something I'm missing, please let me know. I HAVE simplified this by keeping things on Roshar's equatorial plane, but I'm fairly confident that you get more or less the same thing if we incline the orbits a little and view the moons from a point in the southern hemisphere.
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  10. Some quick updates today. But first, if you haven't seen the STEELHEART teaser trailer, the prologue, or teaser chapters, please go give them a look! The release date is fast approaching, so think about preordering the book from your favorite vendor. (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, Audible, Apple, Kobo, Google Play.) If you would like a signed and numbered copy, Weller Book Works will begin accepting orders on August 15th for delivery on or very shortly after September 24th. Mysterious Galaxy and Shawn Speakman's The Signed Page will also have signed books available to preorder, but they won't be shipped until I sign them in October. Waygate Foundation has a new charity auction to benefit the Wounded Warrior Project. They're auctioning off a rare production sample of a Ta'veren Tees t-shirt featuring Perrin Aybara, signed by Team Jordan and me. You can't buy a shirt with this exact design. The auction ends on August 21st. The Kindle Daily Post has an interview with me about STEELHEART and other topics. Also, Inspiring Insomnia is giving away (US-only) an ARC of STEELHEART. I often mention giveaways like this on Facebook and Twitter when I see them, but sometimes the giveaways are over by the time I compile a blog post. So if you want to keep track of things like that, Facebook and Twitter are the best places to follow me. The most recent Writing Excuses podcast episode is another microcasting one where we touch on the following topics: How do you manage your workload? Are writing contests worth it? Which ones are good? How do you make it clear that the weird aspects of your world are done on purpose rather than just being bad science? How do you know when to take a break from your writing? What are your word count suggestions for various markets? SF Signal asked me to name two or three authors I feel haven't received the recognition they deserve. So I had to keep the list short, but you should check it out! Tor.com's newest THE WAY OF KINGS reread post covers chapters 27 and 28. Chasm duty, Horneater stew, and smashing a lot of rock with a hammer. <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/08/signed-perrin-t-shirt-charity-auction.html">Source</a>
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  11. It's time to announce the winners of the STEELHEART Mega Vault Fan Art contest. First, if you haven't seen the teaser trailer, the prologue, or teaser chapters for STEELHEART, please go give them a look! STEELHEART Preorders The release date for STEELHEART is fast approaching, so think about preordering the book from your favorite vendor. (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, Audible, Apple, Kobo, Google Play.) If you would like a signed and numbered copy, Weller Book Works will begin accepting orders on August 15th for delivery on or very shortly after September 24th. Mysterious Galaxy and Shawn Speakman's The Signed Page will also have signed books (without numbers) available to preorder, but they won't be shipped as quickly. When I'm on tour in October, I'll stop by both of these places and sign the preordered books, which will then be shipped out. Mega Vault Contest Winners We had a great response to the STEELHEART fan art contest. Take a look at all the entries over at my official fan site, 17th Shard. The fan art is just fantastic! There were so many awesome entries, in fact, that we had a hard time choosing winners. So we've made space for five winners and five runners-up. The five winners of the Random House Mega Vault are, in no particular order: Bleed by HeavenlyHedgehog Steelheart by Archetype Deathpoint by Kristal He Was Majestic by Rodrigo Legoheart vs. Deathlego by Neverland The five runners-up will receive a STEELHEART poster signed by me, and their choice of one signed book from my online store. Here are the runners-up, in no particular order: I've Seen Steelheart Bleed Poster by jlequire What Are You Doing Here? by GalaxyFlyer Steelheart Custom Binding by Stairdweller Steelheart's Ultimatum by ktep by Scott CapenerTo the winners: My assistants will be contacting you through the 17th Shard message system. Thank you again for entering the contest, and thanks to Random House for providing these awesome Mega Vaults and posters as prizes. <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/08/steelheart-preorder-and-mega-vault.html">Source</a>
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  12. Tomorrow I'm heading out to Spokane for SpoCon, and I'll also be signing at Barnes & Noble. Details are below. There's no signing listed at SpoCon itself, but I will sign books if you find me between panels. See you there! Barnes & Noble, Spokane Date: Thursday August 8th, 2013 Time: 5:30–7:30 p.m. Place: Barnes & Noble Booksellers – Northtown Mall Address: 4750 North Division Street Spokane, WA 99207 Phone: (509) 482-4235 Notes: This signing is in conjunction with SpoCon, but you don't have to be a SpoCon member to attend the signing. Please consider attending SpoCon as well though, since they are flying Brandon out and he'll be doing many more events there this weekend. SpoCon 2013, Spokane Dates: Friday August 9th–Sunday August 11th, 2013 Place: SpoCon 2013 Address: DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel - Spokane City Center 322 North Spokane Falls Court Spokane, WA 99201 Phone: (509) 455-9600 Fri, 08/09/2013 - 15:30 to 16:30, Parkside II Writing For the Youth Market Do you enjoy telling your children stories? Do you remember childhood stories of your own? Would you like to share them with other youth; to help shape and put a bug of creative imagination in to their minds? Why just infest your own children's imagination, or that of friends and family, when you can tweak the youth of the world's imagination. Buahaha... Brandon Sanderson, Jessica Rising, Deby Fredericks, Fallon Jones, Shelley Martin Fri, 08/09/2013 - 18:30 to 19:00, Salon 5 Opening Ceremonies Come join SpoCon Staff and distinguished Guests as we celebrate the opening of SpoCon 2013; see our Guests introduced, and hear about some of the great things that SpoCon has to offer this year! As usual, SpoCon's opening ceremonies are not something to be missed.... Brandon Sanderson, Kaja Foglio, Phil Foglio, Mark Osier, Scott C. Brown, Andy Dopieralski, Christian Doyle, Beau Prichard Fri, 08/09/2013 - 19:00 to 19:45, Salon 5 Marmot Talk Sitting in for the Mad Marmot himself will be the one and only Scott C. Brown with his mostly fearless sidekick Tim Martin. Join us for a style of talk show only SpoCon can produce. On the schedule is a Q&A with our distinguished Guests. We are pretty sure you won't want to be missing this... Scott C. Brown, Brandon Sanderson, Phil Foglio, Mark Osier, Kaja Foglio, Tim Martin, Christian Doyle, Andy Dopieralski, Beau Prichard Fri, 08/09/2013 - 20:00 to 21:00, Shades Reading - Brandon Sanderson Come and enjoy a reading from SpoCon's 2013 Guest of Honor, author Brandon Sanderson. Brandon will read a number of selection, and will include some of his works for younger readers. Sat, 08/10/2013 - 12:30 to 13:30, Parkside II World-Building: Creating a Magic System Learn how to tackle the challenges of creating a magic system for your world or universe from true masters of the art. Brandon Sanderson, S.A. Bolich, Rhiannon Louve, Shelley Martin Sat, 08/10/2013 - 15:30 to 16:30, Spokane Falls Ballroom B The SpoCon Unquisition! So, you think you know The Wheel of Time? Bring your questions to SpoCon's Unquisition - Our panel of Unquisitors will listen to your question about The Wheel of Time, that may NOT contain any name, or direct reference to anything IN The Wheel of Time series. Should our panel of Unquisitors deem the question "correct", our Guest of Honor will then answer the approved query in any manner he so chooses. Brandon Sanderson, Debbie Lentz, Christian Doyle, Molly Lloyd Sat, 08/10/2013 - 20:00 to Sun, 08/11/2013 - 02:00, Spokane Falls Ballroom D Magic the Gathering Draft with Brandon Sanderson Brandon loves playing Magic the Gathering. Brandon enjoys it so much that when he travels, he often puts out the word that he's up for a game. Now Brandon is here at SpoCon, and he's not just putting out the word, he's offered us a tournament. So, come out and play in a MtG draft with our Guest of Honor, Brandon Sanderson! Did somebody say prizes? Why yes we did! Per Brandon, this will be a "Booster Draft." Our friends at Gamer's Haven will help administer this event. Seats are limited to 15 players, and please note that there will be an additional $25 fee to participate in this event. Sun, 08/11/2013 - 15:00 to 16:00, Salon 5 Guest of Honor Address - Brandon Sanderson Join famed author Brandon Sanderson in Salon V for his Guest of Honor address. Learn about his career, his current and future works, and more. Sun, 08/11/2013 - 16:00 to 17:00, Salon 5 Closing Ceremonies You've packed your days full of all of the awesome fun that SpoCon has had to offer. Join us in Salon V to finalize our time together and talk about what we have in store for you next year. Brandon Sanderson, Phil Foglio, Kaja Foglio, Mark Osier, Scott C. Brown, Christian Doyle, Andy Dopieralski, Beau Prichard, Rob McDonell <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/08/spokane-this-week.html">Source</a>
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  13. So this is Brandon Sanderson's fansite. Talk to most young authors nowadays: chances are they're a hard worldbuilder. They can throw together the foundations for a decent universe on the fly without a pen or pencil in just a few minutes. Chances are also likely that they read Brandon Sanderson--let's face it, who doesn't? Is there a correlation here? ... Yes. Yes, there is. The answer is yes. Which is fine. Hard Worldbuiding is great; I would know. I'm a hard worldbuilder too. Heck, I'm right here at the Sandersite. But I don't need to write a blog post defending Hard Worldbuilding. Now, most people aren't jerks (there's gonna be a blog post about that soon-ish too, actually). However, I've still met the odd folk infected with Worldbuilder's disease who knows absolutely nothing about Soft Worldbuilding (imma called it "Softy" from here on out) and are kinda mean to people who do it. This problem stems from misunderstanding (obviously): essentially, people will assume that Softies exist as just a weaker version of Hardies, which of course would be bad. Basically, what this means is that soft worldbuilders would simply be lazier than hard worldbuilders, and should be treated like such. Which is wrong. That's not what Softies are. It is not a form of Hard Worldbuilding with fewer details and weaker connections; it's a form of worldbuilding with a focus on a different aspect of the story. Generally speaking, Hardies are very plot-centric. Take Mistborn, the Final Empire, for example; I mean, both the magic and the world are both there in the name! The plot is all about the nobles versus the skaa, and the exclusionary metal magic and creepy eye spike dudes. Why do you think they're called the Stormlight Archives; it's all about the Stormlight! Hardies are a planner's playground. Sofites, on the other hand, cover a completely different side of the story: the tone. Show of hands: how many of you read Mistborn and have tried to write a dark fantasy, nitty-gritty slog story? Based on what I've seen from the Shard, a lot of you have. Some are better than others (I'm thinking of Syn's Mystic-verse in particular), but it's easy enough to say that a lot of you have a half-murderhobo protagonist who gets down and dirty with some sort of oppressive force, using their magic to slaughter the evil and bring about justice in their own twisted way. In the case that you rasied your hand, then clearly you liked the tone of Mistborn enough to try and replicate it. There's no problem with that; I loved Mistborn as much as the next guy. Its tone is so perfectly dark and gritty. The point I'm tryna get across here is that tone is crucial for a story--but it's often difficult to get across correctly. A Softy story is almost always entirely tone-centric. They're meant to evoke more otherworldly feelings and internal connections rather than drive a hard plot along with logic and reason. If any of you have seen Studio Ghibli, try to imagine the strange wistfulness that every (good) movie always evokes: Spirited Away, Castle in the Sky, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Howl's Moving Castle, Kiki's Delivery Service, uhh... Ponyo (what was that movie? I love it to death but it was so weird). PRINCESS MONONOKE (I just watched that last night so I'm still kinda in the vibe). These movies never really expound on the details because that wouldn't help--heck, it'd even detract from--the immersion. Lemme whip out an example that people have actually seen, though, so I can go into more detail: Spiderverse. To start, imma just say that this movie is the best frikin cinematic masterpiece of a singular film ever created (it's tied with Castle in the Sky, by the way, for first place in my grand tier list of movies. Endgame would be higher, but it's too perfect and also not much of a standalone, so I keep it away). Now, to start, this is a comic book movie: it's not exactly designed for cold hard reason. However, a lot of Marvel films are very hard worldbuildy anyways (Iron Man and Captain America, for example, are farther on the harder spectrum than, say, Shang-Chi and Doctor Strange), so I honestly couldn't care less. Anyways, Spiderverse leaves that amazing, wistful gut feeling in you like nothing else; every time it gets to the final scenes and everything awesome has already happened I'm always just aching for more. But that's not created by the hard physics of multiversal travel and Spiderman powers: it's created by Miles Morales' and all the other Spidey's arcs. Tone is captured by the atmosphere of the setting as well as the characters and their emotions. It's almost as all-encompassing as a theme, and manages to capture your world not in a fancy picture frame but through a different lens. Every story needs it; but Softies are almost always 100% focused on it. When I first started writing, I never really focused much on the Tone. Iconar Collective was just a boogaloo of hard magic and worlds. I never focused on trying to set a vibe to the whole thing; I was too bent on showing off this epic world that I had created. But, of course, dropping exposition left and right isn't writing: hence why the first act is so goshdarn terrible. It's easy to learn and memorize facts: how to properly plot and pace a world, how to give a character an arc, how to develop of a solid world. It's less easy to learn the writing itself: theme, tone, voice, and all that. And it wasn't until I started trying out Softies that I really got a hang of decent prose. Before I wrote Wishing Away and a myraid of other little storyettes, I'd never focused how to write a decent setting or strike a certain mood. I'd go completely minimalistic for how everything and everyone looked, leaving the reader with a blank image of pretty much nothing in their head. All they got was magic and facts. But now I go into paragraphs upon paragraphs of detail explaining just one or two things so it's very clear just how this particular place is supposed to look and feel. Currently I'm working on another Hard Worldbuilding project (the itch came back to me), but all my dabblings in the Softy realm have given me more experience in theme, tone, and even just prose itself than jotting down details in a notebook ever would. So if you take anything away from this at all, then just give a Softy a try. Crack open a google doc and try to hit the tone instead of the details of the world; flesh out as little as you can, and just focus on your character. If you can figure it out, it'll give you the most experience a piece of writing ever could. * * * * * * Thanks for reading! This might've made absolutely no sense because I'm terrible at explaining things, but if you've gotten this far, then good for you! I'm going to create a thread in Creator's Corner dedicated to developing Softies so people can ask questions that I'll hopefully answer in time. I've been meaning to make one for awhile, actually. And no, I'm not only making it now so I can have the 1000th topic in the subforum. I'll edit in the link as soon as it's made. Don't die! ~ Fadran
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  14. ***** Warning: Rhythm of War spoilers below ***** While working on some updates to our "Interactive Map and Timeline of Roshar" I came across something that intrigued me regarding Rosharan units for distance. EDIT: I'm coming back to this a few months later because I've just received my 2021 TWoK leatherbound and, to my surprise, the scale on the Alethkar map (referenced below) is gone. That's right. The original Alethkar map had a north arrow and a scale. The 2020 TWoK leatherbounds have the north arrow removed but the scale remains. Apparently they made some kind of last minute change that wasn't included in the 2020 printings because in the 2021 TWoK leatherbounds both the north arrow and the scale have been removed. Weird! (there's also a white shadow behind the text on the map, making the blue font stand out much brighter--that's actually the more noticeable difference) I'm leaving this entire post as-is. That scale was really the heart of my speculation below, but I'm not surprised it was apparently wrong. Turns out my first "final thought" below (I think the scale on the Alethkar map is probably just an oversight, and that it's wrong...) was dead on. The scale was our best reference to what a Rosharan mile might be, without that there's much less substance here. That said, I quoted a lot of references to miles in the text. So perhaps when I have some time I'll circle back and make some fresh guesses! Some background info first @Paleo was working on a tool to measure distance on the map by clicking two points. In the process, we realized that the grid overlay we were using was not correct. @Otto Didact was the first to realize that our world map of Roshar is a "azimuthal equidistant projection", which is an interesting globe projection where all points are at a consistently proportional distance from a chosen center point. It is perhaps best well known for it's use in the United Nations emblem, where the North Pole is used as the center point. You don't have to use one of the poles as your center point, though that's the most common use. For example, the one on the right, centered on Taipei. It's a great projection to use for Roshar because the the central area of the map looks accurate, as if seen from space. The distortion is worse along the edges. Roshar conveniently has all of it's land in one corner of the globe, so the distorted parts (of the full map) are off in the middle of the sea on the other side of the planet. The map we get in the books of course is just a cropped portion of the full projection. Anyways... We were looking into this distance measurement tool and realized the calculated coordinates for points toward the edges of the map didn't match up with the grid we were using. Oops! Conveniently, Oathbringer came with a beautiful map of Roshar that included the planet's grid. We just need to adjust things to match this map. And come to find out not only was our grid wrong, but the calculations weren't quite matching the Oathbringer grid either. We never did figure out what was wrong with the grid, so we'll have to make a new one from scratch. As for the calculations, it turns out we needed to pick a better center point. It's hard to say precisely what the center point of the projection should be. The IDEA behind the projection, is that a great circle passing through the center coordinate will appear on the projection as a straight line. We know the center point must be on the "prime meridian" of the map, because it's the meridian that appears as a straight line, but we don't know the right latitude. I used my globe of Roshar to draw great circles through different latitudes on the "prime meridian", and then sketched horizontal lines across the map looking for a match. Through this I found that the center point must be somewhere around 16 or 17 Rosharan degrees south of the equator. Paleo realized that 16 Rosharan degrees is the center point of the image file, so we went with that. Distance Discrepancy I've used my globe, linked above, to measure distances in the past... But I was never entirely sure of how accurate my projection for the globe was. (plus we realized the globe website wasn't quite calculating distance right through this) After working through everything above, I was quite confident with what we had. Our new grid, calculated mathematically was a pretty solid match to the one used on the Oathbringer map. We know the circumference of the planet is about 22,110 miles. So we should have distance measurements that are as accurate as possible. With that done, I wanted to check something that I've always wondered about.... The Map of Alethkar in The Way of Kings has a scale on it. So I was curious if our measurements would match this scale. I wasn't expecting it to match actually, because I've been under the impression that the scale was wrong. There is a new version of this same map in Oathbringer, and it has the scale removed. That has given me the impression the last few years that they were retconning some map details. Indeed, the TWoK version also includes a "North" compass heading that conflicts with the Oathbringer world map, and which the OB Alethkar map also removed. Curiously, however, the 10th Anniversary TWoK leatherbounds DID remove the compass but DID NOT remove the scale. So I was curious about what's going on there... Is it right or wrong? An oversight? Something else? One problem right off the bat is that it's not clear how the scale is meant to be used. Alethkar covers a sizeable chunk of the planet's surface, so a single linear scale can't really be highly accurate for the entire map. So we have to realize there's some margin of error built in. But I did find that the map of Alethkar overlays quite nicely onto the Oathbringer map of Roshar. From there, it was very easy to count pixels on the world map and compare them to known distances. For the azimuthal equidistant projection that we have, any line radiating from the center point as a constant scale. So given the circumference of the planet, we know the distance from the center point at 16 Rdeg South to the intersection of the prime meridian and the equator. If we count the number of pixels on the image, we have our distance/pixel relationship. Now I can draw a straight line (or line segment) at any angle through the center point, count the number of pixels to figure what the distance is. Meanwhile I can overlay the Alethkar map and count the number of pixels for the scale (in the same map). Here's what I got: So the Alethkar map's scale was for a total distance of 300 units. Presumably miles. Presumably Rosharan miles I should say, because it's an in-world document, which I'll refer to as "Rmiles" from here on out for clarity. Note also my use off Rdeg for Rosharan degrees--they use 200 Rdeg in a circle.I should also note that the "22,110 mile circumference" that we have is NOT entirely clear whether that's Rosharan miles or "real" miles. I tend to get the feeling that they use real miles, internally, and so it's probably that. But we don't know. For all we know, the two are equivalent. Anyways, what