Brandon Signing - 11/06/12

[Windrunner]

Lo and behold, the week after spring break I actually had a bit of time where I wasn't doing homework to knock this one out in a couple of hours! Sit back, relax, and enjoy. As a side note, this is the last of the backlogged audio we have.

QUESTION:

I was just wondering, how Stormlight 2 is coming?

BRANDON:

How is Stormlight 2 going? It’s going pretty well. This whole being trapped in a hotel during the storm thing was not actually as conducive as you might think. Cause I sat down and I worked on it for a bit but being away from home, being, you know, annoyed that I’m trapped in a hotel and things like that I actually ended up writing a short story I owed somebody instead, just to kind of further clear the plate.

I owe Charlaine Harris a story. Charlaine’s a friend and she’s been a dear to me and she keeps trying to get me into one of her anthologies. And I’m like “Charlaine, this isn't really my thing,” but she keeps asking so I finally said yes to one of them because the concept sounds fun, it was called “Games Dead People Play”. So I wrote her a story for her “Games Dead People Play” anthology. So we’ll see about that.

It was actually four thousand words; you can be impressed now. I don’t write things very short very often, if you can’t tell. My short stories are as long as the book you’re holding in your hand usually. So that’s how that tends to go. So four thousand words is really short for me; it’s only like 20 pages or something, it’s tiny. Anyway, Stormlight 2’s coming along well. Hopefully next Christmas-time is when it’s should be coming out. I’m supposed to be turning in a new title this week and a cover concept by the end of the month, so that Michael Whelan can paint one. So we will see if I’m able to keep these deadlines.

QUESTION:

Do you have any future plans for the character of Stephen Leeds?

Ah, Stephen Leeds. So this is the main character from Legion. Legion is- actually kind of got some cool stories behind it. Legion, you know, is one of these quirky ideas I came up with. And actually since it was mainstream and things I said, “Hey Dan,” talking to Dan Wells, my friend, “You should write this story, let me tell you about it.” And he was not nearly as excited about it as I was. I’m like, “Dan, you need to write this story, you need to write this story.” And finally I realized, “Oh, I should write this story cause I came up with the idea, rather than telling Dan to. It’s okay, Brandon. You can write something mainstream”.

So, I kicked it around for a while. For me, I viewed it as being a television show, a pitch for a television show particularly. So I wrote a pitch on it, and I wrote that story to be kind of a pilot pitch. Which then sold the television rights on it, which was always kind of the goal for me was to get that because I view it as being a really awesome television show. So we sold the rights to Lionsgate and I went ahead and released the story that I wrote

I would like to do more things like that. I have so much on my plate, who knows? My little notebook that I carry around places where I expect to be bored, it has scribblings, you know, of maybe a quarter of another Stephen Leeds story. I ran into a hangup with some of the science and so I fired off a furious email to Peter, my assistant, and he was like, “I don’t know”. And usually that doesn’t happen with Peter on the science, so maybe it is a real quandry. So, answer is, yes there should be more. Hopefully we can get the television show off the ground and that would be a lot of fun.

QUESTION:

Were there highstorms on Roshar before Adonalsium Shattered?

BRANDON:

Were there highstorms on Roshar before Adonalsium Shattered? I’m gonna RAFO that. I’m not gonna answer you, because I’m mean. Maybe someday you shall have your answer to this important answer.

QUESTION:

Who was the first Feruchemist?

BRANDON:

Who was the first Feruchemist? I don’t have their name written down. [Laughter] It’s fairly ancient of date.

QUESTION:

Were they born or were they created?

BRANDON:

The first Feruchemist, were they born or created? Both. [Laughter] I don’t see those two as mutually exclusive. See how good I am at dodging questions, now? I’ve been dealing with the Wheel of Time fans long enough. They’ve really whipped me into shape for dodging questions. Anything else? I promise not to dodge all of them

QUESTION:

Where’s Alcatraz situated?

BRANDON:

I did not like how they were treated by the publisher. And this has got a lot of different arguments and reasons for it. I lost my editor after the first book and I didn’t feel like the new editor really got the books. And the second cover was awful and the sales on the series after the first book were mediocre. Anyway I bought the books back from my publisher, from Scholastic.

