When it comes to fantasy authors, few are on the level of Brandon Sanderson. Sanderson is one of the genre's most prolific authors, known for The Stormlight Archive, Mistborn, Elantris, Skyward, and numerous other books, including the final three volumes of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time after the original author's death in 2007. With the release of Wind and Truth, the fifth installment in Sanderson's magnum opus The Stormlight Archive, and a few record-shattering Kickstarter campaigns under his belt, he's more renowned than ever. But there's still plenty more to come in the author's grand plan for the Cosmere, the fictional universe where all of his adult fantasy stories take place.
Last month, we were fortunate enough to interview Sanderson about his works, his career, and where it all goes from here. Sanderson has written dozens of books, including more than 20 set in the Cosmere. This was Sanderson's first full-spoiler interview about his works since Wind and Truth released in December 2024, and he provided some incredible insights about a broad range of topics. I can't wait to share them all with you.
But what would a destination like that be without a journey to get there? This week we'll be sharing excerpts from that interview each day until we release the full interview next weekend. Think of it as a "Week of Sanderson."
To kick things off, today we're spotlighting the series Brandon Sanderson is currently working on: Ghostbloods, the third era of his Mistborn saga. Mistborn is set on the world of Scadrial, which has several detailed magic systems that revolve around the ability to manipulate metal. Sanderson has gained a reputation for being "that magic system guy," and nowhere is that reputation better warranted than with his work on Scadrial. But what will Scadrial look like in this next iteration, and how will its magic evolve?
So far, Mistborn is comprised of seven books; three in the original trilogy, and then a run of four called the Wax & Wayne series which are set more than 300 years later. With Ghostbloods, Sanderson will jump ahead in time another 50 years, showing the world of Scadrial as it moves into modernity.
Sanderson is also pulling a page from his early playbook with Ghostbloods: he's writing all three books concurrently before releasing the first. This is the same strategy he used for the original Mistborn trilogy. Right now he's hard at work writing the first draft for book one, and projected in a recent weekly YouTube update that it will be finished "sometime [in] July or August." Considering that he only started writing it in mid-March, it's another example of Sanderson's prolific work ethic in action.
"It's going really well," Sanderson tells me of his writing on Ghostbloods.
How Brandon Sanderson is defying the odds with Mistborn Era 3
Sanderson conveyed a lot of excitement about Ghostbloods, and a big part of the reason is that he's been itching to write these books for nearly two decades. He originally pitched the series to his editors at Tor Books all the way back in 2006, the same year that the very first Mistborn novel, The Final Empire, released. It's been a long road to reach this point in the saga.
"I called my editors before the first [Mistborn] came out and I said, just so you know, here's kind of my outline for the series, and it was original trilogy, Ghostbloods and science fiction trilogy," Sanderson explains. "And I walked him through all three of those and said, here's what I'm doing: epic fantasy becomes kind of the foundation of mythology and religion for an urban fantasy, and then we jump into a space-age science fiction. Back then I was referencing Fifth Element as kind of a fantasy sci-fi that I was shooting for, and saying this is what we're looking at for kind of a trilogy of trilogies. And he's like, 'Wow, you're ambitious, and it kind of sounds like this will never happen.' But it did, it is finally happening."
"And so it's been 20 years that I've had like what I wanted to do with Ghostbloods," he continued. "I did borrow a little of that for Wax & Wayne. There's things I took and said, 'No, this will fit better in the Wax & Wayne series'...but it's very cool. It feels awesome to finally...you know, you plan something for 20 years and you get to sit down and finally write it. It feels really nice to get this out of my head."
"I've wanted to do this forever, and so being able to sit down and finally do it feels extremely gratifying and the writing is going great. You know, these are characters that I've known for 20 years that I finally get to introduce to people."Brandon Sanderson on Ghostbloods
Ghostbloods will not just be "our world, but there's Mistborn"
In many ways, Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive are the two main pillars of the Cosmere; there are many other stories set in Sanderson's fictional universe, but few have the breadth and depth of the tales told on the worlds of Scadrial and Roshar. So it should come as no surprise that Sanderson and his team are pulling out all the stops for this next era of Mistborn books. Sanderson's art department developed extensive concept art for Ghostbloods, helping envision the visual style of modern Scadrial.
"I put them for six months doing concept art on this modern era, and they just kind of were churning [things] out," Sanderson says. He pinpoints one artist, Ben McSweeney ("who's just awesome"), as a champion of in-house Mistborn artwork. "He just loves Mistborn. I found him through Mistborn fan art, that's how I hired him in like 2008 or 2009, whenever it was. And he came up with all these ideas that are really cool for melding some science and fantasy, and you know...how does this feel different from other urban fantasies? We don't just want to do our world, but there's Mistborn. We want it to feel like Scadrial."
We'll be sharing much more from our interview with Brandon Sanderson in the coming week, including more behind-the-scenes details about Ghostbloods. As Kelsier would say, there's always another secret. Stay tuned for the rest of our Week of Sanderson to learn a few more of them!
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