I've done in the image above is mark 300 mile long line segments. We know these are accurate because that's simply how the projection works. And they DO NOT match the scale on the Alethkar map by a significant margin. In fact, I found the scale to be 95% longer. Almost double in length. So what do we make of this? The very first thing I should say is that this could simply be an error. There are WoBs which clearly indicate that Brandon and his team had NOT entirely nailed down the details of the world map at the time The Way of Kings was written. Isaac notes in that particular one that the continent is 4000 miles across. It's currently at ~6400 miles across if measured through the center point. Depends where you measure from exactly, but it's definitely more than 4000 miles now. The scale WAS included in the leatherbound... but this could simply be an oversight. An error seems highly plausible to me. Rosharan Units of Distance But what if it's not an error? Then what do we make of this? You COULD take it as the discrepancy between "real" miles and Rosharan miles. What if the Alethkar map approximates 300 Rmiles while the segments I've drawn are just 300 real miles? Remember that the scale is... a bit ambiguous... The trick of measuring pixels like I did only works along lines radiating from the map's center point. The scale's pixel measurement that I did is not quite a radial line segment, and any measurements on the Alethkar map that are perpendicular to these radial lines will vary in consistency from left to right. That is to say, the scale of vertical measurements distorts as you move across the page from left to right. Where does the 300 mile scale apply? Unclear. But the margin of error shouldn't be SO far off. I'd be surprised if it's more than +/- 5%. So let's run with this notion that Rosharan miles are about 1.95 times the length of a real mile... 1 Rmile = 1.95 miles = 1.95 x 5280 feet = 10,296 feet. I can't help but notice how close this is to a metric-like multiple of 10 as we would expect from Rosharans. Indeed, we know that they use ten inches per foot. Or rather, I should say they use 10 Rinches per Rfoot. And for the number of feet per mile we're really more interested in Rfeet per Rmile. BUT we know that Rosharan feet are just a BIT longer than real feet, and Brandon's use of the word isn't meant to imply something highly unintuitive. This is pretty straight forward though. If we imagine 10,000 Rfeet per Rmile we get: 1 Rmile = 1.95 miles = 1.95 x 5280 feet = 10,296 feet = 10,000 Rfeet 1 Rfoot = 1.03 feet = 12.36 inches = 10 Rinches 1 Rinch = 1.24 inches In Khriss's essay on Roshar she DOES say that their units of measurement are larger than the cosmere standard equivalent units. And with these assumptions it's precisely what we get. Miles that are about twice as long as "normal". Feet that are perhaps something like 5% longer than "normal". (which matches this WoB--5% on top of 6'-4" adds 4 inches) Inches that are ~25% longer than "normal". (emphasizing once again that this is all very approximate, based on me measuring pixels on a world map... There's room for some variance. Textual Issues Unfortunately, there are a few references in the text that conflict a bit with this interpretation. BUT there is one that, in my opinion, affirms it. And it's possible that these references could be adjusted in future leatherbound versions as none of them are in TWoK. The Purelake is a little over 1000 miles across and 400 miles wide. For 2X long Rmiles, that would be 500 and 200, so this fits nicely. For 2X Rmiles, it looks like the eastern coast is only 150 Rmiles away. Could say Shallan's sense of geography is off... but with her photographic memory I think this is pretty unlikely. The distance from Narak to "not quite Hearthstone" looks to be about 1700 miles. That would only be about 850 Rmiles. Though maybe Kaladin's judge of distance just isn't quite right. Or maybe with error it's just barely over 1000 Rmiles. This one actually AFFIRMS the idea of 2X Rmiles in my opinion. I'm measuring the diameter of the Shattered Plains as about 170... The exact edges aren't clear, so it depends where you measure from. But it's definitely over 150 miles. That means the radius is 75 miles minimum. In the Words of Radiance finale, we see Lopen's arm heal back in the warcamps while Kaladin is presumably somewhere around Narak. Lopen was easily more than 50 miles away, and certainly more than the 30-mile limit where their powers supposedly diminish. But for 2X Rmiles, the Shattered Plains has a radius of perhaps about 40 Rmiles, give or take. That fits MUCH better with Lopen's healing. I'd go so far as to say that if this "theory" about Rosharan miles is wrong, this reference is an error. This is Dalinar going to visit Azir. Azir is less than 800 miles from Urithiru, so he's just plain wrong about that distance regardless. Though I suppose overestimating 800 miles would be more reasonable than for him to say "a thousand" when it's only ~400. This is correct either way. This is correct either way. (spoken from Shadesmar in the vicinity of Kholinar) These distances seem to refer to real miles. The distance from Thaylen City to the coast of the bead ocean where they landed is about 200-300 miles. So this doesn't jive with 2X Rmiles. Reshi Isles is thousands of miles either way... Well, for 2X Rmiles it's not quite 2000 miles I think, but seems reasonable enough for her to say. Works either way. Works either way. This is Dalinar flying from their base in Emul to Ishar. It's not entirely clear where teir base was (or precisely where Ishar was). I think this works either way though, eyeballing the area. Final Thoughts I think the scale on the Alethkar map is probably just an oversight, and that it's wrong... BUT I really like this idea for the units. I think it's safe to assume that a Rosharan foot must be similar in length to a foot. If Rosharan miles are supposed to be closer in length to miles, there's not a great way for Rmiles to be a 10X power of Rfeet. Again, assuming feet are fairly similar, using 1000 Rfeet per Rmile gives an unreasonably short Rmile. I think the best alternative idea is that they use 5000 Rfeet per Rmile. That means you just need Rfeet at 6% longer than a real foot to give Rmiles the length of miles. Increasing the foot size a bit more gives Rmiles a bit longer as well. Using a multiple of 5 like this has precedence in their units. We know that there are 50 Rosharan minutes in a Rosharan hour, rather than 100. So this seems reasonable... But using 10,000 Rfeet per Rmile is a really nice alternative that seems to fit with the scale on the Alethkar map! That said, there ARE definitely some quotes (mostly in Oathbringer) that would need some revisions if this is the intent. (and one that needs to be revised if it's not)
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  15. Edit: This blog entry used to contain a theory on my mental health. I no longer believe that it is true, and have therefore deleted it. My apologies for any confusion.
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  16. Playing catch-up with the Writing Excuses podcast, we did episodes on both Writing Reluctant Characters and Combining Dialogue, Blocking, and Description. We also did a Q&A session at the Out of Excuses Retreat that touches on these questions: To Dan: How did you go about selling your first trilogy in Germany before selling it in the US? To Howard: did you consider doing a separate storyline on Sunday strips? Why or why not? Have you transitioned between outlining and discovery writing? To Brandon: Why is John Scalzi your evil nemesis? To Dan and Howard (and Mary): When you had full-time work, what did you do to "reset" when you came home from work, especially since your job used the same parts of your brain that writing does? Tor.com has revealed Michael Whelan's cover art for WORDS OF RADIANCE, the sequel to THE WAY OF KINGS. The cover is gorgeous, as always, and I love how the wraparound looks on it. Many thanks to Mr. Whelan for all his hard work! Tor.com has also announced that the tentative release date has been pushed to March. I may have more to say on the reasons for this in the future, but it's important that I get this book right. On July 24th I tweeted a screenshot of me starting the third draft. I've missed mentioning a couple of THE WAY OF KINGS reread posts; you can find all of them here. Tor.com also put up an excerpt of my novella "Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell" coming in the George R.R. Martin/Gardner Dozois anthology DANGEROUS WOMEN that will be released on December 3rd. My Comic-Con interview with MTV Geek is archived here. The video is at the bottom of the page; I appear at the 1:59:38 mark. There's also an extremely short preview of the STEELHEART book trailer right before I come on. The full trailer should be released fairly soon. And on that page you can also read the second excerpt from the book. There's also an interview with me about STEELHEART over at Big Shiny Robot. My assistant Peter uploaded another Twitter posts archive. This one covers most of July. <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/08/updates-catch-up-michael-whelan.html">Source</a>
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  17. I took the time to update the statistical analysis of Rhythm of War today and wanted to share some fun charts! SPOILERS FOR RHYTHM OF WAR! Word Count by Character Self explanatory. Kaladin, Shallan, and Dalinar lead the pack in that order, as I think most people would assume. Word Count by Character (excluding the big 3) Zooming in a bit better on all the characters besides Kaladin, Shallan and Dalinar... Navani and Venli both leaped up tremendously in Rhythm of War. Adolin kept his title as top secondary character though, with his biggest word count yet. Lezian is the newest character with smallest word count. I guess I should also note that this has the numbers from Dawnshard as well, so you can see how high that pulled Rysn and Lopen. Big Three Word Count by Book Turning attention back to the three main characters, here's how their word counts stack up for each book. Kaladin had a bit more than OB and Dalinar barely squeaked by with more words than WoR. Rhythm of War was Shallan's lowest word count yet (barely). On the whole, you can really see how Navani, Venli, and Adolin dug into their usual numbers (overall) this book. Flashback Word Counts Here's how the flashbacks have gone so far. This is JUST word counts of these characters' flashback sequences. (Always surprises me how little word count Shallan's flashbacks got in WoR. Brandon packed so much punch in those for me.) Individually Eshonai and Venli would be the lowest. But together they give Rhythm of War the 3rd highest word count on flashbacks. Rhythm of War Word Count by Character Here's the word counts for each character looking only at Rhythm of War. Kaladin led the pack, but only by a little. Navani had more than Venli and Eshonai combined. Word Count by Book Part Here's how RoW's word count is distributed among each part compared to the other books. Word Count by Location One thing not captured on the statistical analysis pages on Coppermind is that I've done my best to note where everyone's PoV happens.This admittedly gets a bit arbitrary... But whatever. Nothing particularly exciting or notable about this graph, but here it is. Rhythm of War Word Count by Location And here's just the RoW data. I think the time in Tukar was just that one Dalinar chapter. And I think the "unknown" is Lezian when he wakes up? Seems like it didn't give any clear indication where he was there. Word Count by Gender This is a breakdown of PoV character gender (in terms of word count) for the entire series... Rhythm of War Word Count by Gender And here's the same thing but only with Rhythm of War numbers. Girl power running the show in RoW. Chapter Word Count Distribution Okay, these last two aren't super exciting. This is a distribution of chapters over different word count ranges, so it gives you an idea of how long the chapters tend to be. Hard to see much of a trend with these ranges... But it's a pain to tinker with the range. Nothing particularly notable about this compared to other books so far I think. PoV Word Count Distribution Same idea here, just breaking it down by PoV instead of chapters. The short snippy PoVs during "avalanches" brings things down.
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  18. To those whom it may concern: I wasn't planning on making a sequel to this post. Frankly, I didn't think there was much else to say. But then I was reading What If? 2 by Randall Munroe. This is not a paid promotion or an advertisement, but GO FRIGGIN READ IT. And the first one, for that matter. In one of the sections, he brings up in a footnote that the distance light travels in one nanosecond is roughly 11.8 inches: a distance, he notes, that is "frustratingly close to a foot," and then jokingly proposes we redefine the foot to exactly one light nanosecond. So of course I'm going to do that right here and now. First up, we need the speed of light. 299,792,458 m / s: a frighteningly strange number. In most science classes you'll round it to 300,000,000; or 2.99e8 if you aren't a casual. Next, we need to convert that to feet. I totally did this completely be hand and didn't use google converters to get 983,571,056.43045, which I'm going to round to 983,571,056 to give the future generations something to complain about. There we have the speed of light per second in feet; but we need to crunch it down to one nanosecond. To do that all you need to do is shift the decimal up nine slots, giving us about 0.9835... feet. I used another handy-dandy calculator series of hand calculations to get roughly 11.802 inches. Wonderful! We've successfully proven that Mr. Munroe was correct. Now we can move along to the cooler bits. So what happens if we redefine the foot to exactly one light-nanosecond? Well, my friends. The foot would go from how we know it today to just about almost as big as we know it today. In other words, I need a visual. Unfortunately, most paper isn't quite a foot on the long edge, so I found a 6-inch notecard instead (and completely on accident, too. I was planning on scaling one foot down to an inch but got lucky). So here's six inches: Compared to how long six inches should be: So what happens to our other units when we make this conversion? Well, everything (in the imperial system) becomes approximately 0.0165% smaller. If we kept the mile as 5280 feet (which is the worst number), then the length of it would change to about 5192 Old Feet (si). I looked up the new feet-to-meter conversion, hoping it would be a bit closer to a 3:1. Now instead of 3 feet making up 0.9144 meters, 3 feet makes up 0.899 meters; which is so close to just flat-out 0.9. This actually comes out surprisingly close to simply 35.5 New Inches (si) (it's roughly 35.406). For all intents and purposes, we could simply say a meter is "three feet minus half an inch," which is way better than "so, like... three feet? But... wait. Is it more or less? *Looks up conversion* okay, so... one meter is 39.37 inches. So like... three feet plus three point three inches, I guess? Or maybe three point four... I dunno." So we did it, right? hahahahahahahahahahaha hahaha no No, there are more units in the Imperial System that we use all the time. Okay, but, for the record, I won't be going into all of them. If you want to, go ahead and multiply them by 0.9835. By all means, go redefine the "chain" and the "furlong" or whatever the heck a "twip" is. It's a bit more complicated to convert units of area and volume, so I'm going to go into those next. First up: the acre. This is defined as 4840 square yards, which is just about as unhelpful a number as it gets. It isn't even a perfect square: it's roughly 69 (nice) point 5701 yards across, assuming we have a perfectly square acre. That makes 208.71 Old Feet (si), or 2504.52 Old Inches (si) on edge, which are both numbers we can plug our handy-dandy converter onto. We get a brand-new acre side of 205.2666 Old Feet (si), or 68.4222 Old Yards (si). Squaring that, we get 4681.597 square yards for one acre. I was wrong. That number is just about unhelpful as it gets. But we'll get to fixing that later. Next up we have our primary unit of volume in imperial: Fluid Ounces. These are how we define pints, quarts, and gallons... and also "gills," apparently. A fl oz is roughly 1.7339 cubic inches, which is awful. Fortunately, it's still just math, and - WAIT! FADRAN! We can't just change the definition of a fluid ounce that easily! Why's that? Because it's defined by one 160th of a gallon, or how much space ten gallons of water takes up! If you changed the fluid ounce, you'd have to change literal friggin water: another near constant of the universe! Hrm. You're right of course, me. Of course I am. And beautiful. Oh, shut up. *Blushes* So now we've stumbled upon a new dynamic: fixing other imperial units of measurement. We've completely redone single-dimension units, but from what we've seen so far it's probably for the best that we do two and three-dimensional measurements individually as well. Let's go back to the acre real quick. It's a unit of area, which means it can be defined in terms of squares. That means that we should probably find a perfect square that's pretty close to current definition and go from there. Currently it's 4640 square yards, so we want to be in the high-ish 4000s ballpark. I looked up a list of perfect squares and apparently there's a perfectly good 4624 that we can use, or 68 * 68. I was curious as to how this stacked up in terms of Old Feet - y'know, to know how much the farmers have to re-measure their fields or whatever. 4640 Old Yards squared is... well, 4640 Old Yards squared. I don't really know how to visualize that. The same goes for 4624 New Yards squared, which comes out to roughly 4472.66688 Old Yards squared. That's quite a way's off, isn't it? Nearly two hundred (old) yards squared. So I went to the next perfect square. 4761. If we make the New Acre 4761 New square Yards, then it comes out to about 4605.183 Old Yards squared. Now we're only off by about 35 Old Yards squared, which I personally think is a great improvement But that's not all. Because you see 4761 is So now we have to worry about gallons and pints and quarts and scud. Now, many of you should argue that we should just stick to metric units of volume instead of imperial. After all, one cubic millimeter of water (or "millileter") equates to EXACTLY one gram. Here's why you're wrong. One gram is not some magic number. It, as much as anything else, is a contrived unit. Now you might argue that one mole of a given element gives you its atomic weight in grams, and therefore the unit is still superior: but you're wrong AGAIN. You FOOL. I mean, look at Avagadro's Constant! 6.02214076×10^23? Do you call that clean? No! It, as much as anything else, is completely contrived. The gram is not magically equal to "exactly" something of something. Basically what I'm saying is that you can't hate on gallons for being "ten pounds of water," because a pound is just as arbitrary a number as a kilogram is. Are the numbers associated with it worse? Yes. Is the metric system still way more useful in every situation ever? Of course! But that's as far as the superiority goes: both systems are still completely arbitrary. 'Course, the gallon was defined back in the 1800s. It needs some fixing, most likely. For y'alls information, the gallon was defined first in 1824 as the volume ten pounds of room temperature water takes up (room temperature so that it hasn't expanded or contracted; ten because that's a good number). It was then quartered into - you guessed it - a quart, which was in turn halved into a pint. A fluid ounce is 1/20th of a pint (and a gill is 1/4 of a pint). A gallon is 160 pints. What this means is that we probably shouldn't change it, on second thought. It's based almost entirely on constants outside of the rest of the imperial system: and good constants at that. But I was curious, so I started by figuring out how many New cubic Inches an Old Gallon would be. Wikipedia tells me a gallon is 277.42 cubic inches (correct to five significant figures). That means 6.519768931 inches on edge. Plug in our converter and BAM: 6.41436427437 inches on edge, or 263.913 cubic inches. Personally I think that "almost 264" is better than "277 and a half-ish." Still... it isn't that great a number. It was then that I realized there was something else we could change in order to make ourselves a cleaner gallon: The definition of a pound because hoo boy is this one stupid. Take a good look at this: Currently, a pound is officially known as an "avoirdupois pound." It is equal to 0.45359237 kg. It's also equal to 16 avoirdupois ounces. What is an avoirdupouis ounce? Arbitrary, is what it is. We can do better. But where to start? I decided to reverse-engineer this one. There isn't jack scud we can do about water's density (and believe me; people have tried), so let's use that. A gallon is roughly equivalent to 4.54609 Liters. That's pretty close to a better number: let's go from there. Let's redefine a gallon to 4.5 Liters. That's a good number. Next up we take how much water can fit in that (4.5 kilograms) and divide that by ten. A pound is now 0.45 kilograms. Math is fun! The New Gallon (si) is 274.607 Old Inches, or ~270.1 (270.0759845) New Inches. Much cleaner! Let's review: The Foot has been redefined to "1 Light Nanosecond." All one-dimensional units of measurement are reduced by 0.0165%, or to 0.9835 times their original size. We overhauled the Acre, making it 4761 New Yards squared. The gallon has been redefined to 4.5 liters. The pound has been redefined alongside it to 0.45 kilograms. Everything is better. VOTE FADRAN FOR 2022 PRESIDENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL BEREAU OF WEIGHTS AND MEASURES
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  19. How much of this universe actually matters to you? Try putting a number on it: twenty percent? Thirty percent? Ninety percent? Do you care about what you know, or do you think about all that we don’t? We haven’t explored the vast majority of our own oceans, let alone everything beneath the crust, or any sizeable portion of another planet, or any meaningful fragment of the universe. Statistically speaking you’re going to be stuck on this one bead of lava and sediment for your entire life, and even then you can’t possibly see all of it. So if you only care about the stuff that you can observe, then you’re limiting yourself. Go beyond. I have a friend whose mindset is very similar to my own in terms of knowledge. With so much stuff out there, isn’t it a little mean that we only get a few decades to look at it? He’s of a firm belief that if something exists, then it can be experienced; and he wants to experience it all. I’m of the same mind, learning all I can about whatever I can. I’m not quite as good at it as he is, but overall I think I do pretty well. That’s why I decided that this thing should exist: so I can just talk about the stuff and why it matters. With so many things out there in their infinite complexity, there’s so much that we can miss. And to be completely honest, I don’t want to miss any of it. I plan to talk about scientific discoveries, laws, and theories. I plan to talk about the arts and why they matter. Broad-scale anthropology, styles of society, types of cultures; The implications of everyday things on the level of generations; Growth, change, learning, knowledge itself; Philosophical ideologies and processes; literally anything that I can think of that seems to matter—which is everything. So welcome to Unnecessarily Overcomplicated!
