Tanner Boyce
I was hoping that you would talk about about the book you wanted to write about people getting magic powers from when they're sick.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, The Silence Divine. It would be a really great time to write this right now. In fact, someone wrote to me on Reddit and was like, "Hey, you gonna write this now?" The problem is, it is not a good time to write this because Stormlight Four is due July 1st, and I am needing to finish the third draft this week, and then launch into the fourth of five drafts.
This story, I always get a ton of offers from people to help me out with it. Which I really do appreciate you guys doing that, because my immunology experience is kind of low, which is why I didn't actually write this story when I wanted to.
So, this cool story about people who get a disease get magical talents while they have the disease and what-not, I will write this someday. This takes place on Ashyn, which is in the Rosharan system. And there is kind of deep lore stuff about the history of Roshar that Ashyn is related to, and I want to do that. And there's some fun inter-connectivity to the magics. I just haven't had the time, yet.
If there are those who are watching who are very into immunology, I do have people offering to help me out. I certainly wouldn't say no to more offers of help, since some of you may have already written to me and said "I'll help out!" And that was on Reddit, which has a terrible message management system. So I'm usually good at copying and pasting usernames and/or emails of people into a file, but not always.
Some day, I'll write this story. The trick is... viruses and bacterias are so different, I have to commit to one or the other. Or, I could do both, but then I'm gonna have to deal with that. And then there's the whole part of it, me wanting certain chronic diseases to have longer-lasting abilities, and I'm not sure if that will work. There's just all sorts of questions that I just need to sit down with a panel of experts and ask them my stupid questions and have them tell me what I'm doing wrong so we can actually make this work.
I think it'll be great when I write it someday. The thing is, I have to finish this (Stormlight [Four]). And then, I really do want to have a novella in the Stormlight universe (probably not this one; something actually on Roshar) to do with the Kickstarter. Because a lot of people are fans and want to read new stuff, but do not have the means or the inclination to spend $200 on the leatherbound copy of The Way of Kings. And we would like to have something on there that people who want to spend less money can get all the swag, instead of buying this very beautiful but very expensive book, they could also just buy the novella. So I want to do something like Edgedancer that will take place between books three and four.