Pagerunner

Looks like they're taking questions on Twitter for the AMA.

They haven't officially announced anywhere yet, so I assume it will be the one linked on brandonsanderson.com. https://www.youtube.com/user/BrandSanderson

Here's the full description of the event: So, not heavy lore questions. (Although, if they run out of boring life story questions, you never know...) I plan on asking what Brandon thinks the Cosmere experience would have looked like if he had successfully written Dragonsteel before starting on Stormlight.

On Saturday, 1:00 MST (3:00 EST). We'll need to wait on details; not sure if this is promoting anything in particular, yet. But start dusting off your question lists, in case good cosmere questions are legal.

We do know that force is inversely proportional to distance, and there are some other interactions that suggest the force is also related to relative velocity (like steelpushing contests between two Allomancers, as shown in the linked Impossible Physics thread). So the ZoBell tower could be another scenario explained by a relative velocity factor on steelpushes. But there are a couple of other factors to consider beforehand, which all require a closer reading of the text. You can push harder on larger anchors; what was Wax pushing on as he was going up the side of the tower, vs coming down? When you're calculating the work done, you're essentially integrating force times distance. If you're not directly adjacent to what you're pushing off of, you're not going to be able to get as much work out of a push (since the force will start off smaller, and you'll be able to accomplish work over less of a total distance). How far was Wax from what he was pushing off of on his way up? I'm not certain air resistance is negligible. According to Google, it takes a human 12 seconds/1500 feet to reach terminal velocity, about the height of the Empire State Building. ZoBell tower is about a fifth of that (20 stories, Empire State Building is 102), so I'd estimate that there's enough time for air resistance to accomplish some effect on the free fall. Air resistance operates against Wax's pushes going up (he has to put in more energy to reach the same height), and with Wax's push coming down (has to put in less energy to slow down). So, there are a lot of other factors that could potentially be responsible for Wax needing one object on the way down, and more on the way up. When exactly did this scene occur? As to the gun vs spear comparisons, remember that once a coin enters someone's body, the Allomancer can't push on it any more. (Which is why people hide coins in their mouths.) By the time the coin begins to slow down, it will already have broken the skin and be inside the body, so you won't be able to sustain that push anymore.

The WoB in question was from a paraphrased report from Phoenix ComicCon 2013, and it does not appear to be in Arcanum: It should be added to the Phoenix ComicCon event (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/297-phoenix-comicon-2013/) and linked in the footnote for the 17S Q&A entry. Would you like to make those edits? There are several other reported WoBs in that thread which need to be added, as well.

TWG 100%: Brandon 100% (116/116), Peter 100% (116/116), Isaac 100% (75/75), Ben 100% (38/38) 17S 100%: Brandon 100% (107/107), Peter 100% (113/113), Isaac 100% (113/113), Ben 100% (102/102) Reddit 100%: Brandon 100% (136/136), Peter 100% (109/109), Isaac 100% (27/27), Ben 100% (90/90), Adam 100% (18/18), Store 100% (8/8) Twitter 59%: Brandon 100% (129/129), Peter 44% (57/129), Isaac 47% (64/136), Kara 59% (69/117), Karen 55% (59/107), Adam 40% (24/60) Blog 100%: Brandon 100% (216/216) Social Media Total: 87% (1778/2054) Theoryland Review: 10% (121/1183) Events and Signings Review: 0% (0/397) I was not able to put Twitter away this month, between holidays and work and getting sick. I made more progress than it looks like - you'll see Kara (the store manager) and Karen (the continuity editor) are on there now. Neither have been active in years, and their early activity looks to be all personal stuff, but I'll put them on the list, anyways.

There's a user, @Mark Lindberg, who has an extensive collection and a YouTube channel called "The Sanderson Collector." I suspect he'll have a lot of the info you're looking for.

It's definitely an "S." The tail isn't as thickly drawn as the other characters, which is why it's getting blurred out in my pic, but it's the same character. Considering we didn't get a question mark at the end of the phrase on the cover, I don't think there are any punctuation symbols at all.

