Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

Now I stroll back into my workshop and find that a little bit of dust has gathered. Out of necessity, the Stormlight Archive has been neglected. I am pleased I made the choice to work on A Memory of Light instead of Stormlight 2. However, it is time to pick up that story again and make this series all of the awesome things I've dreamed of it being for some twenty years.

The stories of Mat, Rand, Egwene, and Perrin are now done. Returning to the stories of Kaladin, Shallan, Jasnah, and Dalinar will be my next major project. You'll also see me doing revisions on both The Rithmatist and Steelheart this fall—as I've made arrangements for both to be published next year or the year after. You'll probably hear more about them in the days to come. And yes, I WILL be doing a sequel to The Alloy of Law.

No, I'm always looking for something that strikes me. And I'm looking for things that haven't been done before. Things that will make nice conflict, that walk the line between science and superstition.

Question

That's what I love, that it's all super scientific but it also has magic.

Brandon Sanderson

If you will Google Sanderson's First Law, and Sanderson's Second Law, I have two essays that I wrote about how I do magic. They're both on my website, but Google will find them easier than trying to find them on my website.

Question

Did you ever read Master of 5 magics?

Brandon Sanderson

I did. That's old school.

Question

Yeah, not great stories, but wonderful magic.

Brandon Sanderson

Yep. Great magic. That's what I felt about them too.

Question

When will the next Mistborn (Alloy of Law era) come out?

Brandon Sanderson

It will probably come out after the next Way of Kings. Next Way of Kings is next Christmas, the next Alloy of Law era book is probably the following Spring or something like that.

Question

Are you planning two more or three more?

Brandon Sanderson

I will do as many of those as strikes me. The Alloy of Law books are a deviation from the main world plotline.

Yes, there will be more with those characters; I really enjoyed doing that one, and so I will be doing more. There is the trilogy before, of course, which is more epic fantasy, and this is a little bit more a detective novel, but yeah, I plan to do some more.

Phillip Carroll

Do you have any idea when that next one will be?

Brandon Sanderson

I really can't say because there is so much that I've got going on. Finishing the last Wheel of Time is really a big priority to me right now, and then the second Stormlight Archive is a very big priority also. And so, I will do the second Alloy of Law book—I've given it the title Shadows of Self; I've got some plotting and things done for it—but I can't promise a time.

Phillip Carroll

Okay, thank you. That was one of my other questions that Zach sent in was, The Way of Kings. That's the one you just mentioned, you're doing the second book? Because I'm listening to the Mistborn trilogy right now; I just started on The Final Empire, and I'm loving that. Again, through Audible. I'm through the first third of it, and I'm having a good time. But that was Zach's second question.

Brandon Sanderson

When is the second book going to be out?

Phillip Carroll

Yeah.

Brandon Sanderson

I will be starting that as soon as the Wheel of Time book is done to my satisfaction. That's looking like maybe July, and then I will write the second book, as long as it takes. A book like that doesn't come fast. The way I'm a faster writer: I'm imagining eight months to ten months for the initial draft, and then it will depend on how long it takes to revise based on my editor's feedback and how long Tor feels they want to wait. I am guessing next fall.

Phillip Carroll

Okay. Zach says, the year that he read that book, by far, it was the best book he had read that year.

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, well I appreciate hearing that.

Phillip Carroll

He's a big fan. When I told him that—they're all at Balticon, and I'm here at BayCon, and when they found out you were going to be here, he just went all fanboy on us.

Thank you.

Question

...but I noticed towards the end you started creating overtones of a much larger story, and I was curious how you are going to follow up on that.

Brandon Sanderson

I will do more books without Alloy of Law, with Wax and Wayne. I originally—I may have said this in the forward to Alloy of Law—I pitched the Mistborn series a three-book, as three sets of trilogies, past-present-future, and I do still intend to do that, but I am going to pick up some of the things that I did in Alloy of Law and keep going with those same characters for a little longer, the main reason being I really like how Alloy of Law balances Stormlight Archive. I love big epics, but I also love fast-paced kind of actiony books as well, and being able to do a little bit of both of that fulfills both sort of itches, scratches them both, and so I like having Alloy-of-Law-style books come out alongside larger epics.

