Advanced Search

Questioner

Why do you have salt?

Brandon Sanderson

Because this is my tour box, and I like to salt my food. And sometimes I will be on tour and have to grab food real fast after a signing or before, and so I have salt to salt my food.

Thousandarms97

I know Allomancy is, like, "alloy" and "mancy." Were you inspired by "alomancy", which is the divination of salt?

Brandon Sanderson

I wanted to use "mancy" because in part I was working in a seeing-the-future with atium. And I thought: number one, it's resonant; and number two, it works because we are looking at the future. So that's where the name came from.

Thousandarms97

No future salt-based magic system, though?

Brandon Sanderson

No. I've toyed with it for a while, but I just have never come up with anything that I'm satisfied with.

DrogaKrolow

Last question: Are you planning to come back to Poland somewhere soon?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes but I don't know when, but I have to come to Warsaw Book Fair, my publisher has made it very clear I need to eventually, and you guys do keep bugging me so-- I'm sure it won't stop now that I've actually come. I have been to Spain like four times so--

Bystander

It's closer to States.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah it's so much closer.

DrogaKrolow

We'll definitely come back with some weird questions

Brandon Sanderson

Ok great. We need a direct flight to Warsaw, that's what we need.

Bystander

From Salt Lake.

Brandon Sanderson

From Salt Lake. Yeah, not gonna happen. There is a direct flight to Paris so I'm in Paris and there’s a direct flight to London, so I end up both in London and Paris all the time.

Bystander

There is loads of flights from London to Warsaw.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.

Bystander

To any city in Poland.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah but if there is no direct flight then I have to change planes.

Bystander

Jesus.

Brandon Sanderson

It's hard.

Bystander

At Heathrow--

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, I know! Actually I changed this time in Amsterdam, that's a good airport, so easy to get around.

DrogaKrolow

How many hours did you spend traveling here?

Brandon Sanderson

Nine hours.

DrogaKrolow

Nine hours?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah-- Oh nine hours-- Sorry, nine hours on that flight to Amsterdam, and then two hours to Warsaw.

Bystander

Not bad.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, not that bad. Two hour layover, so total of 13 hours.

I wrote a really bad short story that I don't think I will ever release. It's kind of dumb. So that still happens to me.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Twenty-Five

Vivenna and the Mercenaries Attack the Salt Merchant's Shop

A very quick and efficient way to hurt the future Hallandren war. Denth doesn't mention that there are ways of preserving meat (drying and smoking) that don't require salt—but even in most jerky methods, one uses a brine solution, so his argument is reasonably satisfactory.

Miss Silver

Can we have Design's recipe for ramen noodles down to the exact grains of salt and herbs used?

Brandon Sanderson

Well we'll have to ask the person who's making the cosmere cookbook some day to figure that out because yes she does like to count the grains of salt. It's the sort of thing you do when you're a Cryptic.

Miss Silver

Did Hoid give her the recipe or did she make it up herself? Who taste tested it?

Brandon Sanderson

She made it up herself, and she tried it on poor unfortunate people that were offered free food.

Brandon Sanderson

Acknowledgements

I've had a few complaints about this page–but not the complaints I expected. When I was writing the acknowledgments, I was worried that I'd leave someone out who gave me good comments on the book. It took me a lot of searching through old records, but I think I finally found pretty much everyone. However, I assumed that if I did leave anyone out, they would complain. (It's been five years since I wrote Elantris, and a lot of people have read it during that time.)

However, most of the complaints I got weren't from people I forgot to put on the acknowledgements page. The complaints were from people who were on the page, but didn't think they deserved to be there!

You see, I added a few names to this list. These were people who hadn't read Elantris as an alpha reader, but who had been part of one of my writing groups or who had otherwise given me support during the days when I was trying to get published. These people read other books of mine, even if I wasn't working on Elantris when I met them. So, on this acknowledgements page, I wanted to give a general thanks to all the people who have helped me over the years. That means if you're on the list and don't think you belong there, tough!

You get my acknowledgement whether you want it or not!