Double-posting because I played around with lighting and got some good pictures of the cover, and a clearer version of the blackboard, as well. There certainly appear to be errors (DEIROY, CYEATED) in each of the selections. HELLO WOULD YOU LIKE TO DEIROY SOME EVIL TODAY CYEATED BY DANDOS THE OILSWORN AND ISAAC S

I got my grubby paws on my copy today, so I can get a bit of a better look. It is really difficult to make out the purple text on the black cover, even with the book in hand, and I'm not having much success taking any better pictures. But some observations: Every letter with a dot above actually has two dots, very closely placed side-by-side. Which is why they look like a single large dot on the original pictures. I believe U will match this pattern; they just get spaced a little more widely, since that's more natural for the shape of the letter. The Y has two dots to the side, one atop the other. It is in the correct row; it shares the "A" structure. R is odd, based on the chalkboard example. The "R" in "created" appears to share the "A" structure, but in "oilsworn" it appears to follow the "L" structure. It's subtle, but quite distinctive, especially since the next two letters provide immediate contrast. And the million dollar question... the mysterious "ST" letter is, in fact, an "I." I've gone cross-eyed trying to see a difference, and I can't find one; it is the exact same "L" structure with two dots above. If the letter after it is, indeed, an "R" (and it does match the "oilsworn" style "R"), then we are asking to "deiroy" some evil. Which, according to spellcheck, is not a word. I'll keep poking around through the interior illustrations to see if there are any other examples of in-world text. I flipped to the Ars Arcanum and didn't see a key (which isn't terribly surprising).

Well, the third and final stretch goal was unlocked with a whopping $150,368, very little room to spare. But it was done, nonetheless. And with the tier I suggested ($25, get a set of acrylic dice) getting 71 backers, that's at least $1775 that wouldn't have been pledged otherwise. (Potentially more, with add-ons for additional acrylic sets.) So go Pagerunner, you were able to help push this thing across the goal line! For those who missed out and are reading this later, here's what Crafty said in the campaign about future availability outside the Kickstarter: There are 82 pledges at the Mistborn Merchant level, so between any of their various online store sand the Crafty online store, there should be some options for to get your hands on them, if you're proactive. August 2020 is the estimated fulfillment date, so August or September would be the time to start hunting.

