They named prisons after us.
Here we get the reason why everyone has prison names. I figured this makes sense, in the twisted reasoning of this book. Alcatraz the First is a famous hero in the Free Kingdoms. So, what do the Librarians do? They make sure everyone in the Hushlands associates the name Alcatraz with something base.
It was fun when I actually managed to work out a reason behind the loony choice of my hero’s name.
It was a person I had known for my entire life: Ms. Fletcher
The Ms. Fletcher scene has some interesting things to note. First off, if you figured out before Alcatraz that the person whose footprints he was following had to be Ms. Fletcher, you’re not alone. I realize this isn’t the biggest twist ever. However, there’s more going on here than you might suspect.
Particularly with the fact that she lost her keys. That’s important. You’ll find out in book two why. Also, there’s more about her footprints that will be answered later in this book.
Character Growth
And, speaking of character, another of the fun themes of this book comes out in this chapter. One of my points is to show all of these wondrous, incredible things–then relate them to Alcatraz and his growth as a character. From the very beginning, the narrator has tied the two together. For instance, the reason Alcatraz begins believing that Grandpa Smedry is his grandfather is because he’s seen so much that is insane, the idea of this man being his grandfather doesn’t seem so out of place.
This character, Alcatraz, has some things he needs to learn. We’ll get into them in the next chapter. However, all of the craziness–even the implausibility–happening in this book is a foreshadowing of the ability he has to change the most incredible thing of all–his own mind.
Chapter Ten
Are you annoyed with me yet?
This beginning is exactly what I like about the form of this book. Here, I can go on and on about how you shouldn’t separate readers from the payoff of cliffhangers–all the while keeping you from getting the payoff of the cliffhanger at the end of the previous chapter.
This whole theme started with that first line, and my desire not to get right back to Alcatraz on the altar. As I thought about it, I realized there were a lot of ways I could play with the form of a fantasy novel–or any novel–while at the same time following that form. This became almost as fun for me as character or setting.
Favorite Joke
That pteridactle one.
Peteridactyl
There are some jokes in this book that I don’t expect anyone to get. There are others that are just for a select group.
If you didn’t notice, I spelled pterodactyl differently every time I put it in this chapter. There are a good half dozen or more places where it’s misspelled, each time in a new way.
I put this in not because I expected the average reader to notice, but because it gave me glee to think of the proofreaders, editors, and spelling-minded people who read the book trying to correct each instance–then groaning when they discovered that I’d done it on purpose. (Evil laughter.)
Chapter Nine
Dinosaurs
I’d like to be able to tell you where this came from, why I put it in the book, but . . . well, I have no idea. Remember, this book was–in essence–a long free write. I didn’t have much of an outline, setting, or anything else in mind. When I got to this point in the book, I thought, “Hey, talking dinosaurs. Let’s put those in.” So I did.
I enjoyed them, however, and had a lot of fun using them. They show up later in the plot–if I add something to a book, even in a free write, I don’t want it to be random. Things exist in stories for a reason, even if that reason is to give a deeper explanation of where the English language came from.
Favorite Joke
Particularly the carnivorous kind.
Banter
These chapters were a lot of fun to write because of the interaction I could get going between Alcatraz, Bastille, and Sing. Also, with the faster pace, I feel like the quick pops of humor work better than they did during the more leisurely, explanation-heavy beginning.
New Continents
The existence of three new continents is also a bit of a stretch. Though I appeal to Plato here as an explanation, it’s still mostly lighthearted. I can’t hold this book to the same scientific rigors as my other fantasy novels. Not only would it undermine the book, but it would also make this one feel too much like everything else I’ve written. I wanted to see what would happen if I gave myself a little more freedom. This is the result.
Chapter Eight
Elevators? How Primitive
Of all of the things in this book, I think this chapter has the biggest stretch when it comes to worldbuilding.
I really liked the concept of Free Kingdomers thinking of our modern world as primitive. Them thinking swords are more advanced than guns is a really fun reversal. However, it’s a tough one to justify.
I ended up leaving this concept in because of the way it made the book feel, but I would never have done so in a more solemn fantasy novel. If you’re wondering, the reason for Bastille thinking that stairs are more advanced is the following:
Once, the Free Kingdoms used stairs. They eventually moved on to primitive elevators, but when Smedry Talents and other magical abilities began to get widespread, things with moving parts had a large chance of breaking. Plus, people developed Silimatics–the technology of the Free Kingdoms. Soon they were building stairs again. Partially for health reasons, partially because elevators weren’t very safe, and partially because silimatic stairs–which moved on their own–were so much more convenient (for those who could afford them).
So technology regressed while progressing at the same time. And people like Bastille can look back at elevators and say, “We stopped using those because they weren’t advanced enough.” We get an explanation like this in the book, regarding guns, in a little while.
Favorite Joke
The Summa Theologica comment. I first remember encountering this book (which is on Catholic doctrine) when I was a freshman. Some of us went out to a local used bookseller, and one of my friends said he was searching for a copy of it. I thought he was so smart. He wanted a book that had a Latin title. Ooooh.
