How did you first hear about Brandon?

[firstRainbowRose she/her]

(yes, double post, but of very different natures, so it's allowed.  )

 

I guess I should probably share my story, since most of you haven't heard it.

 

I used to shop at a Waldenbooks in one of the local malls often enough that the employees there knew me by name, and that I wanted to be an author myself.  One of the employees (Steve.  I think he's in the acknowledgements of a couple of the books), knew this and suggested Brandon to me, figuring I'd enjoy his works.

 

I have to say, honestly, I put him down the first couple of times.  I was given the hardback the first time, and didn't have the money.  I was given the paperback the second time, and the back didn't catch my attention.  (Really, that back is TERRIBLE!)  Well, Steve told me one time that Brandon was going to be at this huge Authorpaloza type thing, and since I wanted to be a author I should come and pick his mind.

 

This was on Black Friday, and it was insane!  When I tried to find Brandon I was directed to the front.  I asked one guy, who instead of saying "No, I'm not him, he's over there" he was all like "I'm not him, but let me talk your ear off about about medival history." (Which, was kind of cool.  Also, when I said Brandon's name he was close enough to turn around and see who had said it, but I of course wasn't able to go over...)  From there, my mother demanded I come home, so no luck that time.

 

However, a little bit after that he held the pre-release launch party for Mistborn, and I was like "This is my chance!"  I also decided if I was going to pick this guys mind, I should probably know something of his writing.  It was only proper to support the guy, right?  And while I was planning on picking up Mistborn, I figured I should also go into it knowing his stuff.)  I picked up Elantris.

 

I was blown away, simply put.  I remember discribing it to people as a book that had predicitable twist, and things that you could never see coming.  (I think it was the twist ending that I loved the most.  I am usually able to pick up on foreshadowing a mile before it actually happens, so for someone to surprise me was awesome.)

 

I went to the launch and ended up having a million questions to ask.  At one point I had my recept, and kept on scribbling questions on the back so I wouldn't forget.  I actually got teased for it a bit at the time.  Mind you, this was a group of MAYBE 20 people asking questions.  The total number of books sold had to be less than 100, and most of those were only sold because the book was being offered 3 days before the actual release date.

 

From there it's a long story about how I ended up here, in charge of the site.  I don't know that you guys would want to read that wall of text...

[Nihilist]

My brother has been reading WoT since it first started when we were still kids.  When Jordan died, and Sanderson was named the author who would carry on to finish the series, he immediately went out and bought every book Sanderson had written up to that point.  I just happend to see Elantris lying on a bookshelf at my brother's house one day and asked to borrow it.  I was hooked from the start.

[Mysty she/her]

My sister dressed up as Vin for halloween complete with mistcloak, coin pouch, and metal flakes. Personally I thought she looked like chewbacca gone gray, but any book good enough to inspire hours of work to make a costume, it would be worth looking into. Besides, I had to learn more about the crazy idea that money is for jumping not spending. So I borrowed her copy of FE...and have been hooked ever since, even to the point of listening to the entire Writing Excuses archives.

[Djerf he/him]

I first heard of him on Dragonmount after he'd been selected to finish WoT during a flame war between " He's awesome you should read his books!" and " He sucks, he'll ruin the whole thing!" and I thought that if AMoL turns out ok I'll read his other stuff!

Some time later I were suposed to studie for a test I had the next morning and so i was browsing the web trying to find a book i had read years before when I stumbled upon Warbreaker which I finished just in time to catch the buss for school. Warbreaker was awesome and I just had to have more from this guy so I went and bought Elantris and Mistborn. It's was some time after this while checking for updates on AMoL that the coin fell down and I made the conection between AMoL Sanderson and Warbreaker Sanderson.

[Darkarma he/him]

I got the first WoT book that he took part of and went from there starting with Elantris. I was surprised how good it was an how his magic systems mirrored my own attempts at such only he did it much much better... After that I was hooked.

[Claincy he/him]

A friend told me a lot about how good mistborn was. So a bit later I got the trilogy from my birthday. I loved it, especially the final empire, but at the time I didn't really look at his other books. Some time later I read most of his other stuff and learned about the cosmere, thought it was cool, but I just didn't have time to really get into it. Finally when I found out about the MAG mid last year I really got invested in it all. Joined the crafty forums, started a 4-crew campaign. Then around July I got involved in steelministry.com running and playing there and finally stopped ghosting here and created an account =)

 

No regrets since then.

 

 

*Feels slightly embarrassed about how long it took me to really get involved with most people talking about how they were hooked instantly.*

[Zizoz he/him]

It actually took me nearly three years to go from reading The Way of Kings to reading all the cosmere books and joining here.

 

The first time I looked for fansites I found TWG but got scared off by cosmere discussion (since I hadn't even read anything but WOK) and info about the orders of Radiants which confused me because I was pretty sure it wasn't in the books. (It's surprising how much *was* in the books that I missed or forgot, but this was from an interview.)

 

It was Tor.com's reread that eventually got me excited about Words of Radiance and convinced me I had to read the other books to find out what was going on with the cosmere.