So I will be—to answer the questions that are coming—next is the last Wheel of Time book, and pretty much everything I have is devoted to that book. I'm hoping to have revisions of that done by the end of June, and then can start on Stormlight 2 which is what I will do next. The Wheel of Time book is coming out in January. I had really hoped to have it out in November, but it proved unrealistic, and I'm too optimistic on these things sometimes, and Harriet wisely counseled that we need to slow down a bit and spend some more time on the revisions, which we are doing. The Stormlight book, if I'm really on the ball, will be next November-ish—not this one but a year from that—and then I would follow it really closely with another Alloy of Law book.

I do plan to write a sequel to The Alloy of Law between books in the Stormlight series, and will probably write more of those after that. The second major Mistborn trilogy is something I will write after book five of the Stormlight Archive.

Szabó Dominik

If I'm not mistaken, you have great plans with this universe and you intend to write more trilogies set in this world. Would you tell us about this conception in some detail?

Brandon Sanderson

Sure. I originally pitched the Mistborn series to my editor as a sequence of three trilogies. Past, present, and future—epic fantasy, urban fantasy, and science fiction; all with the running thread of the magic system.

Since I just started coming out with the Stormlight Archive, I want to commit myself to that and don't want to dig into the second Mistborn trilogy for quite a while. Yet I want to prep people for the idea that Mistborn is going to be around for a while, and they are going to be seeing more books. I didn't want it to just come out of nowhere at them in ten years or whenever I get to it. So I decided to do some interim stories.

One of the things I'd been playing with was the idea of what happened between the epic fantasy and the urban fantasy trilogies. We have some very interesting things happening in the world, where you've got a cradle of mankind created (by design) to be very lush, very easy to live in, so a great big city could grow up there relatively quickly; civilization could build itself back up over the course of just a couple of generations. Yet there would be very little motivation to leave that area at first, which I felt would mean that you'd end up with this really great frontier boundary. The dichotomy between the two—the frontier and the quite advanced (all things considered) city in the cradle of humanity—was very interesting to me. So I started playing around with where things would lead.

To worldbuild the urban fantasy trilogy coming up, I need to know everything that happened in the intervening centuries. Some stories popped up in there that I knew would happen, that would be referenced in the second trilogy. So I thought, why don't I tell some of these stories, to cement them in my mind and to keep the series going.

I started writing The Alloy of Law not really knowing how long it would be—knowing the history and everything that happened, but not knowing how much of it I wanted to do in prose form. Things just clicked as they sometimes do, and I ended up turning it into a novel.

Another frequently asked question that I will get a bunch of times in line, so I will answer now: I am working on the second Stormlight book. (applause) Tor thinks it's coming out this fall; I'm hoping to meet their expectations. (laughter) If not, it will be the following spring. A sequel to Alloy of Law would be the next thing I would work on. (applause) Yeah, it's funny how these things happen. One of my favorite stories about Robert Jordan and the series is, you know...I started reading these books in 1990, right? How many people picked it up in 1990, when Great Hunt wasn't out yet? That's...the few the proud, right? 23 years?

Question

How many times did you reread it?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, and you would reread it every time a new book would come out, right? That's what I did. Until you...at one point, I reread the whole series, and by the time I got done, the next new book was out, and I'm like, "Whoa, this takes a long time!" (laughter) And...there's a lot of questions I had as a fan that I have now been able to get answers to.