They got a sell-off period and I actually found out that it isn’t until January 1st that their sell-off period ends, or I guess December 31st. So as of January 1st, I own the rights again. The UK is releasing an omnibus edition of all four together. And then I will eventually write the fifth book, at some future date, maybe this year after I finish with Stormlight 2. I really got to keep my eye on Stormlight 2 for a while. So, the answer is, kind of- stuff might happen. I mean, we will probably will, at least, release ebooks of them in the early part of next year, so they can be found. And there’s also the omnibus edition, which I told the UK they could sell over here if they wanted to, so you can order it and things like that.

QUESTION:

Does Elantrian conversion follow the Law of Sixteen?

BRANDON:

Does Elantrian conversion follow the Law of Sixteen? No. Good question, excellent question.

QUESTION:

Okay Hoid, you mentioned he’s in all your books, is he in also in all your shorter stories?

BRANDON:

He is not in all of my shorter stories. In fact, he is not in any book that references Earth. So if there’s a reference to Earth- most of my science fiction has referential stuff to Earth, Alcatraz is like this. He’s not in anything like that. He’s not in the Wheel of Time. It would not have been appropriate for me to seed something like that into a Wheel of Time book. So he’s not in Steelheart or the other children works that I’ve done. But he is in all my epic fantasies.

QUESTION:

Now my main question actually, which magic systems, if any, does he have access to?

BRANDON:

That’s an excellent question. He is familiar with very many of them, and lots that you haven’t seen yet.

QUESTION:

Where did you get your inspiration for having kind of a kind of consistent universe; it’s kind of similar to Stephen King and things like that.

BRANDON:

Yeah, where did I get the inspiration for that? There’s a couple of places, and I don’t want to go off on this too long, if you go look on the Q&A database that these guys have on the 17th Shard you can find more.

But there were really two things that made me do it. First off is reading how Asimov did it and really being impressed with what he did and also noticing that he had to like do some patches in order to make everything work. Asimov connected his Robot series and his Foundations series after the fact many years later. It turned out really well; the two series, as it turns out, blend together in a really cool way but it felt to me it felt after the fact . And I wanted to do something from the get-go and say, “Well, if I’ve got something like this as a model.” Stephen King did it also, but he did it after the fact. But I’ve got writers like this as a model to show how cool this can be, so my question to myself is, “How much cooler can it be if I do it from book one?” And you know, it’s the sort of advantages you get as a writer by standing on the shoulders of authors like that, who have done these awesome things in the past. It allows us to kind of see what they did and say, “Okay, how can I expand on this? How can I do something new, rather than just doing what Asimov did?” And one of the approaches was to try it from book one.

And the other reasoning was that I like big epics but I also want to be writing a lot of stand-alones. And early in my career in particular, it was important for me to be writing stand-alones. And so the hidden epic behind the scenes allowed me to embed some of this depth of foreshadowing and connection in a way that would not be intimidating to readers because they could just read the story and enjoy the stand-alone. And then if it’s something- if they’re the type that really gets into this and really wants to dig deep, they can find the other level and be like, “Wow, there’s an epic on here and Mistborn is a sequel to Elantris. I didn’t know that,” and things like that. Or they can be read completely independently and you never have to worry about that. So I like that versatility.

I will eventually write some stories connecting all of these things in a more obvious way, but I don’t want it to come to the forefront of any series that that’s not already the focus. For instance, I don’t want Way of Kings to be about that, because I’ve already promised you what Way of Kings is about. And I don’t want then to trick you into, “Oh, now it’s this other thing.” I have books planned that will be that, but they’re a little ways off.

QUESTION:

My question’s kind of twofold. So the Emperor’s Soul takes place on Sel. Is it’s magic derived from the Dor?

BRANDON:

Yes.

QUESTION:

Okay, and second, Mistborn, the broadsheet hints that there’s a continent or whatever on the other side of the Mistborn planet.

BRANDON:

Yes.

QUESTION:

Would that also be connected to Allomancy and Feruchemy and all that?

BRANDON:

Yes, it will be.

So, I gave you a lot of answers. [laughter] To expand upon that, the magic systems for Elantris- the pitch to myself designing the world and magic system was this kind of procedural-based, almost programing-based magic. Where in Elantris, you use these characters to programout a sequence of events that tells the power flowing through what to do.