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  20. Some calculations I did a while back. Was planning to do more with the moons, but I just haven't had time and figured it was worth going ahead and posting this here as is. Given Surface gravity on Roshar is 0.7 g (source: Arcanum Unbounded) Roshar's radius is 5663 km (source: JordanCon 2018) This map of Roshar (minor WoR spioler) gives both latitude and longitude lines. The planet can be broken into 200 "squares" horizontally and 100 "squares" vertically. (source: Peter on Reddit) This map of Roshar (an azumithal equidistant projection) helps to place the equator as the latitude line passing through the southern tip of Kadrix island. One Rosharan solar day is 20 Rosharan hours. The moons have an orbital period of one solar day. Assumptions The "standard cosmere" gravity is 1 g = 9.81 m/s2 (surface gravity on Earth) The "standard cosmere" size refers to planetary radius (and circumference) and is R = 6371 km (Earth's radius) The gravitational constant, G, remains unchanged Units Units are "real" units unless defined below. 1 Rdeg (Rosharan degrees) = π/100 radians (200 Rdeg in a circle) 1 Rhour (Rosharan hour) = 3473 seconds (calculation) Calculations Size of Roshar (planet) Radius = 5663 km (88.8% of Earth radius. This is roughly in line with Khriss's estimate that Roshar's radius is 0.9 R in Arcanum Unbounded.) Diameter = 11 330 km (88.8% of Earth diameter) Circumference = 35 580 km (88.8% of Earth circumference) Surface Area = 4 * π * (radius)2 = 4.030 × 108 square km (79% of Earth surface area) Volume = 4 / 3 * π * (radius)3 = 7.608 × 1011 cubic km (70% of Earth volume) Mass Calculations Surface Gravity = 0.7 * g = 6.86 m/s2 (70% of Earth surface gravity) Mass = (surface gravity) * (radius)2 / G = 3.296×1024 kg (55% of Earth mass) Density = mass / volume = 4.333 g/cm3 (79% of Earth density) Characteristics of Roshar (continent) Northernmost point: northern tip of Iri @ 2 Rdeg N = 3.6 deg N Including islands: northern tip of Kadrix island @ 3 Rdeg N = 5.4 deg N Southernmost point: southern tip of Frostlands @ 30 Rdeg S = 54 deg S Including islands: southern tip of Thaylenah @ 32 Rdeg S = 57.6 deg S Easternmost point: New Natanan (and Frostlands coast) @ 37 Rdeg E = 66.6 deg E Westernmost point: eastern tip of Steen @ 29 Rdeg W = 52.2 deg W Including islands: eastern tip of Aimia @ 38 Rdeg W = 68.4 deg W Furthest distance: west coast of Shinovar to tip of unclaimed NE peninsula = 10 610 km (calculation) Size Comparrisons By u/Shagomir on Reddit, based on this Mollewide (equal-area) map: Each pixel on the map is approximately 78.25 km2 Major regions: Region Area Comparison Area Roshar (Total) 414,030,000 km2 Earth 510,060,000 km2 Roshar Oceans 373,780,000 km2 Earth Oceans 361,900,000 km2 Roshar (Continent) 40,250,000 km2 Asia 43,820,000 km2 Aimia 984,000 km2 New Guinea 786,000 km2 Thaylenah 414,000 km2 Sumatra 443,000 km2 Purelake 1,160,000 km2 Caspian Sea 371,000 km2 Sea of Spears 129,000 km2 Lake Superior 82,100 km2 Size of countries: Region Area Unclaimed 8,649,000 km2 Alethkar 7,134,000 km2 Jah Keved 5,553,000 km2 Iri 2,473,000 km2 Tu Bayla 2,040,000 km2 Reshi Isles 1,582,000 km2 Shinovar 1,407,000 km2 Azir 1,343,000 km2 Herdaz 1,155,000 km2 Babatharnam 1,107,000 km2 Rira 1,056,000 km2 Aimia 984,000 km2 Tukar 702,000 km2 Emul 596,000 km2 Marat 524,000 km2 Greater Hexi 454,000 km2 Thaylenah 414,000 km2 Yezier 396,000 km2 Marabethia 394,000 km2 Yulay 393,000 km2 Tashikk 364,000 km2 Triax 336,000 km2 Liafor 319,000 km2 Desh 230,000 km2 Steen 156,000 km2 Alm 144,000 km2 Bavland 141,000 km2 Tu Fallia 127,000 km2 Shattered Plains 80,000 km2 List of comparable countries on Earth: Country Area Russia 16,377,742 km2 United States 9,147,593 km2 Australia 7,633,565 km2 India 2,973,190 km2 Argentina 2,736,690 km2 Mexico 1,943,945 km2 Iran 1,531,595 km2 South Africa 1,214,470 km2 Egypt 995,450 km2 Turkey 769,632 km2 Spain 498,980 km2 Sweden 410,335 km2 Germany 348,672 km2 United Kingdom 241,930 km2 Syria 183,630 km2 Iceland 100,250 km2 Czech Republic 77,247 km2 Moons Orbital period: T = 20 Rhours = 69 480 seconds (precession makes this weird)
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  21. You are going to love this theory. I guarantee it. I was reading Andrew's article the other day, and that got me thinking about what makes magic work on a fundamental level in the cosmere. This will be somewhat of a rebuttal to you, Andrew, because this direction is far more fruitful. But it's much more than a rebuttal. In my opinion, this is quite a paradigm shift. In any given Shardworld, magic is directly tied to a Shard. Everyone has pieces of Shards inside them. In Mistborn, everyone has fragments of Ruin and Preservation inside them. In Warbreaker, everyone has Breath. It's not unimaginable to think that this generalizes for any Shardworld, so I'm going to assume that always holds. In order to use Allomancy, you need to have "enough" Preservation in you. There's other stuff you need, too, like Snapping, but we'll discuss that later; it's not important anyways. The only real requirement for Allomancy is that you have enough Preservation. The rest is just book-keeping. And likewise, for Awakening, you need Breath, a fragment of Endowment. So here's a question: why is Awakening different from Allomancy? Before you go saying this is a totally obvious question, let me remind you that there are distinct differences between Awakening and Allomancy. Awakeners never need to Snap, though Allomancers do (and the Shaod is sort of similar to Snapping, too, in a way). We want to discover the fundamental rules of how magic operates, right? So the question about the difference between Awakening and Allomancy isn't so dumb. Now that I've made the question sound important, let me completely trivialize it with the easy answer: they are different because the Shards are different. Duh. That's fairly obvious. But in fact, this is precisely the key to understanding all magic. My principle is simple: To interact with the spiritual power of the Shard inside you, it must be in accordance with the Shard's intent. (That is, the name of the Shard. Ruin. Preservation. Endowment. It is what the Shard wants to do. Look at the bottom here for that reference.) I'm going to call it the Principle of Intent, simply because that makes it sound important. Now I simply have to show you how important this principle is. Let's say that Breath is the Nalthis equivalent of those fragments of Ruin and Preservation on Scadrial. These latent powers of a Shard can be accessed and manipulated. With Preservation's magic, I can do lots of cool things, but one thing I can't do is move that fragment of the soul around. But, I could do such a thing if I was using the right magic system. On Nalthis, Endowment endows. It makes perfect sense that Awakening can move pieces of souls around, because that's Endowment's intent. Indeed, I can do similar things with Hemalurgy, because it is inherently destructive. Ruin ruins. Endowment endows. Preservation preserves. "But wait, why does Allomancy cause such rapid changes if it's from Preservation? That seems antithetical to Preservation's intent." There was a thread about this on Adonalsium.net, actually, and I couldn't come up with a proper explanation. Now I can. Watch closely, because this is fancy footwork. Think, for a moment, less about the external effects of Allomancy. Brandon's said that powers don't need to have rational explanations, just that they are bound by rules. Is there any particular reason why iron does the Physical Internal power rather than pewter? No, and that's okay. Instead, let's consider what happens to that piece of Preservation inside you when you utilize Allomancy. Awakening moves spiritual energy, or endows it to something else. This doesn't happen with Preservation. There ought to be some reason why Preservation provides a net gain of energy with Allomancy instead of Awakening's system, and there indeed is. Preservation does preserve, it just preserves the piece of Preservation inside you (and for that matter, every aspect of your body. There is no direct physical cost to Allomancy in the act of burning metals). When you think about it from a Shard level, each Shard has a focus. Ruin and Preservation share a focus in metal. This metal activates some spiritual action, I'd imagine. Lock and key. The metal is the key to all the Metallic Arts. The metal must do something with respect to Preservation, and what's it going to do? With the Principle of Intent, that fragment of Preservation inside you wants to preserve itself, its spiritual energy. It also wants to preserve yourself. So, the only place it receive energy from is some external source, in order to preserve your own energy. Slight side note: Another issue with Allomancy and its net gain is the idea that if Preservation "designed" Allomancy--though that term is a bit misleading, as I suspect no Shard explicitly could design something like that--he's losing energy. That's not true. The Well of Ascension refills every thousand years (technically, 1024 years). Utilizing it doesn't make it go away. Burning atium also regenerates eventually in the Pits of Hathsin. Likewise, there's no reason why this Allomantic energy actually goes away. It regenerates, too. Wait a minute. I just got the most brilliant idea ever as I wrote that. Brandon said that Preservation or Ruin could, in principle, fuel any of the Metallic Arts, but he said that it expends power in ways gods are hesitant to do (I can't find the citation right now, but I think it's in the Hero of Ages spoiler thread). Why would it expend energy? Doesn't it all regenerate? No, I think not. Not exclusively. What if a Shard's power only regenerates when the Shard is doing something according to the Shard's intent? Atium is of Ruin, and so using that energy with respect to Ruining something will make it regenerate. The Well put Rashek into severe Preservation mode, making him extremely reactionary. So in a roundabout way, that again is Preservation. That kind of explains why dispersing the power broke Ruin's prison--it was an act not of Preservation, so the power wasn't conserved. Also, if this was true, it makes a heck of a lot more sense why Endowment Returns people, and why he isn't dead from doing so. The power all comes back eventually. Ahem, that got off track. I'll build that theory in more detail, with better citations, later. Back to the Principle of Intent, with respect to the other Metallic Arts. It's been noted in the annotations that Ruin is selfish. So, fragments of its power wouldn't want to destroy itself, but it is perfectly okay with destroying other things. Hence Hemalurgy doesn't do much to yourself, and instead destroys other things. To use the analogy with Preservation, Preservation preserves spiritual energy, while Ruin destroys spiritual energy. I suspect that the greater amount of Ruin inside you, the more likely to perform Hemalurgy, however. So why does Feruchemy work? Well, it's perfect balance. I can't utilize the power of either Ruin or Preservation here. They are balanced. I can't use either power up now. Were I to use or "access" the Shard's powers, they'd cancel each other out, so to speak. Nothing happens on the spiritual side of things (Okay, that's probably not true. It's just no spiritual energy is changed. I'm sure on some Realmatic level, both Ruin and Preservation act equally) So what happens if not doing something with spiritual energy? I draw from myself. This fits the Principle of Intent just fine. You may be wondering why there'd be such a principle at all. Sazed could do all sorts of things when he held both powers. The difference here is that the body acts as a conduit--and not a very good one--for the power. Only once Vin's body vanished did the power become more expansive. I suspect this effect is due to the Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual Realms. When a Shard's power is in a physical form, it does one specific thing (lerasium, atium). The Physical Realm seems to have a restricting effect. Thus, for humans, they access the power in their Shards in a more restrictive manner simply by being human. That's why the Principle of Intent appears to hold. Of course, even as a full Shardholder, the same principle applies eventually. The Shardholder's mind would be shaped to the Shard's intent over the centuries. Furthermore, Brandon said that Preservation or Ruin could, in principle fuel any of Metallic Arts, but he said that that expends power in ways gods are hesitant to do. Presumably, this is because while a Shard is a part of the power of creation and can do lots of amazing things, the Shard can more easily do things in line with its intent. Or, if I was right about the conservation thing, it's that a Shard knows the power will come back eventually. A Shardholder's consciousness apparently "feeds" off the spiritual power of the Shard, so if that power is all gone, that person dies. Maybe you're not buying my principle. Don't believe me? Well, no theory is good unless it has some predictive power, so let's do some theorizing on other magics. I'd like to work with Elantris, but I don't know either Aona or Skai's Shard name, so it's going to be challenging to know just what they do. But Stormlight Archive is the perfect testing ground for a theory. We know all the Rosharian Shard's names, and there's a bunch of magic systems that don't exactly make sense. I began pondering what exactly would Honor--the Almighty's Shard--do. Knowing the answer to this would give an intuitive understanding to the mechanism of his magic. But Honor is hard to pin down. Ruin ruins... Honor honors stuff. That's, uh, super helpful. But you know what's really honorable? Oaths. Promises. Bonds. Oathpact. Surgebinder. Peter said on TWG that a Surge is what people on Roshar call a force (I'd assume things like gravity). Surge, plus a bond with a spren? Surgebinders. Congratulations, you are now a magic user. Honor's power comes from oaths and bonds. Perhaps it creates a spiritual bond of sorts. That's what Honor does. There was also the question of what happened to Kaladin at the end of Way of Kings. He spoke the Second Ideal of the Knights Radiant, then he burst with power. Seems to me that this near unequivocal evidence that Honor uses these oaths in a specifc, magical way. Then there's good old Szeth. How is he a Surgebinder if he doesn't have a spren? I'm not totally sure, but perhaps his strong oaths as a Truthless provides the sufficient bond for Honor's magic to work. Maybe there does exist a spren. Either way, those oaths are intricately tied with Szeth's Radiant powers. So, I'm calling it right now: if Szeth breaks his oaths, he will lose his powers. I read a little bit of Way of Kings today, and I had forgotten that Jasnah said that two orders of the Knights Radiant have natural Soulcasting abilities. Now, recall that in the 17th Shard interview with Brandon, he said that there are ten powers (it seems to be ten Surges is the technical term), and you make an order of the Knights Radiant by picking from two of those Surges. I never realized before, but that must mean Soulcasting is a type of Surgebinding. That's kind of a scary implication. We've seen, what, Windrunners and Soulcasters, and there are ten more powers? Plenty more magic systems to go around, clearly. But a more detailed analysis of Stormlight Archive magics is for another day, I think. Other theories for other days. Source: The Principle of Intent
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  22. The Hugos are one of the most prestigious awards in our field, and they are given out by the readers themselves. The deadline for voting for the Hugo Awards is approaching quickly. Less than a week left! For a ballot to be counted, it needs to be in by Wednesday, July 31, 2013 before midnight, Texas time. So, if you were considering joining Worldcon to vote, you don't have a lot of time left. (Full disclosure, The Emperor's Soul by yours truly is up for an award in the novella category. Also, Writing Excuses has been nominated its third year running for best related work.) For the last few years, the Hugo Awards have been offering a "Voter's Packet" to everyone eligible to vote, and it includes ebooks of basically everything nominated. To be eligible to vote, you have to buy at least a "Supporting Membership" to Worldcon, which costs $60. So, for sixty bucks, you get a selection of the best sf/fantasy published last year––including five novels and a ton of short fiction. It's one of the best deals out there, and you get to vote for what you consider the best fiction of the year as well. (You'll also get to nominate for next year's awards.) Unlike the Academy Awards or the Grammys, these awards aren't chosen by distant committees––they are chosen by discerning fans. As always, I strongly suggest that you read/watch/listen to the majority (if not all) of the entries in a category before voting on it. Do not vote for your favorite author; vote for what you actually think is the best work. As the voting is in our hands, let's do what we can to maintain the integrity of the award. (Though, if you do join now and only have a week or so left, you should totally read the novella category first, so you can vote on that one without running out of time. Just saying...) It was great seeing many of you at San Diego last weekend! I look forward to meeting more of you at my upcoming events! <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/07/hugo-awards-voting-deadline-is-july-31.html">Source</a>
