Skyward Flight Livestream

Questioner

In a 17th Shard interview, Janci said that it would be really cool if there were a new Young Adult pre-Mistborn story to serve as a bridge for YA readers to jump into the adult Mistborn stuff. Is this something that you have thought about, YA books to introduce readers into the Cosmere?

Janci Patterson

More than any other question, I get asked this all the time: if I was gonna write something in the Cosmere, what would I wanna write? So many times. And what I always say, every time: "I'm not writing in the Cosmere. This is not happening. I have never been asked. I don't expect to be asked. Don't spread rumors."

But people get excited by things. So, what I told them (and what I'm referring to) is that I think it would be really awesome to have (because Mistborn gets shelved in YA, which is awesome) to have an actual YA Mistborn story that is actually YA that happens before The Final Empire so it serves as a bridge for your YA readers. And that's the answer I give people.

Brandon Sanderson

As I ended up writing the fourth book in the series I incorporated a lot--you haven't read it yet because it's not readable yet--from the novellas. We almost got the novellas switched to book three, er, book four, and Defiant book five, almost got the publisher to switch that but they were unwilling to do that and they did feel that it was too late in their cycle of publications. But in our head, these are basically book four. 

Janci Patterson

I think you're gonna be really confused to read Defiant without it. 

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, I mean, I'm doing my best to make up for that, I will at least in revisions, but right now my writing group is very confused about some things, half of them have read the novellas, and half of them haven't-   

Janci Patterson

Oh, jeez, ok.

Brandon Sanderson

The ones who have read the novellas are like 'No, no this makes perfect sense.' Why they have kitsen with them in cockpits and why there's lots of different types of slugs. 

Questioner

How have the Skyward Flight stories affected your writing of Defiant?

Brandon Sanderson

They affected them quite a bit. A lot will be spoilers but I already mentioned a couple things. New slugs were discovered, different relationship things happened, the relationships with the other races in the universe have developed, some big events happened. Basically, when I sat down to write it, I couldn't not take these all into account so I just wrote it with no coddling the fact that all of this had happened. My writing group is indicating that maybe I want to give a little bit more--which I'll try to do--for readers to bring them up to speed on what happened. But, y'know, these novellas, we imagined them as side stories but we both like to write things that are epic and expansive and interconnected--

Janci Patterson

And it grows.

Brandon Sanderson

--and it stops being side stories very quickly, once you get a couple of excited authors involved.

Janci Patterson

Every time we had a conversation the scope grew a little.

Brandon Sanderson

That's why they ended up... we say novellas, they were fifty thousand words each.

Janci Patterson

One of em's fifty.

Brandon Sanderson

What are the others?

Janci Patterson

Sixty.

Questioner

Would you be willing to tell us what the rainbow slug's power is?

Brandon Sanderson

Do you have the notes handy?

Janci Patterson

I know what it is.

Brandon Sanderson

Okay, you can say what it is.

Janci Patterson

That's the illusion slug. So in my mind, that's why it's a rainbow, it's not real, it's an illusion.

Brandon Sanderson

It's creating an illusion of itself, yeah.

Brandon Sanderson

So, Peter and Karen's daughter, I guess multiples, two of the daughters or many all three. But I know for sure Bridget, is very eager about creating a slug. Because boomslug Dallin, my son came up with. So I'm like we could maybe do this. They want a remote viewing slug. 

Janci Patterson

Remote viewing?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, a slug that creates a little thing you can see through to another location. That's what they have come up with.

Janci Patterson

That's awesome. Do they have a name for it?

Brandon Sanderson

They don't have a name for it. But they want us to canonize it and tell them which of these slugs is the remote viewing slug.

Janci Patterson

So I have, and I don't know what happened with Defiant, I have a list of all of the slugs that I- yeah.

Brandon Sanderson

So it wouldn't be any of those.

Janci Patterson

So probably it would have to be a different colored slug. So if they have a recommendation of what color slug they would like.

Use the Falchion

It seems that by Evershore you got the coauthoring with Brandon down pat. How has that dynamic changed with Darci now officially onboard?