What Shai is doing in this book is she carves a little seal. And the seal is very much like a little program, and she stamps it on something and uses that stamp to rewrite the history of the object. As long as the seal is there, the object thinks it has this other history. The example you see in the book is you know- an old dirty table that’s not been cared for, she can write a seal for its history, she has to figure out what its history was first. And she can write out a seal that basically reprograms that past, so when she stamps it, it thinks it’s been cared for all along and suddenly it gains this lacquer, it’s beautiful, it’s been well-cared for, because in that fake Forgery of the history, that’s what happened to it. And that’s what her magic does, which is why she’s been hired to Forge a copy of the emperor’s soul.

But yes, the magic systems have the same root and it’s not just the Dor. I like the magics on a given planet to all have a consistent theme. And for Elantris they are these almost programming-like, very based on symbols and whatnot. And in Misborn, it’s based on the metals and the interactions in the metals. And so yes, the southern continent does have interaction with the three Metallic Arts, but they use them in very different ways.

[Ooooh]

Yeah, I know I’m evil.

QUESTION:

The Emperor’s Soul lists the Rithmatist and Steelheart in your novels. Are there publication dates for those yet?

BRANDON:

Rithmatist and Steelheart? Both of these are coming out next year. The Rithmatist is the last book I wrote before being offered the Wheel of Time. It was the book I was working on and finishing. And it is a book about a boy who gets to go to a magic school, but he has no magical talents himself, he’s the son of the cleaning lady so he gets free tuition. And so he gets to go to this high-class school and get this high-class education that also trains wizards but he can’t do the magic, he just doesn't have the genetics for it. And it’s a really fun book about a chalk-based magic where you basically play like a magical version of a tower defense game by drawing a circle around yourself in chalk and creating little beasties to go attack your opponent's chalk circle. The loser is the first one that gets their chalk circle breached. It’s really fun and like I said, it’s kind of a mashup between those two ideas; the idea of the Muggle at Hogwarts mixed with these chalk magics. So that’s coming out next summer.

And sometime next fall or the following year is Steelheart, which is a book I’ve been working on for a long time that I also developed as a Hollywood pitch. And it’s about a world where people start gaining superpowers, but only evil people get them. And a big apocalypse basically happens because they just start taking over. And it’s about a young man whose father was killed by one of these creatures called Epics, evil superheroes basically. And he joins a team, or seeks to join a team, that all they do is hunt down Epics, figure out what their weakness is, and assassinate them. And he wants them to assassinate Steelheart, the Emperor of Chicago, cause he thinks he might know what Steelheart’s weakness is. So it’s one of these wacky things that pops out of my brain occasionally and so that’ll be coming out sometime eventually then. So thank you for giving me that wonderful marketing opportunity.

(Note from the Editor: THE RITHMATIST is coming out May 14th, and STEELHEART is coming out September 24th)

[Laughter]

QUESTION:

How long on the Emperor’s Soul, from having it pop into your head in Taiwan to getting it on the page, about how long are you looking at it?

BRANDON:

How long am I looking at it? This was thirty thousand words, I’d say probably two to three weeks actual writing time and then, you know, several drafts after that. About an equal time in revision is usually what it takes me on a book. So, probably this is a month and half’s worth of work. The thing about that is it was spread between times when I was sending drafts to Harriet and having an open moment to sit down and, you know like, “Well I can’t be working on the next draft of the Wheel of Time because I just sent this one in. I need to see what her response to these changes is, so I will take these three days and I will work on Emperor’s Soul.” And that’s where it came from. Filling in the gaps, yeah. It’s like pouring milk into the jar full of marbles, that’s where, you know, this came from.

QUESTION:

You sold the rights for Mistborn for a movie, right?

BRANDON:

Yes, I did sell Mistborn movie rights.

QUESTION:

How is that coming along?

BRANDON:

I have had no major updates, I’m afraid. You know, I really like the script. They’re pitching it in Hollywood. They’re good guys, the producers are. The script is really awesome and is pretty faithful. It’s adapted in the ways that adaptations need to happen. Like it’s really cool, like the beginning they did this thing where they said, “You know, we really need to focus the movie on Vin, so the opening needs to be on Vin instead of Kelsier.” Which is a really good move for a movie like that that’s got such a shorter length of time. So, you know, they start with Vin and Reen, actually. And you know, Vin being part of a heist that goes wrong, with her brother, and things like this. And you know, there’s changes like that that thematically, you know, are the same concept as the book but then work really much better in the only two hour block that you have. Then Kelsier is a mysterious figure who invites her in and recruits her into the team, which works much better in that format. So there’s changes like that.