I bought a hardcover copy of The Hobbit. Still have it.
People who weren't impressed by how advanced my culture was
Man, this book is preachy, isn’t it? Ah well. Good thing it’s written from the viewpoint of a guy up on his soapbox dispensing wisdom. Otherwise it might get pretentious.
Isn’t it funny how I can get away with so much in a book like this? If I tried to be this overt with theme and message in one of my epic fantasies, it would completely ruin the book. I always talk about how books shouldn’t have intentional messages–only the messages that the characters want to talk about. However, you can’t help having things come through anyway. And as soon as I started writing in first person with a humorous tone, all kinds of things popped out.
In this chapter, we get Alcatraz having to face the fact that America doesn’t have all the best stuff. This is kind of hard to swallow, sometimes. Everyone wants to believe that their country is the best, and I’m afraid that Americans sometimes tend to go overboard with this.
Chapter Seven
Unwittingly made a friend's pants fall down
Humor is hard to write. Not only is it subjective, but in a book you don’t have the benefit of a laughing crowd to help you get into the mood.
Because of these things, I know that everyone who reads this book is going to find some of the jokes lame. The best I can do is try to cover the range of different kinds of humor. That’s why there are non sequiturs–where I mention random absurdities–mixed with jokes about a boy’s pants falling down and random discussions of books by Thomas Aquinas breeding with copies of Little Women. Hopefully, the amalgamation has something that entertains you.
By the way, that crack about Alcatraz making his friend’s pants fall down wasn’t in the original draft. Instead, it was a crack about Alcatraz making a girl’s shirt fall off. That’s what I’d do if I were a teenage boy with the power to break things. However, when we decided to go middle grade for this book instead of YA, making a boy’s pants fall down seemed to hit the humor level for the age group better than jokes about shirts falling off. Unfortunately.
Information. That's the real power in this world
Everyone is an academic. (Or, well, nearly everyone.) This is intentional. Grandpa Smedry gives us a speech here about information, and if I had to pick one theme for this book, his comments would be it.
Isaac Asimov once complained that fantasy was all about dumb barbarians killing smart wizards–thereby making the genre anti-intelligence. I’ve always found this a shortsighted way of looking at the genre. To me, it’s all about being clever. I wanted heroes who were academics. People who were what we would call nerds. And I wanted to show them using information–rather than weapons–to save the day.
I do worry, however, that Grandpa Smedry droned on a bit long in this chapter. It’s the last place where I think we have this problem in the book, but this chapter itself is essentially one big conversation while preparing to go into the library. Not a lot happens.
We get those sometimes in my books. Hopefully, they set us up for the drama and climaxes later on. We need to know the characters, and have a groundwork, for the quick pacing that happens from chapter seven onward.
Chapter Six
Kindly pretend that you own a mousetrap factory
This mousetrap example is exactly the sort of thing I can do in a children’s book that I haven’t ever been able to make work in an adult book. I’m not sure why it feels so good in this format, while doesn’t quite fly in an adult book. Maybe it’s because when you write humor for the adult sf/f market, it seems like you can only do humor. You can’t have a hybrid story like this. Pratchett comes the closest, and I think his novels are legitimately good stories with good humor in the mix. But everyone else who writes humor seems to get dismissed as “just” humor. Their books don’t get much attention.
Here, however, I could–I thought–make a book work with good worldbuilding (if a little funny at times) and powerful characters who have actual character arcs in a book that is–essentially–a comedy. I think it’s because in the children’s field, books don’t need to be classified by genre. They already have a genre. They’re children’s books.
Either way, the humor in this book just works very well for me. It’s absurdist with a hint of satire, and it left me free to play with the form of the novel as well as the content.
Favorite Joke
Rutabaga, of course.
Bastille
Bastille’s character came quite early, and I was very pleased with how she turned out in the book. I did tweak a few things, making her a knight instead of a bodyguard, to keep her from looking too much like the bodyguard daughter in the Artemis Fowl books.
By the way, Bastille says something along the lines of “We’ve got plenty of sand” in this chapter. If you’ve finished the book, you’ll note that she’s not nearly as ignorant about the types of sand, and the importance of them, as she’s acting here. She pretends she knows less than she does because she doesn’t like to be reminded of her failure. However, she’s not very good at pretending, as she reveals later in this very chapter where she explains auras to Alcatraz.
Setting
Where is this book happening? If you’ve wondered this, you’re not alone–and you’re also not going to get an answer.
One of the reasons I write epic fantasy is because I have complete control over my settings. I know where things are and what they look like, and I’m the ultimate expert on the details. But when you write in this world, you can get one little thing wrong, and then end up having all kinds of complaints from readers who get distracted because you describe a real library the wrong way.
Plus, I like it when you can put yourself into the story. You can imagine this happening pretty much anywhere–I’ve even allowed foreign publishers to change Alcatraz’s national identity, if they want. Doesn’t matter to me. This story happens in “our world,” and that’s all the detail I wanted to give.
