Brandon Sanderson Books (Non-Stormlight)

Minor "Monday" Update:

Mistborn: The Alloy of Law is free from Tor! It will be a free eBook until August 6th aka this Saturday, so pick it up before then! I certainly plan on doing so! (Yes, I have a paperback copy, a hardback copy for my shelves, and plan on buying the Leatherbound version, but a FREE electronic version won't be overlooked!)

Other than that, Brandon is working on Stormlight 5 again and plans to keep that up for the next few months. Sanderson will also have a Q&A this Thursday. My questions are the usual suspects, but I don't expect them to be asked. Still, it never hurts. That's it.

https://www.tor.com/2022/08/02/download-brandon-sandersons-the-alloy-of-law-before-august-6/

 

Update #2! (And probably a cross-post)

In last night's stream, Brandon was asked a few very good questions about Stormlight 5, gave us a glimpse of some stuff that may come down the line, and gave us some nice hints about movie stuff! My questions were sadly not asked, but I figure that one of them may be answered sooner or later, so I'm not too hurt.

Stormlight 5 - Still all but certainly delayed until 2024, but Brandon is making headway on it, writing about 2% each week. (That's about 8000 words per week, which is a solid pace for Stormlight. Other books he'd write more per week, but with an increase in meetings and the complexity of Stormlight added onto the work required for a solid arc ending, he's taking his time.)
Years ago, Brandon stated that he had the final scene to Stormlight 5 written out. When asked if he was still using it, he hinted that it might be rewritten for something better, more or less. But Stormlight 5 will have a prologue, an epilogue, and then a second ending, possibly called an epilude, as a way to tie together the prelude of the first book.
Brandon also mentioned in this week's episode of Intentionally Blank, that one of his early tabletop RPG experiences actually holds the ending to Stormlight 5! He won't say what it is and wouldn't let Dan talk about it either onscreen, but it's something that he wrote for a campaign in college I believe, that his players completely messed up, and so he decided to use it in his books. They'll talk about it after Stormlight 5, so we've got a while before we know about the campaign.

Down the line - As we all know, Brandon plans on spending about 5 years after Stormlight 5 writing Mistborn 8-10 back-to-back-to-back....sort of. Brandon has warned us that not a lot will come out during that time. Previously, I thought that meant that he'd write the trilogy and then revise it as it releases, but now it's looking like he wants to write the trilogy and revise it all before even one book releases. Brandon's negotiating with Tor about his contract regarding this, and he noted that he needs time to write something in-between the Mistborn books as a refresher. Sanderson seemed serious about there not being any Mistborn books released during that five years or so; it looks like my predictions were off. He did say that he may release some other projects he has in his back pocket, like a revised version of White Sand. What really threw me for a loop though was his mention of Dark One's novelization coming out during this time. Dan Wells, co-author of Dark One, finished up his draft of the novelization earlier this year, and Brandon revised it earlier this summer! To have a book that's ready and waiting, and to hold it for a couple of years is...something. It's not unheard of for the entertainment world to do this - Nintendo will actively sit on finished games until a release time opens up, and then they won't promote or announce the game until it's within 4-6 months of release - but it's weird for Brandon to do so IMO. That being said, Brandon could have been thinking about future Dark One books, not just the one that he revised a few months ago. We'll probably have to wait until the State of the Sanderson to see.

Movies - Brandon didn't outright say it, but he has a deal worked out! Brandon basically said that he wouldn't be surprised to be on the set of a movie in a year from this time, and that we should expect some sort of announcement within the next few months. I think later he even misspoke and said "next two months," but I'm not sure. Either way, this lines up with a special, pretty high-profile event - New York Comic-Con. A few months ago, Brandon announced that he'd be going to NYCC this year. We didn't think much of it at the time, other than it being a sign of Brandon going to 1-2 more major events in the year. But now with this news of a movie all be being announced and confirmed, I'm pretty stinkin' sure that we'll see a movie announcement at NYCC. THAT BEING SAID, this is speculation, not a guarantee. We'll have to wait a few months to see what happens.


