Full Transcript

BRANDON: Hey! Brandon here with the Weekly Update. Sorry we missed last week. I was doing some things I'll talk about in a minute. But we have two really cool announcements for you today. So stick around.

First though, let's do a book update. Ghostbloods Book One I am at, Bing! 45%. Some really great motion on that. I am moving up to the midpoint climax. I might pause there and do some revisions. So I don't think I'm going to hit my late July/early August kind of self-imposed deadline on this. I think I want to stop and do some revisions and work on some things before I go to that. But looking pretty good.

Songrise by Janci is at, Bing! 28%. She's moved up a couple percentage points as well. So we're both moving along.

All right. Exciting news number one. All right? Check this out. We got Isles of the Emberdark in early. So we were, you know, saying we are hoping to ship these September. We put November as our latest. But they came in June. What this means is we can start shipping these. So if you were part of the Words of Radiance leatherbound campaign and you got a copy of Isles of the Emberdark, then we are going to start shipping those on July 1st. That means we will also send out the eBook on July 1st. 

Now because we were surprised by this, the audiobook isn't ready yet. So we don't know exactly when we're going to be able to ship the audiobook. Obviously, it's going to be well before November. We plan to try to have it by September 1st. If we can get it earlier that that, we will send it out to you, to those who backed. So if you prefer audiobooks, I am sorry about that. But again, we weren't expecting these. We were expecting to ship these September 1st. We're going to ship them July 1st. That feels pretty cool. So you should start getting boxes. We'll start updating the page to talk about fulfillment. 

If you preordered but you didn't do the BackerKit, we're still going to ship yours out. Right? Or, if you want to grab a copy now. But we're going to wait until everybody has their print copies of the version we're sending out before we ship out any of the other print copies.

So just to catch you up on this, what we're going to do, July 1st we're going to start shipping to backers. July 1st you will also get your eBook sent to you if you backed it. Once we are done shipping for backers, we will start shipping for those who've preordered. The eBook will go up for sale on the 10th of July, for those who didn't preorder or back. Audiobook will come out as soon as we get it, and then for non-backers it'll go up probably 10 days after we are able to send out the audiobook to people. Kind of what we did on the Secret Projects, the previous ones. If that's confusing, we will have a big, long blog post on it on the BackerKit site for it. So go check it out. Double check that--triple check your address was right. Or if you've moved or something like that, go make sure you change your address so that you get your copy of Isles of the Emberdark, which we'll start shipping out here in just a couple of weeks.

So, what was I doing last week? There's a program called My Story Matters, which goes in prisons and teaches people about writing so that they can kind of work on their life story, or so that they can practice writing so that they can learn some life skills. And so I went last week and was visiting local prisons. We actually recorded one of those lectures where I kind of took the Hero's Journey, and I said, "Here's how I would apply, if I were writing the story of my life, how I might apply the Hero's Journey and the various points on the Hero's Journey to my life." And so we'll put that up on the channel for you eventually. And I think that you'll enjoy it. If you've heard my story, kind of how I became published and how I became a writer, you've heard all these points before. But the different thing about this one is me applying the Hero's Journey to it, as kind of a model.

All right, last thing. I will be going to WorldCon this year. That's not as surprising as you might imagine. But I do want to let you know. WorldCon's a different sort of con. If you've been to a ComiCon, WorldCon isn't like that. WorldCon is more book-focused, for one thing, and writer-focused. Kind of half an industry professional convention where editors, agents, and authors are meeting together, and partially a fan convention. But when I say fan, more the kind of fans who would put together panels about who their favorite Star Trek captain is, and things like that. Back in the days before ComiCons were super huge, this was one of the ways that nerds like myself would get together and talk about things we love. 

WorldCon is the biggest of those, but it's still very small by ComiCon terms, and we like it that way. So if you're interested in meeting authors, and maybe hearing some industry talk and some how-to-write talk, you maybe want to go to WorldCon. You'll be able to see me. The thing about WorldCon is, it's all volunteer run, and they don't have sponsors. The dealers' room is not a giant room full of Funko's. Because of this, WorldCon's kind of expensive. Everybody chips in. Your tickets can run between $50 and $200, depending. That said, they have a cheaper ticket, if it's your first time going to a WorldCon, and I suggest you take advantage of that. If you are a student, the tickets are dirt cheap, comparatively, for going to WorldCon. And we'll link all this in the description. 

And if you can pay more, they have a--you can pay some extra money that's helping keep the convention going while paying for someone else's ticket who might be their first time. So if you're in the Seattle area, or even up, you know, in the Portland area, maybe come see me.

Last thing, I shouldn't do such a hard pitch, but I do like these cons. If you join WorldCon, you get the Hugo voter packet, which includes copies of most of the novels that are nominated for the Hugos in the short stories and short fiction. So you get your monies back, kind of in just the Hugo voting packet if you join WorldCon. So worth doing if you're in the area, if you've never done it, if it's interesting to you. And I'm going to go, and I'm going to have, I hope, a very fun time. I expect a very fun time. 

I'll be at WorldCon. I hope to see a lot of you there. And I will be back next week with another Weekly Update.