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Brandon Sanderson

As a side note, I'm planning this seon here to make an appearance in the sequel (if I write one.) She would be Adien's own seon, as he would probably be the hero of the sequel. (Along with his brother and sister.) For those of you who think I didn't deal enough with the seons in this book—the sequel would have strong focus on them. In fact, I'm tempted to make this seon a viewpoint character. However, that would bump me up to four characters, which wouldn't let me use the chapter triad system.

FirstSelector

Did Ambition fight back?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

MetalCake166

Will we see another book with Waxillium Ladrian? His story doesn't appear to end with The Alloy of Law. And will his story be directly related to the next Mistborn trilogy? This has been eating away at me since finishing that book.

Brandon Sanderson

Wax's story was indeed directly related to the second trilogy, but I was intrigued enough with his time period that I find myself wanting to do more with him. I probably will.

Paleo

So we know that aluminum resists Investiture or blocks Investiture in some cases. Does it act like radiation protection like lead or something that actually gets deteriorated while it's resisting something or is it like, does it just interfere?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO, good question.

hyperman500

[Nightblood] also is described as having a hooked cross guard, but nobody seems to include that in their art.

Ben McSweeney

The sword on the cover of the Warbreaker leatherbound was designed with feedback from Brandon. We went through about a half-dozen variants on the quillons before we settled in on the one we used.

Questioner

Could you give any insights as to what the Dawnshards are?

Brandon Sanderson

Um......(long pause)...

Questioner

Am I gonna get a RAFO?

Brandon Sanderson

Nyeaaa it's it's..nyeaa I dunno, do you think? You know what the Dawnshards are right? We haven't talked about that? Ok, I thought we had. Um. We'll RAFO it for now. But good question.

Other person

It's an excellent question. And we have not yet talked about that. I was like...answer that, answer that!

Questioner

I was trying to think of questions that could get me very close to being RAFO'd, but not quite RAFO'd.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, that was a good one, you were close to not getting RAFO'd, on that. Coz I do want to talk about it at some point.

Questioner

What happens if you eat an Aviar?

Brandon Sanderson

Normal things happen; you would not gain the powers. You would be a cruel person because Aviar are not of animal intelligence. You would not gain the powers

AltF4WillHelp

Sorry if this has been asked before; I haven't been able to find a direct answer anywhere. It came up while playing the Mistborn Adventure Game (which has been very fun, btw!).

A Feruchemist can easily determine whether any metal is a metalmind, regardless of whether it's theirs, simply by touching it. And a Ferring can definitely determine the same, but for their own metal.

But, a question came up: can a Ferring also—perhaps with practice—tell whether any piece of metal has been stored in/is a metalmind? Would this be easier for certain kinds of Ferrings? (Ones that are more directly in tune with Investiture, perhaps?) And, if they can determine that a piece of metal is Invested, would they feel something similar to what Vin did when she was examining Sazed's metalmind? Would they be able to tell what the metal it is based on how that power feels? (That last bit might be infringing on what skilled/savant bronze Mistings might be able to do).

Brandon Sanderson

So, bronze Mistings are really good at reading investiture that is being used--it's harder to simply "detect investiture" as all things are made out of investiture in the cosmere. That said, I could see your game allowing this, as it's a natural extrapolation of the magic--and it could make for some good gameplay. Don't be afraid to extrapolate the magic for your own uses, even if it doesn't fall right in line with the way I do things.

Questioner

Couldn't think of any [questions], but I would just like to say that I would like to punch Kelsier in the face now, so... *group laughs*

Brandon Sanderson

He usually deserves getting punched in the face. *group laughs* If you were to meet Kelsier on the street, you can guess he has something that he's done that makes him deserve to be punched that day. *group laughs*

Jamester86

Couldn't resist a cosmere question: Since rivers can be quite shallow, could someone "swim" under their counterpart in Shadesmar? (Or to rephrase that...are the landmasses in Shadesmar equivalent in depth to the "water masses" in the physical realm?

