Questioner
In a 17th Shard interview, Janci said that it would be really cool if there were a new Young Adult pre-Mistborn story to serve as a bridge for YA readers to jump into the adult Mistborn stuff. Is this something that you have thought about, YA books to introduce readers into the Cosmere?
Janci Patterson
More than any other question, I get asked this all the time: if I was gonna write something in the Cosmere, what would I wanna write? So many times. And what I always say, every time: "I'm not writing in the Cosmere. This is not happening. I have never been asked. I don't expect to be asked. Don't spread rumors."
But people get excited by things. So, what I told them (and what I'm referring to) is that I think it would be really awesome to have (because Mistborn gets shelved in YA, which is awesome) to have an actual YA Mistborn story that is actually YA that happens before The Final Empire so it serves as a bridge for your YA readers. And that's the answer I give people.
Brandon Sanderson
As I ended up writing the fourth book in the series I incorporated a lot--you haven't read it yet because it's not readable yet--from the novellas. We almost got the novellas switched to book three, er, book four, and Defiant book five, almost got the publisher to switch that but they were unwilling to do that and they did feel that it was too late in their cycle of publications. But in our head, these are basically book four.
Janci Patterson
I think you're gonna be really confused to read Defiant without it.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, I mean, I'm doing my best to make up for that, I will at least in revisions, but right now my writing group is very confused about some things, half of them have read the novellas, and half of them haven't-
Janci Patterson
Oh, jeez, ok.
Brandon Sanderson
The ones who have read the novellas are like 'No, no this makes perfect sense.' Why they have kitsen with them in cockpits and why there's lots of different types of slugs.
Questioner
How have the Skyward Flight stories affected your writing of Defiant?
Brandon Sanderson
They affected them quite a bit. A lot will be spoilers but I already mentioned a couple things. New slugs were discovered, different relationship things happened, the relationships with the other races in the universe have developed, some big events happened. Basically, when I sat down to write it, I couldn't not take these all into account so I just wrote it with no coddling the fact that all of this had happened. My writing group is indicating that maybe I want to give a little bit more--which I'll try to do--for readers to bring them up to speed on what happened. But, y'know, these novellas, we imagined them as side stories but we both like to write things that are epic and expansive and interconnected--
Janci Patterson
And it grows.
Brandon Sanderson
--and it stops being side stories very quickly, once you get a couple of excited authors involved.
Janci Patterson
Every time we had a conversation the scope grew a little.
Brandon Sanderson
That's why they ended up... we say novellas, they were fifty thousand words each.
Janci Patterson
One of em's fifty.
Brandon Sanderson
What are the others?
Janci Patterson
Sixty.
Questioner
Would you be willing to tell us what the rainbow slug's power is?
Brandon Sanderson
Do you have the notes handy?
Janci Patterson
I know what it is.
Brandon Sanderson
Okay, you can say what it is.
Janci Patterson
That's the illusion slug. So in my mind, that's why it's a rainbow, it's not real, it's an illusion.
Brandon Sanderson
It's creating an illusion of itself, yeah.
Brandon Sanderson
So, Peter and Karen's daughter, I guess multiples, two of the daughters or many all three. But I know for sure Bridget, is very eager about creating a slug. Because boomslug Dallin, my son came up with. So I'm like we could maybe do this. They want a remote viewing slug.
Janci Patterson
Remote viewing?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes, a slug that creates a little thing you can see through to another location. That's what they have come up with.
Janci Patterson
That's awesome. Do they have a name for it?
Brandon Sanderson
They don't have a name for it. But they want us to canonize it and tell them which of these slugs is the remote viewing slug.
Janci Patterson
So I have, and I don't know what happened with Defiant, I have a list of all of the slugs that I- yeah.
Brandon Sanderson
So it wouldn't be any of those.
Janci Patterson
So probably it would have to be a different colored slug. So if they have a recommendation of what color slug they would like.
