Brandon Sanderson is the fantasy author behind such series as The Stormlight Archive, Mistborn, and the final three books of The Wheel of Time, and in the genre writing world, he's got a reputation for being a veritable book-making machine. Few authors write as doggedly as Sanderson, who has in the past written surprise books for his fans to take breaks from other books he's writing, among other antics. And he's extremely transparent with his readers about his progress, posting weekly updates to his YouTube channel as well as popping onto sites like Reddit to discuss what he's up to.
Last month, Sanderson released Wind and Truth, the fifth book in his epic fantasy series The Stormlight Archive. It marked an important turning point for the series, wrapping up its first major arc and drastically shifting the status quo for the interconnected fictional universe where all of Sanderson's adult fantasy stories are set, known as the Cosmere. The author is now taking a six-year hiatus from the series, which will correspond with a 10-year time jump in the novels.
But in true Sanderson fashion, he's already let fans know what he'll be working on in the meantime. Late in December, he published his yearly "State of the Sanderson" blog post, where he went over all the projects he'll be getting to now that this first arc of Stormlight is over. The two biggest projects on deck are the third era of his Mistborn series as well as two sequels for his 2005 debut novel Elantris.
We've known that Mistborn Era Three, titled Ghostbloods, was going to be the next large project Sanderson tackles for a minute. Now he's let fans know that he's officially begun work on it in his first weekly update video of 2025:
Brandon Sanderson will write all three Ghostbloods books before publishing any of them
Sanderson opens his video by talking about another project he's been working on in these first few weeks of the year, "Moment Zero," which is a new novella that's being included in his non-Cosmere anthology coming out in late 2025, Tailored Realities. Sanderson says he's just about finished with his revision of "Moment Zero," but since he's a couple of months early on his deadline for it, he's taking the time to get it just right before handing it off to his editor at his company Dragonsteel.
"In the meantime though, I have started on Ghostbloods," he continued. "We're at 10% of the way through my pre-writing for the Ghostbloods series."
Pre-writing, if you're wondering, includes stuff like outlining and figuring out the major plot beats and character arcs. Sanderson said he anticipated spending most of the month of January working on that sort of stuff, which will be important since he's planning to write all three books of the trilogy in quick succession.
"This is Era Three of Mistborn, I'm very excited for this. I'm going to write all three books completely before I release any of them, so this is our major project over like, the next three years," he explained, promising a lot of Ghostbloods updates ahead. "The only other thing that I'm planning to write between those books is going to be the Horneater novella, about Rock [from The Stormlight Archive]."
Sanderson is going back to his roots with Ghostbloods
Mistborn is interesting as Sanderson's series go. Published between 2006-2008, the original trilogy was a post-apocalyptic epic fantasy set on a world plagued by invasive mists and ashfalls which was ruled by a nigh-immortal being known as the Lord Ruler. Sanderson wrote all three books of that trilogy before the first was released, so he's going back to his Mistborn roots here.
The second "era" of Mistborn is set 300 years after the first, when the fantasy world of Scadrial is moving into its industrial revolution. Think wild west steampunk, and you have a good idea of the sort of tone of those books, known as the Wax & Wayne series after their duo of lawmen protagonists. There were four books in Era Two, published between 2011-2022. Sanderson didn't get to write those books concurrently like Mistborn Era One, and the time between books stretched as a result, since he had other series to work on as well, like The Stormlight Archive.
That problem will be avoided with Ghostbloods thanks to the way Sanderson is approaching this trilogy. But it does mean we'll be waiting a little while before we get to read it. "We plan to release Ghostbloods 1 for Nexus 2028, I believe," he said, referring to the convention that Dragonsteel runs every year in Utah. Best mark your calendar and start planning for it now.
There were a few other updates in this video worth mentioning. Sanderson's co-writer on his Skyward Young Adult sci-fi books, Janci Patterson, is deep into work on a sequel series. Sanderson's publicity team will be recording a new series of video lectures this year, capturing the author's course on fiction publishing which he runs at Brigham Young University (videos of previous courses Sanderson taught already exist online, and they're extremely popular with writers). And last but not least, some of the merch from Dragonsteel Nexus 2024 is now online for general sale.
Even when Brandon Sanderson is giving small updates, they're long enough to write a bulleted list out of. We'll be tracking his progress on Ghostbloods throughout the year, so stay tuned for more.
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