Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

Dragon*Con was awesome. I was so busy the entire time that I barely had time to think, but I have to say that the Wheel of Time fans are just about the coolest people ever. I loved hanging out with all the folks from Tar Valon.net, Dragonmount, Theoryland, and the rest of you. (I know that there were others.) Also, those of you who killed me during the game of Who's a Darkfriend are going to pay some day.

I'd never been to Dragon*Con before, and it was . . . well, it was what I'd always thought a Con would be before I started attending other ones. Costumes, craziness, lots of paneling and things to do, and a whole ton of fun. High points for me were the WoT costume contest, dinner with Melissa and the group from Tar Valon, my reading (which was WAY better attended than my Worldcon one), and an extremely relaxing and engaging dinner spent chatting with Pat Rothfuss.

I've got a lot of Updates for you below, so stay with me. I think there's something here for everyone: A WoT update, a Mistborn link, and a really cool Elantris link. So read on!

First up, for Mistborn readers, Pat's Fantasy Hotlist is giving away free copies of Mistborn 3. I don't know if these are ARCs or Hardcovers, but I think that he will be sending the copies to the winners once the book is out in stores.

For you WoT fans who couldn't see me at Dragon*Con or Worldcon, my good friend Ookla (Peter Ahlstrom) did this excellent write up of the Wrapping Up the Wheel of Time panel from Worldcon. There's a lot of good information here.

Finally, perhaps the most exciting to me, is something for you Elantris readers: Amazon's exclusive rights to "Hope of Elantris" (the short story I wrote in the Elantris world) ran out yesterday. So I've posted it on my website for you all to read. Those of you who bought it on Amazon have my thanks; you actually pushed me to being a #1 Amazon best seller for a week or so, which was kind of cool. We wanted to offer this to Amazon because they had asked, and we figured it couldn't be bad to earn some good will. However, I always intended to put it on my website eventually.

To add something new, I've done an extended annotation of the short story. You'll find the annotation at the end; if you've already read the story, you'll probably find this annotation quite interesting.

Finally, I want to mention something that is cool beyond description. When I was out in Charleston last time, Robert Jordan's cousin (who was as close to him as a brother) walked in. Many of you may know Wilson from his blog posts over at Dragonmount, speaking about Mr. Jordan and the Wheel of Time. Well, he was out at Harriet's this time, and I had the privilege of meeting him. (And we use that phrase like a cliche, but I think case, I mean it sincerely. Meeting Wilson WAS a privilege. He is an engaging, interesting person with genuine sense of nobility about him.) Anyway, near the end of my stay, he told me that he felt I should have something of Mr. Jordan's and told me to go out into the armory and pick out a piece—any piece—that I wanted, and he'd ship it to me.

I'm certain you can imagine just how I felt at getting this honor. If you aren't aware, Mr. Jordan's armory was enormous. He collected the weapons as research for how to write descriptions and usage in his books. They were part of the process, part of what made the Wheel of Time turn out like it did. I think his attention to detail on these kinds of things is part of what made the books so great.

I'm going to wait to post about the sword I chose, since I'm having it cleaned and mounted, and would rather show final pictures of it. However, Wilson has put up some other pieces of the armory on ebay for sale. I wanted to alert you all of this fact, as I think some of you might be interested in the pieces. Also, here's Wilson's blog post about the armory, if you haven't seen it.