Ghostbloods Updates

Brandon Sanderson

Hey, all! I thought I'd stop by and post an update to your new book, which I've been working on diligently these last few months.

If you've been following along on the Weekly Updates, you'll know that I've been making slow and steady progress. Well, last week I passed the 50% mark, and hit the "midpoint" of the first book. It's been a blast to be back on Scadrial, working on the modern era of Mistborn--something I began outlining in 2005! (Wax and Wayne was not part of the plan back then. I'm glad I did it though, as it would have been too long a wait otherwise. Twenty years!)

The story is following a new recruit into the Ghostbloods, and...well, I don't want to say too much. We've got three years until the book comes out. As a reminder, my plan is to write all three before the first one is out. There are some things I can tell you, though, so I'll put those in the spoiler tag below.

I had originally talked about this being about a nicroburst who helped with an apparent Mistborn serial killer. I've moved away from this as the central plot for a couple of reasons. First, I feel the story with Bleeder covered this serial killer angle in era two, and I don't want to do something similar. Second, era two was able to establish some of the things I wanted this story to introduce, and I feel I can move ahead a little. So, while the lead is one of the same characters I've been planning a while, she's going to be involved in something else, originally planned for the second book. Note that the lead is not the nicroburst character, whom I'll make use of a little later. But yes, the space race is still very much the central plot of the trilogy as a whole. If you want more clues as to where I'm going with this, Isles of the Emberdark might have them for you...

I am going to take a break to do some revisions on the book and work on something else you might find exciting: the comprehensive document explaining Malwish medallions, airships, and the very complicated details of how that all works. (The things that are too granular to go in the books.) I would like to have this done pretty soon, as I promised to release these mechanics once Lost Metal was out--but I haven't been able to find my original notes document about this, and have to reproduce it from scratch. (I've been putting off doing this, as I'm sure the notes file is hiding on my hard drive somewhere. Usually, I don't have trouble finding these things, but this one has eluded me. So I'm just going to remake it, let editorial/arcanists look it over, and get all the fundamental cosmere science explanations in place before this book is ready for beta reads.)

I'm traveling extensively next month (for my anniversary, then a trip to Spain, then probably a drop by to tour the Avengers set in London, since I've got some friends working on the film.) So expect the percentage bar to stay static for a little while, but don't be concerned. I'll be using that time to work on the notes document, and probably to work a little on the Mistborn screenplay. (Don't get too excited; it's not anywhere close to being made. I haven't even resold the rights yet. I merely want to have it ready in case something does happen.)

LewsTherinTelescope

Once the books are out do you think you'd be able to talk a bit about the character/plot swaps in more detail?

Brandon Sanderson

So, there's a few things going on here. Swap really began to happen in my head somewhere around 2019-2020, as I realized that I didn't want to do a serial killer. I'd already done this, and plus, I wanted to shoot more for an 80s spy thriller as opposed to a detective vibe, having done that so much with the series already. If you watch my lectures, I talk about the difference between a lower case p plot and an uppercase P Plot. The larger scale Plot of the series remains the same (has the same ending to book three that was built back in 2005-6), but each book needs its own plot as well. The things that move scene to scene, make the book stand on its own and be readable. I started to revise the story in my head over the years to focus on something that would better match the tone of what I wanted. When I sat down to write, I tried them both out in outline, and was unsurprised to discover that the newer one was more interesting, so I rebuilt that direction. I can say more once you've read them, though I recognize that's a ways off. Most everything I planned to do is still in there, but things have moved around a little, which isn't odd once you start active work on something. Some of what was book one becomes part of book two, and some of what was book two becomes book one. That sort of thing.