Chapter Five
Prison Names
Why did I use prison names? Well, the truth is . . . because. It felt kind of fun.
It wasn’t one of the things I’d been planning for the book. I knew I was going to name someone Alcatraz, but not that I’d use prison names for other characters. And yet, as I did it, I realized that Bastille was a great name for a girl and that Leavenworth would work really well for Grandpa Smedry’s real name.
After that, the joke took on a life of its own, and everybody got a prison name. A real-world explanation for this is coming later in the book.
Favorite Joke
The one where I list all the random pieces of clothing, then tell you I made them up.
People generally don't recommend this kind of book
This chapter has my favorite of all twenty chapter-intro essays, by the way. I’m somewhat passionate about this one in particular. I think that we put too much emphasis on certain books while ignoring others. I don’t think we should ignore the books about boys and their dogs, but we should know that they just don’t work for some people. People like me.
Fantasy books made a big difference in my life. I didn’t find traditional “literary” books, even ones for kids, to be challenging. Fantasy engaged my imagination, however, in ways that no realistic book ever could have. Fantasy made me think, made me dream, and now I’ve become an author of it.
Things aren’t as bad for kids now as they were when I was growing up. However, they’re still pretty bad for older people. I have a friend who was in a creative writing class last week where the professor said–in reference to popular fiction–“You have to decide if you want to write for the most people, or for the best people.”
“Best people”? What the crap? This is the sentiment that has always bothered me. If a person likes a certain type of fiction, they’re a better person than someone who likes popular fiction?
People are equal. People’s interests are equal. Not all fiction may appeal to all people, but who is anyone to judge another based on what they read?
That said, maybe someone someday will give me one of those shiny circular awards just to make me eat my words.
Chapter Four
Smedry Talents
We’re hitting our stride now. I think that this is where the book starts to really reflect what I imagined for it. Here, we’ve got some genuine tension, some worldbuilding, and some utter silliness.
One of the early ideas for this book was a magic system where the characters had powers that sounded like drawbacks, but which could be used in ways that were clever and interesting. Grandpa Smedry shows this off for the first time in this chapter by arriving late for the bullets.
As you might have noticed, it’s a kind of metaphor. I find that often, our drawbacks are advantages in disguise. It all depends on how you look at it. I’m often fond of pointing out that arrogance misused will turn you into an annoying person–but if you channel that same energy into believing in yourself, you can accomplish some fairly amazing things.
It takes a lot of thinking to come up with the right Smedry Talents. They have to be things that you can explain in one sentence, and have to be hindrances that a lot of us feel that we have. However, I also have to be able to twist them around so that they can be used in interesting ways.
Favorite Joke
The whole “Gak” sequence. Makes me laugh every time, even though it’s rather dumb. That’s my humor for you.
We are civilization's only hope
I do wonder if this conversation with Grandpa Smedry took too long. I might have covered the same information too many times here. Both my agent and my editor, however, kept noting that we need to make certain there’s a feeling of tension here. We need to know why the sands are so dangerous, and we need to know that they have to be recovered immediately, lest the world suffer a dire fate.
Something massive crashed through the wall of my house
Some notes on the chapter itself. First off, the car crashing into the room was one of the later edits to the book. Originally, I just had Alcatraz go with Grandpa Smedry in that scene when he looks out at the car on the curb.
This scene–the original–bothered me for a couple of reasons. It seemed out of character, for one thing. I mean, why would Alcatraz go with the crazy old man? He didn’t believe Grandpa Smedry, and thought he was crazy. I needed more of a reason. On top of that, it seemed like the pacing of the book was just a bit too slow at this point. I needed something to increase the tension. So, poof. A gun (this guy was originally going to show up later), a car crashing through the wall, and an escape. I’m pleased with the changes.
Chapter Three
Who To Blame
There are two people you can blame for this book. (No, I’m not one of them. We authors never take responsibility for things like that.) They are Stacy Whitman and Heather Kirby, the women who worked on me for a period of several months to get me to start reading kids’ books. I’d always said that I wanted to get back into YA and middle grade (even if I wasn’t sure on the distinction then. Not sure if I am now, actually…). However, I’d just never gotten around to it.
Well, these two–along with Ms. Fish–just kept recommending books to me. Eventually, I broke down and started reading them. (Though, if I trace it back to the real beginning, it was when my friends Faith and Nathan started reading the Lemony Snicket books to each other while they were engaged. I was the roommate who had to deal with them snuggling on the couch all the time…)
Anyway, back around 2004 I started reading a lot of YA books. I found I liked them, and remembered a lot of the ones I’d enjoyed as a kid. The more I read, the more I realized that a lot of the really exciting fantasy worldbuilding was going on in the kids’ book world. I also realized that you can get away with my kind of humor in kids’ books much more easily than you can in adult books. (I’ve written one other comedy, but something just didn’t work about it. I now think that if I’d shot for a younger audience, it would have been far more successful.)