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  23. It has been quite a busy time these last six or seven months. Too busy, maybe? A lot of great experiences, but it has cut into my time to be at home writing. Let me give you a little update of what I’m doing writing-wise. First off, of course, is Words of Radiance. If you weren’t watching, I finished the rough draft of this book (the second book of the Stormlight Archive, and sequel to The Way of Kings) late June. I sent it off to my agent and editor for commentary and advice. I got back my editor’s notes last week, my agent’s notes today, and Peter just finished assembling everything together and doing a tight, continuity-focused copyedit of the entire manuscript. At 360k words, it’s roughly the length of A Memory of Light. Obviously, there’s a lot left to do here. Tor keeps talking about January as a publication month, and I’d like to meet that, if at all possible. That’s going to require me to do several drafts of the novel over the next two months. More updates as we progress, but I’m pleased with the book. It has only a few large flaws, and I think they can be fixed fairly quickly. During July, I took time off from major projects to have a breather. If you aren’t aware, I prefer to do smaller projects between big epics as a means of helping me stay fresh. This month’s “breather” stories include a novelette (9k words) piece set in the Steelheart world, which should be published as an e-original around Christmastime. I also did some work in the Infinity Blade world. (More on that later. If you aren’t aware, this is a video game that friends of mine make. I’ve enjoyed being involved to practice my video-game writing chops, with an eye toward doing Mistborn video game writing.) My next major writing project will be the sequel to Steelheart, which is called Firefight. (And if you haven’t seen the trailer, Prologue, or teaser chapters for Steelheart, please go give them a look! We’re hoping for big things from this novel.) As you might be aware, I will often be preparing for/writing one piece while I do revisions on another. I generally can only do new prose on one piece at a time, but I like to be revising and writing on two different things at once. So, for the foreseeable future, I’ll be writing Firefight and revising Words of Radiance. What does this mean for future projects? Well, let me go down the list of sequels in order of current urgency. 1) Rithmatist Sequel. I will hop on writing the next one very soon. 2) Shadows of Self. (The next Wax and Wayne Mistborn novel.) I’ve finished some sample chapters of this and have a fairly solid outline. Expect to see me writing on this sometime early next year. 3) Book Three of Stormlight. I don’t want to let this series languish with three year gaps between books, as I was forced to do between books one and two. Because of this, I’ll try to be doing them at 18 month or 24 month intervals at the most. Do note that the books, at around a thousand pages each, are HUGE undertakings. The way I write, I have to space out projects like this. They’ll be regular, I promise, but part of the reason I’m so productive is because I allow myself freedom to work on different projects, instead of being beholden to one series. 4) Calamity (Book Three of Steelheart.) This will be the final of that trilogy. 5) Elantris Sequel. (This is getting close. Should be doing this in the relatively near future.) 6) Legion Sequel. I have sample chapters of this done, but as it’s a side project, it can’t command prime writing time. I will probably slip it in between some of the books above somewhere, but I can’t promise when. 7) Final Rithmatist book. (I’m not 100% sure this will be a trilogy. It might just be two books.) 8) Nightblood. (Warbreaker sequel.) This one is still fairly far off. 9) Alcatraz 5. Still planning to write this. We have to find a home for the series, however, as I bought the rights back to it from Scholastic earlier this year. Within the next couple of months, my US readers will be able to buy my British publisher's omnibus edition of the first four books. As for non-sequel, original projects, here’s what might be coming in the future, as they stand now. 1) "Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell." Cosmere novella set on a new world. Find it in GRRM and Gardner Dozois’s anthology called Dangerous Women, which I believe is coming out Christmastime. Read an excerpt on Tor.com. 2) "Sixth of the Dusk." Cosmere novella set on a new world. Written following a Writing Excuses brainstorm. Still needs a revision, but should be released later this year. 3) The Silence Divine. Standalone Cosmere Novel. Modestly far off, but maybe not too far. I don’t want to be stuck writing only sequels. Though, since I did release two new books this year (Rithmatist and Steelheart) in new worlds, starting new series, I will probably wait on this one until those series are done. 4) The Liar of Partinel. Cosmere Novel, set on the original planet of Yolen and dealing with Hoid’s origin story. Very far off right now. 5) Skyward. (Working title.) Young Adult cosmere novel. In the early stages of development. Probably a few years of. 6) Dark One. Non-cosmere YA novel. Still haven’t been able to get this one off the ground. I had a chance, but The Rithmatist worked better, and I wrote that instead. Don’t hold your breath on this one, though someday I might post the sample chapters that I wrote a few years back. 7) Death By Pizza. (Urban Fantasy.) This book was fun, but not remotely good enough to publish. We’ll see if I ever get the bug to go back and fix it. 8) White Sand. Cosmere trilogy. Some fun things are happening here, but I can’t really talk about them right now. And finally, media properties. 1) Mistborn: Birthright. (Video Game for consoles and maybe PC, cross platform.) We’re looking at 2015 for this right now. (Sorry.) The new console generation made us push it back. I’m still planning to write it, and development is still moving. It’s far from dead. 2) Mistborn film. Option runs out in January. I’ve had a very good experience with the producers, but so far, we do not have funding for the film. We’ll have to see where we are in another six months. 3) Legion television show. Lionsgate still has this under option! 4) Steelheart Film. I had lunch with the producer at Comic-Con. It's still early in the process, but they're very engaged and very excited. That's it for updates. For now, I should get back to work on the Firefight outline. As always, thank you all for reading! <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/07/state-of-sanderson.html">Source</a>
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  24. So, I'm at Comic-Con in San Diego right now. You can see my schedule here. Among the other things I'm doing at the con is an interview with MTV Geek. That's not a public event at the convention, but they will be streaming it live on their site on Sunday at 1:00 p.m. Pacific time. And as part of the interview livestream, MTV Geek will be premiering the book trailer that Delacorte made for STEELHEART. It will be exciting, so set your alarms for 1:00 p.m. Pacific in two days. (Right now their countdown clock says the trailer reveal will be at 8:00 p.m. on Sunday, but we're pretty sure that's a mistake.) And right now, MTV Geek has put up a new preview of STEELHEART on their site. If you haven't read the prologue you should read that first, and then come back and read chapters 10 and 11 on MTV Geek's site. MTV Geek has also revealed the Comic-Con exclusive Steelheart poster by DC Comics artist John Van Fleet. Go there to check it out. I'll be signing prints of the poster with Mr. Van Fleet at the DC Comics booth #1915 today at 11:00 a.m. <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/07/read-preview-2-of-steelheart-steelheart.html">Source</a>
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  25. I'm leaving today for Comic-Con, and I'll be there Friday through Sunday. See you there! There will also be a Steelheart trailer reveal online on Sunday with MTV Geek; I'll add the link later. Date: July 19–21, 2013 Place: San Diego Convention Center Address: 111 West Harbor Drive San Diego, CA 92101 Schedule: Friday, July 19th 11:00–11:30 a.m., booth 1915 DC Entertainment Signing with John Van Fleet Signing exclusive Steelheart poster prints by John Van Fleet 2:30–3:30 p.m., Room 24ABC Epic Fantasy Panel Dragons, elves, and magic—epic fantasy transports us to another world. Colleen Lindsay and some of the genre's biggest authors discuss the worlds of their own creation and what fantasy has to say about our own world: Robin Hobb (Blood of Dragons), Raymond Feist (Magician's End), Django Wexler (The Thousand Names), Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn and The Wheel of Time series), Melissa de la Cruz (Frozen), Christopher Paolini (the Inheritance cycle), and Daniel Abraham (The Tyrant's Law). 4:00–5:00 p.m., Table AA09, Autograph Area Signing by authors from the Epic Fantasy Panel 5:00–6:00 p.m., booth 2707Tor Booth Signing Brandon will sign copies of The Way of Kings (and probably any other books you bring) Saturday, July 20th 1:00–2:00 p.m., booth 1515 Random House Booth Signing Signing ARCs of Steelheart This is a ticketed signing. Tickets can be picked up at the Random House booth 1515 on Saturday when the booth opens. The line will start forming 15 minutes before the signing. Sunday, July 21st 2:30–3:30 p.m., Room 23ABC Safety Not Guaranteed, Post-Apocalyptic Panel Dystopian societies, postapocalyptic scenarios, enhanced (and deadly) abilities, and mysterious government branches make the future a not-so-safe place to be. Moderator Anna Jarzab (Tandem) joins authors Marie Lu (the Legend series), Gen Albin (Crewel), Brandon Sanderson (Steelheart), Margaret Stohl (Icons), Amy Tintera (Reboot), and Michael Johnston (Frozen) as they discuss what it takes to survive in the future worlds they've created. 4:00–5:00 p.m., Table AA09, Autograph Area Signing with the previous panel's authors. Brandon will sign ARCs of Steelheart (and probably any other books you bring). Notes: The "Firstborn"/"Defending Elysium" con exclusive hardcover will be on sale at Mysterious Galaxy's booth, #1119. Badali Jewelry will be at booth #532/534 with their beautiful assortment of jewelry based on Elantris, the Mistborn series, and more. <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/07/my-san-diego-comic-con-international.html">Source</a>
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  26. Recently I got back from The Rithmatist tour, so it's time for me to post some pictures of some of the cool things I saw and some of the neat things you all gave me. I appreciate the time and thought put into the gifts. Take a look at this Steel Inquisitor sculpture Meghan Etzel-Hardman gave me. Wow! You can take a look at more of her work at her site. These awesome Mistborn costumes came from the hard work of Sarah Levinson, who came with her pals to Phoenix Comicon. From left to right: Karen as Tindwyl, Varouj as Sazed (I think I saw him dressed as Aang from Avatar one of the others days), me dressed as myself, Brian as Elend, and Sarah as Vin. The attention to detail on these costumes is amazing! Here's a beautiful bookmark I got from the Tattered Cover when I signed there, beads from New Orleans, A Game of Thrones card game, and a silver spoon and expertly knitted animals for Baby Melvin (not his real name). At one of my tour stops back east, I met fellow Tor author David Walton. He was kind enough to give me a copy of his latest book Quintessence, which I enjoyed reading during my flights. One reader, lmlnewburg, created some fan art for a story idea the Writing Excuses cast helped me brainstorm about psychic birds in the jungle, "Sixth of the Dusk." And as usual, the various assortment of Magic cards: Emily Grange knitted this koloss based on Ben McSweeney's illustrations. The detail on this guy is amazing! The event put on June 3rd by the King's English Bookshop and hosted by the Provo Library was a great success. With nearly 500 people in attendance, this was probably the second-largest non-release-party event that I've had for one of my books so far. At the signing, I received this beautiful glass ornament from the folks at Gomm Studios (check out their gallery of stained glass). There were some nice T-shirts for those working the event. They gave me one too. Take a look at that enormous gear decoration! Incidentally, the picture below was chosen by Publishers Weekly as their photo of the day on June 6th. In addition to the book store signings, Phoenix Comicon and BookExpo America were all part of the tour. It made for a crazy time, but as always, I want to thank you all for coming out to the signings and other events. Because of you, The Rithmatist debuted at #6 on the New York Times Bestseller list. <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-rithmatist-tour-swag.html">Source</a>
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  27. The anthology THIS IS HOW YOU DIE, sequel to THE MACHINE OF DEATH, was released today. I don't have a story in it (I was considering submitting something, but I'm way too busy), but my friend and alpha reader Karen Stay Ahlstrom (who happens to be married to my assistant Peter Ahlstrom) does have a story in the volume. I was surprised when she submitted her story to our writing group, since she usually participates as a reader rather than a writer, but it was a great story and I think the anthology's editors (Ryan North, David Malki!, and Matthew Bennardo) made a good choice when they plucked it from the field of over 2000 submissions for the volume. What is THIS IS HOW YOU DIE, and what is the Machine of Death phenomenon? Longtime readers of my blog know I follow a lot of different webcomics. This particular phenomenon started with the following strip from DINOSAUR COMICS: Buy the trade paperback here: Amazon Barnes & Noble IndieBound Books-A-Million Powell's The Book Depository Buy the ebook here: Kindle (US)(CA)(UK) Nook Kobo iBookstore (US)(CA)(UK)(AU)(NZ)(IE) Google Play As I understand it, discussion got underway in the webcomics community about how cool the idea was: a machine that predicted your manner of death, but didn't give you enough details for that knowledge to be very useful to you. DINOSAUR COMICS' creator Ryan North and WONDERMARK creator David Malki! then got together with writer Matthew Bennardo and they edited the anthology THE MACHINE OF DEATH to explore the concept further. That book was indie-published and hit #1 on Amazon. THIS IS HOW YOU DIE is the sequel, and it was picked up by mainstream publisher Grand Central, an imprint of Hachette. I think the concept is a great one, and the first book is quite entertaining. If you've read the first volume and are wondering if you should read the second, you may have noticed that one issue with the first is that a number of the stories tread the same ground, making a few of them a bit repetitive. The second book breaks that mold—the editors specifically put out a call for stories that took the concept in new and interesting directions. I've read the second volume, and it certainly does that! A few of the stories do start out seeming like they're going to be retreads and then you realize that something is wildly different. That's the case with Karen's story, titled "Machine of Death." Each story in both anthologies has a title that is the cause of death read from the card the machine produces, such as "Natural Causes" and "Execution by Beheading," but as in the comic above, these are often misleading. And that's also the case with Karen's story. What if you haven't read the first volume? Don't worry. These are both concept anthologies, not a coherent narrative. Each story stands on its own. All you need to know is the initial concept of a machine that predicts how you die, and you're good to go. The stories can be read in any order or no order. If you haven't read the first volume, don't hesitate to read the second one now and decide later whether you want to read the first one. These are the cream of the crop (though the first volume also has some very good stories—and it's currently in the Humble Ebook Bundle II, which is a great deal). There's also this trailer for the book (or basically just the concept). It's a bit gory, if you want to avoid that kind of thing. This is How You Die: Stories of the Machine of Death - watch more funny videos THIS IS HOW YOU DIE – 90 page preview by David Malki <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/07/this-is-how-you-die-stories-of.html">Source</a>
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  28. This week's Writing Excuses podcast episode is entitled "Your First Contract" and it's about exactly that! We're not lawyers so don't consider this to be legal advice, but as a writer you're a a small business owner who should be thinking about this sort of thing. The STEELHEART fan art contest ends tonight at midnight (probably Mountain Time). There are over 30 entries so far. Fantastic work, folks! I'm looking forward to seeing what else gets submitted before the deadline. Note: This contest is only for people in the US and Canada, but Fantasy Book Critic has a book giveaway that is open worldwide. They don't have the Mega Vault though. Tor.com's Way of Kings reread has reached chapters 19 and 20, which includes Dalinar's first highstorm vision of the book. Ta'veren Tees has a new shirt up for preorder, called the Golden Crane. It's available for men and women. The library comic UNSHELVED does a "book club" comic every week. The most recent one is on THE WELL OF ASCENSION. They also featured ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS a few years ago. Something very cool today is that Tor.com is celebrating their five-year anniversary by giving away an ebook of every piece of short fiction Tor.com has ever published, including my novelette "Firstborn." This ebook is available to anyone registered at Tor.com. All of the stories are still online for free, but the download is in convenient ebook format epub, mobi, and pdf. These stories are available from the ebook vendors for 99¢ each, so the following huge list for free (in alphabetical order by author) is a great deal: When We Were Heroes, by Daniel Abraham Olga, by C.T. Adams Foundation, by Ann Aguirre The Department of Alterations, by Gennifer Albin The Fermi Paradox is Our Business Model, by Charlie Jane Anders Six Months, Three Days, by Charlie Jane Anders Intestate, by Charlie Jane Anders Legacy Lost, by Anna Banks The Witch of Duva, by Leigh Bardugo The Too-Clever Fox, by Leigh Bardugo The Girl Who Sang Rose Madder, by Elizabeth Bear The Horrid Glory of Its Wings, by Elizabeth Bear Faster Gun, by Elizabeth Bear The Final Now, by Gregory Benford Grace Immaculate, by Gregory Benford Backscatter, by Gregory Benford River of Souls, by Beth Bernobich A Window or a Small Box, by Jedediah Berry Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes, by Michael Bishop Catch ‘Em in the Act, by Terry Bisson TVA Baby, by Terry Bisson The Cockroach Hat, by Terry Bisson Shall We Gather, by Alex Bledsoe Prophet, by Jennifer Bosworth The Ruined Queen of Harvest World, by Damien Broderick Time Considered as a Series of Thermite Burns in No Particular Order, by Damien Broderick The Memory Coder, by Jessica Brody The Desecrator, by Steven Brust Brother. Prince. Snake., by Cecil Castellucci We Have Always Lived on Mars, by Cecil Castellucci Our Human, by Adam Troy Castro The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere, by John Chu Fare Thee Well, by Cathy Clamp The Commonplace Book, by Jacob Clifton What Makes a River, by Deborah Coates The Ghosts of Christmas, by Paul Cornell The Elephant in the Room, by Paul Cornell Day One, by Matthew Costello Am I Free To Go?, by Kathryn Cramer Tourists, by Sean Craven Eve of Sin City, by S.J. Day The Cage, by A.M. Dellamonica Among the Silvering Herd, by A.M. Dellamonica Wild Things, by A.M. Dellamonica Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away, by Cory Doctorow On 20468 Petercook, by Andy Duncan The Strange Case of Mr. Salad Monday, by G.D. Falksen Men Who Wish to Drown, by Elizabeth Fama The Iron Shirts, by Michael Flynn A Clean Sweep With All the Trimmings, by James Alan Gardner Lightbringers and Rainmakers, by Felix Gilman Shade, by Steven Gould Bugs in the Arroyo, by Steven Gould Steampunk Quartet, by Eileen Gunn Mother, Crone, Maiden, by Cat Hellisen The Ink Readers of Doi Saket, by Thomas Olde Heuvelt Too Fond, by Leanna Renee Hieber At the Foot of the Lighthouse, by Erin Hoffman Ghost Hedgehog, by Nina Kiriki Hoffman A Spell of Vengeance, by D.B. Jackson The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles, by Kij Johnson Ponies, by Kij Johnson Crazy Me, by James Patrick Kelly First Flight, by Mary Robinette Kowal How to Make a Triffid, by Kelly Lagor A Water Matter, by Jay Lake The Speed of Time, by Jay Lake The Starship Mechanic, by Jay Lake and Ken Scholes Dress Your Marines in White, by Emmy Laybourne A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel, by Yoon Ha Lee Uncle Flower's Homecoming Waltz, by Marissa Lingen Earth Hour, by Ken MacLeod Farewell Performance, by Nick Mamatas Though Smoke Shall Hide the Sun, by Brit