Brandon Sanderson

It's not a 1/1 ratio, by necessity, and rivers tend to be reflected by rises in Shadesmar. So you couldn't, in most cases, swim through the beads under them.

polaristar

So in Words of Radiance, at the end of the book, the singers in their Stormform can summon red lightning and it's revealed Shardplate can neutralize it. I was wondering, can Shardplate neutralize ALL electric discharges or just the "special" kind from Voidlight/voidspren powered from.

And if Shardplate can defend against lightning in general is their a maximum voltage/amperage before it loses effectiveness?

nagewaza

In my mind - the plate likely acts like a Faraday cage - essentially allowing the lightning to never have a path through the user's body (electricity moving through your body is how you get injured). This would assume that Shardplate is conductive.

If they jumped, then likely the lightning would again travel through the outside Shardplate metal and then to ground - again avoiding the human altogether..... That said, small aluminum airplanes have been known to have damage to wings from strikes. In the case of Shardplate, I doubt that thermal shock or melting temperature is an issue for the material.

Brandon Sanderson

This is along the lines of what I was thinking, though I'm not sure I have a maximum volt/amp answer handy.

polaristar

Was basically asking to find out if I can use Shardplate users against Electromaster characters on /r/whowouldwin

Brandon Sanderson

Then I give you an official, "Yes you can."

Questioner

We have to wrap up, I think, so everyone here is going to kill me if I don't ask you about DMG which acquired the rights to your Cosmere. I wanted to ask how are you feeling about this, do you know at this stage how involved are you going to be? I heard you mentioned that the best adaptations are those that are done by people, just by leaving them do their thing, but I was also asking myself, in regards to this, if you're planning on any other cross-media stories? We have White Sand, we have whatever happened to Mistborn: Birthright. I wanted to ask about that too, because...

Brandon Sanderson

So, we'll start with Mistborn: Birthright. Unfortunately, it is dead, sorry. This was a video game we worked on for many years, and it just is not going to happen. As for other cross-media stories, I am very open to doing more. It will depend on how White Sand is received, and whether I can do other video game projects that look like they will work. As for the film, I spent a long time interviewing a lot of different people before we decided to go with DMG. I chose them primarily because I feel they understand the Cosmere, and are willing to approach it as a whole, as opposed to little pieces of something not connected. How much I'll be involved really remains to be seen. They've promised to let me be involved, they gave me a fancy title, we will see once the film's actually in production. I have every reason to believe that they will involve me, and so far they have done so, but I don't want to be the one directing or writing these films, because I am not a director or a screenwriter.

Questioner

What is the current plan for the Stormlight Archive *inaudible* what we do *inaudible*

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Oh, that's one of those hard ones.

Questioner

Can you tell us where we - that the Queen's arc, in the question of *inaudible*? Not that I wouldn't read the section on the Herald--

Brandon Sanderson

Nah, that's fine. Nonono, it'll have an arc. The first five are about Dalinar, Kaladin, Shallan, Szeth, and Eshonai in an arc, and then the back five will be about Jasnah, Taln with *inaudible* and stuff like this. So, I mean, some of the same characters from the first five will be characters and still have viewpoints and things, but it's kind of a shift in focus.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Twenty-One - Part One

Demoux Survives

Yes, Demoux lives. He'd have died, save for a promise I made. If you've read the other annotations, you'll know that he was named for my former roommate Micah DeMoux. I always thought his name was cool, and wanted to use it for a character. He said I could, but made me promise two things. 1) His character had to get a girl eventually, and 2) His character had to survive to the end of the series.

So Demoux couldn't die here. He's protected by a magical shield known as the author's promise to his pal.

Questioner

I have to say, I find more gospel conversations after going through The Stormlight Archive with people than any other fictional book I've ever read. Does that intentionally bleed in, or is that just part of who you are?

