Author Event: Brandon Sanderson

Last night the Brandon Sanderson book tour made a stop here in Seattle, and Battle Hymns was there in attendance. The event started out with a few laughs as Sanderson mentioned that the reading for the night would come from the prelude of his latest novel, The Way of Kings. Sanderson mentioned that he "cheated" on the book because he has a prelude, a prologue, and the first chapter which he referred to as his "second prologue", since things don't really get fully rolling until the second chapter. This got a few laughs from the large crowd.

After reading the prologue he did a Q&A session, and there was no shortage of good questions from the fans. A quick recap: No new news on Sanderson related films. There's some promising things in the pipeline, but he wont know for sure until the end of the year. Also, even less is happening on the video game front, so don't hold your breath. While on tour and taking a "break" between books, he's been writing a Mistborn short story.

It struck me as strange that the first two questions that fans asked were about his previous work being put out in other mediums. Shouldn't you ask him about, I don't know? Writing? Well, plenty of other people did just that and Sanderson discussed how he juggled working on The Way of Kings and his Wheel of Time stuff at the same time. Basically he can only write one thing at a time, but can be editing and fixing lots of other stuff at the same time, however he only has the creative juices for one item of new material. I am always intrigued by how various authors work and create, so this bit was quite interesting to me.

The crowd was mostly adults, but there was one young boy there who was sporting a copy of one of Sanderson's Alcatraz books. About mid-way through the Q&A the kid and his father got up to leave, as it was getting late on a school night. Sanderson noticed this, stopped what he was discussing, and signed the boy's book before he left. This extremely charming, and classy moment seems to capture Sanderson quite well. I could tell that he really loves his job, and his fans, and it seemed to be a pleasure for him to get a chance to interact and talk about his work.

All in all it was another cool author-related experience for me. I haven't read any of Sanderson's novels yet, so this author event was a nice introduction for me. I sort of feel like I am a fan before I even read a page of his writing. I will say that I look forward to the time when I do read his stuff, and it will likely be more enjoyable, knowing that Brandon Sanderson is a great guy.