Dan Wells
Guess who I am going to be working for? Brandon!
Couple of years ago, he wrote a book called Apocalypse Guard that didn't work. And he brought it to me and said, "Hey, do you want to collaborate on this book, and maybe you can help me fix it?" And so I did another draft, and we looked at it and said, "Yeah, this still doesn't work." But we very much enjoyed the process of writing together.
And so he gave me Dark One. And he said, "Here, this is an outline that I have; do you want to collaborate on another book?" And so I wrote that one. And this one did work. It worked very well. And we both really loved the experience, again, of working together, of cowriting books, doing all this stuff.
Brandon Sanderson
Meanwhile, on my side, the whole Brandon Sanderson thing has gotten kind of big. And I was talking to my team, and I'm like, "I need help with the narrative side of this. I need another brain." We're going to do Dark One, but the goal will eventually be to have Dan just kind of help me work on the Cosmere, and things like this. I need another writing brain. And I need somebody who can write stories that I can't, was another thing. I had been thinking for a while; I'm like, "I need another me." I need help to manage the whole thing. Not just the books, but the entire series. And I'm like, "Well, Dan is the best writer I know. Maybe I should ask Dan."
I came to him, I'm like, "Do you wanna come on full-time as the vice president of narrative at my company?" So Dan is coming on on Monday as the vice president of narrative at Dragonsteel.
Dan Wells
That is gonna entail writing a bunch of books; there'll be a bunch of cowritten Dan and Brandon Cosmere books. We're gonna start with some non-Cosmere stuff, 'cause we gotta get Dark One.
The book itself, we still are in the process of revising that. But as early as January, the prequel will be available in audio. We wrote a thing called Dark One: Forgotten. Which is audio native, specifically because we wanted to do it in the style of a true crime podcast. Imagine if, halfway through Serial, they discovered that there was a supernatural serial killer murdering people. That's what Dark One: Forgotten is. It's six episodes, hour-long mockumentary podcast thing. It's really cool; I turned in the final revisions this morning.
I will say, to mollify any fears that might be out there, my own career is not disappearing. I am still gonna be writing my own stuff. There's still Dan Wells alone stuff; there's still gonna be Brandon writing his own stuff. But there's gonna be a lot of overlap with the two of us.