Anyway, you can see that there are a lot of names on this list. These are a great bunch of people–good critics, great fans, and many of them pretty good writers in their own right. Though at this point, only one of them has a professional novel publication (Rob Wells,) I'm sure that others will eventually join him. When they do, buy their books!

The top list of people includes my closest and most helpful writing groups. The first group, named "Here there be dragons" actually started when I was writing Elantris, and that was the first book the group dealt with. Though we didn't spend much time on Elantris, I remember meeting in Ben's office in the BYU alumni house and chatting about the book's terrible title (see the title page annotation,) among other things. The founding members were Dan, Ben, me, and Nate. We added Peter a bit later on, and he went on to become an editor at Tokyopop. A couple of other people–Krista Olson, Alan Layton, and a few others–did short stints as dragons, but I ended up acknowledging them in other places on the list.

Of those three writing groups, only one is still going. The one with Alan Layton and Kaylynn ZoBell. We meet in Salt Lake every Friday night (yes, I know. That's the best thing we writers often have to do on Friday nights. . . .) Anyway, they're a great support and help to me.

Another interesting note is regarding my professors. I intend to dedicate a book some day to the teachers that have helped me over the years. It was a school teacher–the appropriately named Ms. Reader–who gave me my first fantasy book . I can think of few professions as noble as that of teacher, and I am deeply thankful to all of those who have helped me–not just the few names I had room to mention on this page.

uchoo786

So it is said that the Lord Ruler created the nobility out of the people who supported him in his rise to power, making them taller, stronger etc.

But how does that make sense? Wasn’t his rise to power after he ascended and used up the power at the Well of Ascension, so how exactly did he change human physiology after the fact?

Unless I’ve gotten it wrong and I’m misunderstanding what happened, this timeline doesn’t fit.

Brandon Sanderson

There are a lot of myths about things the Lord Ruler did that aren't accurate. Most of what is said about the skaa and nobility by characters should be taken with a grain of salt.

uchoo786

Ah gotcha, thanks for the reply! I guess I gave it more weight because Sazed speaks about the difference as fact in the HoA epigraphs.

Thanks for the clarification!

Brandon Sanderson

The LR did distribute beads to some people, essentially creating major noble families with access to Allomancy. So there is truth behind what people are saying. They have just taken it too far.

Phantine

Just to clarify, this is the Sazed thing he's talking about

The Balance. Is it real? We've almost forgotten this little bit of lore. Skaa used to talk about it, before the Collapse. Philosophers discussed it a great deal in the third and fourth centuries, but by Kelsier's time, it was mostly a forgotten topic. But it was real. There was a physiological difference between skaa and nobility. When the Lord Ruler altered mankind to make them more capable of dealing with ash, he changed other things as well. Some groups of people—the noblemen—were created to be less fertile, but taller, stronger, and more intelligent. Others—the skaa—were made to be shorter, hardier, and to have many children. The changes were slight, however, and after a thousand years of interbreeding, the differences had largely been erased.

Brandon Sanderson

Sorry, I don't think I read the topic closely enough. The issue here is that OP is, I believe, conflating the people the LR changed and the ones he gave beads to. The changes are real, but not nearly as important as people in world theorized about over the years. (At least when one talks about northern continent people.) What Sazed says here, however, is factual. (Though he doesn't know the LR's intentions, only what he did.)

uchoo786

To clarify, I meant to ask how did he decide who to make nobles and who to make skaa? From what I remember he made his supporters the nobility, which would imply that he made the changes in the balance after he had already used up the power. Right? Or am I misunderstanding and the nobility have nothing to do with who his supporters were?

Brandon Sanderson

He didn't have supporters at that point, not really. He did have people he liked, and groups of people he wanted to advantage--and other goals as well. But he was mostly a guy from the backwaters who didn't know a ton about world politics.

The people he liked later on were the ones he made Allomancers, and they became the most important noble houses. It's possible I didn't make this very clear in the text, though. It was a bit tricky to decide what I wanted to make clear and what I didn't.

Questioner

You mentioned the other ruined cities... Are there any other cities that you were thinking of putting into the book, but ended up not?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, I had-- I brainstormed a few with the team. Cities I was thinking of-- Toronto we-- Toronto was the big one.