For instance, I went to Tom Doherty—Tom Doherty is the publisher at Tor; he started the company, and I don't know if you guys know, Harriet was the first person he hired, as editorial director; she was in charge of editorial, and Harriet edited a lot of wonderful books. One of the books she edited is Ender's Game, if you're familiar with that. (applause) And she did also discover Robert Jordan, and then she married him. (laughter) I've always noted that's a great way to make sure your editorial advice gets taken, right? (laughter)

And so I went to Tom, and I said, "Tom, really...how many books was it?" When you hear this talk of, "Oh, we expect it to be this long," "We expect it to be this long..." And Tom sat me down and said, "Okay, let me tell you Brandon. Robert Jordan came in, and he had this pitch for me, and he gave me this big, long description of this awesome book. He said in the first book...the first book ends with our hero taking a sword that's not a sword from a stone that's not a stone. That's where the first book ends. And from there, we have two more books; it's a trilogy." This is what Tom Doherty said, exactly. And then Tom said, "Jim,"—Robert Jordan's real name was Jim Rigney—"Jim, I know how you are. Why don't we sign you for six books?" (laughter) And Jim said, "Well, I don't need six books. This is a trilogy." And Tom said, "Well, if you think you don't need that, we can do something else. You know, let's just sign you for six books in the series." Tom looked me right in the eyes, and he said, "Brandon, I thought I was so smart." (laughter) "I thought I was buying that whole series for sure." And here we are on book fourteen.

And so, yeah; this has been quite the experience; quite the ride, quite the journey of 23 years, and it's been amazing to be part of it.

I'm really intrigued by both of those premises. Where do you keep getting all these ideas from? I really admire your ingenuity.

Also, and I'm not sure if you can/will answer this, but will we see another book with Waxillium Ladrian? His story doesn't appear to end with The Alloy of Law. And will his story be directly related to the next Mistborn trilogy? This has been eating away at me since finishing that book.

Wax's story was indeed directly related to the second trilogy, but I was intrigued enough with his time period that I find myself wanting to do more with him. I probably will.

Sure.

BOOKS YOU WILL SEE SOON: (The books that are done.)

AMOL: January

The Rithmatist (once named Scribbler): Summer 2013

Steelheart: Fall 2013 or spring 2014.

BOOKS YOU WILL SEE SOMEWHAT SOON: (Working on right now.)

Stormlight 2: Hopefully Fall 2013.

Shadows of Self (New Wax and Wayne): 2014

OTHER:

Alcatraz 5: I own the rights again now, and hope to write this book sometime in the near future.

Stormlight 3: Goal is to write this soon after Stormlight 2

Steelheart and Rithmatist Sequels: I will probably try to do one of each of these between Stormlight 2 and 3.

MAYBE MAYBE:

Elantris 2: I'd still love to do a sequel for 2015, the 10th anniversary of the book's release.

Warbreaker 2: Long ways off.

STALLED PROJECTS

Dark One: Unlikely any time soon.

The King's Necromancer: Unlikely any time soon.

I Hate Dragons: Unlikely any time soon.

Death By Pizza: Turned out mediocre. Won't be released anytime soon.

The Silence Divine: Will be written someday.

White Sand: Will be written someday.

Mistborn modern trilogy: Will be written during the gap between Stormlight 5 and 6.

The Liar of Partinel Didn't turn out well. Scraped.

Dragonsteel: Won't be written until Stormlight is done.

Not a lot of changes from back then, except that Steelheart got finished and Rithmatist got a release date for certain.

Would you ever expand on The Alloy of Law? I loved the ending, it made me want even more.

Speaking of Alloy of Law... To me it felt paced like a good movie. I feel like it would make a super fun movie. Just wanted to say that.

Keep being awesome!

Phantine

Ooh! I can answer this one. The sequel to Alloy of Law is called Shadows of Self. As far as I know, there hasn't been a date specified on when it'll come out since it's unwritten, but the best fan guess is sometime in 2014.

I agree on the movie thing. It's like Lethal Weapon with allomancers.

As the other person wrote, I will be doing more. Thanks for reading!

When is the timeline for the sequel to Alloy of Law?

Sequel for Alloy of Law? Probably not next year but the year after. I’m pretty dominated by finishing the second Stormlight book right now. So once I do that, then things will open up a little bit more for what I might do. I do actually have half a sequel for Alloy of Law written but I don’t have time to finish it right now.

Shadows for Silence

This year, I have a few works that are eligible. The first I'd draw your attention to is "Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell," my story in the anthology Dangerous Women, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. I think this is my strongest short fiction piece of the year, and it is eligible in the novella category.