All of that led to me writing Alcatraz during a short break between Mistborn books two and three. It was a quick write–took me sixteen work days–and was essentially an extended free write, intended to get something out of my system so I could get back to Mistborn. (Though at the same time, Alcatraz made for an excellent break from the Mistborn world, which is rather dark.)
I didn’t expect much from the book. It was fun, but had been done more as a writing exercise than anything else. A way to clear my system of all the kids’ book ideas that came to me during my readings in the genre.
Then Joshua and Steve–my agents–got hold of the book. They sold the heck out of it, and we discovered just how many people loved the concepts in it. We ended up getting a four-book deal from Scholastic, which tickled me pink. Not just because I got paid for a book I didn’t expect to earn a whole lot from–but because it let me write more books in the series! (These are a blast to work on.)
Favorite Joke
By the way, favorite joke this chapter: “In that way, grandfathers are kind of like kangaroos.”
The Simpsons Did It
I worried a little bit about having Grandpa Smedry and the other Free Kingdomers misunderstand American culture so much. They don’t quite get it. This is a fun plotting element, and it gives explanation for some of Alcatraz’s past (you’ll get this later) but it’s also worrying because it’s similar to something that was done in Harry Potter. (The Weasley father tries to do things like Muggles, but doesn’t ever quite get it right.)
I almost cut this element from the book because of the similarity. Those of you who know me and my work probably already understand how much of a “Don’t do what I’ve seen done” reaction I have. If another author has done it, and I’m not parodying it or changing it enough to be unrecognizable, then I don’t want to put it in my books. Even if I knew nothing of the other author and their work.
In this case, I didn’t cut it. I do happen to like Harry Potter, and have read all of the books, and so I was even more tempted to edit this out. However, in contemplating it, a certain episode of South Park came to mind. In the episode, one of the characters is constantly crying out “Simpsons did it!” to plot elements or ideas that the characters tried.
The point in the episode was that the characters kept getting frustrated because all of their great ideas are things that the show The Simpsons had already done in one of their episodes. I can see the writers of South Park and their frustration in this episode, and see it as a reaction to times when people emailed them and posted on forums, chastising them for copying The Simpsons. The problem is, as the show points out, The Simpsons has pretty much done everything. The writers couldn’t afford to undermine their own show by trying to cut out every little thing they thought of that happened to be similar to something in another show.
Harry Potter dominates the market right now. And the thing is, a lot of the things in Harry Potter weren’t invented first by Rowling. They’re staples of the genre, or ideas that have been done other times by other books. Rowling does them very well. However, if you try to cut out anything from your books that might hint at being similar to Harry Potter, you’re going to have a frustrating time.
Yes, we need to innovate. Yes, I prefer books that are original. However, I’m already writing a book about a cult of evil librarians that rule the world and a boy with the magical power to break things. Neither are ideas I’ve ever seen before. I didn’t feel I needed to expunge everything that might reference another work. If I did, I worry that my novels would be so original that they’re inaccessible.
Just my thoughts on the matter. Wow, that turned into an essay. I didn’t mean it to be one–it was more for my own benefit than for yours. But that’s what you have to deal with in these annotations. I’m even more free than I am in my books to write whatever the heck I want.
Alcatraz, My Boy!
Here we get Grandpa Smedry, introduced for the first time. As I believe I mentioned earlier, I wanted this book to be a subtle satire of some of the books on the market in fantasy. Not a full-blown satire, of course–I don’t tend to like books like that. They’re forgettable. Instead, I wanted something that had its own world, magic, characters, and story–but something that also occasionally took a subtle shot at the fantasy establishment (of which my other books are a part).
I love fantasy. However, what I loved about writing these books was that I could strip away some of the self-importance and seriousness. Standard epic fantasy, as a necessity of the genre, takes itself very seriously. These books don’t. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want the stories to have structural integrity or good storytelling; it just means that they can be a little more silly at times.
All of this leads to why I wrote Grandpa Smedry the way I did. I wanted a wise old mentor character. We’ve seen plenty of the type–Belgarath, Gandalf, Dumbledore. However, I wanted to make him a total spaz. Hence Grandpa Smedry, who’s a great Oculator and a very competent person–but who is also a complete spaz, and who is sometimes his own worst enemy.
His curses, by the way, are all the names of my favorite fantasy and science fiction authors. (In no particular order.) So, in this chapter he curses by Melanie Rawn’s name and Robin Hobb’s name, I believe. That’s only the beginning. [Assistant’s note: Terry Brooks and David Gemmell are also sworn by in this chapter.]
Authorial Interruptions
The style of these interruptions–we’ve got one at the beginning of each chapter–is intentional. I’m not shooting for brilliant humor, most of the time. I am the type of person who likes dumb humor. Groaners, you might say. That’s why I post Amphigory comics on my site. Bad puns, jokes that deserve rimshots, that kind of thing.
So, what I tried to do with a lot of these inserts was have a final “pow” of a line that creates a jarring gap between the last bit of the humor and the reintroduction of the story. Instead of a smooth transition, in other words, I wanted a harsh one.
