Austre: Is also also- is that Endowment? You referenced him as male, but Endowment's female. So I'm dying to know.
No, Austre is not. So who do you think Austre is?
Since it's not Endowment I personally think it's a Returned from long ago.
That's a very good conclusion.
Wax's earring is now gone, would you mind sharing what Allomantic charge it had?
Um, eventually.
With Adolin you say there that he feels a connection to his sword. And all the other Shardbearers, when they touch a Shardblade they get the screaming in their ears. Does that mean he’s not going to be a Radiant.
It means he's- number one he's not on the path to being a Radiant, that's the main thing that means.
Do you by chance suffer from hippophobia, which is the fear of horses?
I don’t, but I’m not terribly fond of them either. They’ve been mean to me when I’ve ridden them.
I was just curious, because Kaladin and Vin are both cautious when it comes to horses.
Yep.
Could they use [Oathgates] to teleport to different galaxies?
That is what we call a RAFO, which means Read And Find Out. *laughter*
So during the chase scene in Shadows of Self, it seems to imply that conservation of momentum is...
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Allomancy follows the law of conservation of momentum, yes.
So that is intentional?
It is, it does follow the laws of conservation of momentum. That was very intentional.
<Something about favorite authors>
A few favorite authors: Robert Jordan, pretty obvious, right? Terry Pratchett, Anne McCaffrey, Guy Gavriel Kay-- boy, there’s a lot recently that I've been reading. Last few books I read, one by N.K. Jemisin, her new one [The Fifth Season] which is really good. It’s got a viewpoint in second-person, and it works. So you Lit. English majors out there, it will blow your mind. I-- What’s that?
The audio books good.
The audiobooks, I didn’t do the audiobook, I just read it. I read Jim Butcher’s new one [The Aeronaut’s Windlass], that one’s very good. I read Naomi Novik’s Uprooted, OOOOOOHHHHH, OOOOOHHHHH Uprooted. Go read Uprooted, it is so good. I’ve read David McCullough’s The Wright Brothers, that one’s good, it’s not like-- It’s fun. There you go those are the last one’s I read, and some of my favorites.
Do you have plans to have anything to do with nicrosil and chromium? They seem like they have a lot of potential to them.
Yes, I am planning to do a lot more with nicrosil and chromium in the Mistborn books. You’ll find out a lot about what the Feruchemy of those does.
What do you do when you have a really great idea and you read a book and someone has already done that idea?
Weep into your pillow a little bit...
*Laughter*
Then remind yourself that Ideas Are Cheap; in science fiction and fantasy ideas are cheap. Writing skill is what people are really looking for. And so if your idea has already been done, you can take a new spin on it. You know how many people had written young kid finds out they are secretly a wizard and goes off to wizard school books? *laughter* I mean, there are so many of those. Diane Duane did a great series of them. I think it’s So You Want to be a Wizard or something like that. And so don’t let that destroy you. Ask yourself “What is my unique take on it. What’s my perspective on it?” and go ahead and do it. A ton of people had done heist novels as fantasy books before, but I wanted to do one. So I did.
Will you ever do a prequel to Mistborn?
It is unlikely that I will spend very much time with prequels because as a reader I’m not terribly fond of them: Since I already know what happens it ruins some of the story for me. Though the video game, which by the way is taking a long time and I have no updates *laughter* was going to be a prequel. And so that sort of thing you might see mediums like that. And it’s not impossible that I will do something like that. You might see a novella or something like that, but it’s unlikely-- I’m unlikely to do a whole series about, y’know Alendi and Kwaan and people like that.
When Quentin says "wasing not as wasing is", is that just a reference?
That’s just a reference. So I in Alcatraz make occasional weird references to the Mistborn books and to The Wheel of Time. I think he at one point claims his mother killed Asmodean *laughter* And this is because the Alcatraz books break the fourth wall, they’re self-referential. It’s not implying that they’re connected to the other books. They’re just done for pure silliness’ sake. And so I let myself just do things like that.
If you are a fan of those, we are re-releasing those starting in January with new art and new covers and interior art. And one of the fun things we’re doing is-- we’re testing this out, I’d like to do it for some of my epics-- we’re actually making the dust jacket, inside, have the world map. In full color. And so you take off the dust jacket while you’re reading your book, you spread it out there’s the world map there and you put it back on to keep your place and put back on the shelf. And so this is something we’re testing out to see if we can get it to work for the Stormlight books or something like that. And then the fifth book of Alcatraz, previously unreleased is coming out in June is what they’re planning right now. Publication schedules always vary a little bit. But it’s going to be right around then.
Are there going to be any more stories set in The Emperor’s Soul time?
You will probably see Shai again but I can’t promise that I will do another story just about her. That’s in part because The Emperor’s Soul turned out so well, that it feels like one of those things that feels like it should be left alone. It just-- Not everything needs a sequel. And in some ways it was so successful that it’s better not to do one, if that makes sense.
How do you hint at something, like you hinted at some characters in Shadows of Self without making it feel forced?
