Was that really the end of the Evil Librarians?
No. Did you see the last page? About Bastille? Yeah. That'll be the actual end. Once I can get a Bastille book written, that'll be all right. And she's going to un-dreary-ify things, because Alcatraz has a skewed perspective of the world.
Do you know when the next Alcatraz book will come out?
Working on it slowly, but it's happening. This one, Oathbringer, took longer than I expected, so it slowed me down a little bit. But it shouldn't be too much longer.
Rithmatist?
Rithmatist, that's the other one. No promises of when; working on it slowly.
Really cool what you're doing with Tor. I'm really enjoying the chapters every Tuesday. Me and two of my coworkers are just kinda geeking out about it.
I'm really glad to hear it. That was my idea.
How many sharpies do you go through in one of these things?
You know, it's not as many as you think. It's maybe three. I go through them really fast when I have big stacks to sign, for the publisher or something. But a sharpie is good for about 200, 300 signatures for me. And a line like this is maybe 500 people, each with maybe three books.
So, you know the White Sand graphic novel you made? Did you only sign, like, 250 of those? How many did you sign of those?
I'm not sure how many. I sign them when people bring them by, but I'm don't know how many numbers there were.
No, when you first printed it.
Yeah, the numbered edition. I'm not sure. There aren't that many.
I'm like, 199.
Yeah, there's 200 or something like that.
When's the next Alcatraz coming out?
Slowly. Slowly but surely. I'm working on it. Oathbringer went a bit long, longer than expected, but I will see what I can do now that it's done.
Elantris. I heard you're maybe doing another?
Yes, some day. It may take me a little while, but it will happen.
What would be your dream cast for a Steelheart movie.
I'm not sure if I would have a dream cast. They are who they are in my head. Mostly, I want to be there in the casting meetings, if it's someone I can be "Yeah! It can be them!" then we'll go with that. I don't really have a dream cast.
You're writing so many stories at once with so many different characters. Does it ever get confusing?
Once in a while. But the way my brain chemistry works, it's good for me to be always thinking about something new and jumping around a little bit, it helps me a ton. Different writers are very different. They don't want to do that at all, and it's just fine. There's no one right way to do it. I don't usually have trouble. It's the excitement of keeping track of it all that's fun for me.
What was your inspiration for Waxillium?
My original pitch for myself for Wax was Clint Eastwood finds out that he's inherited a noble house, and has to move to New York City and take over the family finances.
Any advice you would give to a second grader learning to write?
For second graders? Until about high school, my recommendation is just to encourage them to write whatever they feel like writing. Not imposing too much structure, it's just about momentum. Just "Go go go" will be my recommendation.
Now I just gotta know how [Nightblood] got there.
Yes, you do. There will be some hints in the next book.
[Way of Kings] is my best book, but it also is the one that requires you to trust me the most.
Your movie coming out? Adaptation?
We've been trying. We've been trying for years. It's just not going too well, so far. We have hope. Lots of things are in development, but we'll see if it actually happens.
What inspired you to start writing?
It was the books I was reading. I wanted to learn to do what they had done. Anne McCaffrey was a big part of it. But I was reading it, I was like, these books have had such a profound effect on me, I want to learn to do that for other people.
I've been dying to ask you this question, especially ever since I've read Way of Kings, it's been growing on me. How much of your work has been influenced by Terry Warner? Bonds That Make Us Free?
I haven't read any of him.
I have been telling people you're my favorite writer for two reasons: ...your quality of writing is fantastic, and your quantity is high. That's very rare to get both of them in the same author.
You know, it's this weird thing where I have found that the more I keep up my momentum, the better I write. The worst things I write are the things where I take a long break in between. And it's sort of this thing like, if you stop playing baseball or a while, you're gonna start missing the ball. And I found, just for me, that if I do stuff that keeps me going, so I use a lot of these novellas and things to make sure I'm keeping momentum. And it's hard sometimes, because books take a lot of revision, and you can't just write them and send them out. So you have to do, like, six or seven drafts sometimes. Just keep that momentum.
...I still haven't finished the last [Wheel of Time]. Because I'm like, I don't know what I'm going to do without them in my life.
I know that feeling. When I sat down and read the ending that Robert Jordan himself had written, it was a weird, surreal moment, that it was done.
How can I get on the waiting list for the leatherbound of The Way of Kings. Because, I know, when it comes out...
I don't think we're gonna be doing the waiting list for leatherbound Way of Kings.
So I'll just have to keep up on it? Keep looking at the website?
Yeah. We'll try to make sure that we get enough of them, maybe order a few extra of that one.
How do you keep your magic systems straight?
You know, I've never had trouble with that. I forget my keys, I forget where I put my wallet, but I don't forget stories. I get the stories right.
So Hoid writes a letter to his old friend, was that before or after he got the bead of lerasium?
That was after he had taken that, the letter.
Is Marsh a worldhopper? Can he worldhop? Does he have the ability?