Here are some of my various comments and observations, ordered chronologically: Cosmere Symbol: An interesting modification to the cosmere symbol in the header: The ring with sixteen suns around the outside is new. (Well, the ones we can see are spaced such that there should be sixteen. It gets a little transparent in the bottom-left.) I suspect those sixteen represent the Shards, and the centermost one represents Adonalsium. But I had thought that the sixteen points represented the sixteen Shards; why do each of the outermost ones have sixteen points, as well, if each of those represents one of the "points"? I'm also unsure as to the remainder of the design elements. I think the four-pointed star is the Spiritual Realm (from which Investiture comes), entering and passing through the single circle of the Cognitive Realm (which is all connected), moving toward the four arcs that represent distinct planets in the Physical Realm (not particular planets, necessarily, but the concept of there being separation). Way of Kings Kickstarter: Looking forward to the descriptions. It makes me think of the small companion book we got before Oathbringer, which had some interesting tidbits that hadn't been otherwise confirmed up until that point. I do hope they have an easy way to let you get all ten tiers of the Order-specific goodies; signing up for eight new burner accounts is going to be a little time-consuming. Signing Changes End of an era. I'd be saddened by the loss of the signing line - that's been one of my favorite parts of the fandom, and something that makes us unique. I'm torn between gambling that I'd be able to get in the lottery (or have a friend who could get me in), and wanting to see the signing line gone entirely in the hopes that Brandon is more amenable to people staying afterwards to ask some more questions. (At all of the signings he's been at, he's been too tired to offer any second-rounds. But if it gets done at 11:00 instead of 2:00, that could change things.) Either way, it's going to make Reddit AMAs that much sweeter. (And there's been rumors that one could be coming once Brandon finishes up Stormlight, so keep your eyes open over the next few months.) That format is actually a little better for detailed cosmere questions anyways; there's much less time pressure in answering. Back in 2015, Brandon kept going back to an AMA for six months (right until the date the thread got locked, pretty much) answering more questions. Reddit itself could probably be used better to leverage AMAs. Questions get posted day of, and Brandon basically sorts by "new" in answering. But using upvotes to push questions that more people want to see to the top, and having Brandon sort by "hot" or "best," could make them run even better and minimize repeated questions or stuff that's already been answered. (You hear that, @Jofwu? Might be worth trying.) White Sand Well.. it's better than nothing, I guess. I'm not a fan of the pacing of comics in general, but these seem to be working. Future Cosmere Plans This is the first I've heard of the First of the Sun YA novel. I must say, I'm not a fan of YA books. The parts of the cosmere I dislike the most are the characters who feel like they're out of YA novels (Lift, Lopen, and Wayne). Girl Who Looked up is fine, but that's not really something for Brandon to work on, either; that'll be more like the Leatherbounds, where it's his team. The Secret Standalone Cosmere book is interesting. Based on history, Secret Projects tend to get a lot of momentum really quickly and get pushed to the front of the writing queue. (Alcatraz, Skyward, and Children of the Nameless all started as Secret Projects.) So, one one hand, if Wax and Wayne get pushed back again, it would be nice to at least have something in the cosmere be released in their place. But on the other hand, what could it possibly be? Is this a new world? Or is it a Secret History style piece, something that fits in on an existing planet? Brandon made no mention of Mistborn: Secret History 2 or Stormlight: Secret History, both possibilities he's floated before. Could this be a Hoid: Secret History book? But those wouldn't be very much of a "standalone," if they were entries to existing series. Here are some WoBs where Brandon has talked about other things before: Kite Story: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/385/#e12820 and https://wob.coppermind.net/events/379/#e12792 Sixth of the Dusk sequel: https://wob.coppermind.net/adv_search/?query=&date_from=2003-12-05&date_to=2019-12-20&speaker=&tags=sixth+of+the+dusk+sequel&ordering=-date Emperor's Soul sequel: https://wob.coppermind.net/adv_search/?query=emperor's%2Bsoul%2Bsequel&date_from=2003-12-05&date_to=2019-12-20&speaker=&ordering=-date Threnody Novel: https://wob.coppermind.net/adv_search/?query=&date_from=2003-12-05&date_to=2019-12-20&speaker=&tags=threnody+novel&ordering=-date Silence Divine: https://wob.coppermind.net/adv_search/?query=&date_from=2003-12-05&date_to=2019-12-20&speaker=&tags=the+silence+divine&ordering=-date Aether of Night: https://wob.coppermind.net/adv_search/?query=&date_from=2003-12-05&date_to=2019-12-20&speaker=&tags=aether+of+night&ordering=-date Wandersail: https://wob.coppermind.net/adv_search/?query=&date_from=2003-12-05&date_to=2019-12-20&speaker=&tags=wandersail&ordering=-date Horneater: https://wob.coppermind.net/adv_search/?query=rock%2Bnovella&date_from=2003-12-05&date_to=2019-12-20&speaker=&ordering=-date Darkside Graphic Novels: https://wob.coppermind.net/adv_search/?query=darkside%2Bgraphic&date_from=2003-12-05&date_to=2019-12-20&speaker=&ordering=-date Also, the Silverlight novella has disappeared from this list. Was it an accidental exclusion? Or has that become the Secret Standalone? https://wob.coppermind.net/adv_search/?query=&date_from=2003-12-05&date_to=2019-12-20&speaker=&tags=silverlight+novella&ordering=rank Film/TV Uh oh. This has the potential to be a huge time sink. I'll selfishly hope this fizzles out like Apocalypse Guard did. Release Schedule Well, this is a first. Compare to last year's: This is the first time nothing has moved back. Is Brandon finally being conservative enough in his estimates? Or is that more due to the fact that he's been working on the same book the whole year, with no opportunities to revise his plans? Looking forward to next year, to see if we get two in a row. Big Cosmere Plans Original Cosmere Outline for reference: I've also done some number crunching on Brandon's writing speed. He's seeing 30 years, and I'm seeing 35; that's largely due to his book-by-book approach, whereas I looked at a word-by-word approach, so his will be skewed by the prevalence of shorter stuff earlier on. I think he's selling White Sand short - if we count each graphic novel trilogy as a single "novel," then we're at one more completed, and one more to go. So 12 out of 37, which improves his percentage a bit. The Aether trilogy is new. I had seen it as 1 book in the outline, as Aether of Night. But Brandon had done some working on a larger series (where Syl originally started, as a matter of fact): Climb the Sky: https://wob.coppermind.net/adv_search/?query=climb%2Bsky&date_from=2003-12-05&date_to=2019-12-20&speaker=&ordering=rank The planet of Lor: https://wob.coppermind.net/adv_search/?query=lor&date_from=2003-12-05&date_to=2019-12-20&speaker=&ordering=rank Threnody novel being the replacement for another cosmere novel is... also interesting. It appeared in Brandon's list from 2003, which had an untitled Warbreaker as a single book. Like I said above. I would not be surprised if the new Secret Project bumps out Wax and Wayne again. He wants to do standalones, and the only brand-new project on this list is this Secret Standalone.