Other interesting things:
Brandon would consider doing a film/tv/screen-exclusive or screen-original Cosmere story.
Since the first of the months for the Secret Projects (January, April, July, October) fall on weekends, Brandon and team may release the books a few hours earlier at Midnight for eBook/Audio orders. This would give fans time to read them over the weekend and allow Brandon to have a Q&A Stream that following Thursday. I sort of hope that at least for Secret Project 1, the release date is January 1st, so I can wake up and read it, but the rest I wouldn't mind getting a day or two earlier. (Which would amusngly make the releases potentially December, March, June, September.)

So yeah, quite the signing! That's probably all for this week, but I'll be back probably sooner rather than later to give more Sanderson news. (And I'll post the Stormlight information in the appropriate thread later tonight.)

 

Update time as some exciting (and weird) things just happened!

First and foremost, Tor is giving away Shadows of Self aka Mistborn 5 aka the sequel to Allow of Law away for free for the rest of this week! Get it before it's gone. (And yes, like Allow of Law, I have this in hardback from its release and I plan on ordering the Leatherback version later this year, but that won't stop me from getting a free copy either!)

https://www.tor.com/2022/08/23/download-brandon-sandersons-shadows-of-self-before-august-27/

Alcatraz 6 is also officially up for pre-order!

Now for the weird news. Brandon Sanderson's videogame has been revealed! And it's...and mobile multiplayer game called Moonbreaker? Check out the trailer here:

The first reaction from Sanderson fans has been...a little let down, to be honest. This wasn't expected (or desired probably), so it threw a lot of people off. I wasn't expecting a Mistborn game or anything remotely like that - I've been talking about how his videogame may be Soulburner, as all hints pointed towards that to me. But this wasn't really what anyone had in mind. Still, if it helps Sanderson reach a new audience, I'm okay with it; and the company apparently has a great track record with Subnautica, so let's see how this turns out.

Anyways, that's it for this update. Let's see how this all plays out in the upcoming months, as between the secret projects, this game, and a very likely movie announcement, Brandon's trying to reach as many people as possible in a pretty stinkin' short timespan!

 

Update to the Update:

Moonbreaker is indeed Soulburner. Brandon confirmed this on Reddit not even an hour ago.

 

Happy Wednesday all! I hope it was a good Labor Day weekend - I know mine was. Alas, the week is upon us once again, but at least it's a short week this time around.

This will be a longer update with some speculation and analysis involved, but not too much. Let's dive right into it.

First thing's first, Brandon had his weekly update yesterday. He's about 16% through Stormlight 5, but he does note in the Stormlight update t may be closer to 15% or even 14%. (More on that later.) But now his time on Stormlight is done for a few months, as he has revisions for both Defiant (Skyward 4) and Secret Project 4 to knock out. He plans on spending the rest of September and October on those, and then he'll come back to Stormlight 5 for November (potentially another SandoWriMo - more on that later) and December. Hopefully he can get about 25% of the book done this year...mostly so that my predictions on his writing schedule will be at least somewhat accurate. But Brandon has less time to write than earlier in the pandemic.
Other than that, the Fan T-Shirt contest for The Lost Metal that he's been hosting has its finalists! Head over to the Brandon Sanderson subreddit (and possibly the Mistborn subreddit) to see the designs!

Outside of Brandon's update, we did get some information last week that Boatload of Mummies, aka the Mistborn book written Isaac Stewart (friend and Head of Art Design at Dragonsteel), is over 100k words so far! Currently, that'd make it the length of the Secret Projects and a hair longer than Alloy of Law, but not yet the length of the other Wax & Wayne books. (For another frame of reference, it's a hair shorter than Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in length.) Let's see how long the book gets! No word on release dates yet, but I'd guess either 2024 or beyond at this rate. Isaac has a lot on his plate, and I don't see Brandon devoting too much time to revisions on this while Stormlight is looming.



Speaking of looming and releases, we have a delay! Boo! Dark One: Forgotten, the audio-novella cowritten by Dan Wells, was supposed to come out on October 18 of this year. However, yesterday I checked Amazon on a whim and found that the story has been pushed back to January 10, 2023. This was surprising but not too much so:
Alcatraz 6 was more or less complete in 2019 and it's only coming out at the end of this month;
Lux and The Original were supposed to receive an eBook version of their stories by now, and there's been silence from Brandon's team and Amazon;
Dawnshard was released almost two years ago, and it just released its audio version last month.