Isaac Stewart

What was the funny, weird thing about the city?

Brandon Sanderson

Um... I wanted to do a mushroom city, and I didn't do that. I dunno, I had a bunch of them that I bounced off of Isaac and Peter. This is the one we decided on just because the salt thing is so *unintelligible*, you know?

Isaac Stewart

Yeah, we did a lot of Canadian cities, is what we were thinking at first.

Brandon Sanderson

And then Random House came in and said, "Can it be an American city? Please?" I'm like, "Okay, but you'll have to fight off the Canucks."

Brandon Sanderson

Architectural and Character Cameos

Many of the High Noble keeps I described in the first book are real buildings. Keep Venture, for instance, is based on the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. Well, Keep Orielle here is based on the LDS Salt Lake Temple, only with more stained glass. Go read the description again (I think it's in this chapter) and maybe you'll be able to see it.

Brandon Sanderson

The Attack on the Salt Merchant Was a Cover

Denth did dozens of things like this, subtle methods of bringing the two kingdoms closer to war. This is the only one that Vivenna and Vasher figure out soon enough to be able to counter.

In this scene, Vivenna's chapter arc is her struggle with deciding when to make judgments and when not to. It seems that in our society, it's taboo to judge someone. If you judge, you're seen as intolerant. And most of us hate being labeled that way. I remember seeing an advertisement online just a few days ago that said something like "Please teach your children tolerance; teach them not to judge others."

Now, those who read my blog know that I'm big on trying to understand other people's viewpoints. I don't like how harsh our dialogues about charged issues tend to be. I've said I'm a peacemaker by temperament. However, I think telling someone, "Don't judge others" is just plain ridiculous. (Of course, maybe it's all just semantics.)

We have to judge. We do it every day. We decide who we want to be friends with. We judge which candidates we want to vote for. We judge which activities we want to be a part of. A lot of these judgments are influenced by our thoughts on the people involved in them.

It's not good to be racist. Skin color is a terrible reason to judge someone. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't sometimes make judgments about people for other reasons. I think maybe we've become hypersensitive to this sort of thing.

Questioner

In regards to the Infinity Blade book, how did you pick that up out of all the licensed products?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, why Infinity Blade. You know, It’s because they worked so darn hard to get me. They just kept going through every channel they could to get a hold of me. They called up my publicist, they called up Tor, they were trying everybody who possibly had a contact with me, and finally got through Isaac. It was they worked so hard, and also, they offered me a really good deal, meaning the idea that I could do this. And it was less about me looking for a licensed product or something like that, and more of me wanting to test how the digital market worked for something like this, and also, I want to have more to do with video games. And Epic, you know that gives you Unreal Edge, and Gears of War, they are a pretty big deal of a company. And if I ever wanted to do my own video game, straight out of an IP, which I have one I want to do, having contacts there would be really helpful. And so they came to me, they pitched this, they gave me a lot of creative freedom, they gave me a really good deal, monetarily, to make it worth my time, and I got to test the waters digitally and see how it is selling a story in game, and I also got to make some contacts in video games and gain a little more street cred.

I want to build a Skyrim killer one day, is what I really want to do. I have a story, a world that I have built with magic and things that I want to do, that may be a Skyrim killer someday, an Elder Scroll type game. I really like those games. I have problems with some of the things they do, but I really like those games. So I really want to do that someday. That means I have to find some game studio who’s willing to give me 30 million dollars to play with, so I’ve got to have a lot of good street cred in video games before they let me do that. Yeah “30 million, that’s nothing!” That’s one of the big reasons that I’m doing it also. I mean I’m going to pitch this to the guys after a follow up Infinity Blade eventually, and we’ll see what they say.

Questioner

Why did Infinity Blade try so hard to get you specifically?

