Introduction Hey, all! Welcome to another quarterly(?) newsletter from the desk of Brandon Sanderson. I’m still chugging along here at Dragonsteel HQ, finishing up projects while I slowly ease my way into working full-time on Stormlight Four. (Update below.) As always, I appreciate the support you all give me—particularly the little things, like interacting with me on social media, or even taking the time to open this newsletter. You guys are great! In this newsletter, find a quick list of updates on projects I’m working on, followed by some little tidbits like a review, some exclusive first looks, and some of my thoughts on life. You’re receiving this email because you signed up at my website. If you want me to notify you when I’m appearing near where you live, I suggest you check your subscription preferences and see if we have the right Metro Areas listed for you. Of course, this is an optional part of being on the mailing list. The newsletters I send out to everyone on the list will still come only three or four times per year. In this newsletter: Stormlight Update

Skyward Update

Wheel of Time Update

Reminder: Children of the Nameless

Mistborn: Secret History

Book Review: The Truth

Writing Advice

Update on Grill Cat

From Brandon

Newsletter Exclusive Fiction Stormlight Update I’ve done two posts about working on Stormlight 4, and you can read more in depth there (update one, update two). Basically, I’ve been working on the outline for the last few months, and going over my ideas for the story with my team to get feedback. I’m mostly finished with all of that, and have a few early scenes in progress with prose. The goal will still be to release this book in the fall of 2020, but the spring of 2021 is not out of the question. It will really depend on how quickly the writing goes these next eight months. We’re also close to finishing the Warbreaker leatherbound (which has some awesome art in it). After that, we’ll start diving into one for The Way of Kings—which should be awesome, and release around the same time as Stormlight 4. So look forward to that! Skyward Update Skyward has been selling really well, and the reactions have been awesome to read. (It’s currently one of my highest rated books on sites like Goodreads and Amazon.) The reaction to it has been astounding. I finished the sequel last year, and have finished up edits on it as of the 23rd of March. It’s off to see the copyeditor now! We pushed the release date back from October this year to the first week of December after I decided I wanted a little more time to refine a couple of ideas following the beta read, but it’s still coming out this year. I haven’t started on the third book. (I project four in this series.) It will have to happen after Stormlight 4, as will Wax and Wayne 4. (Sorry.) Wheel of Time Update I’ve spoken about the deleted sequence from A Memory of Light that is included in the Unfettered III charity anthology. Just in case you were unaware, the anthology is out now! This sequence is a meaty chunk, roughly the size of a novella like Sixth of the Dusk, and should be a treat for Wheel of Time fans. (Plus, all proceeds from the anthology go to pay medical bills for authors.) It’s a great cause, and the anthologies are usually something quite special. So have a look! This depletes a lot of the material I have left that is Wheel of Time-related. There are one or two quick four-or-five-page scenes that got cut, but this anthology might very well be the last Wheel of Time fiction that ever gets released. However, it’s not the last you’ll see of the Wheel of Time, because the Amazon show is progressing really well. I’ve read the first two scripts, and was pleased with them—and I think very highly of the team working on the project. Once filming starts, I’ll make sure to stop by the set and grab you all some photos. For now, it’s time to start getting excited, because after lots of waiting and many false starts, this one is actually happening. Reminder: Children of the Nameless I know that the book most of you are awaiting most eagerly is Stormlight Four. Another quick update here. If you missed the novella I released late last year, you can read it (or download it) for free at this link. It’s a Magic the Gathering tie-in, but really doesn’t require any knowledge of the game or its settings to enjoy. I did this one because I’m kind of obsessed with the game, and released it for free mostly as a gift to the community. So, if you are looking for something to read, please enjoy! Mistborn: Secret History Since the publication of Arcanum Unbounded we've been unable to sell the Mistborn: Secret History ebook. Well, no longer! And as a little “welcome back” gift, we're going to make it available for 40% off for the next two weeks, starting on Monday! Check out the Mistborn: Secret History page on my website for your region's pricing on Monday. Book Review: The Truth Recently I did a book podcast talking about Terry Pratchett’s book The Truth. It was a fun experience because it’s a podcast that often discusses my novels—but they wanted to have me on not as Brandon Sanderson the writer, but as Brandon Sanderson the Discworld fan. I found it quite an honor to be asked in that capacity, much as I know George Martin is tickled when people invite him to conventions not as an author guest of honor, but as a renowned editor. (Which he also is.) You can listen to the podcast here, but I realized my Goodreads page doesn’t have a review of The Truth posted. I figured I’d write something up for this newsletter, assuming you all are willing to indulge me a little (more) in gushing about Discworld. (If you’re not familiar with my review format, look here for an explanation of how I approach these Goodreads reviews I do.)