So, yeah, delays aren't too uncommon. Annoying, but not uncommon this year. Still, the common denominator in most of these is Amazon (although the true common denominator is Brandon), so there may be some friction between the two at this time. Hopefully Brandon will address Dark One: Forgotten's delay in an update, or at least in the State of the Sanderson at the end of the year. There's also the possibility that Brandon just wanted a Mainframe (his audiobook company) project every year, and this was a way to get one on the 2023 slot if the Lux sequels aren't happening (either next year or at all).

On one hand, this probably means that the Dark One's novelization will most likely not come out next year, as Brandon mentioned a month or so ago. On the other hand, this delay means we have even more confirmed things to be excited about next year! A novel and an audionovella in January? YES PLEASE!

Speaking of audio-novellas and Dan Wells, there is something in the previous large update I forgot to mention - Dan Wells has been secretly writing novellas for Moonbreaker, that videogame that Brandon helped will!



These will be audionovellas and they'll be released outside of the game so that fans of Dan and Brandon's works can give them a listen. There's no word on the release date of those just yet, but I assume they'll release around the same time as the game. (Early Access goes up later this month with no word on the release date just yet.)

Now, onto the big piece of information, the Stormlight 5 update. Yesterday, Brandon provided us with the first of hopefully quite a few major Stormlight 5 updates. It detailed the reasons for the delay, what Brandon's working on in the book right now, how it's being formatted, and a little of what to expect.

Spoiler: Pre Book 3 Spoilers

In breaking this down without spoilers for those who don't want to go to the link for fear of spoilers, I'm going to talk about three main things, with a few extraneous things thrown in, and some of Brandon's responses to questions and comments after the update was posted.

To begin, Brandon officially delayed the book until Fall 2024, and cites three main reasons.

The first reason is that Brandon has had a lot of revisions to write. Most of these were planned and Brandon could have written Stormlight while revising, but they're taking much more time than previously expected. This is a reason Brandon has given us before, but mostly for revision of The Lost Metal and not the Secret Projects. Regardless, it's not an unexpected reason.

The second - and main - reason is that this is the last book in a sequence, and it's huge, so Brandon will need more time to make sure everything works. The 18-month production cycle won't work for this book, and that's fine. Again, that's to be expected, especially since he gave TLM a little more time and love. (And an extra 25k words.) It's easy to imagine Stormlight 5 needing more time and love than usual to tie everything together.

The third reason is the amount of time in Brandon's schedule right now. As Dragonsteel grows as a company, and as Sanderson's works gather more fame, the author needs to devote more and more time to being a businessman and a company president than previous years. That means that his writing days are down from four days a week to three. Hopefully this will clear up next year as Sanderson chooses the companies to adapt his works, and the part of the production where he can't be involved ramps up. (Still, I believe this is what we call "suffering from success.")

All of this culminates into Stormlight 5 needing more time than the previous book releases did, and the book is being delayed. What wasn't mentioned but is often speculated is that Stormlight 5's fall release date will coincide with Dragonsteel Convention 2024. That feels like an open secret though, so we won't really worry about it.

On the bright side, Brandon mentioned that this book will most likely be the largest one to date! Brandon is currently planning Stormlight 5's first draft to be 400k words long. But that first draft doesn't really include Spren, and he writes the interludes and novella in the story later on, so none of those are included in the page count. The first part of Stormlight 5 that Brandon is writing is also running long, so that will ultimately add to the end-count. As it stands, Brandon's hoping for a 400k word first draft, but it will probably end up somewhere between 430k and 450k. From there, and due to Brandon's estimations of this being the largest one yet this book may end up in the 475k to 500k ballpark in terms of word count. But we'll see.


Onto the comments Brandon gave after the update:

Brandon talked a little about the concept art, basically stating that the prompt was given to the artist (Randy Vargas) before Brandon had actually written the scene, so it's a little more evocative than it is descriptive.

Sanderson also answered my question! I asked if he would do SandoWriMo (his version of NaNoWriMo) this year, and he said he'd probably do so! It may not be the same as last year, but it'd be somethng.