Brandon Sanderson

Because they are from Salt Lake, and they really liked my books, and they kind of based Inifinity Blade sort of off of my books. Not based, but they were inspired a little bit by my books, and so they really wanted to work with me. So that’s why. They liked the books. And you know, they make really good games. I was really impressed. I am a gamer, I hadn’t played their games. And that’s another reason—I played the games and they were fun. So that’s why they tried so hard. They just liked the books. It is interesting that there is a lot of talk in video games of “Are video games going to grow up storywise?” Like they’ve really come to their own as an entertainment medium in the last ten years, and yet story tends to be a weak point still in a lot of these. Even the games that have great story lines are great story lines for a video game. There’s been a lot of editorials written and a lot of articles written saying “Guys, we need to start hiring top talent to write our stories rather than farming it out to Dave who does our Particle Effects, and moonlights as a writer.” There’s lots of discussion about this. So I think these guys are interested in doing something like this. Do you have something Isaac?

Isaac Stewart

I just wanted to add why they tried so hard to get you. If you want a little anecdote, I was at a Barnes and Nobles on my lunch break, and I look up and there’s this guy that I went to college with. So I said “What are you doing lately?” “Well I own my own video game studio.” He said “What have you been doing?” “Oh, I made some maps for some guys books. It’s right here. ” He decided to buy it and read it, and he became a huge fan. He really loved it.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Siri Is Led Up to a Room with an Altar

Well, welcome to my favorite chapter in the book. (Of course, I do tend to say that about the climactic chapters of each book.) For me, this is the kind of chapter that drives one to write a book. The chance to get to it, and to have things start coming together, is the biggest thrill I get in writing.

The "sacrifice Siri on the altar" image was one of the original ones I'd planned for this book, but by the time I got to this place in the novel, it just felt lame to go through with that. It's such a clichéd image. That's kind of the point—Bluefingers is trying for something visceral and exaggerated—but I felt that the imagery of it could undermine the entire scene.

I think I did one draft with her tied down to it, but I revised that out pretty quickly. It was far too Snidely Whiplash for me. I like this version much better, where we find out what Bluefingers is going to do, but Siri stands up to him and bullies him into letting her die with dignity. I also went back and seeded the stories about Hallandren and killing people on altars as a superstitious rumor that some Idrians believe. (There were stories about the Mormons, back in the day, claiming that they sacrificed women on the altars of their temples then threw the corpses out the window into the Great Salt Lake. Sounds ridiculous, I know, but in eras without as much media, people can believe some pretty crazy things.)

w0rkaround

From what I understand, Sanderson has basically decades of books planned, and the next Mistborn era should be coming out after this first Stormlight series is done, which will be 5 books in total.

I forgot the source on this, and honestly this is more from multiple interviews of his, so take it with a grain of salt, but my understanding is that he writes each series in chunks, so his writing timeline would look something like this:

• Stormlight Archive Part 1 (Books 1-5)
• Misborn Era 2 Trilogy (1980s cyberpunkish)
• Stormlight Archive Part 2 (Books 6-10)
• Mistborn Era 3 (Futuristic SciFi setting)
• Final Cosmere book focusing on a central character to all these books.

So Mistborn won't be coming out until the 5th Stormlight book is done, and so on down the line. If you expand the schedule, we can expect almost yearly Sanderson books until 2040! Guy is a machine.

Brandon Sanderson

You've got this mostly right, though we've just gone ahead and renamed the 1980s one "Era Three" because of confusion, and Wax and Wayne Era Two. (People didn't really take to my Era 1.5 philosophy on that one, so we are just going with the easiest method of discussing it instead.) Era Three will be a little more Tom Clancy spy thriller than cyberpunk. And Era Four is the same as the final cosmere books. (But you forgot Dragonsteel, which will happen right before it--Hoid's origin story.)

V_Spaceman

I hope you don’t mind me asking, how do you think you’ll approach balancing out knowledge self-contained to the Mistborn series with the audience’s need to know about the larger Cosmere? Do people who only read Mistborn have to brush up on Roshar stuff beforehand?

Brandon Sanderson

For the final Mistborn trilogy, they will have to. That will be the cosmere equivalent of Endgame or something--the series that won't really work for you unless you've followed most everything up to that point. Dragonsteel, Era Three, etc should still work as stand-alones.

Is_Meta

That will be the cosmere equivalent of Endgame or something

This sentence alone gives me shivers. I can't wait for all of it. And I hope that everything comes together as you plan and hope.