Janci Patterson

Darci actually unfortunately had to leave the project for personal reasons, so she's not onboard anymore. It was awesome when she was, though! And what it changed was having somebody that I can talk to on a regular basis. Because Brandon's very busy. And so, when we talk and brainstorm, it's fantastic; but that happen,s like, once every a couple of months. So it was really nice to have someone else to throw stuff back and forth with.

Dragonsteel Employee

Mister Brandon has two Questions for Janci:

The first is: Were the three novels [from Skyward Flight] always going to focus on FM, Alanik, and Jorgen - if not, who were the runner ups?

Janci Patterson

I was given a list when we first started to talk about doing this and it was basically all living members of Skyward Flight except Spensa and Jorgen.

And I took the list and I went and read the books, 'cause I was behind - Brandon writes faster than I read - so I had to go read the books and I was so happy because they're so amazing. But as I read them I was keeping my eye on Jorgen because he is my favorite and he wasn't on my list and I was like "There's got to be a reason he's not on my list" and I got to the end and I didn't find a reason why he wasn't on my list. And also I was really exited of doing an alien point of view, that sounded really challenging. These are the things I say when I'm pre writing that I then hate myself for later. I'm like: "That sounds so awesome!"

When we then got together to start brainstorming, I was like: "So, could I write about Alanik?". I started with that one cause that's the one I wanted less and Branon's like "Sure." and I was like "So, can I have Jorgen?" and I got a yes, that made me really super happy.

Brandon Sanderson

The reason Jorgen wasn't on the list is I had a lot of things I was planning for Jorgen and so what that meant is the Jorgen Novella needed a lot more me influencing and talking about where I want Jorgen to go. The other two characters, I did not have plans for where I was going to go with there characters going forward and so I just thought, I give Janci the blank slates, but she was really interested in Jorgen. It actually worked better, that you did pick Jorgen, because shoehorning all of that into Defiant would have been very hard and now basically we were able to do part of his arch in his own novella and that helped out a lot.

Janci Patterson

And then the difference between them was: With Jorgen, it was like "This is were his story goes, this is how it ends." and than I had to take that and figure out how to make that work, which I love. That's my favorite thing: It's to take constraints and then riff off of them and sort of figure out why and how. So that made me really happy.

Adam Horne

And they had a follow-up question to both, but mostly directed to Brandon. "In the State of the Sanderson 2021, you, Brandon, called Defiant the end of the first sequence and promised that more is coming."

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Adam Horne

"Does this 'more' mean more full-length Skyward novels that are marketed as such, despite the novellas being novel length, or does it mean more novellas or something else? Or is that all part of the stuff you're working out with Janci."

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. The plan is right now to do a trilogy of novels co-authored with Janci really taking the lead on those to follow up Defiant, to keep doing more stuff in the Cytoverse. We're both very excited with it, and the reaction to Janci's novellas has been spectacular --

Janci Patterson

Thank you everyone.

Brandon Sanderson

So that's where we're sitting right now. Create a trilogy. I have to get Defiant finished, and I am behind on a lot of things. Writing the Secret Projects didn't put me behind, but last month's Kickstarter did, because I was doing a lot of publicity and a lot of goofy videos and lot of various things, so I'm a little behind on everyhing right now. So we'll see when I get Defiant revised. 

Janci Patterson

I'm really excited to do novels because there were -- I mean, these ones are novels, right?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Janci Patterson

But they're much shorter than the other Skyward novels, and there were a lot of things that readers would say, "Oh I would have loved to have seen this, I would have loved to have seen that." And I was like, "Me too! I would have loved to have written that. Where was I gonna put it?" (laughs) Because they were already twice as long as they were supposed to be. So having a bit more space to breathe and get to do all those fun things, I'm really excited.

Brandon Sanderson

And doing them as straight up novels in the sequence, we have found the fans kind of want novels and we kind of want to write novels. So the novella --

Janci Patterson

We kind of do write novels, even if we're not supposed to. (Laughs)

Brandon Sanderson

-- was a fun experiment, but we'll just do some novels. That's the plan at least.

Adam Horne

This next question is from <LotusTheBlooming>. "Any tidbits you can give us on what the future Janci Skyward novels will be about?"

Janci Patterson

You have to take that.

Brandon Sanderson

I think that we should not say.

Janci Patterson

Okay.

Brandon Sanderson

Because the plan is three books with one "kind of" continuing viewpoint character and then sharing a viewpoint with a different character each time. That's the plan, right?