Ah, yes, yes.
Will we ever see him do anything on the other worlds?
That's a RAFO. There's your card. But yes, no his Investiture would not prevent him from going offworld.
If you transform something using Aon Shao, would that be permanent, for taking off-world?
That would probably be permanent. That's where I stand right now on those ones.
Forged items. If it's one of those where it's permanent or it's not going to die after a couple of hours, can you move it off-world or would it transform once you moved it too far from its location?
Forgery requires a constant little stream of power to keep it going so yeah if you moved it off-world the Forgery's going to collapse.
Hi, I was wondering, in your books you have a lot of mentions of gods, and spirits and I was just wondering what your opinion on religion is?
Excellent question, excellent question. And oh sure the microphone works for you. So I'm religious, I'm Mormon. Yes, I am. And I've grown up religious, I'm a religious person and I'm fascinated by religion in all its different aspects. One of the things I love about being a writer is the ability that you have to jump into the heads of various different people who are very different from yourself and explore. Like that character coming alive thing, it's really a fun aspect. I feel that, since I am a fascinated by religion, my passion-- and if you are writers you will know this yourself-- whatever you are passionate about translates usually to good fiction, as long as you are willing to approach it from all directions. Where fiction goes wrong is when you allow your perspective to color everything too much and you end up with a story where everybody thinks the same. However if you can allow something you are really interested in to have five or six different characters on different sides of an argument. Because there aren't two sides, there are as many sides as there are people in the world on these sorts of issues. You can show a lot of those different sides and show the way they kind of-- the rough edges bump into one another, then what you are going to be doing is you are going to start exploring what it means to be human and what it means to have faith, or whatever it is you are fascinated by. I find that this is where I find your fiction can get really good.
I love reading fiction, I love science fiction and fantasy I think sometimes-- I do love the escapist aspect of it, getting out of the world and going someplace imaginative, but I think sometimes because we have this escapism-- which is a lot of fun and there are a lot of fun aspects to this-- we miss out on the importance of what fiction does. I think fiction allows you to see through the eyes of someone very different from yourself and experience their life and their role. And when you get done with fiction-- A good piece of fiction I feel it's harder to hate the people because you've lived in someone else's shoes for a while. Maybe that's a very lofty opinion that I have of what my job is where really it is telling stories about magic and knights hitting each other with swords. But that's the soul of what I think is very noble about fiction and I think it was very Tolkien. You get done reading Tolkien and you're like "I can see how these different races in this world, the hobbits and the kings, and dwarves and the elves and I can see how they all view the world differently." I think that does something for us, something wonderful.
One of my favorite books of all time is Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly this is the book that got me into reading. I was a 14-year-old boy, who was not a reader and my teacher handed me this book. This book should not have worked, this book is about a middle-aged woman who is trying to choose between her career and her family, that's basically what the book is because she's been told she could be the greatest magic-user ever by her teacher if she would just focus but she the reason she can't focus because she's got these two crazy little boys who distract her and a husband and things like this. And I read this book and its about the last living dragonslayer who has to go and kill a dragon, except he goes and does it with crossbows ballista instead of a noble ride up with a sword because who does that its stupid. It's great, its from her perspective. I get done with this and I'm like "this was amazing. I loved this book, why did I love it so much?" At the same time my mother had graduated first in her class in accounting in a year where she was the only woman in the accounting program and had been offered a really prestigious scholarship to go along with her education, instead she had me. She felt it was important to stay home with me while I was young. She took care of me and as a teenage boy knowing this I was like "Of course she did, I'm awesome of course that's the right thing to do". And I was reading this book about dragons and I understand my mother better. That's what we can do with this, and I'm kind of going off in weird directions. That's what I love about fiction, that's what I love about science fiction and fantasy.
When a Dakhor monk leaves his homeland do his bones still give him his abilities? Is it only the creation that's location-dependent or is it also the ability that's location-dependent?
The further you get away, the weaker the power the bones will give you will get. It's way better than Elantris at bringing the power with you. That's where it is in the notes right now, I have not written the second book, I could totally change that.
Could a Surgebinder potentially use a different kind of Investiture them Stormlight? So like if somebody from Elantris somehow bonded to a spren could they use the Dor?
Yeah this is possible, not as hard as it may sound, there is a few things you need to do, but it's possible.
I was wondering if a bond to a spren, a Nahel bond, may be taken with a Hemalurgic spike.
This is possible but it's gonna-- Since the spren has free will it's going to be-- Yeah it's going to have weird ramifications but it is a possible thing.
I've got a Mistborn question for you. So, Identity? Can you store, like-- is your physical appearance part of your Identity?
It is to some people. To most people, it's a part of it, yes.... I don't know the answer-- don't take that as "You can store that." and things like that. It's involved. There are certain things you can do. But it's not as simple as it might have sounded, what I just implied.
So, does that apply to your Identity, if you're in the Cognitive Realm? Or the Physical Realm? Can you store that?