Brandon also backpedaled on a Warbreaker sequel. Previously, Brandon wanted to write Mistborn 8-10, Elantris 2 & 3, AND a Warbreaker sequel during the 5-year gap between Stormlight 5 and 6. Now it's looking like he may just write the first five books and save Nightblood for another day or whenever he has time.


A pen-and-paper RPG is also potentially in the works, but we're a few years off from that.


Finally, as we all assumed, Szeth is the flashback character, not the interlude character like Brandon had said a few months ago by mistake.



Overall, this is a lot of news, and a lot of it good. Next year should be plentiful with stories to enjoy and updates to mine for clues! But that's it for now. Sanderson mentioned in the update that he's going on a writing cruise next week, so he won't have an update to give. Still, that doesn't mean interesting things won't happen.
As it stands, I'll be back to this thread in a couple of weeks myself, once Alcatraz 6 is out. I'll do a review for that and an update on anything else then.

2023 Tentative Schedule at this point, although it's subject to (and likely to) change:
January 1 - Secret Project 1
January 10 - Dark One: Forgotten audio-novella
April 1 - Secret Project 2
June/July - Dragonsteel Prime (with Words of Radiance Kickstarter)
July 1 - Secret Project 3
October 1 - Secret Project 4
November - Defiant

 

Stormlight Miniatures Kickstarter is live, Brandon is on a cruise, and Tor is giving away The Bands of Mourning aka Misborn 6 for free. This is the finall book before The Lost Metal this November, so now's a great time to catch up!

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...ef=nav_search&result=project&term=Stormlight

https://www.tor.com/2022/09/13/down...ns-the-bands-of-mourning-before-september-17/

 

Happy Andor Wednesday! I'm waiting to watch Andor with my friend this weekend, so no spoilers for me on this thread!

Anyways, we had a Q&A and a book release yesterday, so I thought I'd do a little breakdown.

First thing's first, no weekly update this week. Brandon records those on Thursday, but he was on the Writing Excuses cruise last week, so he didn't bother to record one. But that doesn't mean work wasn't done, and that doesn't mean Brandon left us empty-handed.

On Monday, preview chapters for The Lost Metal started to release! The first bit is the Prologue and Chapters 1 & 2, all of which have been read in previous draft forms last year at Dragonsteel Mini-Con. Well, most of them. The official Chapter 2 goes a bit longer than the reading this past November. This will also be the last I upload the preview chapters here, as I'm not reading anything beyond this point. I usually only read the previews of things previously read at Signings & Q&As - if at all that - and never go beyond. (Unless it's the beginning of a new series, like Skyward.)

https://www.tor.com/2022/09/19/read-the-lost-metal-by-brandon-sanderson-prologue-and-chapters-1-2/

Also on Monday, I read Sanderson's latest book, Alcatraz 6. Yesterday, Alcatraz 6 aka Bastille vs the Evil Librarians released! Well...officially...the book didn't have a Strict On Sale (which is code for Bookstores to put the books on shelves after the store closes on Monday). I didn't know this, but I asked a nearby bookstore if it was a Strict On Sale release after work on Monday, and they informed me that the book wasn't, and that they had a single copy for sale. Needless to say, I took it. Between that and the preview chapters, I had a blast on Monday. My quick review follows:

Last night Brandon also had a Q&A, as mentioned above. The first half of the stream was with Janci Patterson, the coauthor of Alcatraz 6. The second half of the stream was with Johnny O'Neal head of the Stormlight Archive with Brotherwise Games and Isaac Stewart (VP of Dragonsteel I believe, and head of art design). Frankly, I was more interested in the Janci section, and I even got my questions asked! (I may or may not have done a happy dance when they said "Use the Falchion asks...")

My questions verbatim and Brandon and Janci's paraphrased responses:

Janci's Question Response (with some of Brandon's input) - They officially have a deal, so the books are definitely happening! Janci has a plan and ideas of where the series will go, but she hasn't read Defiant yet, and that will change things. Brandon is about 80% through with Defiant 2.0 revisions (the last update he gave us was about 2 weeks ago and he was at 5%) and plans to finish by October 1, so Janci will get the book then. (Brandon also is expecting and looking forward to some feedback when it comes to certain novella characters.) So yes, the series is most definitely happening, but there won't be a lot of work on it until Defiant is more solid.