Brandon Sanderson

It's a little of both. I don't preach in my books. What I am determines part of what I find heroic. But I'm very fascinated by religion. So I like to have lots of different people in the books who have lots of different viewpoints on religion that talk about it, like we kind of do in real life. So, you know, you have someone like Dalinar, who is kind of very... almost revolutionarily faithful. And you have Kaladin who's just straight-up agnostic, "Don't know, don't care." You have Jasnah, who's an atheist. You have someone more like Navani, who's a classic conservative faithful. I just like having all of these different people interacting.

Questioner

You already said names. Is it "SAYzd" or "SAY-zed"?

Brandon Sanderson

Both are said by various characters in the book. Sazed, he would say it "SAYzd" a little bit more, but Kelsier says "SAY-zed".

Questioner

Who invited Rayse to the Adonalsium-Shattering party?

Brandon Sanderson

Hehe, you will have to see. That is definitely a RAFO.

Questioner

Does the "M" in M-Bot stand for mushroom?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. To me it does. I'm not sure how I will canonize it in the books, but that's what I intend it to be.

Questioner

When do you know a book is finished and send it to an editor/agent/whatever, wherever it gets sent?

Brandon Sanderson

I would say... that my process is I write the first draft and I do a second draft where I am fixing the problems that I recognized on my first draft. Then I do a third draft where I try to clean up the prose, that's just making the writing line by line better. I try to cut 10% and I just try to take each line and make it tighter. At that point I send it off. But I generally send it-- At that point I send it to my alpha readers, which are my agent and editor for me. If you are doing it I would suggest giving it to a round of readers from friends first. Get feedback from them, then do one more draft and then send it off.

Raven_Lunatic

First of all, I want to say how awesome your books are. The Mistborn series, in particular, is on my list of "best fantasy books ever read".

Now my question: is Warbreaker going to be the start of a series?

Brandon Sanderson

I've talked about the sequel. I wouldn't call it a series, though, since I'm only intending it to be two books. I actually plotted it at one, then during drafting decided that some of the things I wanted to do would be better in a sequel, and started calling it a two-book series. Tor signed me for two, and have put the second one on infinite hiatus, allowing me to turn it in whenever I want.

Chaos (paraphrased)

What do you call mixing Allomantic powers with Feruchemical powers? Allochemy?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

He hasn't decided yet.

Questioner

Is there a relationship between the Parshendi and the airships?

Brandon Sanderson

The Parshendi and the oh-- Okay. So the relationship is that I assumed when people saw the picture they would think Parshendi, and that was an intentional red herring.

Moderator

Or red and black herring.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, red and black herring. *laughter* We spent a lot of time on that picture, Where I'm like "It has to actually look like the people, but it can't be straight up where people are like 'Oh! This is like what we've seen before here!' " And so we went back and forth on it a lot. That picture took a lot of revision to get right.

Storm Cellar

We know Snapping is not the same in Mistborn Era 2.  We know Wayne knew he was a slider, but could not afford bendalloy for his early life. How do the poor skaa know they can burn rare metals?  Is there a ceremony, or a formal process of testing skaa for metal powers?

(The assumption is that nobles can just give their children a mix of metals to see if any of them are reactive.)  

Brandon Sanderson

There are lots of ways--remember that lots of groups are seeing Allomancy as valuable to them, and are actively recruiting.  There's no formal process, at least not for everyone, though some houses do have them. But there are events, even at fairs and the like, where you can get a vial and see if you feel anything--in exchange for promises of service if you do turn out to have abilities.  Beyond that, just like getting gold foil to put on food is not horribly expensive in our world, getting little bits of many of these metals is not THAT expensive. It may not give you enough power to do anything useful, but it can be enough to tell.

Havoc (paraphrased)

I know that Perfect State is not part of the Cosmere, but if the Wode were to construct a 'Perfect State' for someone like Hoid, would that look like the cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

So a universe with him as the most important character... yes.

timi1993

Wayne, his inability to pick up guns, is there anything else to it or is it just psychological?