Murder by the Book has them in the store. I'll be heading over on Saturday, most likely. Last call if anyone wants to meet up.

A couple late additions. They took my suggestion and added a $25 tier to get you a single acrylic dice set. And they took somebody else's suggestion and added an add-on for collector's tins for the acrylic sets. (Unfortunately, no tier for a smaller subset of metal dice, but they were very clear from the get-go that that would not be feasible.) Final week of the campaign, so if you've been on the fence, you should head on over. I expect, with these new collector's tins, we'll get a lot of people pledging an additional $45 for all three (eventual) acrylic dice sets, so I suspect we'll get a big push towards our third and final stretch goal over the next day or two.

We just got some pictures of the Warbreaker leatherbound. There's a new script on the front cover. Let's try to figure out what it says. Before we get started, all you weebs get the "uwu"s out of your system. Yes, we know that's what it looks like. No, we don't need to dwell on it. Okay, down to business. There's a nine-word phrase that is essentially repeated on each side: Along short sides, there's just the nine-word phrase. Along the long sides, there's a seventeen-word phrase; it's the same phrase, but the first word is excluded. Thinking of what's significant: "hello would you like to destroy some evil today" The second word was throwing me for a loop at first, since it's a pretty obvious double letter to begin, and only five letters. But the opening two U's are a literal W, and what I thought was the last single letter is actually two that kind of smush together. Going off the three most common vowels, everything falls right where I'd expect it to: I'll try and make a cleaned-up reference of what we have. We've only got half the alphabet (13 letters)... hopefully we'll get some more clues to flesh it out the rest of the way. EDIT: nothing every works perfect the first time. The middle of "destroy" doesn't quite seem to work out, and I can't quite distinguish the difference between T and V. I think I'll need some better resolution pictures or actually have the book in my hand to say for sure. But the vast bulk of the phrase matches up very well. Here's my rough key, with dashed lines to indicate which letters rise above and which letters fall below. (Thrown together in powerpoint using letters and symbols stacked on top of each other; I'm no graphic designer, so don't be too harsh.)

Since I've been tagged, here's the thread in question where I've been collecting the tidbits we get from Stormlight Four. I don't think Lirin's presence as a viewpoint character in this chapter means he's one of the "main viewpoint" characters. I'll contrast it with Elantris, where Brandon intentionally restricted his viewpoints to three main characters, rotating between them one chapter at a time in "triads." I don't see any indication he's doing this in Stormlight - he's been free to add in POV segments from characters like Cenn, Amaram, and Ash when appropriate, even when those characters don't appear in the high-level "main viewpoint" outline. Lirin's point of view could be in fact function very similar to Cenn's viewpoint, or even the first scene of Mistborn, without necessitation that Lirin will get extensive additional viewpoints.

I Tweeted at Peter. They're still intending to get the Liar chapters back up, and request that fans don't share the files.

The second redesign just happened, coinciding with the Skyward release about a week ago. I hadn't thought about the Mistborn Prime and Final Empire Prime samples. Are they still linked? I think one of them used to be in Mistborn Deleted Scenes, and the other was a blog post. I'll try to dig around in WayBack and find them later, unless somebody else gets there first..

Looks like a casualty of the site move. I'll just list a little bit of history, from what I've been able to determine. There used to be two sample chapters: chapters 1 through 6, version 1. And chapter 1, version 3. (A version two was written, obviously, but never released as a sample chapter. A character was gender-swapped, but Brandon decided to go back. There are some brief forum posts about it on the TWG forum, the old forum Brandon had created before he was published.) The larger sample was linked on the TWG. The smaller sample was linked in a blog post. That's where the two download links originally came from. There was a mini site migration on brandonsanderson.com back in 2018, which affected all the filepaths. Any files that were linked on the site, like in a blog post, were updated. The larger Liar sample, since it wasn't linked anywhere on the blog, didn't get an updated link, and was "lost." Then, there was the full site redesign. None of the blog posts from 2012 were migrated; the second Liar sample had been blogged in 2007, and that blog post isn't on the site anymore. So it looks like that file didn't survive the migration due to the blog post cutoff. Both times, the download links were broken while the websites were being worked on. So it doesn't look like either of them were intentionally taken down.