I can’t quite explain why I like this so much in mixture with the humor. For one thing, I think it lets the reader keep the commentary and the story straight from one another. Also, I think it gives a stronger emphasis to the jokes–which, like the aforementioned rimshot, gives an unconscious clue to the reader that yes indeed, that was a joke. A lot of the humor in this book has to do with non sequiturs and the like, so making them stand out more seemed like a good instinct.
Chapter Two
I'm A Writer
In making this book first person, I gained one thing that is really cool. I was able to write the book such that the method of writing it proves–or tries to prove–what Alcatraz is trying to get people to believe about him. He says in the prologue that he’s not a nice person. Then he proves that by being mean to the reader through the way he writes the narrative.
I really like the way this works in the book. It’s much better than the joke of having the third-person narrator actually be the subject of the novel. My literary love of postmodernism and self-awareness tingles marvelously at this aspect of the book. (And I do something similar in the sequel, which I’ve finished writing.) The book itself is a form of proof of what the character in the book claims.
Alcatraz's Self-Awareness
The biggest change to this chapter was one I couldn’t talk about above. You see, in the original version of this book, Alcatraz was far more self-aware of the fact that he was intentionally driving his foster families away. In this chapter, he saw it as a game. Originally, he didn’t burn down the kitchen by accident–he did it on purpose to get the parents to send him away. He did this because the first few families sent him away after he got attached to him. So his goal with later foster parents was to push them away first before they could do it to him.
Getting rid of this knowledge was one of the very first things that Anica suggested. You see, Alcatraz has such a great chance for character growth and revelation later on, when he’s in the prison, that having him be aware of what he was doing the whole time undermined what could have been a great scene.
I agreed with this immediately, since I’d been thinking of doing the same cut. The edited manuscript, then, has him accidentally setting the drapes on fire, then not caring about it. I think that gives me a nice balance.
However, the broken smoke alarm here is a reminder of the original draft. I left it in, implying that Alcatraz does partially know what he’s doing, even if he won’t admit it to himself. He broke the smoke alarm because he knew that by fixing dinner, he would likely start a fire. Grandpa Smedry hints at this later.
One edge of the paper was covered with wild scribbles
Ah! Scribbles on the package. See, they’re there in the first few paragraphs.
Favorite Joke
Oh, and my favorite “stealth” joke in this one? Alcatraz calling “Alexander” a great name. Alexander the Great. Ha.
The Revision Process
As usual for my books, chapter one is the most revised chapter in the book. Getting the balance between humor, character, and plot establishment in this chapter was a bit tough. The first draft (which I’ll try to remember to post to my website so you can compare) was too long. As the book went through drafts, paragraphs were cut, trimming it down and trying to concentrate on what we really need.
This was important for this book. I still worry that chapter one is one of the least funny. We don’t really get to the right voice and tone for the book until chapter two.
I tried to fix this, but it proved impossible. The reader has to be acclimatized to the characters before I can do anything else in this book, and so I have to focus on Alcatraz’s strange power and the way he feels about life before I can get more wacky.
Some of the cuts from this chapter include a fun line involving one of Alcatraz’s former foster mothers and cookies, a longer explanation of the postage stamp mystery, and a crack about Joan being a liberated woman. That last one was edited out so that I wouldn’t have as many women throwing things at me.
Anica is a good editor, by the way. She knows how to write for kids. I’ve got a feel for how to do that, but I sometimes let my desire for a good line or quick joke overshadow the clarity of the book for the target age group. I do leave in some of my obscure jokes (as you’ll see when I make fun of Heisenberg), but Anica is great at pointing out phrases or words that just won’t work for the audience.
I grew up in the Hushlands
There was some confusion about the Hushlands vs. the Free Kingdoms in this book. Originally I called them the Inner World and the Outer World. Even when I wrote that, I knew it wouldn’t work–and it didn’t. They aren’t two different worlds, but different regions in the same world. Plus, people had a lot of trouble remembering which one was our civilization and which one was the fantasy kingdoms.
After trying various names, I ended up with Hushlands (which was suggested by one of my friends, I believe). It seemed like a good mix with the Evil Librarians. I think Free Kingdoms and Hushlands are a lot easier to keep straight.
I did worry a little bit about doing another “hidden world in this world” book. However, in writing fantasy, you really only have three options. There’s the high fantasy paradigm, where there is no connection to this world. (Like what I usually write.) Or you can do a fantasy alternate reality, where a lot of the things are the same, but some things are different. (This is what comic books generally do–it’s our world, plus fantastic elements that everyone knows and accepts.) I didn’t really want to do that, so I was left with number three: the urban fantasy “there’s a hidden fantasy world that nobody knows about” paradigm.
I hope I can add something new to the genre. I’m not too worried, since I’m very confident in this book. Plus, there is enough satire and sarcasm in the book that–in part–I’m making fun of the genre.
Chapter One
So, there I was, tied to an altar made from outdated encyclopedias, about to get sacrificed to the dark powers by a cult of evil Librarians.
The first line here was the original inspiration for this book. I got that line before anything else. I still love it – particularly since it plays into the theme of this book by not really giving you any information on Alcatraz’s predicament. More on this in later annotations.