Brandon's Question Response - This was an intentional reference, but Brandon considers it an Easter Egg at most at this point. Brandon doesn't want to do a multiverse story ever again due to the lack of stakes in those types of stories, so he's not going to do a crossover. Still, that's a question I've been asking for YEARS finally answered, so I'm happy! Brandon didn't answer any questions about Lux sequels or Dark One: Forgotten. I imagine we'll find out during Dragonsteel 2022 though.

Despite my focus on the first half of the stream, that doesn't mean that the second half didn't have any goodies. At the very end of the stream, Johnny from Brotherwise Games officially revealed that a Pen & Paper Stormlight RPG is coming in 2024! That means we'll see the Words of Radiance leatherbounds arrive (assuming they miss the 2023 date), a new TTRPG Stormlight game, and Stormlight 5!

Lastly, there will be another stream next week that will be about Moonbreaker I believe. Since my main questions were asked, I'll be noodling on a question or two to ask until then. (And for Dragonsteel 2022 after that.)

This also means that I'll be back around this time next week to talk about that stream and any interesting notes, and then back again about 11 days later in order to talk about Brandon's NYCC panels...which may or may not include movie news. Exciting things ahead!

 

Happy Saturday and Happy October! I hope y'all have had a good day - I certainly have!

What's going on in the world of Sanderson? A few things, some of which are surprising, but overall not too much.

There wasn't a weekly update this week, but we did get something...surprising. Brandon started a TikTok account! While Sanderson doesn't possess the most social media-friendly face, and he's far too old for the target demographic, it works well to make to things like FAQs* and fun quick videos. It also fits with Brandon's personality. Sanderson has always been a proponent of using new media to promote his works and authors in general. He was on the Timewaster's Forum in the days when Robert Jordan was still writing The Wheel of Time. After that, he moved to Facebook and Reddit where he still mainly operates. He's used his Instagram for Q&As before, and uses his Twitter to post random updates on fun things like writing marathons when finishing a book or simply fun stuff while playing Elden Ring. TikTok was a natural next step. It also allows him to make sure that any fake Sanderson accounts are known as fake because he has a real one that can be seen and traced back to him. Finally, it will most definitely help when promotion starts for whatever movie is happening. Overall, I'm weirded out by it since I'm not too big on social media myself (I check Facebook maybe once ever few months, only "Like" things on Twitter but rarely post, and often forget I even have an Instagram), but it makes sense.

(Also I just check some of his page stats and it's hilarious. Over 100k views for both of his intro videos, with 40k followers and 36.6k likes. That's nearly one like per follower! The ratio of likes to followers should increase and have far more likes than followers in the months/years to come but that's a GREAT starting ratio.)

https://www.tiktok.com/@authorbrandonsanderson?lang=en

Next up was the livestream on Tuesday. The stream was for Moonbreaker, and it wasn't a Q&A. Still, there were some interesting things about the world covered in the video. IGN wrote amall article about the most interesting bits, so I'll link the video and the article below.

https://www.ign.com/articles/brando...ab-isnt-like-george-r-r-martin-and-elden-ring

Speaking of Moonbreaker, they released their first audio-novella (if it can be called that) this past week too. The shorts are designed by Brandon but written by Dan Wells, and this one has the best of both worlds. The world feels pretty unique but the setting is very wild-west/frontier-esque. Brandon brings the small plot twists and the fun characterization. Dan brings his audio prowess to the forefront, using snappy and fun dialogue to let us really get a sense of the world. The audio feels more like a radio drama of days old rather than the simple text-to-speech that many (Sanderson) audiobooks seem to use. If you're a fan of Dan's Zero-G audio-novella's you'll love this. (The audiodramas look more appealing than the game to me, but they do make me almost want to play the game, so I guess that's a success.)

(It's available wherever you get podcasts, but I'm linking Spotify for now.)
https://open.spotify.com/show/5U6Qesjh73ttBsdHUdUV8Y

Finally, Brandon was at FanX about two weeks ago, so some footage from that should be popping up in the foreseeable future. I'll keep an eye out for it and link it if/when it becomes available on his channel. (I honestly expected 17th Shard to have any and all questions from the event recorded and on their Arcanum, but I guess they're all busy.)