There’s this really cool prologue where they start the prologue with the march up the mountain toward the Well of Ascension, a thousand years ago and an interaction there that changes into a stained glass window and then you see stained glass windows of the interim periods until you hit the Final Empire. So there’s some really awesome stuff.

So, we’ll see if this actually ends up working or not. Again, if your father is the owner of Warner Brothers, go and put in a good word for me. We’re kind of long shots because all we are is an author and several producers who have no major credits to their name. And I sold it to them specifically because- you know, I sold Alcatraz to Dreamworks for a lot of money and then I just had to like say goodbye to the project and I like what they did with it but it was basically they took the project. And I, for Mistborn, wanted to have more control which also means my chances of actually getting it made go down quite dramatically. Ask Orson Scott Card how long it took to get made Ender’s Game made and you will see the same sort of thing, but then he’s getting it made his way, eventually. So that’s what I’d like to do with Mistborn if I have that option.

QUESTION:

How is Birthright coming?

BRANDON

How is Birthright coming? Birthright has been, unofficially, moved back to 2014 in anticipation of the new console generation. I don’t know that that’s official, I don’t even know that the new consoles are official or that we even know when they’re coming, but the fact that the WiiU is coming out makes us think that we want a little extra time on Birthright. So, that’s the Mistborn video game.

QUESTION:

When does Emperor’s Soul take place in relation to the events of Elantris?

BRANDON:

After them.

QUESTION:

Like how long after?

BRANDON:

I haven’t answered that yet.

[Laughter]

A lot of people keep asking. But after them, but not so far after them that the technology level has shifted, which I allow, in my worlds, to happen. And also not so far after that the Emperor’s Soul- if you keep your eyes open you will see a Derethi priest in full armor. And so, not so far after that the kingdoms we are familiar with no longer exist. They do exist and the tech level has not shifted dramatically so you can use that to kind of ballpark for yourself, a range. It’s certainly not thousands of years later, in other words.

QUESTION:

If Stephen Leeds read your books would he get you as an aspect or a 17th Sharder?

BRANDON:

Definitely a 17th Sharder. Definitely definitely, it’d be one of these guys. [Points to Josh and Mi’ch]

QUESTION:

Do you mind if I ask a Wheel of Time question?

BRANDON:

No, I don’t mind at all.

QUESTION:

The group that I’m a part of on Facebook has a list going of things we want to ask you.

BRANDON:

Ooooh, okay!

QUESTION:

So I’m trying to ask one that’s not gonna get a Read And Find Out.

Brandon:

Okay.

QUESTION:

Do the women in Randland shave?

BRANDON:

[Laughter] Wow, I’ve never been asked that. Oh wow, I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.

QUESTION:

It’s been bothering me since I started the series.

BRANDON:

Wow. That’s an excellent question. Ask Maria, she might actually know. That’s the sort of thing that’s probably buried in the notes somewhere. You can ask another one since I didn’t know. You can go down a few and if I have to RAFO, then I will but is there another one you can ask that might get an answer?

QUESTION:

Maybe, you’re going to have to forgive me if I mispronounce...

BRANDON:

That’s all right.

QUESTION:

What did Moridin mean by the Fisher King being a dim remnant of a memory of Rand al’Thor?

BRANDON:

There are lots of ways to interpret that I will give you one interpretation. And that is that it is a memory from the last time that Rand al’Thor did what he did. And that those stories were passed on and passed on and so now he is following legends about himself. Does that make sense?

QUESTION:

Yeah.

QUESTION:

We’ve been arguing about how to pronounce the character, either it’s “Say-zed” or “Sayzd”?

BRANDON:

Right, that’s one of the most contentious name decisions that I’ve chosen. Before I tell you the answer, I will preface it by saying I don’t say the names right, in a lot of times. For instance I say “E-lawn-tris” like everyone else, but in world they say “Elayn-tris” because of the system of language that’s been built. I say “Kel-seer” and they say “Kel-see-ay,” in-world. And so I’m American and I use my pronunciations I say “Say-zed”.