Author's Foreword
This is probably a good place to talk about the shift from third person into first person.
The book was originally written in the third person. There was a narrator telling us this story–someone listed as “Cecil G. Bagsworth the Third” on the title page. (Cecil, by the way, was invented by my friend Dan Wells as a humorous alter ego. I borrowed him for this as an inside joke, but eventually cut him–then put him back in as Alcatraz’s Free Kingdoms editor.)
There was a joke inherent in the narrator guise for this book. As the novel progressed, you realized that the author of the book was indeed Alcatraz, who was writing it and talking about himself in the third person. This let me have all kinds of jokes where the narrator would exaggeratedly describe Alcatraz as being smart, witty, or handsome. It also let me get away with some very clever word plays.
The problem is, it was too clever. Meaning that it was something I found funny, but that undermined the book. Since it was so convoluted and strange, it distracted from the story and the characters. It also felt a little bit too much like the Lemony Snicket narrator used in the A Series of Unfortunate Events books.
Credit for getting me to change the book from third person to first person goes to my agent Joshua and his assistant Steve. Joshua was very firm on the need to swap out the third person narrator for a first person that would bring us closer to the character of Alcatraz, while at the same time give a more solid narrative reason for all of the diversions and asides in the book.
Once I came around to this suggestion–which didn’t take much–I realized that I’d need a foreword to explain why Alcatraz was writing this book. Now that the ‘third person who is the first person’ mechanic was gone, I could create and use a backstory for why Alcatraz is writing his memoirs, which I ended up really liking (far more than what I lost) for what it let me do.
This introduction not only lets me acclimatize readers to the difference between Librarian lands and the Free Kingdoms, but also lets me begin to establish the character of Alcatraz the failure–the person our hero will become. That gives some tension to the narrative, I think, as the reader wonders how Alcatraz ended up like that. This introduction gives a framework to the fictional publication to the book, giving us a story we can all–as readers–be part of: the resistance against the Librarians.
Assistant Peter’s note: I’ve put up the original third person versions of the first two chapters. You may enjoy comparing them to the final versions.
Dedication
This book is for my father.
It’s a tough call, to match all the people you want to honor with the right books. My mother got my first book, which was a good match for her because it was very easily appreciated by people who don’t read fantasy and sf. And, of course, she’s my mother–she deserved the first book.
Next, I went for my grandmothers. I’m afraid that matching a book to my maternal grandmother was pretty much impossible. She’s not a fantasy reader, and though she loves me and reads my books out of solidarity, I know that she doesn’t really get them. My paternal grandmother, on the other hand, is pretty much insane (in a good way), and she loves fantasy novels.
The next book, however, needed to go to my father. I think this one is a good match for him. The boy in this book, Alcatraz, is about the same age that I was when I discovered fantasy novels–and the kid on the cover actually looks a lot like I did when I was that age. It’s a fun match, and the Brandon of that age owes a lot to his father.
My father spoils people outrageously. That’s just one of his things. He takes care of us, and gives us what we need–and more. In my case, that was books. He fed my addiction, making sure I was always supplied with things to read. And, because of that, I ended up becoming a novelist.
So thanks, Dad.
Half Title Page
This will be my first book ever published that doesn’t have a map in it. There was never really talk of one. For reasons that will be explained in the book, I didn’t want to start with a map that might give away interesting plot elements about the geography of the world. However, any other kind of map–of the city or library–would just kind of be boring. So I didn’t intend to put one in.
However, the lack of one is another highlight of something that my editor, Anica, kind of wanted with this book. She hesitated when I talked too much about titles that mentioned things like “The Sands of Rashid” because she didn’t envision the book being as much a straight-up fantasy as I did.
This wasn’t a disagreement, more just a difference in viewpoints. I’m a fantasy writer–that’s what I do. I write epic fantasy books. This one, however, does take place in the “real” world, and Anica wanted to market it in a way that would–hopefully–pull in a larger, crossover audience. That’s another reason we went with the pulpy title. From the cover, you can tell that something cool is going on–we’ve got flying books and a kid wearing some strange glasses. However, it doesn’t scream “epic fantasy.” I was originally hoping for a feel more like the Edge Chronicles or Spiderwick, but this pulpy feel seems very different to me, and I like things that stand out. We’ll have to see how it goes over.
Title Page
Well, here’s something I wasn’t sure I’d ever be doing: the annotations for Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians. I’m looking at the proofs right now (January 2007), and have to say I’m impressed–and a little bit amazed–at the whirlwind (at least in publishing terms) history of this book.
I’ll talk more about that later. For right now, however, perhaps hearing the various different titles that were proposed for the book will give you an idea of how crazy the life of the novel has been.
One of the very first things I started with, when formulating this book in my head, was the name Alcatraz for a protagonist. At the very beginning, I was planning for Alcatraz to be the name of an adult private investigator in a wacky mystery series. He’d solve crimes by getting all of the clues wrong, and interpreting them in strange ways, but then end up catching the crook anyway.