The reason you look like you do in the Cognitive Realm is because it's Identity, things like that. I'm not gonna talk about specifically how storing that works really. Although there is the idea that your soul is the key to Investiture and stuff like that.
With the Heralds we know that there's only one left... one Herald that's still bound to the Oathpact--
OK, only one Herald was about, was abandoned-- You'll find out the mechanics of that in the next book.
So are we going to see more of Taln...
You will see more of-- the Oathpact is not completely broken, the others are still bound to the Oathpact.
Even though they kind of sort of said they were abandoning it?
Yes, so there's still connection there, so you'll find out more about all of this and how it works.
So I have a question about the cosmere. I recently read The Stormlight Archive books and I love them, and then I reread Warbreaker and I noticed something. When Siri was teaching the God King how to read, she says one of the letters is called shash and this is the name of one of Kaladin's slave brands. I was wondering why.
It was just a coincidence, that one's been asked of me before, yeah it's just a coincidence.
Is there going to be a Renarin Point of View in this next book?
There is.
Oh my goodness! Please don't corrupt him.
What's the relationship between the Knights Radiant and their opposite gender spren? Is that important or not?
Ah it is slightly important.
I have to RAFO it though?
It's more important narratively than it is in the world. It happens more often but it doesn't mean anything when it doesn't happen, does that makes sense? So it's slightly important, partialy it's a narrative trick. I want to keep some gender balance and it's a lot easier to play off someone different than yourself, and things like that so I naturally do that. It doesn't necessarily mean anything when I don't. It depends on the personality of the spren.
So there’s Snapping on Scadrial, where an event happens and then you can use the magic. Is there something like Snapping on Roshar, where...
Yes and no. They’re working under the same sort of assumption, the spren are just looking for a specific thing that is similar to what Snapping does.
I'm gonna have a Leecher character eventually, so I don't want to dig into it now, because I want to show it in the books.
We saw the broadsheet lady destroy--do something to--was that Nazh that was in the broadsheet?
Yeah, mmhmm. I’m not going to talk on that one. that’s a RAFO.
Could a Leecher take away stores in a metalmind?
You’ll have to find out. That’s a RAFO.
Aluminum, when you burn aluminum, does it actually destroy the metals or just take away their power?
It destroys the metals.
Same with chromium?
Yeah.
So it actually gets rid of the metals?
It actually trans-- It does a-- matter, energy, investiture are the same things in the cosmere. You have some sort of transfer happening relating to those things.
The question sort of relates to metal poisoning--
Yeah, you would not get metal poisoning after that.
What's the intent of the Seventeenth Shard.
That has not been revealed yet.
So nicrosil. Wax couldn’t use a blank gold metalmind because he’s not a gold ferring, why can he use a blank nicrosil metalmind?
So this will all come out eventually but the idea is there are certain ways to connect yourself to magic, to hack the magic and make it think you have the Spiritual DNA that you don’t actually have. And this is one of the ways.
So then the people who made this medallion have this thing that a regular nicrosil Ferring couldn’t--
Yeah, you’re picking up on it. We’ll dig deeper into it as the series progresses.
Could you have a Twinborn Surgebinder?
Theoretically possible. In practicality, very unlikely.
Is Skimming a sort of restrictive Lashing?
Working on similar principles, but not the same.
When you are burning a Compounded metal are you getting the metal’s effect and the stored power? Can you explain, I’m unclear on the Compounding.
Compounding is a way to hack the magic system so you can get a Feruchemical attribute out of-- basically powering Feruchemy with Allomancy. If that makes sense.
So you’re not actually burning the metalmind?
Kind of? There’s a big explanation on Reddit, if you send me an email I can link you to it, that steps you through exactly, easier than explaining it here
Has Wax drawn on the mists at some point?
Yes.
Are any of the fish in the Purelake Invested?
The fish in the Purelake, like the Ryshadium and other things you will see, are not 100% normal.
Is Nightblood a minor Shard?
Nightblood is one of the most heavily Invested things in the cosmere that is not a Shard.
Is the two-way radio a fabrial?
The two-way radio? Which one?
In Mistborn.
It is actually real.
It's just a two-way radio.
It is actual technology. Good question.
Who were Kelsier’s parents?
Kelsier’s parents? I haven’t talked a lot about Kelsier’s parents. He's obviously a half-breed. So he was raised in noble society, unlike a lot of the half-breeds. He knew his nature. He gets his skaa half from his mother, but they hid in plain sight. Like, she pretended to be noble.
Can Vasher draw Breath from a highstorm?
I will answer that eventually... You know what, yes he can. Not Breath though, he can draw Investiture the way he needs it.
In the event that.. so, say if you've got someone who went through a certain event, and it would have Snapped them. Take that person away from Scadrial, and move them to a different world. Would that still Snap them?
Remember that the Shards are mostly Spiritual Realm things. Space and time do not matter to them. Time does, space does not.