However, that may not be the way they actually say it. And beyond that, every reader of a book has the ability to rewrite the book as they wish. A book doesn’t exist until you’ve read it. I write a script, I write- I get you hopefully seventy five percent of the way there but the last twenty-five percent is you, it’s participatory. And as you write, you create the images of them in your own imagination and that becomes the right interpretation for you. And you have line [inaudible] veto.

When I read Anne McCaffrey’s books the dragons are these unpronounceable things in my head that I could never actually because it’s just something a dragon can say. And it has very little relationship to the letters that are there on the page. I have a friend, who when he reads the Wheel of Time- the first time when Thom Merrilin shows up in the books, on screen, it says he has these big drooping moustaches. My friend said, “No he doesn’t.” And he cannot imagine Thom Merrilin with a moustache. To me, the moustache is an integral part of who Thom Merrilin is. It’s like him, he’s the moustached guy! Well, theres a couple other moustached guys but Thom’s the first moustached guy in the Wheel of Time! And so, you have the right to say it however you want.

QUESTION:

So, do the Parshendi need a highstorm to change forms?

BRANDON:

They do, good guess! Excellent question.

QUESTION:

Do they eat?

BRANDON:

Do they eat? Yes.

QUESTION:

So, they eat like grains and stuff like that?

BRANDON:

You will find out, but they do eat.

QUESTION:

If you don’t finish all of your books in the series that you’re in, would you be willing to give that opportunity to someone else?

BRANDON:

Yeah of course, I’d be a complete hypocrite if I wasn’t, right? [Laughs] Yeah totally, I’ll have like one of these guys write it. [Points to Josh and Mi’ch] We’ll call up Pat Rothfuss, “Hey Pat,” and then you’ll get it in like thirty years.

QUESTION:

When you were talking about the Rithmatist, you said that he wasn’t genetically capable of doing magic and I was wondering if you actually had like a genetic system for how...

BRANDON:

Yeah, this one actually isn’t genetic. I said genetic, but it’s not. But I don’t want to give away what it is that makes someone use the magic in that world. I did actually develop a genetic magic system that was very interesting that is in a book that didn’t get published.

QUESTION:

Is it going to get published?

BRANDON:

Probably not, but I might recycle the magic eventually.

QUESTION:

The name of the metal escapes me, but it’s the one that allows you to speed up your own bubble while everything else is outside of you, in Mistborn. What happens if you have that and you burn the duralumin?

BRANDON:

That is an excellent question. The trick about that is you would have to be Mistborn to do that. Or you would have to have one other specific set of circumstances because- yeah I’m not gonna get into it. But you basically have to be Mistborn and there aren’t Mistborn anymore.

QUESTION:

How do you keep your characters straight, among all the characters that you have to write?

BRANDON:

I don’t know, it just happens. Characters are just one of those things. Like I always have trouble describing how I write my characters, because characters just kind of happen. I plan my plots, I plan my worlds, and characters I write my way into to make them work. And I have a hard time explaining to people how I develop them. They just are who they are, if that makes sense.

QUESTION:

Do you have any advice for approaching agents?

BRANDON:

Have you listened to my podcast or watched my-?

QUESTION:

I’m familiar with it, Writing Excuses?

BRANDON:

We have a couple agents on, you can go look for those agent podcasts and we interview them about what should new authors do, that can be helpful. I have an entire university lecture on agents at writeaboutdragons, and it’s like an hour of me talking about approaching agents and what they do and things like that. The only piece I can give you right now is try and find a way that you can make a personal connection with them. Try and go to a con that they’re at, follow their blog, read books by their authors, have some sort of personal connection so you can know who they are rather than just submitting blind.

QUESTION:

How involved were you in the development of the adventure game?

BRANDON:

Medium level, in that I would go and say, “This is the type of role playing game I like,” and then they would come back and say, “Here’s the mechanics we're thinking of using.” and I’d say, “Hey, that’s cool...” So I did get to sign off on it.

QUESTION:

Is there an odiumspren?

BRANDON:

You will find out what there is.

QUESTION:

Can Odium pick up pieces of a Shard without changing the nature of his Shard?