Yeah, I know. The story has come a long way. I never got very far in the Alcatraz detective story. I thought about it a few times, but then eventually discarded it. The name, however, stayed–and I eventually added Smedry as the surname. Now I had a pretty fun name–Alcatraz Smedry–but no story to go along with it.
Eventually, as I’ll talk about, I drafted the first version of the novel you now hold. At that point, I named it:
The Absolutely True–And in No Way Embellished–Tale of
ALCATRAZ SMEDRY
and the Sands of Rashid
by Cecil G. Bagsworth the Third(a pen name of Stet Cannister)
Based on a story.
Whew! That’s a mouthful. I particularly liked the “Based on a story” crack. However, after my agent Joshua suggested switching the book to first person, I couldn’t keep this title anymore. So I had to come up with something else. By draft version 3.0, this book had come to be named Alcatraz Illuminated, book one of the Sands of Rashid.
I liked the sound of this title, but it has some problems. Primarily, I was still imagining this book as a young adult book–and it took my editor at scholastic to suggest it be middle grade to really get the feel on target. However, Alcatraz Illuminated just didn’t seem like it would fit with a middle-grade audience. Plus, on paper without a cover illustration, it sounds like a documentary book about Alcatraz Island.
So, once Scholastic had picked the book up, we started to talk about different potential titles. Early on, Anica established that we really needed to lose the Illuminated, and I agreed. We went through various rounds of emails with suggestions.
Eventually, we decided to simply go with Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians. It cut out a lot of the jokiness from the title, but it gave us what we wanted. Enough questions in the title to make people pick it up, with a good snappy feel to it. It got “Evil Librarians” in the title, which the marketing department really, really wanted. It got Alcatraz being used in a way that didn’t imply a documentary about the prison.
The title does give the book a bit more of a pulp feel, which is just fine, since that kind of fits. We’ll have to see what the whole package looks like. I have seen the cover, and love it, so I think I’m going to be pleased.
Assistant Peter’s note: I think Brandon forgot that he wrote these annotations. He seemed surprised when I mentioned that I had found them. Anyway, I’m pretty sure that this is the only Alcatraz book that Brandon annotated. Enjoy.
It’s hard to dig back through my memory to the days when I wrote the rough draft of this story. What was going through my head?
The story was written on a beach near Monterey California, and remains the only published piece of mine I did entirely in longhand before transcribing to the computer. I’d never been to Monterey before, and a friend was able to trade something he did at work for a week’s stay in a little condo-style hotel. We had two rooms and a very nice view over the city down toward the water.
So I guess I was doing the whole bohemian thing. During these days, I hadn’t yet gotten published (this would have been late 2001 or early 2002). I had graduated from college, but had been rejected from all of the grad schools I’d applied for. I’d written about a dozen novels, and was annoyed with myself recently for not writing books that were true to what I wanted to be as a writer.
The call regarding the sale of Elantris would not come for another year or so. I was working a graveyard shift at the hotel, renting a room in a friend’s basement for $300 a month, and spending all the time I could practicing my craft. (In part to delay thinking about what I was going to do with my life since my writing wasn’t selling and grad schools didn’t want me.)
Over the next year, I would write a book called The Way of Kings, the best—yet most flawed—book I wrote during my unpublished years. A massive, beastly epic that was my symbolic discarding of any desire to chase the market or write anything that was not the type of writing I loved to read.
That was my mind-set. I remember a couple of long afternoons sitting on the beach, listing to the waves and staring out over the ocean as I wrote. A good friend named Annie was there for most of it—you may know her as the woman that Sarene from Elantris was based on—writing in her journal. Micah (you may know him as Captain Demoux from the Mistborn books, and also as the official Brandon Sanderson jacket flap photographer) was in and out. Mostly he was off taking photos.
I remember wanting to see if I could imbue a short story with the type of characterization and multiple plots that I liked in my epic fantasy. I had an idea for a character with a deep and interesting past, alongside a nice dissonant element (a secret agent working for the phone company). That, along with an interesting idea for an ending, grew into this story.
Oddly, I was able to make this work in a short story the way I wanted, while writing shorter novels hadn’t worked for me. I chalk that one up to me starting to find the natural size for a story and writing it at that size. Ironically, the novels I’d written recently (Final Empire and Mistborn, the ideas for which would eventually be recycled into a single volume you know as Mistborn: The Final Empire) were ones that I’d tried intentionally to write “short.” And in doing that, I’d ended up filling each book with too few ideas for even their short length.
With “Defending Elysium,” I took a short story (well, novelette) and filled it with as many ideas as I could pack into the space. The result is a very dense story (in plot, history, and world terms) that ended up satisfying all of the epic storytelling buttons I like having pushed.
I ended up submitting this to The Leading Edge (the magazine I worked on) during one of my last months there. I did it under a pseudonym, a practice common for staff members, to get some feedback. (The Leading Edge gives feedback on all submissions. I didn’t intend to publish it there; I just wanted some honest opinions.) Turns out that one of my best friends read the story, then spent about an hour the following evening telling me about this great story he’d read out of the slush, and how he couldn’t believe that such an awesome story had ended up getting submitted to TLE just out of nowhere. (That gave me an inkling that the story might have some potential. . . .)
