Went to Brandon Sanderson signing event. Picked up some swag, got a bunch of stuff signed.
Posted a pic of it all in the Books thread if you're interested in seeing what I came back with.
He was a pretty laid back guy. I just missed seeing the reading when I showed up (shoved in the very back of a crowd of ~100 people in a store made to hold 75 at most), but the Q&A was very interesting. He talked about his writing process, where he gets his inspiration for the magic systems, what his plans are for upcoming books, how he handles religion and religious individuals in his books, etc., etc. Enlightening!
When we got up to the table for the signing, Andrew casually asked him "how he handled pacing his novels." Since he'd talked about his method of plotting out book events by starting with the end and working backward until he came up with a starting point, his answer elaborated on his tendency to pick out and plot specific action points and then build the characters to move from scene to scene. It put the Sanderson Avalanche in a much more understandable context -- after all, if you already know how it ends, and the trick is getting to that ending, why would you need to spend time absorbing what happens at the end when you've just spent the entire book explaining exactly how and why things got to this point?
He says his writing plan is essentially:
1. Finish Wheel of Time
2. Write 2 more books in the projected 10 book Stormlight Archive (what this new book, Way of Kings, is the start of)
3. An Elantris sequel
4. Everything else, with the occasional Alcatraz book thrown in to get out "the wiggles" (as he called them)
Good times.
Looking forward to going to the Tachyon Publications 15th Anniversary Party and Presentation of the Annual Emperor Norton Awards next Sunday. Cherie Priest (
Boneshaker) will be at the same store in October, too.