BRANDON:

Any investiture, over time, will slowly change one’s personality, no matter how small that investiture.

QUESTION:

In the prologue it sounds like Lews Therin balefires himself, and then is reborn as Rand al’Thor.

BRANDON:

He does not balefire himself, so I can answer that. He does not.

QUESTION:

So it’s just something that sounds a lot like balefire?

BRANDON:

Yes- well there’s various interpretations of what happens there. He um- yeah there’s various interpretations of what actually killed him. If you go look and read closely, what actually killed him may be- could be subject to some debate.

QUESTION:

I would like to know how you met Patrick Rothfuss, how did you guys become friends?

BRANDON:

The first time we met was actually on the forums for a webcomic.

QUESTION:

Which webcomic?

BRANDON:

Penny Arcade. Because I occasionally go to- Penny Arcade had a writing forum and I would occasionally go to the writing forums. I wouldn’t hang out on most other forums, but any place that had an active writing forum I hung out on, I like to chat with people about writing and things like that.

And Pat got on and gave somebody feedback. Somebody else trashed him for his feedback. And I wrote back to Pat and said, “Don’t listen to him, your feedback was awesome and also if you’re who I think you are, your book’s really good.” And that was back when it was only out in hardcover, he didn’t take off until his book came out in paperback. That’s when he got really popular. So, it was before he was popular. But he’d made waves already in the publishing community. And so he wrote back and said, “Wow, who are you?” And we just started chatting and then we started hanging out at cons after that.

QUESTION:

The question is, can you read it (the Alethi alphabet)?

BRANDON:

I can’t read it, Isaac can.

JOSH:

Isaac can’t read it.

BRANDON:

Can’t he?

JOSH:

No.

BRANDON:

He came up with it!

I told you where it came from, the writing system, right? That I told Isaac, “I want it to look like waveforms,” and he developed it to look like waveforms on the little thing when you speak voice- and things like that, and that was my goal for the [writing] system was something that was a line with waveforms across it. And he developed it then.

QUESTION:

How do you buy a contract with a kandra in Alloy of Law time?

BRANDON:

You don’t, good question. There’s two of them in Alloy of Law. Shadows of Self has quite a big part with a kandra.

QUESTION:

I want to know if the Seventeenth Shard members come from all of the planets, not just Sel.

BRANDON:

They come from multiple planets. You have seen Seventeenth Shard members from several planets already.

QUESTION:

Okay, I also want to know if there are other ways to Worldhop aside then what Hoid uses.

BRANDON:

Yes.

QUESTION:

Do you have any inclination and/or permission to write anything after A Memory of Light or involved in the same world?

BRANDON:

I do not have permission or inclination. Mostly because I don’t think that Robert Jordan would have wanted it to continue. If Harriet decides she wants to do more I would probably say yes, if she asked me, to the prequels, because we at least know he wanted to do those. But my instinct says we should just let it be done.

We might see them as video games. I really would love to see them done as videogames. Because that’s not canon, but you can still experience the story. Anyway, something like that.

QUESTION:

What colors do you play (MTG)?

BRANDON:

I am historically Azorius, so white blue, though occasionally Esper so white, blue, black. If I had to pick one, it’s going to be white.

QUESTION:

Shardplate, does it have to be fitted by a smith or does it just kind of magically...?

BRANDON:

It magically fits to you.

JOSH:

I’d like to see it fit to someone three foot tall.

BRANDON:

It’s within reason, it can fit.

QUESTION:

But they do weld stuff to it to it?

BRANDON:

They weld stuff to it to ornament it.

QUESTION:

But that doesn’t really stick?

BRANDON:

It won’t stay, it can get cut off and things like that. Yeah, and they paint them and things.

QUESTION:

So the actual color is gray, right?

BRANDON:

Dalinar’s color is the actual color.

QUESTION:

He doesn’t have it painted, yeah. It’s kind of stone, right?

BRANDON:

It’s not really stone, it’s more like a deep metallic, like an unbuffed steel sort of metallic. A dark charcoal metallic.

QUESTION:

I think I remember hearing you say before that Mistborn was going to be three trilogies?

BRANDON:

It’ll be three trilogies, yes.

QUESTION:

With the technology advancing and going faster than light...?