Brandon Sanderson

It's just psychological, and you'll see Shadows of Self, we talk about it a little bit. It's post traumatic stress disorder.

Questioner

In Secret History, Fuzz mentions having buried something. That's the atium, right?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

Questioner

So, I was just thinking, if it's something of greater import, I'll just leave it to that it's not the atium. But it's something else, I think. But, I was just thinking, if he wanted to hide something, he could build a planet around it? Because he built a planet. I'm guessing, if I asked a question about that...

Brandon Sanderson

You would get RAFOd. Excellent question.

Brandon Sanderson

Hope of Elantris

I'd been itching to write another Elantris story. Because of the nature of publishing, I knew that I couldn't do a sequel to the book at the time, as the Mistborn novels made so much more sense to publish. However, Matisse's project gave me the inspiration that I needed in order to turn my attention back to Elantris. I stopped writing on Mistborn: The Well of Ascension and wrote out this section of the Elantris story.

Because Matisse had inspired me, I decided that I would name a character after her. I also felt that if I was taking the time to write a short story in the world, I wanted to introduce a new character rather than telling the story from Dashe's viewpoint. (As would have been likely had this section ended up in the final novel.) Therefore, it was reasonable to write it from the viewpoint of the character I'd just named after Matisse.

The Matisse in the story doesn't act like the real Matisse. I didn't know the real Matisse; I'd never met her. (Though I did have Pemberly describe her so that I could make the character look like her. Matisse was one of my wife's favorite students, as you might imagine from her doing fantastic projects like the Elantris book.)

After writing the story, I sent a copy with Pemberly to give to Matisse as a gift and a thank you. I can only imagine how surprised she was to turn in a project based on one of her favorite books, then get back a short story written by the author including her as one of the characters in the world. This is the kind of nifty little thing you can pull off once in a while as a novelist, and I just couldn't pass by the opportunity.

(Of course, the fact that I'd just put one of Pemberly's favorite students into a story for her, then let Pemberly give the gift, did not escape me. I can't help but think it got me a few bonus points. After all, we did start dating exclusively just a short time after that. . . .)

Matisse gave us the original Elantrisology book she had made as a wedding gift. She still comes to a lot of my signings, and as far as I can tell is still one of the most awesome people alive. (Though I'm biased toward anyone who says nice things about my books.)

Dissentinel (paraphrased)

Is Spensa's race left intentionally vague in Skyward?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, it is.

Dissentinel (paraphrased)

So how do you feel about the new US cover, which depicts Spensa as white?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

That's something the publisher decides, it's out of our hands.

Questioner

What's the penalty for killing a highprince, like Adolin did to Sadeas?

Brandon Sanderson

Official law is kind of confusing, because before the unification of Alethkar back into a kingdom, killing a highprince was like killing the monarch of another country. So if you did it on the field of battle it's fine. If you assassinate them it's considered a bad-- a mark of dishonor. But, what's gonna happen? I mean, your own people are gonna probably be like, "Okay, you killed the other highprince. You shouldn't have done that." But, you know... the enemy... *laughing* But now that there's a kingdom, those sort of laws are different. So it's going to cause a legal conundrum. Does that make sense?

Steeldancer

If Kaladin created a kid while he had not summoned Syl in a while. Then he made another kid right after he summoned Syl, would they have different colored eyes?

Brandon Sanderson

Wow! I'll RAFO that for now.

Questioner

Did serving your mission in Korea help you in, like, worldbuilding? Kind of give you-- get you out of your own mindset?

Brandon Sanderson

Getting out of an-- into another culture is the number one thing for helping me world build. And I still-- the linguistics of things I create are often influenced by Korea.