Mandelo The Finite Canvas, by Brit Mandelo The Hanging Game, by Helen Marshall The Courtship of the Queen, by Bruce McAllister Heads Will Roll, by Lish McBride Swift, Brutal Retaliation, by Meghan McCarron Preparations, by Mark Mills About Fairies, by Pat Murphy Fire Above, Fire Below, by Garth Nix Ruled, by Caragh M. O'Brien Hello, Moto, by Nnedi Okorafor Sacrifice of the First Sheason, by Peter Orullian The Great Defense of Layosah, by Peter Orullian The Battle of the Round, by Peter Orullian Sweetheart, by Abbi Mei Otis Ragnarok, by Paul Park Four Horsemen, at Their Leisure, by Richard Parks The Rotten Beast, by Mary E. Pearson Angel Season, by J.T. Petty Silver Linings, by Tim Pratt The Button Man and the Murder Tree, by Cherie Priest Clockwork Fairies, by Cat Rambo The Next Invasion, by Robert Reed Our Candidate, by Robert Reed Swingers, by Robert Reed The Cairn in Slater Woods, by Gina Rosati Jack of Coins, by Christopher Rowe Jack and the Aktuals, or, Physical Applications of Transfinite Set Theory, by Rudy Rucker Good Night, Moon, by Rudy Rucker Loco, by Rudy Rucker Jacks and Queens at the Green Mill, by Marie Rutkoski The Film-Makers of Mars, by Geoff Ryman Firstborn, by Brandon Sanderson After the Coup, by John Scalzi The President's Brain is Missing, by John Scalzi Shadow War of the Night Dragons, Book One: The Dead City: Prologue, by John Scalzi A Weeping Czar Beholds the Fallen Moon, by Ken Scholes Making My Entrance Again With My Usual Flair, by Ken Scholes Two Stories, by Ken Scholes If Dragon's Mass Eve Be Cold and Clear, by Ken Scholes Rag and Bone, by Priya Sharma Do Not Touch, by Prudence Shen The Night Children: An Escape From Furnace Story, by Alexander Gordon Smith King of Marbury, by Andrew Smith Beauty Belongs to the Flowers, by Matthew Sanborn Smith Overtime, by Charles Stross Down on the Farm, by Charles Stross A Tall Tail, by Charles Stross Zeppelin City, by Michael Swanwick The Trains That Climb the Winter Tree, by Michael Swanwick The Dala Horse, by Michael Swanwick The Mongolian Wizard, by Michael Swanwick The Fire Gown, by Michael Swanwick Day of the Kraken, by Michael Swanwick Eros, Philia, Agape, by Rachel Swirsky A Memory of Wind, by Rachel Swirsky The Monster's Million Faces, by Rachel Swirsky Portrait of Lisane da Patagnia, by Rachel Swirsky Sing, by Karin Tidbeck What Doctor Gottlieb Saw, by Ian Tregillis Vilcabamba, by Harry Turtledove The Star and the Rockets, by Harry Turtledove The House That George Built, by Harry Turtledove We Haven't Got There Yet, by Harry Turtledove Shtetl Days, by Harry Turtledove Lee at the Alamo, by Harry Turtledove Running of the Bulls, by Harry Turtledove The City Quiet as Death, by Steven Utley The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland—For a Little While, by Catherynne M. Valente Terrain, by Genevieve Valentine Last Son of Tomorrow, by Greg van Eekhout Errata, by Jeff VanderMeer A Stroke of Dumb Luck, by Shiloh Walker Last Train to Jubilee Bay, by Kali Wallace Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction, by Jo Walton The Nostalgist, by Daniel H. Wilson Super Bass, by Kai Ashante Wilson The Palencar Project, by Gregory Benford, L.E. Modesitt, Jr., James Morrow, Michael Swanwick, and Gene Wolfe, Edited by David G. Hartwell <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/07/steelheart-fan-art-contest-ends-tonight.html">Source</a>
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  29. I'm in Connecticut this weekend for ConnectiCon. Below is my schedule! But also, the STEELHEART fanart contest (you can win books!) is still ongoing, with a deadline of this Friday. Details here, and the first entries from readers are up here. ConnectiCon, Hartford Place: ConnectiCon Address: Connecticut Convention Center 100 Columbus Boulevard Hartford, CT 06103 Phone: 860-249-6000 Type: Convention Schedule: July 12th–14th, 2013 Friday 1:00–2:00 p.m. Brandon Sanderson Autograph Session Signing with Brandon will be Bryce Moore, author of Vodnik Location: Online Media Guest Hall Friday 4:30–5:30 p.m. Brandon Sanderson Q&A Location: Panel 2 Friday 6:00–7:00 p.m. Last Dance with Mary Sue: How to Write Great Characters Location: Panel 7 Friday 9:00 p.m. Magic Draft with Brandon Location: Special Events 2, the capital room in the Marriott Please sign up ahead of time with the convention! Slots are limited. If there are any slots left on Friday, you can sign up at the 1:00 p.m. autograph session. Saturday 2:30–3:30 p.m. Worldbuilding in Fantasy & Scifi 201 Location: Panel 4 Saturday 5:00–6:00 p.m. Starting Out With a Bang Location: Panel 1 Sunday 1:00–2:00 p.m. Brandon Sanderson Autograph Session Location: Online Media Guest Hall Sunday 3:00–4:00 p.m. The Changing Face of Publishing Location: Panel 8 Notes: Brandon is a Guest of Honor ConnectiCon will have copies for sale of the con exclusive double "Firstborn"/"Defending Elysium" at the Literary Guest Table in the Online Media Guest Hall. <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/07/my-connecticon-schedule.html">Source</a>
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  30. Below I have info on a contest that's Steelheart-related (sorry, for the US and Canada only). But first some updates. This week's Writing Excuses podcast episode covers chapter breakdowns—what determines our chapter breaks? How do we handle POV shifts, scene/sequel balance, and other considerations when we're carving our stories into chapters? My assistant Peter has uploaded another Twitter posts archive, this one covering the past month. And Tor.com has put up another Ecology of Roshar post, about purple and orange blood. I'm pleased to announce that my novel The Alloy of Law (or L'Alliage de Justice in French) has won France's Imaginales Festival prize for best translated novel. I'm glad that my French readers enjoyed it! When I got back from the The Rithmatist tour, I found this waiting for me from Delacorte, the publisher of my upcoming YA novel Steelheart. This is the Random House Mega Vault. Random House has graciously donated three of them to be given away. And yes, that case is real metal. Not sure what type, but I suspect an Allomancer could make use of it. Opening the Mega Vault: Inside are copies of the first books in three new series releasing this fall. The Eye of Minds by James Dashner releases October 8th. Teardrop by Lauren Kate releases October 22nd. And of course, Steelheart, my post-apocalyptic young adult novel about normal people assassinating the powerful evil Epics who rule mankind. Steelheart releases September 24th. I'm sure the other two books are also appetizing reads. Though Dashner's book could use some salt. Want to get your hands on one of our three Mega Vaults? Here's what you do. Step 1: Read the prologue to Steelheart at this link. Step 2: Create some awesome fan art based on the prologue. Let's keep it to the visual arts. So, original illustrations, sketches, comic book panels, Photoshopped images, etc. Even videos, if you want to get that ambitious. Please keep the images tasteful and "safe for work." Step 3: Log in to the Brandon Sanderson fan forums at The 17th Shard. I know making an account somewhere can be a hassle, but other methods we considered for organizing this were just too complicated logistically. Step 4: Post your image in their Steelheart Mega Vault Contest gallery. To post, click the black "upload" button in the upper right-hand corner. Click "choose file" and upload as usual. Click "review and publish." Add a title and description if you want, then finish and publish it. The webmasters on the forums will approve all images before they are posted. Step 5: You'll have a week to submit—the deadline is July 15th. After the deadline, the webmasters and my assistants Peter and Isaac will narrow down the submissions to ten unannounced semifinalists. From those ten, I'll pick my three favorites, whose creators will each receive one of the Mega Vaults from Random House. Note that they can only ship to the United States and Canada, so please accept my apologies if you live outside these areas. I'm looking forward to seeing what you all come up with! Good luck! <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/07/random-house-mega-vault-contest-updates.html">Source</a>
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  31. In this week's Writing Excuses episode, Mary, Dan, Howard, and I talk about Space Opera. Give it a listen. My assistant Peter has uploaded another Twitter posts archive. There will be another one next week; we're a bit behind. As always, you can follow me on Twitter and Facebook (both have basically the same content) for up-to-the-minute updates. I'm a bit more likely to respond on Twitter since I find it more convenient, but there's a great community on Facebook discussing the posts and I sometimes respond there too. Tor.com's reread of THE WAY OF KINGS hit chapter 18, where Dalinar and Adolin race the highstorm, among other things. The post also includes this quote from Carl Engle-Laird at Tor: "After last week's reread some of you percipient readers noticed that Amazon.com has changed the release date for book 2 in the Stormlight Archive to January 21st. I've asked around the Tor offices, and can say that the book is currently scheduled for that date. Feel free to update your calendars, with the understanding that the release date could still change in the future." As to whether we'll hit that date (which despite the above, is not an officially announced final date), there's a good chance we will, but the date could still slip around a bit or even change drastically. I'm very close to done writing the first draft of WORDS OF RADIANCE; I've written the climax and the epilogue, but there are still a few scenes in the middle of the book that aren't finished yet. And then of course come revisions, which will take a couple of months. <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/07/updates-for-this-week.html">Source</a>
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  32. Alright, let's start with the basics. To make a space opera, you have to get to space. Now, us humans have already done that... but in just about the single most innefficient way possible. We jam-packed a bunch of metal tubes with straight Hydrogen and lit it all on fire to explode a few lucky individuals into low Earth orbit. The Apollo 11 mission's Saturn V rocket was the most powerful boi ever to be yeeted into space, and burned TWENTY TONNES of fuel per SECOND as it was launching. The propellant accounted for 85% of the rocket's total weight. It took four days to get to the moon, and of the 110.6 meters of rocket that was launched initially, about ten or so actually held the astronauts. 15% by weight included the actual rocket, and less than 10% made up the bit that dropped Mr.'s Armstrong and Aldrin onto the lunar surface. I don't think I should have to say that we can do better than that. Step One: Railguns Using the physics and engineering that we know and love, our beloved NASA scientists have come up with quite the solution to the whole "rockets suck" problem. All they need is two miles of train track, a cargo jet of X-Plane caliber, and enough power to run a small town. Railguns use electromagnetism to propel objects. It's the same as any old magnet: you put south at south and they push each other apart. However, electromagnets can control for how much power this magnet has, meaning the more electricity you pump into it, the more force they push at each other with. Thus, you put a massive coil thingy engine mcbobber (I'm no technician; I don't know the details) at the end of the track and stick your plane (called a Scramjet, apparently) right there full of its stuff. Then you fire up the electromagnet, and YEET the scramjet down the track. Two miles would give it more than enough time to get up to speed (mach four), and then hurls the jet off the end. The incredible air pressure ignites the fuel in the chamber required to get it higher in the air, eventually getting the scramjet up to Mach 10. At 20,000 feet, the jet can't continue flying ('cause there isn't any... y'know... air); so this is where spaceflight begins. The scramjet fires its payload into space, then glides back down to Earth for reuse (it was projected that such a machine could be ready for use again in just twenty-four hours). From here, NASA projected that the payload - in the example situation, it was a satellite of comparable mass to the moon lander - would be in orbit in just a day, and with the same railgun they could send men to the moon on the next. But that's just the first step. Maybe that works for getting things off the ground, but that's nowhere near enough for a full-on space opera. You can't have incredibly epic space battles if it takes years just to reach the next planet over. So this is where our next epic physics boi comes in. Step Two: Trebuchets (hopefully the image actually does its thing) This is a trebuchet. It uses the most basic physics to do the most awesome thing ever: yeet things. On one side, you have your payload, whether that be a boulder, a cow, or a flaming bag of dog poo. On the other side, you have a counterweight. You lock the thing in place to load up your boulder, then unlock it to have the weight heave down and catapult the boulder into enemy lines. What's more, the engineering of these things only ever improved, increasing accuracy, distance, and power. So, naturally, we're gonna put one in space. This is the Skyhook. It's a really, really long cord (made of yada yada 'super tough fiber') extending down into low Earth orbit. At one end is a hook thingy, and at the other is a counterweight. The physics are really simple: spin. So imagine you're a payload, having been yeeted into orbit by a railgun-powered x-plane. Now you're awaiting a years-long journey so you can drop off your brand-new rover on Mars or whatever. But instead of just flying through space endlessly, you get caught by the end of a really long space rope. It's just dipped on down into Earth's atmosphere, but then continues its endless spin routine. When it was put into orbit originally, it was given a little push on one end so that it spirals in its path; and, as things tend to do in space, it continues in this spiral for time and eternity. Then the tether continues spinning, spinning, spinning... you're dragged upwards and away from the Earth, approach the apex of the spin... And then it YEETS you. Skyhooks use basic parabolic physics to simply cast things around like rocks out of slings. You get all the wondrous momentum from rotation without any of the nasty gravitational pull stuff that Earth tends to do! So now you're zooming through space at intense speeds, with no need for fuel or steering. So as long as the computers calculated trajectories correctly (which they tend to do, being computers), you'll be landing on Mars in no time. No time being, that is, about three to five months. Better than seven, though - or nine, if you're a human. So now the solar system's much more local, but even then we can't have epic space battles with just that. So... Step Three: What's Next? First of all, these things will be used to colonize the solar system. It might be possible to build some really dang big skyhooks on Mars' moons. Being tidally locked, you could have two - one on either end - and have them act like an elevator. You latch onto the close end from Mars, beam yourself up, then yeet into space from the other side. Payloads coming in could catch onto the far end and travel back down into low Mars orbit to get down planetside. These would be the most massive and effective tethers possible in the solar system, and probably act as a major nexus for all local space travel. Now, then, we do have a couple issues. What happens if something goes wrong? What if the calculations were off? What if something breaks? Could you send a luxury cruise of rich folks headed to Venus for vacation careening into the void for all eternity? Planes can make emergency landings, and boats can send out distress signals to get picked up. But in space? None of that will be any good. Imagine trying to make an emergency landing on Jupiter. Of course, there will always be a chance of things going horrendously wrong. Mid-air accidents happen and crash planes into mountains; sailors get stranded and die of starvation. What keeps people doing these things is the incredible infrustructure and technological redundancies that reduce the risk factor more and more and more. Planes never crash because just one thing got overlooked; it's always due to a myriad of errors stacking on top of each other and compounding to make things go horrendously wrong. Heck, every airliner actually has a minimum required maintenance level, meaning that a lot of planes you fly will actually have problems deemed negligible by the captain and crew to keep the thing flying. So what things can we add to interstellar travel systems to ensure that nobody gets killed in the vacuum? 3.1 - More tethers While there are eight and a half planets roaming around out there (Pluto? Hello?), they aren't the only things in space capable of maintaining tethers. If you can put a skyhook in orbit around the Earth, it stands to reason that you could put several in concentric orbits around the Sun as well. You could put them on asteroids, dwarf planets, or even each other (as dual counterweights) to create a massive network of tethers throughout the solar system. Think of it like gas stations: places you can go to refuel, buy a snack, or take an emergency pee break. If something were to go wrong on a flight, you could correct your orbit by the necessary amount to grab hold of one of these intermediary tethers and readjust your trajectory. Or, heck, they could even be mandatory stops on a trip. Maybe a several months'-long voyage really isn't all that great for your craft, so you need to stop it somewhere for maintenance; or your departure doesn't line up with where Mars is at the time, so you need to transfer between a whole network of the suckers in order to line yourself up properly. And, of course, if you're threatened with the cold heart of space, you'd have several times as many points to save yourself than you would if Mars was the only place with a tether attached. 3.2 - Better engines I think it goes without saying that we humans have had our fill of combustion. Hydrocarbons, I love ya to death... but us peoples really need to figure out an alternative already. Fusion is the energy of the future. I say that unironically, because it clearly isn't the energy of the now. Fortunately, space really opens up that opportunity for us. The moon happens to have a lot of H-3: a Hydrogen isotope that works really well for cold(ish) fusion, and doesn't let off any radiation as a bonus. A clean, harvestable, and efficient energy source? Perfect for humanity! Powerful and compact engines would allow for direct, on-board steering. Instead of correcting over the long term with minute, calculated thrusts, you could make more drastic and immediate corrections in real time. This would open up jobs such as S P A C E P I L O T S, meaning that we can finally get to - Step Four: Epic Space Battles ...Okay, I'm not actually going to go into too much detail here. There are a LOT of thoughts for how to make a spaceship as effectively as humanly possible in combat, so I guess you could say that this step is more like... foreshadowing. Fourshadowing.