BRANDON:

Yes, the FTL is built into the magic systems and so there will be something where they figure out how to do that with the magic and spaceships will be propelled using that.

QUESTION

Okay, awesome, just wanted to double check that.

JOSH:

Expanding bubbles around the engines and around the ships?

BRANDON:

You will see, you will see.

JOSH:

Someone on the site actually has-

BRANDON:

Actually figured it out?

JOSH:

Has a very convincing theory.

BRANDON:

They’re missing a very big important piece of the puzzle that you won’t get for a few more books.

QUESTION:

So we actually had a question. So the Shardplate, so like if you were to break up the Shardplate shirt first and then start regenerating it over a short person would it regrow to full size?

BRANDON:

A little person? A little person could probably find a way to get their Shardplate to regenerate to their size.

The interview has been entered into the Interview Database.

Edited February 23, 2014 by Joe ST
hid in a spoiler, it's a very long post

[Chaos]

Boom, added to Around the Cosmere: http://www.17thshard.com/news/around-the-cosmere/around-the-cosmere-for-april-14th-2013-r131

Good to finally get this done. Thanks Windy!

[Voidus]

BRANDON:

They’re missing a very big important piece of the puzzle that you won’t get for a few more books.

Argh! More allomancy mechanics? This is going to drive me crazy. A new metal maybe? Like a Bendalloy/Atium alloy? 

Ah well, thanks for the transcript! That one must have taken quite a while.

Edited April 15, 2013 by Voidus

[Phantom Monstrosity]

You know, the southern continent thing and analogy to different Dor use... kinda makes me want to create a whole new system using different metals...

Hmm.

[Joe ST]

I'm thinking some interaction between the current and the southern metallic arts leads to FTL. That would be the most obvious way.

[Kurkistan]

Thanks for the post. Some interesting stuff here. My thoughts:

 

QUESTION:
The name of the metal escapes me, but it’s the one that allows you to speed up your own bubble while everything else is outside of you, in Mistborn. What happens if you have that and you burn the duralumin? 
 
BRANDON:
That is an excellent question. The trick about that is you would have to be Mistborn to do that. Or you would have to have one other specific set of circumstances because- yeah I’m not gonna get into it. But you basically have to be Mistborn and there aren’t Mistborn anymore.

 
This one is interesting because it might semi-vaguely-possibly imply that Nicro-bursting does not always lead to the exact same result at using duralumin. On the other hand, Brandon allows for "one other specific set of circumstances," but he could be talking about Hemalurgy. Maybe using duralumin does something really weird with the effect of Cadmium/Bendalloy, like shrinking the time bubble down to just the person using it or something? That would be a bit odd, though, and shoot even my most basic FTL theory down (more on that development shortly).

 

QUESTION:
Can Odium pick up pieces of a Shard without changing the nature of his Shard?

BRANDON:
Any investiture, over time, will slowly change one’s personality, no matter how small that investiture.

 

This one is interesting because it opens the door to more "mundane" Investiture having effects. So Returned, people with extra Breath, Hemalurgists, Elantrians, etc. could all be at risk.

 

QUESTION:
With the technology advancing and going faster than light...?

BRANDON:
Yes, the FTL is built into the magic systems and so there will be something where they figure out how to do that with the magic and spaceships will be propelled using that.

QUESTION
Okay, awesome, just wanted to double check that.

JOSH:
Expanding bubbles around the engines and around the ships?

BRANDON:
You will see, you will see.

JOSH:
Someone on the site actually has-

BRANDON:
Actually figured it out?

JOSH:
Has a very convincing theory.

BRANDON:
They’re missing a very big important piece of the puzzle that you won’t get for a few more books.

 

First off, thanks for the nod (unless I'm just being incredibly conceited here and you were referring to someone else) to my theory, Rubix. It is kind of wrong on all counts (due to frames of reference and Cognitive definition of "in" time bubbles, along with that pesky calculus), but that's how we learn.

Second, we do get a fair amount of useful info here. Whereas before it was possible that FTL was a fundamentally mechanical innovation that was simply based on insights gained from Allomancy (so an artificial Bendalloy-bubble generator or a warp drive or something), we now know for sure that it's all magic, all the way.

The word "propelled" is also interesting, as it implies that magic will be used to drive the ship through normal space, as opposed to some kind of Shadesmaric stuff or teleportation of another kind.