This is all the sort of thing that you judge using early readers. You put in what you feel is right, you have them read it and give you responses to it, and then you back off if they're feeling like it's too heavy handed, and you add more if they're not noticing at all. And that is the best way to learn this, just by getting test readers. Because your own instincts are kind of hard to trust on things like foreshadowing and things like this. So yeah, just get some good early readers and see what they do.
There is a Mistborn pen & paper RPG, Dungeons & Dragons style RPG does it give more information on the world?
It does.
Though I oversaw that I let them go-- They wanted to do more than I felt comfortable doing myself for my timing, so I let them go pretty crazy. So I say that it is canon until I contradict it. And some of it I will end up contradicting because they needed to be able to make the game the best way they could and I didn’t feel comfortable telling them all the stuff that was coming up because I didn’t want that to sneak into there.
For those who don’t know the Mistborn books, I’m going to do across the period of many centuries of writing—no, of in-world time.
*laughter*
The initial pitch to my editor was past, present, future. So the Mistborn books, we still haven’t hit present yet. We will eventually hit-- Present for these is going to be 1980’s level spy thriller, Tom Clancy-esque Mistborn with Allomancy. Yeah, it’s going to be really cool. The main character, she’s a code monkey who gets involved in all of this. It is really cool. And then we are going to go forward from there to the point where we get to a space opera and epic-- science-fiction space opera where Allomancy and Feruchemy have become the means by which space travel is possible. So that’s coming [...] I’m six books into what's going to be many, many. So just anticipate that with excitement.
How do the timelines line up? So they're all in the same universe. But how does Stormlight and--
They are mostly been chronological, yet Alloy-era is after Stormlight book 5.
Okay.
Otherwise, mostly chronological. White Sand is before most of this happens. So if you ever read that one, it’s a pretty early book.
What do you have to do with the 17th Shard? I was always curious.
They wanted to start a fansite and so I gave them my blessing, gave them a name that would mean something once they started it. But otherwise I don’t have anything to do with them.
I've always wondered, was there actually a plan for [Sazed] to bring Vin and Kelsier back?
No. In fact I wrote that epilogue after initial test reads from the audience all thought "we need more closure, we need more closure" so I actually wrote a mention from him of them just because I wanted give you indication "they're okay" but that is it, Vin and Elend are not returning.
So. Mistborn in Space. Sixth of Dusk...
Lot of people are wondering about that and I'm not answering that.
Where does the concept for the broadsheets come from?
So I get together with my team: which is Ben McSweeney who does a lot of the artwork, Isaac who does all the symbols and maps, my editorial assistant, and myself. And then we brainstorm as many cool things as we can, and then Isaac lays it out, Ben does all the art, and then together we all just write different *inaudible* for the articles so it feels like a newspaper that a lot of different people are writing.
That's awesome. Thank you very much this is very cool.
That's how we do it.
Isaac wrote the Allomancer Jak pieces in the next one so you should read that one. It's really fun, it's his debut of fiction.
Can being an Allomantic Savant be transferred through Hemalurgy?
A Savant cannot be, good question. No one's asked me that before.
Can a Smoker block an Awakener's lifesense?
That will work, yes.
How do you decide what concepts become Shards?
It took a little bit of work. I basically brainstormed a bunch of attributes of deity that most people had in their religions and see which ones will adapt well to being these concepts.
So Odium is trapped on a planet near Roshar. Now that Talenelat is no longer being bound wherever he's at, does that mean that Odium's imminence is--
Taln still is keeping to the Oathpact. So there is that. But [Odium's] being bound is greater than the Oathpact.
I wanted to know if Forged metals had Allomantic properties.
If Forged metals had Allomantic properties. So what I’ve kind of been ruling on this is if you Forge a metal from one metal to another you can probably start burning it Allomantically but it-- Once you did it would disrupt the Spiritual nature of the metal and it would change back immediately.
Can you tell me anything about the destruction of Oregon in Reckoners? Anything at all?
Anything at all? I think I put Night's Sorrow there, and she was the cause of the destruction? I'm pretty sure? I don't have my notes handy, but that's what I think.
Fabrials and AonDor. In Elantris you mention there’s Tia plates that let people teleport around the city. Could an Elantrian essentially make portable fabrials using a similar method as the Aon Tia plates?
*hesitantly* Yes, that is within the possibility of what it can do. The problem is the further you get from Elantris, the weaker the magic, so they’re going to be really limited in distance. But yes, totally could. And you could probably get them working through most of that region.
The thing about women eating sweeter foods, and how sharp the gender divide was and-- I just found that worldbuilding really interesting, so how do you get inspired by that?
So I noticed that a lot of cultures have these really stark gender disparities. And I think in America we don't—like even around the world we still have a lot of them—in America we kind of-- I'm glad we don't because I think it is actual progress to not [have these disparities]. But at the same time that's a really big part of so many different cultures that I wanted to play with that idea.
And I loved in The Wheel of Time how Robert Jordan had the magic word differently [...] and so I was looking for a long time for something I can do that plays with the idea of gender roles, and that's kind of what rose out of it. It actually came from when I was working on the history and the moment when the men kind of seized control of the Shardblades. You know about this?