As I did last year with The Emperor's Soul, I will send an electronic copy of "Shadows for Silence" to anyone who is eligible to vote or nominate for either the Hugos or the Nebula Awards. So if you had a membership for last year's Worldcon, or if you're planning to attend this year, please drop me an email at ebooks@brandonsanderson.com requesting an ebook of "Shadows for Silence" and saying which Worldcon you're a member of (or saying you're an active SFWA member), and we'll respond with a copy of the story.

Any updates on Shadows of Self?

Working on it right now, actually. Maybe out next year.

Hi! First of all thank you for answering our questions :)

Shadows Beneath the Writing Excuses anthology is available in digital format on Amazon or in hardback in your store but if you are from Europe is really expensive to buy it. Will the hardback be available on Amazon some day?

I don't think it will be. :( This would require us to get Amazon to stock it, I believe, which I don't think will happen. But I'll look into this.

RAFO!

The thing is, Kelsier's wife, Mare, had certainly moved on, and that would be motivating him to go on to the next life.

Hey Brandon! So glad you are doing another AMA!

1. Could you explain a little more about Cognitive shadows? When you first mentioned the name and gave the examples of Kelsier and the Shades from Threnody you kind of gave the impression that they were kind of like ghosts. But this past December at the Orem signing you mentioned that the Stormfather and the mist were also Cognitive shadows. The first makes sense to me, I had an entire theory about that (although I argued he was specifically Tanavast's and not Honor's). The second however really doesn't make sense to me, unless it was actually the mist spirit that is the shadow and that got missed in the report (it wasn't verbatim), but even still Preservation is still alive at that point so how can he have a "ghost"? (Unless him sacrificing his mind to form Ruin's prison counts as "death" in this situation?)

The rest of these feel free to pick and choose which ones you want to answer (I'm finding it difficult to narrow things down, so I figure I'll leave it to you to decide which ones you want answered).

2. Are the Unmade Splinters of Odium?
3. Is the Well of Ascension Preservation's Perpendicularity? Or at least related to it (i.e. one is in the Physical Realm but the other is in the Cognitive but are still essentially different aspects of the same "thing")?
4. What if the Throne of Idris passed to someone who was not the child of the monarch? Like if they were the niece or nephew of the previous monarch. Their parent would not have passed on the Royal Locks to them, but if they gained the throne would they spontaneously manifest the Royal Locks? Would their children if they were born before?
5. Does hair that is still attached to a person's head get cut if a Shardblade passes through it? If not, if that person had the Royal Locks could they change the color of the hair "below" the cut?
6. You've mentioned there is a big Hint in Elantris, and later clarified that the hint is an Aon that Raoden mis-interprets. Is Aon Rao the Aon that Raoden mis-interprets? Is its true meaning something closer to "Investiture"?
7. According to Peter, Mraize is from Thaylenah, does Shallan just never mention his eyebrows or is he not ethnically Thaylen?
8. What are your current plans with regards to the Jasnah novella you wrote last summer?
9. Honorspren and windspren have been described as "cousins"; do Cryptics share a similar relationship with creationspren?

Anyway, thank you so much for answering any of my questions!

On the first question, I did not say the mists themselves were a cognitive shadow. That must have been a misunderstanding. The Stormfather totally is, though. Cognitive shadows are basically ghosts, which can take a lot of different forms in the Cosmere, but follow general rules.

2. Yes. Good guess.
3. You're on the right track.
4. This will be discussed in the Warbreaker sequel, most likely.
5. Yes, hair gets cut. It counts as dead in my mind--but not to someone who has the Royal Locks. They could only change below, as you state, and wouldn't get their hair chopped off. (I'm not 100% sure on this, but I Think I've mentioned in Stormlight before that you can cut things like shells on living animals with a Shardblade, but then it doesn't cut the flesh.)

Lots of questions here. More to come, if I find time.

Ted Herman

Would that story be… canon?

Brandon Sanderson

No, the story would not be canon. Most likely not. I mean, it’s possible.

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