Nethermore

Occassionally I go with Brandon to booksignings in order to sign the Mistborn maps and just generally help out by cornering readers and asking them if they like fantasy books. I have a great time each time I go. I used to work in a book store, and I loved recommending books to people, so the signings both feed my desire to share cool books with people and also motivate me in my own writing. After all, someday I’d like to be signing Nethermore for people.

Brandon posted this picture to his blog yesterday, so I thought I’d pass it on by posting it here. This was the Mistborn booksigning in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Three television stations dropped by to interview us, and we just had a lot of fun in general, especially when people I knew from home dropped by to say hi and get their books signed.

I just have to say, Brandon’s a stellar guy to let me tag along at these things.

My friend Brandon Sanderson linked me on Friday through his “Annotations” section of the website. Whenever one of his books is released, he puts up a section that acts as the “Special Features” to the book, kind of like the sorts of things you would find on the special edition of a DVD. With the release of Mistborn: the Final Empire, he’s just barely started posting these annotations.

He says some nice things about the maps. And check out his website . . . it’s one of the better author websites that I’ve seen. I mean, how many authors give behind-the-scenes looks at their books?

As always, the maps are posted for you to view in my Mistborn Gallery #1. (There will be more to come, especially as I finish up the artwork and maps for book 2.)

Tolkien, Lewis, and fellow writers were the Inklings.

My writing group is the Mistborn Llamas, based on the writings of Brandon Sanderson and Albert M. Packard.

Shawn Boyles over at Spike the Surf Dog, has posted his wonderful design for the Mistborn Llamas T-shirt that the writing group will be printing up in time for WorldCon in LA this year.

My friend TAB left a great comment under yesterday’s post.

I just got my copy of Mistborn today, and I have to compliment you on your maps, especially the world map: it’s kind of small, but it isn’t square. I think this is the first non-square map I’ve ever seen in a fantasy book. I like the three-dimensional globe curve.

The city map is good, too. It looks big and confusing, like a large city should be. I want to ask if there is any significance to the major gates being named for metals. If not, I’ll just have to assume that Sanderson was running out of metals when he named “Pewter Gate.”

Rather than answer this comment with a comment, I decided to make a post about it.

I do agree with that the world map is a little small. I plan on fixing in Book 2, Mistborn: Well of Ascension, which is tentatively scheduled for a release early next year.

I’m not sure what’s wrong with the name “Pewter Gate,” unless you’re implying that the gate is made out of pewter, which isn’t a great metal from which to build something if you’re looking for structural soundness.

There’s no significance (that I know of) for the names of the metals applied to the gates. I don’t think the gates themselves are made of the particular metal that they’re named after either. In the Mistborn world there are eight Allomantic metals, and as there happen to be eight gates in Luthadel, each gate received the name of a metal, going in order of the metals clockwise from the west.

The first eight symbols of the metals shown in the glossary (and in the front of every chapter, except the prologue and the epilogue) correspond to the directions that are on the compass on the Luthadel map. (For example, Tin is the symbol for North.)

There’s plenty of symbolism in the maps and chapter icons. So if anyone has any questions, send them my way! Thanks for the comment, TAB!