Tor Books is eye-wideningly excited to announce that TWO new Mistborn novels by Brandon Sanderson will be released in late 2015 and early 2016!
The novels will continue Wax and Wayne’s adventures in the world of Mistborn, a series begun by 2011’s The Alloy of Law, which was itself a short story that just kept growing and growing until, well, until it grew into a series of novels!
Sanderson was already hard at work on the follow-up novel to Alloy of Law, when something unexpected happened. Tor Books editor Moshe Feder explains:
If there’s one thing we’ve learned in ten years of working with Brandon, it’s that he almost always delivers more than we’ve asked for and that he loves to surprise us.
We were awaiting the arrival of the previously-announced sequel to The Alloy of Law called Shadows of Self when he did it again, presenting us with not just one newborn novel, but twins! The surprise package was the third Wax & Wayne adventure, Bands of Mourning. The resulting atmosphere around the office was a heady combination of Christmas morning and the first night of Chanukah.
Sanderson later explained through a Twitter chat with iBooks how the extra novel came about:
.@iBooks So I worked on the outline for the Wax and Wayne sequence to get myself back into the world. In doing so, I got excited about #6.
— Brandon Sanderson (@BrandSanderson) December 18, 2014
(Mistborn book #6 is Bands of Mourning)
.@iBooks So I started working on that one, and wrote the whole thing as a kind of “Warm up.” Once done, I was back into the world.
— Brandon Sanderson (@BrandSanderson) December 18, 2014
.@iBooks That made it easy to jump back to book five and finish off that one, which I was now very excited about doing.
— Brandon Sanderson (@BrandSanderson) December 18, 2014
.@iBooks So…yeah. I kind of wrote a book as a warm up to write a different book. My process can be crazy sometimes, but it really worked
— Brandon Sanderson (@BrandSanderson) December 18, 2014
Brandon also revealed the plan for Wax and Wayne.
.@iBooks So, there will be a total of FOUR Wax and Wayne era Mistborn novels. Alloy of Law, plus a Trilogy I plotted after finishing it.
— Brandon Sanderson (@BrandSanderson) December 18, 2014
You can read the details at length over on Brandon’s blog.
Shadows of Self, the second book in the Wax and Wayne Mistborn series, is currently scheduled to arrive on shelves and ereaders in October 2015, followed by Bands of Mourning in January 2016. Tor Books and Tor.com will announce precise release dates as soon as we have them!
Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes. So excited. THIS IS AWESOME.
Hahaha he’s unbelievable.
MOTHERF
YES
January 2016 is part of 2015?
Though I guess the title is accurate if you just mean the mistborn-fan beta readers are getting two books next year… :P
“Wax and Wayne”
That can’t be an accident, can it? I can’t believe I never noticed this before.
From the State of the Sanderson, he mentions a book called Dark One. Is that Odium’s coming of age book?! This is the only book I haven’t heard of from his entire post…oh, and how awesome that we get 3 more Wax and Wayne books! Super. Stoked!
@5 Definitely not an accident lol. Consider their lifestyles and the way the world is changing around them, then look at their names again. ;)
Hah! Oh, Brandon, you never cease to surprise. Thanks for keeping your fans on their toes.
Oh my goodness. This just made my day. :D
to write a book as a warm up – glorious.
@5/7 – Help?
Wayne as in John Wayne?? Wax for ?
No I don’t see it. (Not native to the english language though).
@10, Drop the y in Wayne, then look at the names again.
@11. Alison.
the (moon) light starts to dawn. Thanks
Wax and wane (or Wayne) plays on the moon and the push and pull nature of the metallic arts. It isn’t a coincidence at all =)
He cracks me up. What a crazy way to write – but if it works, it works, and I for one won’t complain about it!
I love the multi-level approach, be it puns or whatever aspect of his writing.
This one has been a hard secret to keep, just because it’s hilarious.
Only Brandon will react to a crammed schedule and a difficult book to write by writing an additional book on top of the first one.
Robot or proof of aliens among us? You decide…
@16: Peter, I bet! At least you have Team Sanderson to share the laughs with before he went public.
How did that first conversation go?:
“Hey Peter!”
“Yes Brandon?”
“Uhm, I’m stuck on Shadows of Self. But I moved past that into their future. I really think a forth book about them is going to be great!”
“Fourth book?!”
“Yes. I was stuck on the plot for book 3, but in writing a book 4 all the ideas knocked loose. Book 3 of W&W will be done by the end of the week.”
Stares a boss…”Okay Brandon. I’ll let the beta team readers know what to expect.” :-)
@17: Randalator, or proof that Brandon has too many thoughts firing all at once in his brain. He must have the most productive form of insanity ever!
He has to be burning plenty of metal to be getting all of this out.
Although I’m really really excited about this it means we’re probably never going to get more words of radiance :p
Only Brandon would take a break from writing a book…by writing the next book in that series! Can’t wait to read the not one, but 2 new Mistborn books!
@Gemma, make sure you read Bradon’s State of the Sanderson post from yesterday, he explains his (proposed/expected) 2015 scheduling re: writing (most of which will be SA3)
Excellent!! This is the kind of news I love to hear. I suppose I can be patient enough to wait until the end of the year.
@20 GemmaP
Although I’m really really excited about this it means we’re probably never going to get more words of radiance :p
Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll get bored over lunch soon and have finished two additional volumes of The Stormlight Archives by late afternoon…
More Mistborn! More Wax and Wayne!
Whoa, BWS just keeps coming out with new surprises. So, so, so, so, SO, so excited about this.
@18 Braid_Tug The writing folders are in the cloud, so when Brandon started a new book, I knew about it. He saves individual chapters in separate files for backup purposes. The chapters showing up were New Alloy Chapter One. But if I mentioned it to him when I saw him, he’d say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” So I stopped asking. Then he finished that book and started writing Old Alloy Chapter One. So I thought he was writing the NEXT sequel. But it turns out he was doing that for the sole purpose (and glee) of faking me out because he knew I was looking at the filenames (but not reading the files; he doesn’t let us read until the second draft is done) on the server. Old Alloy Chapter One was actually Shadows of Self chapter eleven (since he had written the first ten chapters before). My reaction was just, whatever Brandon, you’re clearly in the zone and enjoying yourself, so you just keep doing your thing.
He did keep Alcatraz 5 a complete secret and not on the cloud until it was finished, just to mess with me and Isaac.
Peter @25
Now I’m even more happy. For him and for us. – Misery loves company and all…
And Kudos that you manage to restist temtation and not go look at the files, before BWS wishes it.
Such an admirable Work ethic from Sanderson.Rothfuss and GRRM could learn from him
Work ethic and ability to quickly write books aren’t the same thing at all. Sanderson happens to be an exceptionally fast writer, from what we’ve seen, that’s all.
On that theme… One of the things I overheard at the signing the other night was Brandon chatting with someone about his habit of writing lots of different things “at once” (from our perspective). He said that if he tried to stick with just one project (e.g. Stormlight), he’d produce books at about the same pace as Pat Rothfuss. If he weren’t writing all this other stuff, we wouldn’t get the next SA book any sooner than we will this way, and in fact it might take him longer, and might not be as good. It’s just the way his mind works, and since he’s got more ideas floating around than he possibly has time to write, it works really well for us too.
That said, he does have a certain combination of discipline, structure, ideas, and style that make it all work. Some writers will keep polishing every section, every paragraph, every sentence, every phrase, every word, until they’re sure they can’t possibly make it any better. Others find a balance, or a point of diminishing returns, where continued polishing isn’t worth the difference it would make in the final product. I’m just grateful that there are some very fine authors who keep me well supplied with reading materials!