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  33. As discussed prior, the energy of the multiverse can be divided into four quadrants. Each quadrant has its own mechanics associated with it, including a solid form of that energy. These solids are known as fundamental substances, for it is from them that the worlds are made. Chaotic-Darkness: Mordite Unlike other forms of chaotic-dark essence, mordite does not destroy things it comes in contact with. Under most circumstances, it is inert. It can even be alloyed with other materials.This does not mean it is not dangerous, however; in fact, due to one simple property, mordite is perhaps the most dangerous thing in all of existence. This property of mordite is its ability to kill anything. No being is safe; not humans, not robots, not gods. Even the Witherlord could be slain with a mordite blade (that is, barring his ability to simply control any mordite that might be wielded against him). Just because a mordite blade can kill doesn't mean it always will - a glancing blow, one that does not strike the core of a being, will only gravely wound. But it will wound, resisting whatever magical healing factor the creature might have. Ordered-Darkness: Nullite Not much is known about the nullite: it is only the ennullers that have access to it, and they are notoriously secretive. Nullite is used to power the magic system of Silence, including the barriers that keep the most powerful entities in the universe trapped. Chaotic-Light: Prismite (commonly known as Narrativium) Prismite is by far the most common of the fundamental substances, especially within the confines of the Wall. Pieces of it are known as dream crystals and are used by various dream artists as a source of power for innumerable magic systems. Dream crystals are also used by dyrlings in a similar fashion to power their wild magic. Prismite is the substance that forms the matter of the world. Each dream crystal contains within it its own world, known as a dreamscape. Dream artists manipulate this dreamscape- consciously or unconsciously - and then project it onto the prismite of reality. The most powerful examples of this are the Narrators, who dictate whatever they desire. Ordered-Light: Luxite Luxite has been almost completely eradicated from reality in the present day. It specializes in the manipulation and the control of energy. Its best-known use is as a weapon against chaotic-dark entities, but it is also critical in maintaining the structure of the universe. Luxite forms the foundation upon which everything else is built, and without it all of reality would be subject to the ravages of the Void.
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  34. u/Aradanftw on Reddit put together a post converting Roshar's spheres to US Dollars. So this is 99% their work and not my own! But I thought it was interesting and something that I might want to reference more often down the road. Perhaps I'll remember to add more things to it. My main "contribution" was a push to reduce the values by an order of magnitude. The diamond chip was originally set at $2, based on the price of a loaf of bread. I'm not sure Aradanftw was entirely on board with this opinion, but the prices I've posted below are 1/10th of that. I'll admit that I'm not great with economics and inflation values, so I'm happy to be corrected on this. But it seems to me like we should compare the prices to Earth prices at a similar level of technological development? So I'm thinking we should look more at 19th century (-ish) US dollars rather than 21st century US dollars? The price of bread in early/pre-industrial society is different than modern society. Even now you can go to non-Western developing countries where a bit of bread is going to be a lot less than $2. And, admittedly, part of the drive for this is that $2 as you SMALLEST denomination of currency seems off to me. Aside from that price shift, I've also reorganized everything from lowest value to highest, and reworked some of the details. So assuming 1 diamond chip = a loaf of bread = $0.20, we've got the following prices: Rosharan spheres to US Dollars: 1 diamond chip (smallest denomination) - $0.20 Apothecary bandages, per armlength (1 diamond chip) - $0.20 Candied fruit (1 diamond chip) - $0.20 Shallan's trip to the Palanaeum (2 diamond chips) - $0.40 Bridgeman slave daily wages (1 diamond mark) - $1 Bridgeman daily wages (2 diamond marks) - $2 Tozbek's sailors' daily wages (1 ruby chip) - $2 Shallan's slaves' daily wages (1 ruby chip + 5 ruby chips toward slave debt) - $2 + $10 toward slave debt Apothecary needle and thread (2 diamond marks) - $2 Soldier's daily wages (5 diamond marks) - $5 Bowl of firemoss, each (1 garnet broam for three bowls)- $6.60 per bowl Adolin's tip to Kaladin (1 emerald chip) - $10 Apothecary larmic mucus (2 ruby marks) - $20 Mraize tips Mem for getting the aether from his suit (3 ruby marks) - $30 Apothecary lister's oil (2 sapphire marks) - $50 Palanaeum alcove rental (2 sapphire marks) - $50 Shallan's mistaken offer for candied fruit (1 emerald mark) - $50 Apothecary knobweed sap, per bottle (2 sapphire marks) $50 Copy of Words of Radiance, found by Gaz (2 sapphire broams) - $200 1 emerald broam (largest denomination) - $200 Shallan's weekly stipend (3 emerald broams) - $600 Renegotiated price for Shallan's books (2 emerald broams and 3 sapphire broams) - $700 Tvlakv's trade wagon and 5 slaves (5 emerald broams) - $1,000 Artmyrn's initial offer for Shallan's books (10 emerald broams) - $2,000 Shallan's aluminum necklass (10 emerald broams) - $2,000 Gaz's debt (80 ruby broams) - $3,200 Wikim and Balat's knives, each (20 emerald broams) - $4,000 Dalanar's offered price to purchase Sadaes's bridgemen, each (60 emerald broams) - $12,000 Palanaeum chit of admittance (1,000 sapphire broams) - $100,000 Sadaes would reject even if Dalinar this much for bridgemen, each (1,000 emerald broams) - $200,000 Again, I'm not ecoomist or historian, but I think these sound somewhat reasonable? Could be shifted around a little one way or the other, but I think the order of magnitude feels right. There are people (in extreme poverty) in our world who live on $2 per day. The wages for the sailors does seem a bit low, but both they and the bridgemen also essentially have free housing and (presumably) meals. So that's more of a stipend than a wage. Seems like a very reasonable wage for what is essentially a pre-industrial indentured servant? The minimum pricepoint of $0.20 STILL seems weirdly high, but I don't think we can go much lower. The bread doesn't seem bad, though it's odd to me candied fruit costs the same. What do you charge for a non-candied piece of fruit? Do people just not do that? They'd buy more than one piece? Perhaps the people at the bottom of society tend to just barter goods directly instead of using spheres. Books costing a few hundred dollars apiece seems somewhat reasonable? I expect books cost even more, prior to the printing press. But then Roshar is a bit more culturally developed despite that technology, so demand is probably bringing that price down. Dalinar's offer to buy the bridgemen is crazy. There were about 1,000 bridgemen I believe, which puts the total cost (if Sadeas had agreed) at $12 million. Apparently Dalinar could afford that (if only barely) while Sadeas's counter-offer of $200 million was going too far. So that's interesting. EDITS: 2021-08-17 I saw someone point out a WoB in which Brandon says that 1 dollar = 1 clearmark "sounds about right". (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/75/#e4380) Now, this is the kind of detail that I REALLY don't think Brandon is likely to remember off the top of his head, especially in the middle of a signing. So I don't put much weight in this. But it's something and it's exactly what I had here. So that's nice. Thanks to Caleb Richards on Facebook for catching an error on the cost of the Palanaeum alcove rental. Had $500 when it should have been $50. I did a quick search through Dawnshard and Rhythm of War and didn't find anything of note to add. Didn't get any transactions in the book where the spheres exchanged are made clear. So this should be up-to-date through RoW.
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  35. Everything I need to know I learned from Mistborn. Maybe this is because I’m just nerd, but when I come across some kind of problem, I find myself turning to books and movies and video games for solutions to my problems. As Kelsier once said, “Every action we take has consequences…both in Allomancy and in life.” I’m the kind of person that weighs the costs of my actions before I do much of anything. I know some people who do not, and they seem to be perpetually angry, depressed, stressed, or all three because they keep getting in their own way. Everyone’s life would be much simpler if they would learn to apply this basic principal. There is balance to everything, like with Ruin and Preservation. Sometimes, it’s horrific to turn on the news or read the newspaper, because it seems like everyone is fighting each other, everyone is sick, and even our environment is out to get us with disasters like earthquakes and floods. I think it’s easy to forget that even amidst all the chaos in our crazy little world, there is lots of good. Volunteer work to help disaster victims. Animal shelters that find homes for needy pets. Boy scouts helping old ladies across the street. I think it’s something of a statement that in Mistborn that at first is a much bigger focus than Preservation. It’s easy to forget—or even ignore—all the good around us. “Belief isn’t simply a thing for fair times and bright days, I think. What is belief—what is faith—if you don’t continue on after failure?” This one quote has helped me through a lot of hard times. I’m a fairly religious person, but I sometimes have days where everything seems to go wrong and no one is out there watching over me. Sometimes, I need to walk on my own and learn to fall so that I can pick myself up and not fall down again. “At first glance, the key and the lock it fits may seem very different. Different in shape, different in function, different in design. The man who looks at them without knowledge of their true nature might think them opposites for one is meant to open, and the other to keep closed. Yet, upon closer examination, he might see that without one, the other becomes useless. The wise man then sees that both lock and key were created for the same purpose.” Look closely at the people around you. They may seem like something unnecessary, something that doesn’t make sense, but there’s always more than meets the eye. There’s always another secret. You’ll be surprised what you’ll find. What about you guys? What has Mistborn taught you that’s helped you in your life?
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  36. Writing Excuses has two new episodes this week due to a goof on our part. We had planned to hold Mary's brainstorming episode back until the spring, but we forgot that there was a direct followup episode. The followup got released first and people were confused, so we've gone ahead and made it a two-episode week. Here are the episodes in chronological order: episode 51, Brainstorming with Mary, and THEN episode 50, Outlining the Mary Way. InkWing has a new blog post up about their December deadlines and the Windrunner pin, which they're giving away in each T-shirt order, or which you can get by entering the contest in the blog post comments. I have two events in Utah this week. Dragons Keep Magic The Gathering Draft & Signing, Orem Date: 12.13.12 Time: 6:00 p.m.–10:00 p.m. Place: Dragons Keep Address: 48 W 300 N Orem, UT 84601 Phone: (801) 225-5215 Schedule: Draft: 6:00 p.m. Signing: 9–10 p.m. Limited amount of potential draft participants; sign up now. Cost: $12.00 Dragon's Keep Standard Draft Pricing and Prizes This one will focus on ALL of my books, and while there might be a few copies of the Mistborn Adventure Game for sale, this is my holiday signing for Utah Valley. Because of that, we'll bring a lot of copies of various things to sell.</p> Worlds of Fantasy at the Salt Lake City Library Date: 12.15.12 Time: 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m. Place: Salt Lake City Library Address: 210 East 400 South Salt Lake City, UT 84111 Phone: (801) 524-8200 Schedule: See the library website for the full schedule, which begins at 10:00 a.m.. My events are as follows: Fantasy Literature and the Re-imagined Myth with Brandon Sanderson 12:00 noon–1:00 p.m., Nancy Tessman Auditorium Sponsored by Utah Humanities Council A discussion exploring the questions; from whence did Fantasy Literature Rise? What is its place in contemporary culture? Where is it going? Brandon Sanderson Q&A: World Building 1:30–3:00 p.m., Lower Urban Room Brandon Sanderson Signing 3:30 p.m., Night-Flight Comics at Library Square Bookplates for A MEMORY OF LIGHT will be available.</p>Here is the Salt Lake Library's press release on the event: Popular Fantasy Author Brandon Sanderson Speaks at The City Library Highlights Worlds of Fantasy Exhibit on Display December 10, 2012—Salt Lake City—Fantasy is a major component in our cultural zeitgeist. The past decade has been filled with literature, film, games, and art that capture society's desire for the exploration of magical worlds. From Harry Potter to Game of Thrones, The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, Dungeons and Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, our pop-culture world is one obsessed with fantasy. Join The City Library for a series of events highlighting the mystical and magical. On December 15, The City Library will be transformed. An ongoing exhibit featuring sets and pieces from a locally-produced fantasy film, Flight from Shadow, will be the backdrop for a series of fantastic events, including an all-ages costume contest—from the worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Robert Jordan, wand-making classes, film screenings, book browses, tours of the exhibit, and a performance by the Salt Lake Pops Orchestra. The feature of the December 15 celebration is a lecture with famed author Brandon Sanderson, beginning at 12pm in the Main Library Auditorium. Sanderson is best known for finishing Robert Jordan's epic series, The Wheel of Time. The final installment of this series will be released on January 8, 2013. Sanderson will also host an intimate Q&A, focusing on world-building, followed by a book signing. Other Worlds of Fantasy events continue through the month of January, including Dungeons and Dragons at the Chapman Branch, and a continuation of the Fantasy Genre Speaker's Series, focusing on art, film, and deconstructing Middle Earth. The Genre Speaker's Series is funded by the Utah Humanities Council, and Worlds of Fantasy has been sponsored by The City Library, University of Utah Department of English, Fort Douglas Military Museum, McGrew Studios, Wagonland Adventures, Absinthe Hair and Grooming Parlor, Razor's Edge, Abbie Warnock Photography, Badali Jewelers, Wheel of 9 Productions, Utah Museum of Fine Arts, The Downtown Alliance, Gryphon Games, Night Flight Comics, Utah Film Commission, and Marcela Torres. For more information on Worlds of Fantasy at The City Library, visit www.slcpl.org/fantasy. Source
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  37. We're geeks. We learn things and share, right? Well, this year at WisCon I learned firsthand how to report sexual harassment. In case you ever need or want to know, here's what I learned and how it went. Two editors I knew were throwing a book release party on Friday night at the convention. I was there, standing around with a drink talking about Babylon 5, the work of China Mieville, and Marxist theories of labor (like you do) when an editor from a different house joined the conversation briefly and decided to do the thing that I reported. A minute or two after he left, one of the hosts came over to check on me. I was lucky: my host was alert and aware. On hearing what had happened, he gave me the name of a mandated reporter at the company the harasser was representing at the convention. The mandated reporter was respectful and professional. Even though I knew them, reporting this stuff is scary, especially about someone who's been with a company for a long time, so I was really glad to be listened to. Since the incident happened during Memorial Day weekend, I was told Human Resources would follow up with me on Tuesday. There was most of a convention between then and Tuesday, and I didn't like the thought of more of this nonsense (there's a polite word for it!) happening, so I went and found a convention Safety staffer. He asked me right away whether I was okay and whether I wanted someone with me while we talked or would rather speak privately. A friend was nearby, a previous Guest of Honor at the convention, and I asked her to stay for the conversation. The Safety person asked whether I'd like to make a formal report. I told him, "I'd just like to tell you what happened informally, I guess, while I figure out what I want to do." It may seem odd to hesitate to make a formal report to a convention when one has just called somebody's employer and begun the process of formally reporting there, but that's how it was. I think I was a little bit in shock. (I kept shaking my head and thinking, "Dude, seriously??") So the Safety person closed his notebook and listened attentively. Partway through my account, I said, "Okay, open your notebook, because yeah, this should be official." Thus began the formal report to the convention. We listed what had happened, when and where, the names of other people who were there when it happened, and so forth. The Safety person told me he would be taking the report up to the next level, checked again to see whether I was okay, and then went. I had been nervous about doing it, even though the Safety person and the friend sitting with us were people I have known for years. Sitting there, I tried to imagine how nervous I would have been if I were twenty-some years old and at my first convention. What if I were just starting out and had been hoping to show a manuscript to that editor? Would I have thought this kind of behavior was business as usual? What if I were afraid that person would blacklist me if I didn't make nice and go along with it? If I had been less experienced, less surrounded by people I could call on for strength and encouragement, would I have been able to report it at all? Well, I actually know the answer to that one: I wouldn't have. I know this because I did not report it when it happened to me in my twenties. I didn't report it when it happened to me in my forties either. There are lots of reasons people might not report things, and I'm not going to tell someone they're wrong for choosing not to report. What I intend to do by writing this is to give some kind of road map to someone who is considering reporting. We're geeks, right? Learning something and sharing is what we do. So I reported it to the convention. Somewhere in there they asked, "Shall we use your name?" I thought for a millisecond and said, "Oh, hell yes." This is an important thing. A formal report has a name attached. More about this later. The Safety team kept checking in with me. The coordinators of the convention were promptly involved. Someone told me that since it was the first report, the editor would not be asked to leave the convention. I was surprised it was the first report, but hey, if it was and if that's the process, follow the process. They told me they had instructed him to keep away from me for the rest of the convention. I thanked them. Starting on Tuesday, the HR department of his company got in touch with me. They too were respectful and took the incident very seriously. Again I described what, where and when, and who had been present for the incident and aftermath. They asked me if I was making a formal report and wanted my name used. Again I said, "Hell, yes." Both HR and Legal were in touch with me over the following weeks. HR called and emailed enough times that my husband started calling them "your good friends at HR." They also followed through on checking with the other people, and did so with a promptness that was good to see. Although their behavior was professional and respectful, I was stunned when I found out that mine was the first formal report filed there as well. From various discussions in person and online, I knew for certain that I was not the only one to have reported inappropriate behavior by this person to his employer. It turned out that the previous reports had been made confidentially and not through HR and Legal. Therefore my report was the first one, because it was the first one that had ever been formally recorded. Corporations (and conventions with formal procedures) live and die by the written word. "Records, or it didn't happen" is how it