Brandon Sanderson

I'm always hesitant to make Avengers comparisons, as the cosmere endgame is less about individuals coming together (though there will be some of that) and more about the clash between philosophies and cultures. But who knows? That is several decades away. Right now, I just need to keep working on Stormlight Four.

V_Spaceman

How thick do you think you’ll go for the Era 4 books? Stormlight level word count or keeping with Mistborn’s general length?

Brandon Sanderson

I would anticipate Era Four going Stormlight length. (Though Era Three should be regular Mistborn length, I think.)

wiresegal

Tacenda seemed to Planeswalk at the end. Did she, or did she just "ascend" within Innistrad? Was she an unsparked planeswalker before she accepted the Entity? If she wasn't, did the Entity give her a Spark, similar to how Slobad was grafted one? And if that's not it, the third possibility... is the Entity native to the Blind Eternities, like the Eldrazi?

Brandon Sanderson

I will give you both the canon and Brandon head canon.

Canon is: ambiguous on all counts. It's not confirmed that Tacenda planeswalked at the end, or whether she (or Davriel) had sparks of their own--or if their planewalking powers are granted by the Entities. I can say, in canon, that the Entities are not native to the Blind Eternities--they are the souls of ancient, powerful planes that were destroyed, and their power harvested.

The Soul of planes sequence from m15 were their inspiration, though something special happened with these specific planes. I can't confirm or deny how many of them there were, but at least two.

Now, the Brandon Head Canon. (See my post at the top of this thread for an explanation.)

In my discussions with Wizards, they gave me leave to create one planeswalker--but in the course of the story, I decided to have Tacenda spark as well. This wasn't done with canon permission from Wizards, and I promised them that I'd leave it ambiguous in case they didn't want to have to deal with me playing loose and free with creating planeswalkers.

I personally imagine that the entities are providing the sparks for both Davriel and Tacenda. Davriel THINKS it's his own spark, and it ignited when he saw the true nature of the multiverse--and this is, right now, the canon answer. But I personally like the idea that one of the reasons these Entities are important is because they provide planeswalking ability to whoever holds them.

That has too much lore implication for me to canonize, however--and I didn't push Wizards to do so. (I also didn't ask them to make Tacenda a planeswalker; I simply wrote the story, and left them the option of using her in the future.) So take this part all with a grain of salt.

Questioner

Has Mistborn: Birthright officially tanked?

Brandon Sanderson

Has Mistborn: Birthright officially tanked?

So this is the video game. So the kind of longer-- the short answer is yes. The kind of longer answer is the developer who was making the video game bought the movie rights for a year, because we wanted to combine the movie rights and the video game rights. We gave him only a year, because we were like, "You haven't made any films. But we want to tie these rights together. It sounds like a good thing." We gave him a year, and he lives in LA so he knows a lot of Holywood people. "Sure, give it a try." In a year he couldn't get a film made, or really moving. You can't make one in a year anyway, and so the rights for everything have lapsed, and now he's talking to the people that we sold the Mistborn rights to, to say, "Hey, maybe I can make the video game if you make the film."

The problem being that new IPs in video games are very hard to get funding for. And those who work in video games and know them are nodding their heads. And so he tried very hard. He's made a lot of video games. Most of his games as you know from looking at his developer site are all movie tie-ins, right? He wanted to try a book tie-in. He's made good games. He has a lot of people on his staff who've made really good games with a lot of different companies. They could make a good Mistborn game. They needed, you know $20 million. Which, they can usually go to people who give them funding, and say, "Hey, we're making the video game for, you know, Kung Fu Panda." Which they did. And they're like, "Oh, okay here's you're--you know-- $10 million, $20 million. We know this is a safe bet. This video game will sell."

When they say they're making one on Mistborn they're like, "Where's the movie?" And so it was very hard for him to get the funding. It was very hard for him to get things built. I think he still wants to make it. But now he's in talks with the guys making the movie, and I don't think it will ever happen unless the film gets made. If the film gets made I think it will happen. I pitched to him last week doing a 2D side-scroller Symphony of the Night style Metroidvania Mistborn game, which is something we can fund in-house, right? And just kind of do what a lot of the cool indie games are doing right now. It's like modern design aesthetics, but a 2D sort of thing. Salt and Sanctuary comes to mind, if you guys played that. You know, you can do some really cool stylized stuff and really interesting game mechanics, but if you want to go full 3D, this generation console, like 20 million is like the low end of what you need. And so that's where we are.