Yeah, I read about it online.
So that moment I'm like "alright, there's a divergence there. How do they strictly define the gender roles to maintain the power of these weapons?" And I think that's-- and I just kind of built from there.
It's really interesting though that women in a way are actually the creative minds-- they're actually not suppressed, but they're repressed in a different area.
It is, right. It's this weird repression where you can't do what you want, but they're actually in many ways the most powerful ones in society, but they're constrained by it.
Yeah, they're the ones that are creative because men don't even read because they're not supposed to. I guess that's what's really interesting to me.
It was sooo much fun to figure some of these things out because it plays with expectations a little bit but also plays into them in really interesting ways.
[In Shadows of Self] there’s the new metal, I guess. I was wondering-- So if someone were to bring a metal from a different planet, say steel from Roshar, would it still be recognizable as steel on that world?
It would still be, yup. It would be.
Because there was mention of it being "of Harmony" right, and that was the difference?
The thing you gotta remember is that the metals on Mistborn are keys and not the actual source of the power. If they were the source of the power, it wouldn’t work.
You hinted I think-- it was talking about it that Kelsier had kind of Ascended?
Yes. [...] Yes he did Ascend briefly. It was... It didn't work real well for him because Kelsier plus the power of Preservation is not a good match, but yes.
When you were writing Steris were kind of imagining somewhere on the autistic spectrum, because that's how she reads?
Yes. Yes. I know a number of people with autism, and so I was looking at... maybe all the way to Asperger's, but I'm not sure.
Does Odium hate puppies?
Hate puppies? Yes. Yes, Odium totally hates puppies.
Are we ever going to see Vivenna again? *inaudible* great to see her again.
You will probably see Vivenna again.
Have you read any fanfiction based on any of your novels?
You know I've stayed away from it, though I approve of fanfiction. There are some legal ramifications of reading something and then it being too similar to what you're writing, and then the worry that the fan's gonna... anyway. So I just stay away from reading it.
Will we ever see Spook again?
You are unlikely... Okay how about-- Spook's touch is all over the books everywhere. So if you watch in the new ones, things he has done have had lasting ramifications. So you-- you will probably hear from him again, but it might be in the form of journals and things like that.
The Soonie dog, this mentions. You definitely need to make one of those: whatever you want to make us pay for it, we'll buy it. No problem.
So what I've got is that we make a Soonie pup as one of those stuffed animals that you can turn inside out, and when you turn it inside out it's a mistwraith, *people all around who heard flip out * and then you twist it back.
Why are humans so consistent throughout the cosmere?
One reason is that some of the people who made humans in the cosmere used a model that were other humans. That's one of the reasons.
When Kaladin; when he turn's a lighteyes, how come they turn blue instead of tan or something? Is there a reason for that?
His eyes turn to the color of his order.
Does Glys hide intentionally or is he just invisible to other spren that are not his kind of spren?
A little of both.
Say you have a Feruchemist who pours Identity into a metalmind. Then subsequently loses that mind, and then is later Awakened? Would that mind retain the personality of--
*Everyone laughs, Scottish man says "it's 11 o'clock at night, give the man a break!"*
Okay, so they store Identity—which I haven't told you what it does--
Yep. We don't know.
And then you Awaken it, and then you want to know if it has the personality of the person?
Yeah, or if it's able to communicate in any way.
Um, if-- how much Awakened is it? Is it Nightblood-level Awakened? Or is it just regular Awakened?
Sure let's say Nightblood-level.
Nightblood-level. So it's-- so the Investiture has been granted sapience. And it's got Investiture from somebody else stuffed in it. I can foresee a scenario where that has an influence, but it's not going to be the personality of the person who stuffed it in. I can see some circumstances where they can-- where the Investiture of the object can make use of that in some way, but...
Oh boy, that was a weird one.
Who would win a game of Tarachin: Hoid or Lightsong?
Um... Hoid. Even if he has to cheat. Lightsong just wouldn't care enough, you know?
The Dor: Is it gaseous Investiture or is it something else completely?
Oh that's a great question. People have not been asking enough about the Dor.
And if it is gaseous—or not gaseous—is it plasma?
*Long pause*
You got it. *said definitively*
It's super sup-- not plasm-- yeah, it's super-dense to the point that's it's liquefied and dense-- does that make sense? So it's plasma, basically. It's its own weird thing, so yeah. What you can write is that it's its own weird thing that's kind of plasma-like.
What leaks out of Elantrians, would it be considered similar to, for example, stormlight leaking, or...?
Yeah, yeah you could totally say that.
Does being an Elantrian, when it first happens to you do you get rushed with the feelings that Szeth describes holding Stormlight is like? Or Vin describes holding the Mists?
No, you get different.
No, it feels different.
So it feels completely different?
You definitely get an emotion, but it is not those same emotions.
The thing people have been dancing around—they haven't been asking the right questions—is they need to be asking more questions about the Dor, specifically trying to figure out why the Dor works differently. It's only a little thing, it's not like it's going to be mind blowing, but it is important for them understanding how the cosmere magics work.