Brandon Sanderson

Movie/Television Updates

The Cosmere

DMG Entertainment optioned the rights to the Cosmere, and they have been wonderful to work with. They commissioned screenplays for The Emperor's Soul, Mistborn, and The Way of Kings. They're currently in Step Three above, trying to get studio interest for the properties. Mostly, they've been pitching Mistborn as a film series and The Way of Kings as a television series.

Likely, the success of things like the new Lord of the Rings show and the Kingkiller Chronicles will influence how this goes in the future.

Brandon Sanderson

Title Page

Well, here’s something I wasn’t sure I’d ever be doing: the annotations for Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians. I’m looking at the proofs right now (January 2007), and have to say I’m impressed–and a little bit amazed–at the whirlwind (at least in publishing terms) history of this book.

I’ll talk more about that later. For right now, however, perhaps hearing the various different titles that were proposed for the book will give you an idea of how crazy the life of the novel has been.

One of the very first things I started with, when formulating this book in my head, was the name Alcatraz for a protagonist. At the very beginning, I was planning for Alcatraz to be the name of an adult private investigator in a wacky mystery series. He’d solve crimes by getting all of the clues wrong, and interpreting them in strange ways, but then end up catching the crook anyway.

Yeah, I know. The story has come a long way. I never got very far in the Alcatraz detective story. I thought about it a few times, but then eventually discarded it. The name, however, stayed–and I eventually added Smedry as the surname. Now I had a pretty fun name–Alcatraz Smedry–but no story to go along with it.

Eventually, as I’ll talk about, I drafted the first version of the novel you now hold. At that point, I named it:

The Absolutely True–And in No Way Embellished–Tale of

ALCATRAZ SMEDRY

and the Sands of Rashid

by Cecil G. Bagsworth the Third(a pen name of Stet Cannister)

Based on a story.

Whew! That’s a mouthful. I particularly liked the “Based on a story” crack. However, after my agent Joshua suggested switching the book to first person, I couldn’t keep this title anymore. So I had to come up with something else. By draft version 3.0, this book had come to be named Alcatraz Illuminated, book one of the Sands of Rashid.

I liked the sound of this title, but it has some problems. Primarily, I was still imagining this book as a young adult book–and it took my editor at scholastic to suggest it be middle grade to really get the feel on target. However, Alcatraz Illuminated just didn’t seem like it would fit with a middle-grade audience. Plus, on paper without a cover illustration, it sounds like a documentary book about Alcatraz Island.

So, once Scholastic had picked the book up, we started to talk about different potential titles. Early on, Anica established that we really needed to lose the Illuminated, and I agreed. We went through various rounds of emails with suggestions.

• Alcatraz Smedry and the Sands of Rashid(This one had problems in that it just sounded too “Harry Potter” to me. Plus it just felt a little bland.)
• The Completely True, and in No Way Exaggerated, Autobiography of Alcatraz Smedry(Harking back to the original title, but this felt too long.)
• The Autobiography of Alcatraz Smedry, Librarian Slayer(He doesn’t really kill librarians, though.)
• Alcatraz Smedry and the Incredibly Long, Exaggerated, and Somewhat Boring Fantasy Book Title(I kind of like this one still, but no one else took it seriously.)
• Lenz-Wielder(If we wanted to go really fantasyish.)
• The Utterly Unheroic Adventures of Alcatraz Smedry Versus the Evil Librarians(This is the one that stuck around the longest.)

Eventually, we decided to simply go with Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians. It cut out a lot of the jokiness from the title, but it gave us what we wanted. Enough questions in the title to make people pick it up, with a good snappy feel to it. It got “Evil Librarians” in the title, which the marketing department really, really wanted. It got Alcatraz being used in a way that didn’t imply a documentary about the prison.

The title does give the book a bit more of a pulp feel, which is just fine, since that kind of fits. We’ll have to see what the whole package looks like. I have seen the cover, and love it, so I think I’m going to be pleased.

