Last chance to vote for the David Gemmell Legend Award

I've mentioned a few times that both WARBREAKER and THE GATHERING STORM are among five nominees for the David Gemmell Legend Award. Well, voting on the award ends on Monday May 31st. Since the award is based in the UK, I assume the voting closes at midnight UK time, which is 5:00 or maybe 6:00 p.m. Mountain time (depending on whether daylight saving time is taken into account).

If you're struggling to pick between the two books, I recommend THE GATHERING STORM since I feel it's more in the spirit of Mr. Gemmell's work. Plus, you know, Robert Jordan collected weapons, and I think an award that's a battleaxe would be right up his alley. So go vote! (Assuming you want either book to win.)

Play Magic with Brandon at CONduit!

All. The Magic draft at Jordancon was a blast, so I figured I’d try to get something rolling for CONduit this year. (It’s the science fiction convention up in Salt Lake.) A lot of people have written me wanting a chance to hang out with me and play. Well, this is your chance!

The CONduit staff was absolutely awesome, and got everything set up on short notice. There will a local game store there that will bring the packs and run the tournament. It will be Rise of the Eldrazi (the latest set) draft format. You don’t have to be familiar with drafting, and you can be a little rusty at the game. Don’t worry—this is for fun. We’ll probably try to do what we did at JordanCon and set up a “more experienced” table and a “less experienced” table.

This will happen at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday. The cost is $15, which covers three packs of cards, land, and prizes. (I don’t know what those prizes will be yet.) You do need to be a member of CONduit to come, but you can buy a one-day pass for pretty cheap. (Also, there will be all kinds of gaming all day, signings by authors, and panels talking about writing and other aspects of science fiction and fantasy. It’s a pretty fun time.)

Note that I am also doing a reading/signing from 6:00 to 7:30. I’ll be reading from THE WAY OF KINGS, and will be doing a Q&A. So, this should be a very fun time. If you’re curious about KINGS, maybe show up early and sit in on this—the chapter I’m going to read is one I’ve never read from before. I’ll also be showing artwork from the book that hasn’t been shown before.

Anyway, back to Magic. I WILL have decks and will be sitting around, playing with any who want to for fun. Most of my Magic playing time will happen around the time of the draft and after it, and the draft takes priority. (I really like drafts; they’re my favorite way to play Magic. If you haven’t tried done, they’re awesome.) However, I will try to find time to play constructed with any who want to.

The last note is that if you want to join the draft, there are only 15 slots open. They put up eight of them for pre-registration online, and six slots are already filled. The other seven will be first-come-first served during the convention. So if you’re wanting to play in this, make sure you sign up early. You can sign up by logging on to this website. (Look in the right-hand column.) But even if this fills (and I think it will quickly) you can sign up for one of the other seven slots at the con itself.

See you there!

Superstars Writing Seminar sessions now available

A couple of months ago I was one of the presenters at the Superstars writing seminar in Pasadena with Eric Flint, David Farland, Kevin J. Anderson, and Rebecca Moesta. Several people who didn't get the chance to attend have asked about getting their hands on copies of the sessions from that seminar. Well, those sessions are now available in both DVD and audio-only mp3 form. They're available as complete sets or individually: each of the 3 days gets its own DVD, and each session gets its own mp3. The sessions cover topics such as:

• Econ 201 for Writers: Economics of Commercial Publishing
• Inside Editors: How editors look at manuscripts, novels & short fiction
• "Dirty Secrets"—What you need to know about being a Professional Author
• From Slushpile to #1 New York Times Bestseller in 4 Years
• Intellectual Property: How to Exploit Yours
• Balancing Acts: Writing World & Real World

If you're curious about more specifics, it looks like the best place to see what each session covers is in the mp3 descriptions. Anyway, if you want to know more about the business of writing, this is something to consider checking out.

And now on to my regular updates. The most recent Writing Excuses podcasts with Dan Wells and Howard Tayler focus on borrowing ideas without plagiarizing, discovery writing, and strategies for getting published.

Recent MISTBORN 3 annotations talk about how it is that the Well can be located at the north pole, Penrod's dying message and what happened to Luthadel, bucking fantasy stereotypes, and the kandra Resolution. My assistant is queueing up more annotations; with THE WAY OF KINGS now turned in, he won't have any deadlines to get in their way. Though his wife does have a baby due in the next few weeks, so he had better make the queue longer.

Catching Up on Updates

Brandon's assistant Peter here. He's hard at work on TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT, which you know if you've been following on Twitter or Facebook. And I've been doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work for the WAY OF KINGS release (the book is being composited as we speak and is due back from proofreading on Friday). So we're a bit behind on updates.

The most recent MISTBORN 3 annotations cover Allomantic secrets including atium Mistings and the kandra coup and Sazed's decision. I've got the next four annotations queued, which should tide you over until we've got the KINGS proofs approved and I can line up the rest.

There are three new episodes of the writing advice podcast Brandon does with Howard Tayler and Dan Wells that haven't been mentioned on the blog. First up is a talk with Isaac Stewart, interior artist for the Mistborn books and one of the artists for THE WAY OF KINGS, about the visual elements of storytelling. Next up is breaking the fourth wall, again with Isaac (who is also half of the team behind the webcomic ROCKET ROAD TRIP with WARBREAKER map artist Shawn Boyles). And finally is Living with the Artist which features Sandra Tayler, Dawn Wells, and Kenny Pike talking about what roles they play in their spouses' careers, among other things. (Kenny is a former student of Brandon's whose wife Aprilynne's book WINGS hit #1 on the New York Times list. Who Sandra and Dawn are should be obvious.)