Questioner

I just found out today that you have a charity called the Lightweaver Foundation.

Brandon Sanderson

I do.

Questioner

What are you trying to accomplish with it?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm trying to find ways to give away my money.

Questioner

Excellent! 

Brandon Sanderson

It's less that I'm trying to funnel money into it from other sources. Sometimes, we sell things or do things that I want to do for charity, but mostly it's, so far we've put a library in the homeless shelter in Salt Lake and we've donated a bunch of books to schools and prisons and libraries. When someone comes and says, "Hey, can you donate to this thing," I just funnel it through the charity. It basically exists to give away my money.

yulerule

Can you Forge liquids, like-- Does that go into Bloodsealing, can you change their blood type?

Brandon Sanderson

OK, can you use Forgery to, say, change someone's blood type? Yes. Can you Forge liquids? A little harder to stamp liquids, so this kind of comes down to, can you--

yulerule

Like, if you have a glass of water and you put salt in the water can you Forge it or make it and make it--

Brandon Sanderson

This is possible, but it requires a few little workarounds. Obviously you can do it because you Forge somebody, and they're mostly liquid.

yulerule

But you're putting in on a hard surface.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, in the same way that you would with thr liquid you would probably--

yulerule

Touch some ice?

Brandon Sanderson

No, you would probably take the cup, and make it part of the whole, and if you can-- Remember in the cosmere, it depends on how you view a thing. Is it a whole? Do you view this as a cup of water, or do you view it as a cup and the water? Do you view a person as a vessel and the blood inside them, or together as a person? And that perception really affects your magic. So it's possible, for instance, to Forge a cup of water, Forging just the cup is easier than Forging just the water.

Kara Stewart

Merchandise and Events: VP Kara Stewart

The year 2022 catapulted our Merchandise and Events department to incredible levels of excitement, growth, improvement, and fun!

Our first big project was the “Surprise! Four Secret Novels by Brandon Sanderson” Kickstarter campaign held in March. The fandom came together and absolutely shattered records, ending with our campaign at double the next most funded project ever launched on Kickstarter.

We also attended FanX Salt Lake in September, New York Comic Con in October, and our own Dragonsteel convention in November—we loved seeing and interacting with everyone! Held this year in conjunction with the release of The Lost Metal, we tripled our attendance for Dragonsteel 2022, nearly doubled our exhibitor hall vendors, and had one fantastic time!

Between our Kickstarter campaign, our three book bundles (Skyward Flight: The Collection, Bastille vs. the Evil Librarians, and The Lost Metal), and our convention, our merchandise team has worked on more than 70 new products this year! Many of these have already been released or will be coming in 2023. We are excited to be expanding our product offerings and can’t wait to see everyone’s reactions to the awesome products we have for next year.

Preparation for 2023 is well underway! First, we have tripled our employee headcount and are ramping up packaging rewards and prepping for fulfillment of our Secret Novels campaign. Second, our events team has already begun planning Dragonsteel 2023, so watch for announcements on hotel discounts and open registration. We are determined to make every year even more awesome for our fans, and we hope you’ll join us on November 20-21, 2023. Third, our merchandise team will be working on the Defiant book bundle, new releases for the store (including opening preorders for those who missed the Kickstarter), merch for Dragonsteel 2023, and the upcoming Words of Radiance campaign. Keep an eye on our social media (Instagram | Facebook) for updates on all these projects!

And finally, with hundreds of pallets of products and shipping materials received already, and hundreds more to come, we have spent much of the past year looking for a larger warehouse space. We are happy to say we found a warehouse that is 10 times the size of our current one, and we can’t wait to move in next year after the improvements are finished.

The enthusiasm for next year is abundant here at our warehouse, and we can’t wait for you to see the results of all our hard work.