Assistant Peter’s note: I think Brandon forgot that he wrote these annotations. He seemed surprised when I mentioned that I had found them. Anyway, I’m pretty sure that this is the only Alcatraz book that Brandon annotated. Enjoy.

Questioner

What should I be looking out for to see Hoid in this one [The Bands of Mourning]?

Brandon Sanderson

He's pretty obvious in this one.

Questioner

Oh he's obvious in this one? I remember the last one he barely popped in.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah the last two he's been barely in. This one he actually is-- He's up to something in this one.

Questioner

So I've always wondered, the Bands of Mourning, the actual spearhead that Wax uses. Was that made by the Lord Ruler or the Sovereign, or--

Brandon Sanderson

No. It was not made by the Lord Ruler. The Sovereign was involved.

Questioner

Is silver in Shadows for Silence similar in any way to aluminum in the rest of the cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

*hesitantly* Yes, but not really. Silver is like silver, and aluminum is like aluminum.

Questioner

Does aluminum have any specific use in Shadows for Silence?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, you could definitely find a use for it.

clyguy

Someone tries to Awaken a carrot, and eats it. What happens to the Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson

The Investiture will be released into the Spiritual Realm like most Investiture that is destroyed.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Brandon said offhandedly, "It is not random who got which Shard." Also, Shards very rarely change hands. Brandon emphasized the "very" there.

Snipexe

Would Hemalurgy work on an AI?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

DammyJerry

Have you ever thought (just for fun) which KR Order your characters for other books would fit the best? Like, Sazed is Bondsmith, Kelsier is probably Skybreaker.

Which Rosharian Shard, Honor, Cultivation or Odium, better fits with Dalinar's personality?

Brandon Sanderson

I'd agree with the other commenter that Kelsier isn't much of a Skybreaker. But picking orders would depend on what point in the person's life we're talking, and the situation. It's not a hard-fast rule.

For example, young Dalinar is very Odium. Modern Dalinar is very Honor.

Seifersythe

What about Magic: The Gathering color alignments?

Like, would Kelsier be Red/White or Red/Black?

Brandon Sanderson

Kelsier is blue/black. Vin is Red/green. Sazed is white/green--with arguments for mono-white. Elend is red white. The LR is white/black.

mithrilnova

This actually surprises me a lot. I would have expected Sazed to be Bant-colored, and Elend seems much bluer than he does red.

Brandon Sanderson

Actually, I don't know why I said red/white for Elend. Must have been answering quickly. You're right, blue/white is a better match for him. Ham is red/white.

Questioner (paraphrased)

Are the Parshendi of Odium?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Not originally.

Questioner

Are you eventually gonna work on getting all of them out in leatherbound?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. One a year is the plan, just kind of, tenth anniversary style.

Questioner

In Alcatraz series, he talks about a lot of things. Religion, fame, particularly fame, stuff like that. I was wondering if that is his voice entirely, or if it's also partially you?

Brandon Sanderson

There is a lot of me in Alcatraz. My mother says Alcatraz is her favorite character because he sounds the most like me.

Questioner

Do you relate more to Kaladin or to Dalinar?

Brandon Sanderson

Dalinar.

AndyGranny

The Five Scholars traveled from Nalthis to Roshar. And Intent is very important across all of the Cosmere. But also, Sel is actually closer than it is to Roshar. And from everything we know right now, when it comes to Intent, the Intent of using the Aons mirrors sort of Awakening. So did they travel to Sel as well, and has that influenced the way Nalthians learned to Awaken?

Brandon Sanderson

That is a RAFO for right now. Let's just say that the things that happened on Sel that prevented travel were not in place several thousand years ago.

What I sidestepped is whether the Scholars had been to Sel, I heavily implied people from Nalthis had been to Sel. Don't take that as canon, that it's specifically the Scholars. That part is a RAFO.