works, at least as far as doing anything official about it. So here I was, and here we all were, with a situation where this had definitely happened before, but which we had to treat as if it were the first time—because for formal purposes, it was. I asked whether people who had originally made confidential reports could go ahead and file formal ones now. There was a bit of confusion around an erroneous answer by someone in another department, but then the person at Legal clearly said that "the past is past" is not an accurate summation of company policy, and that she (and all the other people listed in the company's publically-available code of conduct) would definitely accept formal reports regardless of whether the behavior took place last week or last year. If you choose to report, I hope this writing is useful to you. If you're new to the genre, please be assured that sexual harassment is NOT acceptable business-as-usual. I have had numerous editors tell me that reporting harassment will NOT get you blacklisted, that they WANT the bad apples reported and dealt with, and that this is very important to them, because this kind of thing is bad for everyone and is not okay. The thing is, though, that I'm fifty-two years old, familiar with the field and the world of conventions, moderately well known to many professionals in the field, and relatively well-liked. I've got a lot of social credit. And yet even I was nervous and a little in shock when faced with deciding whether or not to report what happened. Even I was thinking, "Oh, God, do I have to? What if this gets really ugly?" But every time I got that scared feeling in my guts and the sensation of having a target between my shoulder blades, I thought, "How much worse would this be if I were inexperienced, if I were new to the field, if I were a lot younger?" A thousand times worse. So I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders and said, "Hell, yes, use my name." And while it's scary to write this now, and while various people are worried that parts of the Internet may fall on my head, I'm going to share the knowledge—because I'm a geek, and that's what we do. So if you need to report this stuff, the following things may make it easier to do so. Not easy, because I don't think it's gotten anywhere near easy, but they'll probably help. NOTES: As soon as you can, make notes on the following: what happened when it happened and where who else was present (if anyone) any other possibly useful information And take notes as you go through the process of reporting: write down who you talk with in the organization to which you are reporting, and when. ALLIES: Line up your support team. When you report an incident of sexual harassment to a convention, it is fine to take a friend with you. A friend can keep you company while you make a report to a company by phone or in email. Some allies can help by hanging out with you at convention programming or parties or events, ready to be a buffer in case of unfortunate events—or by just reminding you to eat, if you're too stressed to remember. If you're in shock, please try to tell your allies this, and ask for help if you can. NAVIGATION: If there are procedures in place, what are they? Where do you start to make a report and how? (Finding out might be a job to outsource to allies.) Some companies have current codes of conduct posted on line with contact information for people to report harassment to. Jim Hines posted a list of contacts at various companies a while ago. Conventions should have a safety team listed in the program book. Know the difference between formal reports and informal reports. Ask what happens next with your report, and whether there will be a formal record of it, or whether it will result in a supervisor telling the person "Don't do that," but will be confidential and will not be counted formally. REPORTING FORMALLY: This is a particularly important point. Serial harassers can get any number of little talking-to's and still have a clear record, which means HR and Legal can't make any disciplinary action stick when formal reports do finally get made. This is the sort of thing that can get companies really bad reputations, and the ongoing behavior hurts everybody in the field. It is particularly poisonous if the inappropriate behavior is consistently directed toward people over whom the harasser has some kind of real or perceived power: an aspiring writer may hesitate to report an editor, for instance, due to fear of economic harm or reprisal. STAY SAFE: You get to choose what to do, because you're the only one who knows your situation and what risks you will and won't take. If not reporting is what you need to do, that's what you get to do, and if anybody gives you trouble about making that choice to stay safe, you can sic me on them. Me, I've had a bunch of conversations with my husband, and I've had a bunch of conversations with other people, and I hate the fact that I'm scared that there might be legal wrangling (from the person I'd name, not the convention or his employer) if I name names. But after all those conversations, I'm not going to. Instead, I'm writing the most important part, about how to report this, and make it work, which is so much bigger than one person's distasteful experience. During the incident, the person I reported said, "Gosh, you're lovely when you're angry." You know what? I've been getting prettier and prettier. <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/06/guest-post-by-elise-matthesen-how-to.html">Source</a>
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  38. Hi, so as you should all know by now I won't be on the shard for a while, so I put this blog together because it turns out you can have delayed publication on these things. So yeah, I'll try to have at least one for each month I'm gone to remind you all that I exist and what not So yeah, look forward to that.
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  39. Hey all you good folks, I want to provide a brief introduction to what I hope will be a somewhat consistent series here on this blog. Introducing "Wyn talks Anime", a place for me to write about my favorite anime, or review ones that I'm currently watching, hopefully with a little bit of me talking storytelling in general. So today we've got my spoiler-free thoughts on My Hero Academia season 1, alongside my musings on what makes an excellent first season of a show. Spoilers for length
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  40. Preamble Firstly, I was somewhat surprised, but very happy, to know that some people read the last entry I posted Thankyou. So, for anyone who isn't aware, Shelldry is a game in the world of the mistborn series. It is mentioned a couple of times at most, but from when it is mentioned we can gather that it is some form of gambling card game. Partly to play with my MAG groups and partly just for the fun of it I decided to create a version of shelldry. It isn't complete yet so everything here is subject to change. The rules have gone through several iterations and the card backs have been designed so some significant progress has been made on it. I currently hope to complete it within the next fortnight. I wanted the game to be heavily set in the mistborn world, as a result it is based around the 10 allomantic metals that were known in the time of the final empire and their relative value and connections to eachother. I know that both skaa and nobles play Shelldry and many skaa wouldn't know about allomancy. However I decided for this that it was perfectly possible that the nobility created the game and that the skaa adopted it even though most don't understand the significance of the metals and sets. How to Play The game is played with a set of 34 cards, 4 copies of each of the physical and mental metals, 1 gold and 1 atium. The game is, in basics, vaguely similar to Texas Hold'em poker. As such the best sets are of 4 and the different values of hands are based on metal pairs. The hands, in increasing value: -no set -2 of a kind (eg, 2 iron) -metal/alloy pair (eg. iron and steel) -2 * 2 of a kind. (eg 2 iron and 2 brass) -metal/alloy pair and a 2 of a kind (eg. iron, steel, and 2 brass) -3 of a kind -2 of the same metal/alloy pair (eg, 2 iron, 2 steel) -4 of a kind -2 pairs, one from mental, one from physical (eg, iron, steel, zinc, brass) -full set, physical or mental (aka, iron, steel, tin, pewter OR zinc, brass, copper, bronze) -gold and atium pair. (Special case) Atium and gold act differently to the others. A gold/atium pair wins the pot (explained later) and ends the game, but neither gold nor atium is involved in any other set. Instead, atium and gold act as tiebreakers. If you and another opponent both have the same value set, for example if you both have a metal/alloy pair, and you have atium, you win the tie. On the flipside if you have gold, you lose the tie. This reflects atium and gold's allomantic values (Or at least how valuable they are considered by most mistborn, to all you gold lovers out there.) In Shelldry there are two distinct pools of clips/boxings. There is the current betting pool which contains all the bets from the current round and there is the pot. The pot gradually increases in size throughout the game and nothing is taken out of it till the end. How each round works: -Each player is dealt 2 cards, then, starting with the player to the left of the dealer, each player has to choose to stick with their cards, or to pay the minimum bet (lets say 1 clip for now) into the pot to discard them face-down and draw 2 replacement cards. -Each player is dealt a third card. -Each player (in turn) chooses an amount to bet of at least the minimum bet, they do not have to match previous bets. These bets stay in front of the player and are collectively called the "betting pool". -A final card is flipped face up in the centre of the table. Each player can make sets from the cards in their hand and this card. -Each player (in turn) chooses one of 3 options: 1. Fold, and take back half their bet rounded down. The remainder stays in the betting pool. 2. Stand. (No changes to their bet.) 3. Double Down. Provided the player has enough clips/boxings remaining they can double their bet, increasing the betting pool. -All players who didn't fold reveal their hands and the player with the best set wins the round. They take back their bet and an equal amount from the betting pool. If there is not enough in the betting pool to match their bet they take however much there is. They do not take from the pot to make the difference. -Any remaining clips/boxings in the betting pool are added to the pot. -The cards are shuffled, the player to the left of the dealer becomes the new dealer and a new round begins. In the case of a tie, if one of the players has atium, they win the tie. If one has gold, they lose it. If that doesn't resolve a tie a player who formed their set completely from their hand wins the tie. If that still doesn't determine a victor the round is a tie and the players who are tied take back their bets and then split the remainder of the betting pool evenly between them, with the caveat that each player, like normal, cannot receive more than they bet. Any clips/boxings that they would otherwise receive from the split are added to the pot as is any extra that cannot be evenly split between the tied players. -The game ends when a player reveals a gold/atium pair during scoring (including the case where they have one of them in hand and the other is the centre card), that player wins the round and takes the pot. Rounds in Shelldry should go a little faster than normal poker rounds while still allowing for some bluffing and psychological play. Gold and atium make for an interesting risk-taking dynamic. If you get gold on the initial draw do you hold on to it in the hopes that atium will come up, sacrificing your chance to get a set of 4, reducing your chance of a decent set AND causing you to lose ties? Very risky. Atium is a safer, though still risky, choice as while it makes you win ties, it still prevents you from getting a set of 4 and reduces your chance of gaining a good set. A player who starts with one in their hand has to decide if the potential reward is worth the risk An option for resolving things if the game has to end before an atium/gold pair surfaces is to deal a final round with no betting. The winner of that round takes the pot, split the pot if there is a tie. The most recent modifications to these rules are yet to be tested so changes may well still occur. The Cards The easiest way to play is simply to take a standard deck of cards, take out all of the cards for the numbers 1 through 8, 1 jack card and 1 king card. Then: 1/ace = iron 2 = steel 3 = tin 4 = pewter 5 = zinc 6 = brass 7 = copper 8 = bronze Jack = gold King = atium This is what I have been using during testing, however while this is functional it would be much nicer to have proper cards, so I have been working on designing them. I figured it would be cool to have a table of the 10 then known allomantic metals on the back of the cards, both for visual use and as an easy reference chart. Partly due to this the cards I have designed thus far will be round, however as I know that round cards are much harder to print properly and cut out I also plan to put the table on to the back of more regular sized cards for those who prefer them. Circular cards are cooler for this, but normal cards are far more practical I then ran into a problem in that there isn't any table for just the 10 metals known during the final empire. This is where a friend of mine, nard, (he has an account on steel ministry but not here) helped me out. He took the table from "The Hero of ages" He then used photoshop to cut off the bottom part, then took the top part and copied it down to make a full circle. He then covered over all the unwanted symbols and most of the inner lines to create something looking like this: At the time he then just roughly sketched in the remaining symbols. Coming back to working on the card-back now I decided that the sketched in symbols really wouldn't do the trick. Instead I traced out the gold and atium symbols from the full allomantic chart, shrunk them to the size I wanted and used them. Atium initially gave me a bit of trouble as it was too dark a grey and kept blending in with the background. I ended up adjusting the contrast and brightness to make it a much whiter colour that stands out better on the card (and is actually closer to how I always imagined atium anyway ). That left the internal metal symbols. I could take them from the initial chart but they would be white and would look strange and asymmetrical on this new chart. I considered doing as I had with gold and atium and taking them from the full allomantic chart. However, I rather liked how the existing symbols fit with the background and how they contrasted with the new atium and gold symbols. In the end I took the symbols from the Hero of ages chart and simply inverted the colours on them then adjusted the brightness/contrast as necessary and stuck them in. I am quite pleased with the final result. Closing Thoughts Creating shelldry has been a lot of fun. I will hopefully finalize the rules and create the cards in the next two weeks before I go back to Uni. When I do I'll share it in the Creator's corner and upload the files for the cards so anyone who wishes to can print them off. I worry that the gameplay may be slightly suboptimal due to my desire to base it so much on the allomantic metals but I think I managed a decent balance in the end. I don't actually gamble real money with this and I wouldn't recommend anyone doing so , it is just for fun The most I do is sometimes I play it with my MAG players where they are using their ingame (regenerating) resources to try to temporarily get more or to gain secrets from the "informant" they are gambling with As an aside. I will be starting another campaign of the MAG over on steelministry.com hopefully in the next 2 weeks. It will be a multiple crew "cops and robbers" type campaign where there is a skaa crew (or perhaps 2 separate crews depending on the number of players I get) who are trying to pull a certain job, and a ministry crew trying to hunt them down. I have enough players to run it already, but I am looking for a couple more, so if you are interested just toss me a pm or create an account on steelministry and chime in to say you are interested. Thankyou for reading, and if you have any thoughts, comments, criticisms or ideas please feel free to comment and let me know
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  41. The ebook for UNFETTERED, which contains the A MEMORY OF LIGHT deleted sequence "River of Souls," has now been released. Details below. Tor.com's reread of THE WAY OF KINGS reached chapters 16 and 17, the first flashback with Laral and Tien, and Kaladin leading Bridge Four from the front. Also, Writing Excuses' latest podcast episode features us talking about middle grade fiction with E.J. Patten, author of RETURN TO EXILE and THE LEGEND THIEF. Buy the ebook here: Kindle (US)(CA)(UK) Nook Kobo Dragonmount (DRM-free here only) (Note: The iBookstore links below do not yet work, but should work sometime later this week.) iBookstore (US)(CA)(UK)(AU)(NZ)(IE) Grim Oak Press hardcover If you haven't heard about UNFETTERED before, here's a bit of an introduction. When I was on tour probably for THE ALLOY OF LAW, Shawn Speakman (webmaster for Terry Brooks and Naomi Novik, and who also runs the booksigning service The Signed Page), approached me about an anthology he was putting together (at the suggestion of Terry Brooks) to help defray Shawn's medical bills stemming from his 2011 diagnosis with Hodgkin's lymphoma. Shawn has been a friend and supporter to the careers of a lot of writers, so I was interested in helping out. The question was what to contribute to the anthology. The title Shawn gave it was UNFETTERED, because he didn't want to put any restrictions on whatever the authors wanted to contribute. When I was writing A MEMORY OF LIGHT, there was a sequence of viewpoints I was working on that were somewhat more daring than some other viewpoints I had done. The character I'm talking about is known as Bao in the book, and if you've read it you'll know who that is. I wanted to try to give some deeper backstory to Bao, but after I showed the scenes to Harriet, though we all liked them, we decided they they didn't fit in the book. Harriet felt that these scenes were distracting and derailing the narrative too close to what was to be the climax of the entire series, because of the new elements I was adding and fleshing out. So after some discussion, we decided that they should be cut. Though I saw the need for this, the fact that this was necessary left me feeling kind of sad. I felt the scenes were strong and added a lot to the character, giving a lot of extra motivation and poignancy to some of the things going on in A MEMORY OF LIGHT. So when the opportunity for Shawn's anthology came along, I began to think this would be the place for them. I approached Harriet, and she said that was a good idea. The result is "River of Souls," labeled as a Wheel of Time tale by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. Since it's actually a sequence of deleted scenes, it's meant to be read as a companion to your read of A MEMORY OF LIGHT. It's not going to make a whole lot of sense if you haven't read at least the rest of the Wheel of Time, but it's a complete arc and I find it very exciting. I think you'll really like it, and I think this anthology is a good place for these scenes because they won't be distracting from the rest of the story. UNFETTERED also has stories from lots of other wonderful writers in it. I'm honored to have a story in there, to be alongside the names that appear in this anthology. It's great to see so many people pulling together to support someone in the community, and I wish Shawn the best. The anthology is available now in ebook form, and as a hardcover direct from Shawn's Grim Oak Press website. He'll be shipping books out over the next three weeks (he has a very small operation and it will take him time to get through so many orders). Also note that the long-sold-out special edition signed by every single author will take even more time to deliver. The signing pages are currently being shipped around the country from author to author for all of us to sign, and that will take a while. Once all of those are back with Shawn, the pages will be bound into the books, which will then be delivered. Here is the complete list of stories appearing in UNFETTERED: Imaginary Friends by Terry Brooks (a precursor to the Word/Void trilogy) How Old Holly Came To Be by Patrick Rothfuss (a Four Corners tale) River of Souls by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson (a Wheel of Time tale) The Old Scale Game by Tad Williams Game of Chance by Carrie Vaughn Martyr of the Roses by Jacqueline Carey (a precursor to the Kushiel series) Dogs by Daniel Abraham Mudboy by Peter V. Brett (a Demon Cycle tale) The Sound of Broken Absolutes by Peter Orullian (a Vault of Heaven tale) The Coach With Big Teeth by R.A. Salvatore Keeper of Memory by Todd Lockwood (a Summer Dragon tale) Heaven in a Wild Flower by Blake Charlton The Chapel Perilous by Kevin Hearne (an Iron Druid tale) Select Mode by Mark Lawrence (a Broken Empire tale) All the Girls Love Michael Stein by David Anthony Durham Strange Rain by Jennifer Bosworth (a Struck epilogue tale) Nocturne by Robert V. S. Redick Unbowed by Eldon Thompson (a Legend of Asahiel tale) In Favour With Their Stars by Naomi Novik (a Temeraire tale) The Jester by Michael J. Sullivan (a Riyria Chronicles tale) The Duel by Lev Grossman (a Magicians tale) Walker and the Shade of Allanon by Terry Brooks (a Shannara tale) The Unfettered Knight by Shawn Speakman (an Annwn Cycle tale) If you missed it, where I explain my part in this anthology. <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/06/unfettered-with-memory-of-light-deleted.html">Source</a>