And that's really it for this week. Next week should have some fun stuff, either during the week or that weekend. Or both. If there are any announcements during the week, I'll link them and then talk about it over the weekend if possible. If they're on the weekend, I'll try to link them on Saturday and talk about it on Sunday.

*Like answering the oft-asked question of where to start. It's not like the subreddit dedicated to him doesn't have a guide or willing people to help. It's not like he doesn't have a video on YouTube answering this exact same question. IT'S NOT LIKE THERE'S A FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS PAGE ON HIS WEBSITE.

 

Minor Monday Update:

Brandon finished his (most likely) second draft on Defiant and is now moving to Secret Project 4. His goal is to finish by November so he can do "SandoWriMo" again this year.

Dragonsteel Con 2022 also is reopening ticket sales! Apparently, another convention had to back out last minute, so Brandon and Team Dragonsteel got the slot and is opening up sales for roughly 2000 more people. This means that if the convention sells out again, Sanderson would have sold roughly 5k tickets for his second convention. That's HUGE. Who knows how many tickets the convention for Stormlight 5 will sell!

However, the major reason for the update is that Brandon got on Reddit not even two hours ago to shut down some speculation. As y'all know, I've been speculating about a movie announcement during or around NYCC. I'm far from the only one, but today both Peter Ahlstrom and Brandon Sanderson himself got on Reddit to comment on the possibility of this happening. In the Weekly Update thread, someone asked what the general thoughts and ideas behind Brandon going to NYCC after years of not going meant. I posted that the general theory was that a movie announcement or something around it would happen. Peter Ahlstrom, Brandon's in-house Editor, then commented that he highly doubted this would happen.



While Peter's word is nearly as good as Brandon's, I wasn't fully convinced. I mean, Brandon is the type of person to write 4-5 secret novels over the course of two years and keep it a secret from everyone but his wife and kids - I wouldn't be surprised if he was keeping a reveal or two close to the chest. Besides, the timing of Brandon's previous movie assertations and heading to NYCC where an announcement would be well-received seemed too conspicuous.

Alas, Brandon himself stepped in to deny any such movie or show announcements and reveal his real reason for heading to NYCC.



I'm a little chagrined by this, but hey, he responded to my question and theory, so I'll take it! (Besides, the more interactions with "Use_the_Falchion" Sanderson has, the more likely my questions may be asked in later streams. Brandon and Adam have a tendency to answer questions by redditors they know or have as beta-readers. Mostly because the questions asked are very good questions, but also because there's a rapport there. I want to build that as well. Hopefully.)


Ultimately, this doesn't change the coverage of the events, but it means that we most likely won't have any major breakdowns from NYCC.

 

Merry Christmas Eve! I had a post going over what Brandon's annual State of the Sanderson post, but YouTuber Read And Find Out has a concise video summing it up, so I'll leave that here as well and just go over rapid-fire updates:

Dragonsteel 2022 - 9/10 phenomenal fun event.
The Lost Metal - 8/10 or 8.5/10 - A solid finale in an imperfect book. (Soundtrack: "Bloodbath" and "Ego Death" by Polyphia. "First Fires" by Bonobo ft Grey Reverend is the climax and epilogue(s) song.)
Words of Radiance has been moved to Fall (hopefully September) 2023 instead of March
The Secret Project books will NOT be on Audible when releasing.
Stormlight 5's most likely title will be Knights of Wind and Truth

State of the Sanderson 2022 | Brandon Sanderson

Projected Release Schedule for the next two years:
January 2023 - Secret Project 1, Dark One: Forgotten
April 2023 - Secret Project 2
July 2023 - Secret Project 3
Fall 2023 - Dragonsteel Prime (with WoR Kickstarter)
October 2023 - Secret Project 4
November 2023 - Defiant
November 2024 - Stormlight 5
Unlisted - Dark One novelization (I'd wager either 2024 or 2025)
Unlisted - Dark One Graphic Novel Vol 2 (Still in the works, but I'd wager 2024 or 2025 at this rate)
Unlisted - Skyward sequel trilogy (I'd wager 2025, depending on when Janci writes them and if she and Brandon want to write all three before releasing one)
Unlisted - Apocalypse Guard (2025 at the earliest)

That's it for now. I'll be back in early January for my Secret Project 1 review!