That’s the background on the story. For those who like to dig deeper into the meaning and context of a story, perhaps that’s given you something to chew on. This was a melancholy time of my life—perhaps the time when I was most adrift—yet at the same time, it was one of the most artistically uninhibited times of my life. No contracts, no deadlines, no artificial rules imposed on myself. I had decided that the world could do whatever it wanted, and I would just write what I loved even if it never got published.
So, of course, the following year this story got a Writers of the Future nod and Elantris got picked up by Tor.
This next one is from Paleo. They want to know what's your opinion on the term Cytoverse for the Skyward universe?
Oh, I like that.
They were hoping to have a dedicated term for it, and I thought that was a pretty good one.
I'll go with it. Thumbs up. Cytoverse I'm on board. Good job. I can totally buy that.
What color of Magic [the Gathering] decks would some of your characters play?
It's going to depend on the character right? I often say Kelsier is black-blue. I feel that Vin is red-green probably. And Sazed is about as mono-white as you get. It's going to depend on the characters. Kaladin is pretty mono-white, though some of his powers are blue based so you could make a very good argument <for that.> That's the thing in Magic, you have both personalities and power suites of characters influencing what colors they [are] and what they would play. So you get Kaladin where personalty: white, power set: blue, would be pretty common. Dalinar is going to be mono-red for most of his life moving slowly into white-red. And you'll get someone like Jasnah who is very mono-blue with some touches of black or Shallan who is also just mono-red.
Will the tenth book of the Stormlight Archive be the last book in the cosmere universe, or there a plans to continue with other stories in the cosmere universe indefinitely?
So, the last chronological book of the cosmere sequence is the final Mistborn book. So the way that the structure works right now. Elantris, Mistborn era 1, Stormlight Archive first five, Mistborn era 2, Elantris 2 and 3, Stormlight Archive 6 through 10, the the final Mistborn era, is how I'm going.
Right? Did I miss one? I missed an era. So, I'm going to do the Wax and Wayne era and the 1980s era kind of together, and mash those together.
So, era 1, era 2/3, Stormlight 1-5, Stormlight 6-10, era 4 of Mistborn, is how it is right now. Era 4 of Mistborn will the the last chronological. We will have the flashbacks to Dragonsteel after Stormlight 10 but before era 4 of Mistborn.
I do not intend it to go indefinitely. If I manage to get all of that done before I die, which I hope I will - I move pretty quickly, then there's a decent chance I will write other cosmere books that happen in the cosmere, probably during this time frame at some point, unconnected or only tangentially related and things like that. But I do intend that to be the final book of the cosmere sequence, and I have no plans for anything chronologically after that.
Did you mention Warbreaker in there?
Warbreaker is a side project. I do count Warbreaker, there will be a sequel to Warbreaker. But Warbreaker, Emperor's Soul, Silence Divine, all of these things I might write, the unnamed Threnody novel, these are not what I consider the core, essential cosmere books that I need to write. I need to do Dragonsteel, Mistborn, Elantris, and Stormlight, and that's like your core sequence of stories, and if I can get Aether of Night in there - I sure hope that I can - if I can get the Threnody novel in there - I sure hope I can - and some stuff like that.
The requirement I placed on myself is no more than three years between Stormlight books, with a slightly larger break between 5 and 6, cause the first five are an arc. But I'm hoping no more than five years there, but we will see. And gotta just keep moving, keep going, keep writing, so that my own mortality does become a factor in the cosmere sequence.
What is the color of Autonomy's Shard, on Taldain?
RAFO. Good question.
So you said you play Esper in Magic: the Gathering, the central color of which is blue. All the Shards shown black/blue. Is this intentional, saving the Shard you identify with for the later bits of the cosmere?
So, yeah, if you were going to say blue, who is blue? I would say that definitely we do have some blue Shards, but it didn't just naturally fit to do the stories the blue way, it just didn't happen. So it wasn't that I was saving back the traditionally sneaky or conniving Shards, or at least the powers that are related to that, it's just how it played out. It was very natural for Mistborn to play around with black-aligned and white-aligned, if you are giving a single color to the various Shards. And then on Roshar, it just made a lot of sense for what I was building to have a red-aligned, a white-aligned, and a green-aligned. I don't really think of the Shards that way - I can retrofit a Magic color identity to them, when thinking about it. But White Sand, there's some blue going on with what is happening there, so you have seen some, but you're right.
Do any other Shards utilize avatars the way Autonomy does?
Uh... they have in the past, I can't say for sure if they are doing so now or not.
Axies the Collector would probably be fine. We would just have a chat.
But bad luck follows him because of the Curse of Kind, so maybe not. Maybe I wouldn't want to be around Axies the Collector, he is channeling the wrong kind of Fortune. Channeling is not an actual term - don't take that and put it in the wiki.
