Around the Cosmere 11/30

Hey Sharders! Another week has past, and that means that it is time for another (hopefully)awesome news cast!

I'd like to begin by wishing Peter Ahlstrom one more very happy birthday. For those of you who don't know, Peter celebrated his birthday on Saturday (November 26), and many of us have chosen to celebrate this by changing our display names for the first ever Ookla the Mokival. If you want more of an explanation of what the heck is up with this, check out this thread.

In other news, Brandon is finally home from his United Kingdom tour and is hard at work on A Memory of Light. Reports have been springing up all across Utah that since our beloved author has returned trees that have entered their dormant season are now spontaneously bearing fruit and improbable things have cropping up all over the place.

In all seriousness, I think I can speak for all of us here at 17th Shard as we welcome Brandon back to this side of the Atlantic.

Of course, there were some obvious benefits to Brandon's tour in the form of the many interesting tidbits we've gotten from the various interviews and Q&A sessions that Brandon has done while abroad. Zas mentioned some in last week's news post, and now we have a few more to add. Sharder Tortellini typed up a nice selection of question from the Q&A at the Manchester signing here. At this signing, someone asked a question about Taravangian (from WoK) that has never been asked before, and had a really interesting answer, so if you've read The Way of Kings or don't mind spoilers, go check it out! Props to Link Von Kelsier for theorizing about this ages ago in this thread.

Brandon's new collection of tweets is up along with a new blog post. In this post, he gives a link to his official NaNoWriMo pep talk, the new episode of Writing Excuses on plotting out mysteries, and chapter 15 of Mythwalker. Mythwalker is one of Brandon's earlier novels, and elements of it have be re-purposed and incorporated into Warbreaker, Mistborn, and The Way of Kings. Now that the tour is over, this particular collection of tweets doesn't contain too many items of note, other than the thrilling narrative of Brandon's adventures in Her Majesty's land. He does, however, mention this interview from NYC. The last question ("My question is if there’s anything that you’ve never been asked that you would like to talk about?") is particularly interesting. To answer, Brandon gives a good explanation of compounding and talks a bit about similarities between AonDor and Allomancy. There are some spoilers, so read at your own risk.

While we're at it, here's some other sweet interviews: Milton Keynes Signing Report (contains a similar explanation of Compounding, and has spoilers for Mistborn and Wheel of Time),

Brandon talking about his Infinity Blade Novella (where he talks about connecting the first game to the second one with his story), and

Gollancz Blog (where Brandon talks about his inspiration for Alloy of Law).

Also, Alex Flagg, the man behind the Crafty Games Mistborn RPG did an interview with Saving Throw at RPGamer.com.

Fantasy & Sci-Fi Lovin' News and Reviews is having a draw for a copy of Alloy of Law. The holidays are approaching and if you guessed that meant 17th Shard was going to have a huge giveaway you would be correct! See the post for details, and comment below to enter. The prizes can be shipped internationally, so everyone (even Canadians like me) are welcome to enter.

Now I'm gonna start talking about some threads on the site. If you are worried about spoilers, read on at your own risk.

If you are feeling festive, you might want to check out this thread and upvote it a few more times (not that it needs to be).

Right now the boards are buzzing from all the information we've received since Alloy of Law came out. If you want to talk more about Taravangian's changing IQ, to my knowledge, a new thread hasn't been created, so you can check out Link Von Kelsier's thread.

The Mistborn boards are also pretty busy, with threads on bendalloy, the new feruchemical powers, Investiture, and the letter at the end of Alloy of Law.

There's also been some cool additions to our gallery so if you haven't been checking it lately, you're missing out. I especially like this one posted by Yados and painted by Melia.

And since I'm in the RP department here at 17th shard, I thought I'd give a short update for Mistborn: The Inquisition. Since Alloy of Law came out, we've had an influx of new members and characters, so if you've been thinking about joining for a while, I'd say now is the time to do so!

Thanks for reading, and comment below if there is anything I missed that you think is newsworthy.