Janci Patterson

Yes.

Brandon Sanderson

But how we're gonna do other things -- it's like a dual narrative, where all three [books] have character A, and then book one has character B as secondary story, book two has character C, and book two has character D. But what those characters are, and where, how we'll go about that, is still --

Janci Patterson

I feel like we could probably say they're characters you're familiar with.

Brandon Sanderson

They're characters you're familiar with.

Janci Patterson

You know these people.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, definitely. But that's the structure we're looking at right now. I don't want to hype people up -- 

Janci Patterson

And then something needs to change.

Brandon Sanderson

-- and then something needs to change.

Adam Horne

This next question is from 'Worldhopper's Podcast'. "Regarding the recent Secret Project news, it seems that several of those books have romance in them. Was there anything you learnt about writing romance from co-authoring with Janci, since that is one of her main strengths, that you applied to these Secret Projects?" [Janci laughs]

Brandon Sanderson

Honestly, I can't say if there was anything conscious, but there might be some unconscious influence there, definitely. Specifically Secret Project Three, I sat down and said, "I'm gonna try to do a good job of this. I'm gonna work on this." Anytime I write a book there's things that I'm like, "I'm gonna make this a focus of the book and see if I can do a level up on it." 

Janci Patterson

Was that the focus? Romance was the focus of that one? I didn't [know].

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, romance was the focus of that one.

Janci Patterson

That's cool! I'm looking forward to that then.

Brandon Sanderson

I was working on that book around the time I was reading your novellas, so it's possible.

Adam Horne

The next question is from... someone, I'm not going to say their name because I don't know how they say it. "Now that Skyward is finishing up, any plans for your next YA series? Apocalypse Guard maybe, or do you have something crazier in mind?"

Brandon Sanderson

Right now it's probably the next Skyward series.

Janci Patterson

Yay!

Brandon Sanderson

It's the next YA thing I will do. Finishing The Rithmatist is still on my radar. Apocalypse Guard is still on my radar, but I think that the next thing I will be doing is these next Skyward books with Janci.

Janci Patterson

The Rithmatist had some stuff you needed to work out.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, The Rithmatist has some issues, and the biggest one, honestly, is that it's just been so long. I've moved to different parts of my career, and it's real hard to pick up a thread that old. People are like, "Why didn't you do it when it came out?" When it came out, it was already old, because I wrote it in 2007, and I sat on it for years. That's part of it, but there's also some sensitivity issues with it, and things like that.

Adam Horne

AutoDidact17 says, "I'm curious about the UrDail's connection to Tolkien's Elves. I love the idea of Tolkien being Cytonic or being visited by aliens, but wasn't there a period of several hundred years before the human years when no humans were in touch with ReDawn, Evershore, etc.?" I guess that's the question.

Janci Patterson

So when I'm working on a book, I get excited about dumb little stuff. When we were working on ReDawn, I was like, "Yeah the plot, sure, whatever". I need this thing where Tolkien was Cytonic and the UrDail are his Elves, this is really important, and Brandon was like, "Okay. Let's talk about the plot."

Brandon Sanderson

So, he was, in this lore, didn't know he was Cytonic, right? 

Janci Patterson

Yeah. My explanation was actually not that he was Cytonic, but that he knew Cytonics.

Brandon Sanderson

He knew Cytonics, okay.

Janci Patterson

...And so he had met UrDail who had travelled to Earth, not that he was Cytonic. But it's not canonized, right? It's not in the book, we don't know in the book. So it could be whatever.

Brandon Sanderson

Could be. You get to pick the canon version for these things.

Janci Patterson

Awesome. So that's my headcanon anyway. To me, nothing is canon until it's on the page, though. Because even in my headcanon, I might later be like, "But it makes more sense if it works this way but differently."

Brandon Sanderson

Well, I do the same thing. "Words of Brandon", which is what they call them, are not as high in the hierarchy of canon as what I end up putting in the books, and I've warned people of that.

Janci Patterson

Yeah. I'm on the Coppermind now. There's a "Words of Janci". *laughs*

Brandon Sanderson

*starts and stops a few times* The Cytonics not being kind of official doesn't mean there wasn't some connection, something's happening. And so yeah.