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  42. Hey there, everyone who was planning to come to my signing tomorrow—I just found out that it's going to start an hour earlier than previously announced. So if you can swing it, please try to come at 11:00 a.m. instead of noon. I've never done a Costco signing before so I'm not really sure what the logistics will be, but if the space is amenable enough for me to do a reading and Q&A, that will happen at the beginning. If you come later you can still get your books signed, so don't worry about that. As always, check out my other events on my events page. Signing Details: Date: Saturday, June 22nd, 2013 Time: 11:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m. Place: Costco Address: 273 E 1000 N Spanish Fork, UT Phone: (801) 504-9530 Note: Costco members ONLY! <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/06/saturday-spanish-fork-costco-signing.html">Source</a>
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  43. ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE SHATTERED LENS has now been released in the UK (and presumably also in Australia and New Zealand). That means all four books are now out, and since they all came out this year, it should be relatively easy to find them on shelves and in ebook form. (Note that all four books are still out of print in the US, though the audiobooks ARE currently available in the US.). The most recent Writing Excuses episode is a microcasting episode touching on the following questions. Give it a listen! What's your first step in the rewriting process? How do you write Artificial Intelligences as characters? Tactful promotion: how do you get nominated for a Hugo or Nebula? How do you decide whether or not to take an offer from a publisher? Do you use a writing notebook? How, and for what? What methods do you use to test the "coolness" and/or viability of a story idea? What genre or style do you read that is outside of the one(s) in which you write? Tor.com's reread of THE WAY OF KINGS continues with chapters 13 and 14, the battle with the chasmfiend and Kaladin's first attempt to change Bridge Four. <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/06/alcatraz-in-uk-updates.html">Source</a>
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  44. Tor made a book trailer for THE RITHMATIST (which is out now). Enjoy! There's also a cool Kickstarter campaign (well past its goal, ending in two days) from Cryptozoic Entertainment for a digital TCG/MMO called HEX. The developers of the (targeted for fall 2014) MISTBORN: BIRTHRIGHT video game, Little Orbit, are working on this game with Cryptozoic. My congratulations to all of them for such a successful Kickstarter! <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/06/book-trailer-for-rithmatist-kickstarter.html">Source</a>
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  45. The newest Writing Excuses podcast episode is called "What The Avengers Did Right." It has a bunch of spoilers for that movie and talks about it from the point of view of a writer. I've uploaded all of Ben McSweeney's awesome illustrations for THE RITHMATIST. This includes the map (which isn't in the ebook right now) and a couple of doodles that didn't make it into the final book. If you have the audiobook, we prepared a script for Michael Kramer that included the text from the diagrams so you shouldn't be missing anything essential, but it will probably still help quite a bit to be able to see these illustrations. If you haven't seen them, I also have interior illustration galleries for THE WAY OF KINGS and THE ALLOY OF LAW. Tor.com's reread of THE WAY OF KINGS has reached the end of part one. The most recent post covers the first set of interludes and talks about the search for Hoid. This week I will be at Book Expo America in New York. Here's my schedule: Date: May 30–31, 2013 Place: Book Expo America Address: Jacob K. Javits Convention Center 655 W 34th St New York, NY 10001 THURSDAY, May 30th 2:00–3:00 p.m. Author Signing at Meeting Room MR 3211 (Tor Table #17) The Way of Kings, The Rithmatist (Note: This event is ticketed.) 4:00–5:00 p.m. RHCB Booth Signing Booth #3940, Table #1 Steelheart FRIDAY, May 31st 3:00–4:00 p.m. Signing at Tor Booth 1557 The Way of Kings, The Rithmatist 4:00–5:00 p.m. Audio Publishers Association Author Tea Janis Ian, Bill Bryson, Louise Penny, Brandon Sanderson (Note: This event is ticketed.) <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-rithmatist-illustrations-book-expo.html">Source</a>
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  46. Today through Sunday I'm in Phoenix for Phoenix Comicon. Here's my schedule. Thu, 6:00-7:00PM (Room 104B) Books & Authors Phoenix Comicon Kickoff Kick of Phoenix Comicon 2013's Books and Authors programming with a brief look at what all is going on this weekend and a group interview with several of our author guests conducted by Peter Orullian. Brandon Sanderson, Cherie Priest, Peter Orullian, Terry Brooks, Timothy Zahn Fri, 1:30-2:30PM (Room 132) Brandon Sanderson and The Wheel of Time Join Brandon Sanderson and some Wheel of Time fans for a discussion of the series and its completion. Brandon Sanderson, Patrick Young, Phoenix Comicon Staff Fri, 2:30-3:30PM (Brandon's booth #896) Brandon Sanderson Signing The "Firstborn"/"Defending Elysium" convention exclusive hardcover will be available. Sat, 4:30-5:30PM (Room 132) The Unfettered Panel: New Tales By Masters of Fantasy Join the editor and four contributors to Unfettered, a new anthology. Learn about its creation from the editor, Shawn Speakman, while contributors Terry Brooks, Brandon Sanderson, Kevin Hearne and Peter Orullian talk about their stories. Brandon Sanderson, Kevin Hearne, Peter Orullian, Shawn Speakman, Terry Brooks Sat, 5:30-6:30PM (Author's Alley table 2411) Signing with the Unfettered authors The Phoenix Comicon Exclusive Edition of Unfettered will be available in a limited quantity. Brandon Sanderson, Kevin Hearne, Peter Orullian, Shawn Speakman, Terry Brooks Sat, 12:00-1:00PM (Room West105B) Magic Methods Magic systems and fantasy go hand in hand. Join some of our author guests as they talk about how they make it work and how they make it believable. Brandon Sanderson, Melanie Rawn, Peter Orullian, Sam Sykes, Sharon Skinner Sat, 3:00-4:00PM (Room 132) Brandon Sanderson Spotlight Join New York Times Bestelling Author Brandon Sanderson, author of the Mistborn series, The Stormlight Archive, Alcatraz, The Wheel of Time (with Robert Jordan), and others including the new novel The Rithmatist, for a talk and Q & A about his work past, present, and future. Brandon Sanderson Sat, 4:00-5:00PM (Brandon's booth #896) Brandon Sanderson Signing The "Firstborn"/"Defending Elysium" convention exclusive hardcover will be available. Sat, 9:00PM-3:00AM (Moran Room, Hyatt) Magic Draft with Brandon Cost is $10 and slots are limited. Sign up at Game Central. Sun, 12:00-1:00PM (Room 132) The Epic Fantasy Panel Some of today's most popular epic fantasy writers talk about what epic means to them and how they write it. Brandon Sanderson, James A Owen, Melanie Rawn, Peter Orullian, Sam Sykes, Terry Brooks Sun, 3:00-4:00PM (Room 132) Worldbuilding in Science Fiction and Fantasy How do writers create worlds for their stories anyway? Join our panelists and find out. Brandon Sanderson, Michael A. Stackpole, Peter Orullian, Terry Brooks, Timothy Zahn <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/05/my-phoenix-comicon-schedule.html">Source</a>
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  47. A few weeks ago I talked about the Hugo Voter Packet and how for a $60 supporting membership to Worldcon you could get copies of most of the Hugo Award-nominated works. Well, the packet was finally released today, so if you're already a member go download it now! If you're not a Worldcon member already, check out the cover art of the nominated works (it looks like pretty much everything except for the Dramatic Presentations are included in the packet) and consider joining so you can vote for the Hugo Awards by the July 31st deadline. My Hugo Award-nominated novella THE EMPEROR'S SOUL is in the packet alongside the other Best Novella nominees, and it's an honor to be in such a group. This week's Writing Excuses podcast episode talks about short story writing with Mary Robinette Kowal. Mary has published more short stories than the rest of us combined, and she has a lot of good helpful things to say about the process. I sent out a newsletter last week. Here it is. If you're interested in getting these three or four times per year, and getting an email reminder when I'm signing near your city, sign up here. Tonight I'm signing in San Jose and tomorrow I'll be in Albuquerque. Details on my events page. I've also left quite a few signed books at my previous tour stops, so give the following stores a call! Maple Street Book Shop, New Orleans They have signed copies of THE RITHMATIST and A MEMORY OF LIGHT in hardcover, and some of each paperback of all of my books that are in print. They also have a few of the special Rithmatic chalk bags that Tor made—ask about getting one when you call. (504) 866-4916 Murder by the Book, Houston Murder by the Book has signed copies of all of my books, and they're going to bring them to Comicpalooza in Houston this weekend, unless you call and buy all the books before the weekend arrives. (888) 424-2842 (I will be at Phoenix Comicon this weekend.) Other Stores All of the following stores have some of my books signed. Call them up to find out what they can ship to you. Books of Wonder, New York Phone: (212) 989-3270 Email: [email protected] Children's Book World, Philadelphia Phone: (610) 642-6274 Email: [email protected] Tattered Cover, Denver (Highlands Ranch) Phone: (303) 470-7050 Barnes & Noble, Omaha (Oakview Mall) Phone: (402) 691-4557 Blue Willow Bookshop, Houston Phone: (281) 497-8675 <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/05/hugo-voter-packet-out-now-signed.html">Source</a>
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  48. Tor.com's reread of THE WAY OF KINGS reaches chapter 11 today, which is Kaladin's low point. My YA dystopia STEELHEART comes out in September. Today the Onion AV Club put up the prologue of the book. Check it out! I'm in the middle of the tour for my YA fantasy THE RITHMATIST right now; I'll be in Denver tonight. If you're not near the cities I'm signing in, you can still grab a signed copy by ordering it from one of the bookstores I've already stopped at. They have quite a few copies and will be happy to ship one to you. Books of Wonder 18 West 18th St. New York, NY 10011 Phone: (212) 989-3270 Email: [email protected] Children's Book World 17 Haverford Station Rd Haverford, PA 19041 Phone: (610) 642-6274 Email: [email protected] <a href="http://mistborn.blogspot.com/2013/05/steelheart-prologue-signed-rithmatist.html">Source</a>
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  49. 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 ---------------- 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 access to the excellent food available in Davis, including the free pizza often provided at lunch talks, can result in rapid weight gain. A recent study by Cornell University found that on average, freshmen gain about 0.5 pounds per week. (1) Students often turn to diet, fitness programs, and even pharmaceuticals or surgery to cope with their expanding waistlines, but before you attempt harmful fad diets, spend your study time working out, or waste your money on weight loss pills with phony claims, take a moment to read this report and learn how you can successfully manage your weight for LIFE! This practical, flexible, easy, all-natural, scientific, and organic strategy allows you to eat everything you want, with no need for moderation. Dating back to the 19th century, with celebrity adherents such as the late opera singer Maria Callas (2) this time-honored traditional remedy has been proven effective. Discover the solution of Taenia saginata, or the beef tapeworm! Simply ingest a little steak tartare containing our patented Cysticerci™, or encysted larvae, and feel the Taeniarrific difference as your very own cestode develops into an adult in your small intestine! Within three months your cestode can be up to 5 meters long, competing with you for nutrients, and helping you lose more weight than you ever dreamed you could, with no need for the expenditure of any effort. Find a new appreciation for your small bowel as you sense your cestode shifting gently within you with every wave of peristaltic motion, and take comfort from the stress of endless examinations with the knowledge that you are not alone. The uniquely close attachment between human and cestode can result in a powerful emotional experience, in addition to the health and beauty benefits. Dr. Walter M. Boyce, DVM, Ph.D. of UC Davis says of this bond, “Some of our tapeworms are kind of the ultimate companion animals, cause you’ll have them for much of your life.” The therapeutic benefits of the human-animal bond are well documented; keeping companion animals has a significant correlation with reduced stress levels and better mental health. Order your infective stages of Taenia saginata today, serve as the definitive host for a new best friend, and support the UC Davis Class of 2014! Results may vary. Potential side effects include abdominal pain, bloating, nausea, constipation, weakness, nutritional deficiencies, intestinal obstruction, and occasionally death if incorrectly serving as an intermediate host for Taenia solium or other species of cestode. (1) Questionable web statistics (2) Possibly slanderous article from The Guardian
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  50. I blogged briefly yesterday about the Suvudu cage matches. I thought I'd dig into it a little further today, as I consider Monday updates (normally) to be more "Here's what's going on" updates. I prefer to move more in-depth posts to other days. So, the Suvudu cage match. First off, I'd like to say that I'm impressed by the improvements made to the format this year. For one thing, the editors made a conscious effort to even out the power level of the combatants. That goes a long way toward making the matchups more interesting, I think—no longer do we have to suspend disbelief to epic proportions in order to pretend that Jaime Lannister would somehow ever NEED to fight Cthulhu, and somehow find a way to win. There are still some things to gripe about here, as there is still great power-level variety in the matchups. All things considered, this is a good group to battle it out, but do Gollum and Tasslehoff REALLY belong in this? I don't think they match the others. And what about Pug, Allanon, and Zedd? Three full-blown, deeply trained wizards amid a bunch of melee fighters? Fantasy novels aren't D&D. (Well, hopefully most of them aren't.) There's no reason to force power balance between the arcane and the non-arcane. But anyway, at least there aren't any Elder Gods running around. So, what are my thoughts? Basically, thinking of it rationally, Pug and company should end up dominating. Maybe Beowulf too. I mean, really. Beowulf is the proto-hero that almost all of the rest are (tangentially) based upon; the guy was practically indestructible. The others are arguably demi-dieties, and would be better off playing hardball with people like Rand and Gandalf than ending up fighting people like Tally or Druss. (Who, don't get me wrong, are both totally awesome—but they're going to have trouble with people who can teleport, call down the powers of the elements, and all-around warp the fabric of reality.) Questions like these make it a little hard for me to figure out just what's going on here. Is it just supposed to be a popularity contest? If so, Jacob Black wins and we can all go home. (Sorry, but it's true.) If it's not supposed to be a popularity contest, and we're supposed to consider each pairing realistically, why don't we have more information on the matches? How far apart do the combatants start? It's a "cage match" by Suvudu's title, but are they really fighting in a standard-issue wrestling cage? I mean, come ON, guys. We're nerds here. We can't make subjective judgments about fictional characters completely outside of canon if you don't at LEAST tell us how the fights are set up. Do people with followers get to bring some along? What about Perrin—one of his basic powers is calling on wolves for help. So can we assume he's got a pack of them with him? Do the sf characters have guns? Can Vin assume everyone she'll fight will have metal on them, or can we assume they will each know the person they're fighting and be able to prepare? Okay, yes, I'm overthinking this. But don't tell me you weren't too. Anyway, here's my input on the two matches I've got some responsibility for: Perrin against Tasslehoff. Really. We're doing this? Okay, well, here's what we've got. Perrin is an extremely skilled fighter whose very nature (being ta'veren) causes probability to warp around him and bring to him the things and people he needs at the moments he needs them. He has a power-forged hammer, the allegiance of tens of thousands of trained soldiers, and the ability to call upon hundreds of wolves if he really needed to. He is a berserker on the battlefield, and has the power to move in the world of dreams, where he has near-absolute control of his surroundings. He is guarded by Aiel warriors and two powerful Asha'man who can wield the One Power that made Rand such a force in the previous tournament. Tasslehoff has a stick that throws rocks. Okay, I'm underplaying it. Tas is a clever, brave little guy. (Actually, I think he may be immune to fear or something.) He's prone to have a few tricks up his sleeves, magic items stolen here or there. But he's also got a childlike view of the world, and has nowhere near the ruthlessness that Perrin has been forced by fate to learn. Tas can't win this fight. I declare that this battle plays out like so: Tas defaults on his match by not showing up. He's off picking Jon Snow's pockets. Perrin wins. (And Wheel of Time fans, don't prove me wrong. We'll never live it down if Perrin loses to Tasslehoff.) As for Vin and Logen Ninefingers, this is a far more even battle. To put the duel on better footing, I'm going to say that this is Vin before certain events toward the end of MISTBORN 3 that would make the fight wildly unfair. Also, I'm going to remove atium (which would let her see the future and win any battle she wants) from her repertoire for now. (If she has to fight Zedd, all bets are off.) So, she's a very, very talented Mistborn, capable of greatly increased strength, greatly increased speed, near-infinite endurance, supernatural sensory abilities, the capacity to change a person's emotions at will, virtual immunity to metal weapons, the power to kill at range with coins shot at high speeds with expert precision, the ability to ignore many wounds and heal at an accelerated rate, and telekinetic powers that allow her to vault long distances and remain in the air when needed. Okay, so maybe it's not much of a fair fight. (This is what I was talking about.) Logen is a toughened warrior, very careful, but also capable of turning into a crazed berserker who doesn't feel pain. But that's not enough to face Vin. She's out of his league. This fight goes on for a while, but he can't get to Vin, who hovers outside of his range and flings back any weapons or arrows he uses against her. She pelts him with coins, then takes his head off with a six-foot-long koloss sword. Source: http://www.brandonsanderson.com/blog/967/Suvudu-Cage-Matches
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