The Truth: By Terry Pratchett

Once upon a time, I thought my experience with Discword was abnormal. You see, I’d tried to get into the series at one point during my youth. I’d dutifully bought the first book (The Color of Magic) to see what all the fuss was about. While the book was enjoyable, I hadn’t felt compelled to pick up another one. Flash forward to a few years later, when I was working on a science fiction magazine at college. We got review copies of a lot of books, and in this case, an advance copy of the latest Discworld book came in. I volunteered to read it for a possible review, as I’d at least read one in the series. That book was The Truth, and it is one of the best books I’ve ever read. I was blown away by the humor, both subtle and overt. I was astounded by the insightful commentary on both human nature and writing as a profession. I was drawn into the narrative, the characters, and the setting in a way no humorous book had ever done to me before. While I have a sincere appreciation of such classics as the Hitchhiker’s series, it was never the plot that drew me to those stories. It was the humor and the commentary. Here, in The Truth, I had a book that both made me laugh and made me care about the story. I’d never read anything like it before. I couldn’t believe this was the same series at that book I’d read years ago. What had happened? I’ve come to find out that this kind of experience isn’t unique. A great number of people ease into their Pratchett fandom by first reading one of the early books, and thinking it good—only to later on really start to appreciate the genius of the storytelling. I think that a lot of things cause this. One is that The Color of Magic is still trying to find its feet, and tends to err more on the side of jokes than on the side of characterization or a subtle satire of human nature. Another is that I think a lot of us, myself included, just didn’t appreciate the brilliance of The Color of Magic because we weren’t yet sure what to expect. Was this a Bob Asprin book, with (and I say this as a lover of cheesy jokes) cheesy jokes and ridiculous situations? Was it a Hitchhiker’s book, with barbed wit and a commentary on life? Was this a Harry Harrison book, playing it straight while winking at us behind the scenes? The answer is yes, it’s all of these things—and something else entirely at the same time. The Truth exemplifies this; it’s Pratchett at his best, and one of my top picks for where to start on Discworld. The story is about William, a man who—after spending years writing a newsletter for rich people—ends up accidentally starting the world’s first newspaper. Each step is reasonable, but also increasingly ridiculous, as he bumbles his way from introvert high society informant to gregarious newspaper editor and investigative journalist. It’s a character arc that is as compelling as it is unusual. Hand in hand with this character development is a solid mystery. The ruler of the town has been framed, thrown in prison, and a new ruler has been voted in. The city watch (who are main characters in a major sequence of Discworld books) are ill-equipped to solve the problem, as they’re not trusted by the city’s underworld elements (who have information about the crime) while also being subject to the legal authority of the new city ruler. The story takes a keen look at the place of journalists, as people who can both provide a safe haven for whistleblowers and also not be intimidated by the authority of the establishment. I’ll talk about the humor in the next section, but the reason I love stories like this has to do with the intersection between character arc, theme, and plot. Our reporter protagonist sets out early in the book to only report the truth—but as the story progresses, the needs of the people, the right to information, and the nature of dogmatism are all called into question. By the end, our hero is left deciding to not reveal all the truth—but in classic Pratchett style, we’re left seeing both sides while at the same time believing the character’s motivations. It’s a story about ideals being reaffirmed, while at the very same time idealism is challenged.

For Writers

I think the best thing to study in a Discworld novel is the use of humor. Pratchett is not a humor snob—like Shakespeare, he saw that while not everyone will laugh at every joke, a story can work on multiple avenues of comedic attack, and provide something for everyone. The variety of types of humor in the Discworld books is astounding, and part of what makes them work is how Pratchett carefully stiches them together through the use of a gentle, friendly tone. Even when he’s poking fun at something you might hold dear, you always feel like you’re in on the joke. You’re laughing with him at yourself, but not in an uncomfortable “I’d better laugh or that comic will dig deeper” sort of way. Somehow, he can be both biting and good natured all at once. As an examination of the different levels on which even a single joke can work, let’s take a single line from the story. The newspaper, once it gets going, uses a slogan at the top. At one point, the main character is reading a newly distributed copy, and realizes a typo has made its way into this slogan—and so one edition of the newspaper, at the top, proclaims, “The Truth Shall Make You Fret.” On one level, this is a simple word-play pun of the style many authors enjoy. But it’s also a literary allusion, something of which Pratchett is very fond, in this case referencing the bible. And of course, there’s the joke giving a nod to a theme of the story: that sometimes, knowing the truth just makes life more difficult, when you can’t do anything to change the world. Packed on top of that is the amusing way that, in creating a book, we can scour the text for every last typo—but forget the ones in more obvious locations. (In Oathbringer, we managed to miss a typo on the table of contents, proclaiming the book to be the second—not the third—in the series. It’s in such a prominent location that we’ve gotten dozens, if not hundreds, of comments about it.) So one line has a joke working on four different levels all at once—and that isn’t even counting the context where it is in the story, and the way William reacts to it.