Hey Reckoners fans. I've been doing some work on wob.coppermind.net, and some pretty big info has recently come out about the future of the series. I haven't read these books, but you'd probably all appreciate knowing it. First of all, Apocalypse Guard has been even more officially cancelled. Dan Wells had been doing some revisions on it, but that plug has been pulled entirely: But there is another collaborative project in the works, a sequel series following a different team of Reckoners, by author Steven Bohls:

I've updated the original post with the latest excerpts, Update Six, and some WoBs from October/November signing events. (The Starsight release is still being transcribed, but I'm pretty sure I already found all the ones relevant to Stormlight Four and transcribed them already, so I don't expect too many more to pop up.)

Well, we're one-third of the way through the campaign period, and we've reached $105K. It's a steep price point for a set of metal dice, and it looks like most of the people who could afford it have already purchased, since it's been slowing down considerably. If $180 for metal dice is out of your price range, there are some acrylic dice that have been unlocked. They're free for anyone who's getting metal dice, but they are also available as an add-on. There's no formal tier for a set of acryllic dice, but if you pledge at the lowest tier with a total of $25, you'll be able to select a single set of 20 acrylic dice during the pledge manager after the campaign. (For reference, the current 10-dice set retails for $15, so this gets you slightly better value on a per-die basis.) Currently, only one set is guaranteed to be available; the other two are stretch goals. The acrylic sets are: Bronze color, white feruchemical symbols (UNLOCKED) Gold color, black Alloy-era allomantic symbols ($110K) Silver color, black classic-era allomantic symbols (presumably $140K) So we've definitely got the feruchemical dice, and we'll almost certainly get the Alloy dice. (We've been clicking up at about $500 or $1K a day, and we've got twenty days left.) Depending on how much of a push we get at the end, we may get the classic dice, as well. Even if you don't play the RPG, a single set of acrylic dice is enough for four people to play Liar's Dice (or five people, if you start with 4 dice per person). The game's also known as Pirate's Dice. (It's what they played in Pirates of the Caribbean 2.) We should come up with a good Mistborn name for it... Rioter's Dice, perhaps? You can either treat symbols as a 6, or as a wild, or not count them at all, depending on the variant you want. Maybe I'll put together a quick instruction booklet, for those of you who aren't familiar with the game. Alls I'm saying is, a set of dice kinda counts as a game in and of itself. And if you're optimistic, and pledge $75 at the lowest tier for all three sets of acrylic dice... well, it may be worth re-evaluating if you can afford the metal dice or not. All the acrylic dice will be free for anyone buying the metal dice... so instead of $180, you're now down effectively to $105 to upgrade to a tier that has the metal dice and all three sets of acrylics. That's an effective 42% reduction in price. No, Crafty isn't asking me to promote this. If we hit stretch goals, I do get more free things, but that's the same that every other backer will get. So help me satisfy my selfishness and throw some money their way. You won't be sorry! Link to the Kickstarter again: EDIT: Here's a quick Rioter's Dice rules writeup:

TWG 100%: Brandon 100% (116/116), Peter 100% (116/116), Isaac 100% (75/75), Ben 100% (38/38) 17S 100%: Brandon 100% (106/106), Peter 100% (112/112), Isaac 100% (112/112), Ben 100% (101/101) Reddit 100%: Brandon 100% (135/135), Peter 100% (108/108), Isaac 100% (26/26), Ben 100% (89/89), Adam 100% (17/17), Store 100% (7/7) Twitter 56%: Brandon 100% (128/128), Peter 36% (46/128), Isaac 39% (53/135), Adam 39% (23/59) Blog 100%: Brandon 100% (215/215) Social Media Total: 89% (1616/1816) Theoryland Review: 10% (121/1183) Events and Signings Review: 0% (0/397) Reddit's done. I missed, like, one or two little things from Ben, but now I'm up to date. Twitter itself actually has a pretty robust advanced search, once you figure out how to ask it nicely. So I threw in Peter, Isaac, and Adam all into an advanced search, so those will all three begin to tick up together. (As soon as we catch up to Adam. He was a latecomer to Twitter.) I'm hoping to get Twitter finished by the end of the year. We'll see how much I get pulled away to work on the Starsight signing and other Arcanum projects. Once Twitter's done, I'll probably take a bit of a break from the review, do some other projects. I plan on investigating Facebook, seeing if there's a good way to stalk someone. Might try to reach out to customer service or something, try to frame it as a "research project." Eventually, I'll get back to Theoryland; I hear they're going to go through an upgrade soon, so I should probably do my discount double-check soon in case the interview database goes down.