As for the "big important piece" we're still missing:  . I don't think we need any fundamentally new magic, since we've know for awhile that FTL was "built into Allomancy and Feruchemy," but I suppose there's some interaction or new use that we don't know about.

 

You know what, I don't like that. I'm going to post a new thread on FTL. Watch this space.

 

EDIT: Boom. I just can't help myself.

 

...And so yes, the southern continent does have interaction with the three Metallic Arts, but they use them in very different ways.

 

I don't think this one necessarily implies as big a division as between AonDor and Forgery. I certainly hope it doesn't, given Brandon's previous comments about the Southerners having "the seeds of the three metallic arts" and, if FTL is derived from Southern influences, our knowledge about FTL being wholly contained within Allomancy and Feruchemy. More likely, they just use it in really weird and novel ways: a little bit of cultural differences + a little bit of innovation, stuff like Smokers protecting other's emotions and Seekers detecting Feruchemy.

Edited April 15, 2013 by Kurkistan

[Aiken Frost]

So, you people have probably already saw this, but in the Reddit, look what Brandon said:

 

3. You've said you want to write a book set in the Southern Continent. I did enjoy the Emperor's Soul a lot, so I am curious about you writing that future book. How do they use magic differently, and why should we be excited about reading a book set there?

 

 

3. The southern continent is where people have discovered how to harness the metallurgic arts in a more mechanical method. (I've hinted several places that this is possible. I've been holding off doing it until we go here.)

Edited April 16, 2013 by Aiken Frost

[Meg]

QUESTION:

Shardplate, does it have to be fitted by a smith or does it just kind of magically...?

BRANDON:

It magically fits to you.

JOSH:

I’d like to see it fit to someone three foot tall.

BRANDON:

It’s within reason, it can fit.

(... questions not related to this topic)

QUESTION:

So we actually had a question. So the Shardplate, so like if you were to break up the Shardplate shirt first and then start regenerating it over a short person would it regrow to full size?

BRANDON:

A little person? A little person could probably find a way to get their Shardplate to regenerate to their size.

 

 

At first thanks for your work.

 

I tried to restrain myself but I can't, because I haven't been that wrong than it seemed when I thought about Creation or Growing of new Shardplates.

[Joe ST]

Quick clarification, this was from June 11? or November 6? (stupid American dates)

[Shardlet]

Quick clarification, this was from June 11? or November 6? (stupid American dates)

 

Windrunner is in the states, so this would be November 6th, 2012.

[askthepaperclip]

Or was it June 12th, 2011??? ISO date format....the only way to go  

 

Especially useful for date-based file naming systems: alphanumerical sort=chronological sort, even across multiple years! Blew my mind the first time I realized the vast superiority of (YY)YY-MM-DD!

[Herowannabe]

I just saw this post, and was reading through it to see if I came across any interesting tidbits, and then I read this:

 

 

QUESTION:
Okay Hoid, you mentioned he’s in all your books, is he in also in all your shorter stories?

BRANDON:
He is not in all of my shorter stories. In fact, he is not in any book that references Earth. So if there’s a reference to Earth- most of my science fiction has referential stuff to Earth, Alcatraz is like this. He’s not in anything like that. He’s not in the Wheel of Time. It would not have been appropriate for me to seed something like that into a Wheel of Time book. So he’s not in Steelheart or the other children works that I’ve done. But he is in all my epic fantasies.

QUESTION:
Now my main question actually, which magic systems, if any, does he have access to?

BRANDON:
That’s an excellent question. He is familiar with very many of them, and lots that you haven’t seen yet.

 

And I realized- Hey! That was me! I asked that question! This was the first signing I went to- I believe it was for the Emperor's soul release at Sam Wellers. I had learned about Hoid a few months before, and I don't think I had even heard about 17th Shard (the website) yet. So I don't know if that question even made any sort of impact at the time or if all the Sharders in the audience just rolled their eyes and groaned at the newbie question, but well, there you go (of course now we know that he uses feruchemy, has some lerasium, Breaths, the moon scepter, and can Lightweave and who knows what else).

[Joe ST]

Thank's to herowanabe, it seems this was 2012-11-06 Wellers event page

And in fact, has already been entered into Theoryland.