I don’t know how this imposter made the last post, but this is the first I’ve heard of a break. This is also the first I’ve heard of a brother.
Reading through the comments, I see that a lot of you have been deceived by the talk of this “Sam” and his transparent lies. All I can tell you is that I’ve been working every day, trying as always to be the best cartographer I can be. A good rule of thumb is to remain skeptical on the Internet. You can usually see through the lies of people like Sam by remaining alert and looking for tiny, subtle details that a careful eye might catch. Stay vigilant! -Bill
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Hello Cradle fans, local neighborhood Seven-Fold Archmages, and blog post enthusiasts! My name is Sam, I’m Will’s less talented but slightly taller brother, and I’m here hijacking his blog to give you some news: Will is taking a break until the beginning of June.
Normally it would be the man himself writing this post like he did last time, but he was working on more important things, like getting you another novel ASAP, literally up until the minute his break started. We had to physically pull him away from his laptop. A pack of trained gibbons was heavily involved. We are in a very fortunate position to be able to give him an extended break like this every once in a while and for that, we have no one to thank but the fans. You have continued to bless my brother for a decade straight and as someone who cares deeply about his mental health and well-being, I am truly grateful. The last time Will took significant time off (see embedded link above) was because he was already past the point of being burnt out. He was hurting, both physically and emotionally, and it took a real toll on him. We learned our lesson that in order for him to keep pumping out two books a year while also taking on other projects, we needed to bake in a long break every couple of years to keep his creative juices flowing at a healthy level. I genuinely have no idea how Brandon Sanderson keeps going at the pace he does. Maybe his house is a Hyperbolic Time Chamber. Will published House of Blades, his first novel, almost eleven years ago. In the grand scheme of things, he’s relatively early in his writing career. We’re playing the long game here by trying to focus on how best to keep him at the top of his game for the next eleven years, then another eleven years after that, and so on and so forth until his cryogenically frozen head thaws out with an idea for a sequel to Traveler’s Gate. We truly believe that Will taking time off is best not only for him and our team, but for people who just want more books to read. A mentally healthy author is a good author, as the classic Shakespearean saying goes. Does this mean that his writing schedule is delayed? No! One of the fantastic things about planning his schedule several years in advance is that it allows us the opportunity to get ahead of the proverbial eight ball. We plan on having two book releases this year while moving our Cradle animation project forward, and still attending scheduled events like DragonCon in August. More Last Horizon is coming, and I’m happy to report that the most recent version of The Knight is very far along in the writing process. It also features a cameo of a certain fruit-related side character. Rejoice as loud as you comfortably can without bothering people. Will absolutely loves writing and creating stories for you, the best fan base on the planet. They say that if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. That is objectively false. I wish there was some way for all of us, regardless of job/circumstance, to take extended breaks away from our work routines. I wholeheartedly believe everyone would be healthier for it. But most of us are not in the position to be able to do that and keep a roof over our heads. We are very, very fortunate and not a day goes by where we don’t realize it and thank the Aether for readers like you giving us this opportunity. We are dedicated to continuing to pump out quality content on a regular basis and giving back in what ways we can. “Gratitude” simply doesn’t say enough. SO ON THAT NOTE, I’d like to take advantage of the opportunity to post whatever I want without Will’s input and share a little known fact about his childhood. And by “childhood,” I mean the day of his birth. Will’s heart stopped for about a minute the day he was born. Technically speaking, he died for a little bit and came back to life. Mom says it was a very stressful minute. Is this where his inspiration for the beginning of Lindon’s story came from? Who knows!? Maybe! Possibly! Definitely not. But it’s a fun thought! Now back to working behind-the-scenes to tarnish Will’s reputation while keeping up his streak of at least one blog post a month for the last ten years. Who knows what’ll happen next month? Maybe I’ll post a log of how many times he makes ramen every day. Spoiler alert: it’s a lot. -Sam It feels like this month was about a year long.
We've had some other great Kickstarters in the past, but they didn't involve me that much. Except for signing pages, which definitely involved me quite a lot. This time, we were getting reports back from the animation, talking to Lex+Otis, developing new pledges, scheming, strategizing, and sacrificing flamingoes for The Ritual. Busy campaign! Busy and very cool! One of the things that it's hard to communicate is how much growth and development has happened over here at Hidden Gnome during this Kickstarter campaign. We've learned a lot and developed assets and relationships that will help us in the future, and if we hadn't run a Kickstarter, we wouldn't have done those things. We'd be lost and alone, weeping in the dark like usual. And now, as this Kickstarter campaign comes to a close at 5 PM Eastern tonight, it's time for THE FINAL LINKS! First, the Kickstarter is still up! Check it out here! Second, I'm streaming tonight at about 4:30 so we can watch the Kickstarter close together! That will be here. And finally, the ebook collection of Cradle: Foundation (the first three Cradle books) is still free until midnight Pacific tonight! Pick that up right here. Once again, thank you all for reading and thanks for sticking with me for so long! -Will It’s nearly enough to bring a tear to my eye. Eventually, every baby lion gets pushed out of the nest and has to learn to fly on its own.
One of my best friends, Lorn Hillaker, has just released his first book on Amazon! It’s about pirates and dragons fighting over gold on a magical sea, because gold is what powers their magic. If that sounds cool to you, check it out! I’ve made some references to this over the years, but I have a group of close friends that go way back, to when the planet was nothing more than a crust of molten rock. There are nine of us, each of whom secretly rules over 1/9th of the Earth. We play games together pretty much all the time*, every year we all go on a trip, and every week we select one random stranger to cast through the infinite cosmos on a journey of self-discovery. Lorn is one of those friends, and in middle school, we actually both tied for first in a writing contest. It was for a history essay, and he won because he knew the history. I won because I pretended to know the history. He went on to get his PhD in History, and I went on to make up a bunch more stuff. Now he’s muscling in on my turf. During the pandemic, while he was trapped indoors, he called me and asked for my advice in learning to write a book. I told him if he actually followed through with it, I’d shout him out. Well, he did it! Way to go, Lorn! You made it! And now your book has been thrown to the lions. The flying lions. Good luck. -Will *I tend to abandon them for months at a time while writing books. Sorry, guys. Blame Devin. This blog is basically just an update on the animation Kickstarter progress, but I didn't have a clever title for that, so I decided to abuse the W key. It has displeased me.
First of all, a huge thanks to all of you who have already backed the Kickstarter! We have about two and a half weeks left, but many of our fans have already thrown fistfuls of bills at us through their computer screens, and I can't say "thank you" enough. No matter what we end up making, I'm excited to produce some visual content. It's a new medium for me, and I won't rest until I've written for every format that exists. TV, video games, tattoos that appear on your body while you sleep, TikTok. But I have to say, this has been a BUSY couple of weeks in the tent where I live. You've seen a lot of content from me in the last couple of weeks, but that's only the tip of the iceberg. We have a bunch of stuff in production that will be coming out over the rest of the Kickstarter. Like I promised a few weeks ago, you'll be sick of me by the end of this campaign. Sick of my posts, sick of my voice, sick of finding me in your kitchen junk drawer as I steal your random paper clips. And if you haven't seen a bunch of content from me over the last week, here's most of it. We put together this YouTube playlist to contain all of our animation Kickstarter videos, so I could share only this one link and not pepper you with fifteen of them. Thanks for sticking with me, everybody! Talk to you again soon. From the inside of your dreams, where I'm trapped. -Will |
The Knight Progress:
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December 2023
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