Questioner

I don't really read much, but-- *laughter* I listen to all of the audio books of all your books... And one thing I really respect that you do is you're very punk rock about how you approach things. Like "Three [prologues], yeah why not?" It actually reminds me a lot of Final Fantasy, like when that came onto the scene it was just "Dang, these guys are doing everything. The best, the newest, the freshest thing." And I was actually curious, have you ever actually played Final Fantasy, where you inspired by it? Especially because the swords are HUGE like in Final Fantasy.

Brandon Sanderson

I will admit, there's a bit of me saying "Man, what would it take to make giant swords realistic?" *laughter*  Like I actually-- No, this is real. Like fantasy art, and particularly Japanese fantasy art, has these oversized weapons that's completely unrealistic. But that's a challenge to me.

I actually played-- Like I have Final Fantasy cred. *laughter* I played One, on the original Nintendo, right? When it was released. And I have actually played them all. Ten is my favorite. As an aside, what I loved about Ten was-- The voice acting really helped, but I loved that-- Like Ten is what taught me that you don't have to have an angsty, depressed character. Angsty, depressed characters are awesome but sometimes you can have a hero who's not angsty and depressed and it works out alright. But I would call myself deeply influenced by that, certaintly.

Brandon Sanderson

Secondary Projects

White Sand

The graphic novel incorporating the first third of the book was a huge success, so we're going full-steam on the second part. And, of course, Khriss (one of the main characters) is the in-world author of many essays in Arcanum Unbounded. So Taldain is still peeking up here and there, reminding everyone it's part of the cosmere.

I don't have control over when the second part of the graphic novel comes out. That all depends on the artist's schedule—but I have assurances from the publisher that it won't take too terribly long. We'll post when we know for sure about release dates.

Status: Second volume actively being worked on.

Questioner

Will we ever see an entire map of how the different planets are spaced out in the Physical--

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, yeah, the Cosmere collection will have a star chart of the cosmere.

Moderator

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Cosmere, if you will…

Brandon Sanderson

Now, you've got to remember that at the point that this comes out-- The collection's been interesting for a couple of reasons. For one reason, the collection's coming out before Sixth of the Dusk happens in the cosmere, right? And so Khriss gives an introduction to each world, so you'll find her introduction to First of the Sun to be a very interesting introduction that doesn't know things that you know because of that. In addition, the star chart is a star chart created by people who are not spacefaring, right? And so it is a star chart more along the lines of-- It may not be one hundred percent to scale and things like that, like they've been able to figure out a lot of things by using the Cognitive Realm, so they'd be like "alright, here's the relationship", but it will be a while before you get what feels like a Star Trek star chart. Your star chart you're gonna get in this is a fantasy star chart, which will give you the relative positions and things like that, but it's not gonna be like you can measure exactly, which we do have! But I'm not gonna give you yet. *audience laughs*

Moderator

Are you referring to Arcanum Unbound?

Brandon Sanderson

Arcanum Unbounded, yeah.

FeatherWriter

Can I ask about Glys and Tumi, which are Rlain and Renarin's spren. Obviously they have some weirdness from Sja-anat, but they seem very, very different from the other mistspren we see, whose name is Dreaming-though-Awake. And sometimes they seem like they talk like inkspren, with that focus on the "be" verb at the end of sentences, and things like that. Is there a reason why they are so very different - I mean we've only seen one other mistspren, but... 

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, there are reasons indeed. I will give you more as the series progresses. Remember, Renarin has (right now) in the sequence book 7, and so you are going to have an entire Renarin book with its own flashback sequence that you can look forward too. It'll be Renarin in his thirties; he'll be older, he may be wiser. We'll see.

Questioner

Do you write non-fiction books?

Brandon Sanderson

...I have not written any full non-fiction books yet. My nonfiction is my class and my podcast. Maybe someday I'll do a writing book. We did do one called Shadows Beneath... my friends and I each wrote a story, and then we wrote about why we did that story the way we did. So all of my nonfiction is, like, articles about writing. So, maybe someday, we'll do something else, but that's kinda where I am right now.