The Short Version

One of my favorite books of all time, an excellent standalone novel that delivers humor, mystery, character, and social commentary on writing and journalism all at once. Quite possibly the most perfect novel I’ve ever read.

Rating Notes

Nothing in this story is beyond the PG-13 level that I think requires a warning. (In fact, there is a very humors self-censorship joke used in the book. One of the characters curses, but only says the word —ing. Like, he actually says “ing” by itself. He’s kind of dense, and it’s implied that he read a book once that censored the curse words, and he just thought that the censored version is the real word. Seriously, when I first realized this is what was going on, I couldn’t stop laughing—as once again, it’s a joke that not only works on its own, but also makes fun of certain Victorian-era novels that would actually write —ing, to avoid including the vulgarity.)

Bias Notes

I did receive my original copy of The Truth for free, which predisposed me to read it. This latest time, I listened to the audiobook, using a credit that I also got for free from the nice folks at Audible, who like to keep me happy and listening. The narrator was fantastic, and I highly recommend the audio edition, as the voices were excellent. Writing Advice Question: You excel at building fantastic worlds, multifaceted characters & rich plots. Is there one thing that you find you focus on first? For example, do you start forming a character & work out from there? Or do you build your world first & fill it with characters next? Or plot first? (Thank you Twitter user @NecroticNymph for the question and the over 10,000 votes we recieved to get to this question.) It is different with every story. Some of this depends on happenstance—meaning that for some stories, I build it as the ideas come along. It isn’t that I wanted to start with character, or plot, etc. It’s just that I happened to have a cool character idea, and filed it away in my brain, and the story started to grow around that. In other cases, this has happened with a magic element or a plot archetype. Often, it’s an odd mixture where many separate ideas are growing at once, and then two of them intersect like vines growing up a wall, then winding around one another. The two ideas, though begun separately, become one in my head. Skyward started with a character—Spensa—and she grew in my head for years, separate from the story I was designing about a broken-down spaceship that gets discovered. The two entwined together, and a book was born. I have dozens of these ideas growing right now, and it’s hard to say which ones will become books or stories, and which won’t ever get there. When I actually sit down to plot, I lay out all the ideas I’ve come up with for this story, then go through my notes looking for any others that might fit with the story. Then, I separate out a heading for setting, one for character, and one for plot. I usually go down them in that order, but jump around a lot, filling in one character’s backstory, then jumping up to setting to fill out the relevant points there. I’m looking to keep it as focused as possible, and to keep the three parts (plot, setting, character) as connected as I can. Update on Grill Cat If you read my last newsletter, you might remember the story of grill cat—the kitten we found living beneath our grill. Well, I’m happy to provide an uplifting update. After working with her for months, my wife has quite successfully tamed the little feral kitten. The cat still very skittish, as one might expect after what she went through, but is also quite friendly to the family, particularly my wife. She lives in the walk-in closet in our bedroom, and while she’s not brave enough to venture much farther than the bedroom, you’ll often spot her peeking out at you from her favorite hiding spots around the closet. I’ve taken to calling her our closet cat, as she seems quite content in there.



From Brandon People are often amazed by my productivity. I maintain it’s not as impressive as it might look; I just happen to be publishing during an era when many of my contemporaries are a little slower than I am, so it makes me look good. If you stuck me back in the silver age of science fiction, and I had to try to keep up with people like Asimov, I’d be the one everyone is complaining about being slow. That said, one reason that it looks like I do a lot is because I tend to find writing (particularly on something new or different) to be very relaxing. The family knows that if we take a vacation, I’m not going to enjoy myself unless I’ve got a project to work on part of the time. (I do try not to ignore them, mind you. But I will often want to take a few afternoons to get some writing done.) I’m fortunate in that I’ve somehow ended up able to do this full-time, which means often the most relaxing part of the day is when I get to work on a story. So it was that we planned our vacation this year (to Hawaii in February, which is an excellent time to be leaving Utah for some place tropical) around the fact that I wanted to start Stormlight 4 on the beach. A good view is really helpful for me in writing, and a place where I can watch the waves is top of my list of good views. While I didn’t make as much progress on Stormlight as I wanted (I needed to make some last-minute revisions of Starsight) I’m happy to report that the non-vacation part of my vacation was very successful. I found a little nook at the resort where things were quiet and I could watch the waves, and someone periodically brought me a variety of non-alcoholic cocktails. Hopefully, when you launch into reading Stormlight 4 or Starsight, you can feel a little of how relaxing that all was. Exclusive Fiction: Opening of Starsight IMPORTANT NOTE: This has not been copyedited, so there are errors. These will be taken care of before publication. This content is available only for subscribers. Brandon