This is the eighth of our Storm Leader reports we’ll be posting throughout the U.S. book tour for THE GATHERING STORM. At each tour location, Dragonmount and Tor Books recruited a select group of volunteer fans to help run the event, hand out promotional materials, and represent us to the fans. In return, they were given the opportunity to meet with Brandon Sanderson and (if present for their event) Robert Jordan’s wife Harriet. We will have a full report with photos and possibly video for each one of the tour stops. Prior Storm Leader reports can be found here.

Report by Shannon Berndtson

Remember, remember the 5th of November! For those of us at The Gathering Storm signing at the Harvard Coop in Boston, MA we won’t forget any time soon. Even though it was a rainy and cold New England night, that didn’t stop the fans (and hopefully some soon to be new fans) from attending.

I arrived several hours early in order to beat rush hour traffic, so I decided to check out the bookstore. Yup, I am a regular Far Dareis Mai! Finding no lurking dangers, and everything to be in order, I decided to buy one of Brandon’s other books. I’d been meaning to read Warbreaker since it was released. Now I have no excuse not to.

Eventually I made my way over to The Charles Hotel which is home to Henrietta’s Table, the restaurant where my fellow Storm Leaders and myself were to eat dinner with Brandon at 5:30pm. Dinner, unfortunately, had to go incredibly fast as the Harvard Crimson had set up an interview with Brandon at 6:30pm. Poor Brandon didn’t even have time to eat his dessert! We ended up taking it to him so that he could eat it after the event (apple cobbler and ice cream if you’re curious). Dinner itself was great. The food was tasty, and the conversation was very interesting. Storm Leader Nora asked the first, and toughest, question. If Andoran family names are inherited maternally, why is Galad’s not Mantear? There seems to be no real clear answer on the topic. The best guess has to do with Galad choosing on his own to have Damodred as his last name. We also asked about how Robert Jordan kept track of all the character names. He apparently had a file with all the names along with an Excel file for the timeline. In The Gathering Storm, Brandon worked hard at catching people up timeline wise. He found that certain characters were behind others in time. In order to have them be at the same place temporally by the end of the series, there was a lot of catching up to do!

The Storm Leaders with Brandon. I particularly like the beam of light shining down on the author.

Other information that we gleaned from dinner included learning that Aviendha is the favorite out of the three in Rand’s “harem.” Hopefully we’ll get to see more of Pevara being awesome, but that could possibly appear in a novella on Brandon’s web page that will fill in some missing holes. But no promises! And one last interesting fact, in order to get the Illianer and Taraboner accents right, he wrote the book then went back and did a search for all the characters of those nations and then worked on their crazy accents.

Fans waiting in line.

Some people brought stacks with them to be signed

After dinner we trekked over to the Harvard Coop for the signing. Brandon introduced the book. He talked a bit about what the Wheel of Time series means to him, and how he became a writer in the first place. Did you know that he wrote 13 books before getting one of them published? Elantris was number six in that list, but he never gave up on his dream of being a writer. We also heard about how Harriet read Brandon’s eulogy for RJ and subsequent read of Mistborn. After two chapters, she was hooked and knew that he was the man to finish her husband’s series.

Video #1

I’m sorry about the video and sound being off. I don’t know how to fix it since it wasn’t taken with my camera. However here is Brandon introducing the book and giving a bit of background.

We heard more about the process of writing The Gathering Storm, and then the time came for us to hear Brandon read part of the first chapter. What a treat that was! It sent chills down my spine to hear such a wonderful passage read aloud. The crowd also seemed to really love it. Everyone clapped and cheered for the man who has taken over feeding our WoT addiction.

Video #2
This is Brandon reading chapter 1!

During the quick Q&A session several interesting questions were tossed Brandon’s way. One curious fan wanted to know what the other books Robert Jordan had planned after the main series was finished. There were going to be two prequels; one about Tam and one about Lan & Moiraine arriving at the Two Rivers. There were also going to be several outrigger novels. Brandon the fan doesn’t want to see the series go on and on, but now that he could be the one to write these books, he also doesn’t want it to turn into “the one ring” so to speak. He’d have to let it go eventually. However, the ultimate decision will be Harriet’s.

Brandon answers questions

A question was asked about Robert Jordan’s notes – particularly how they were left. We were told that Harriet has said that Jordan has left more in notes than in the series itself! Brandon then related a story about how he needed to know who was traveling with Perrin. He asked RJ’s assistants to look to see if there was a file with that info. A few days later he received an email titled “traveling with Perrin.” Unfortunately it listed every single person from the Two Rivers and their occupation who was travelling with Perrin. Some hadn’t even appeared in the books!

Some other info that we learned during the Q&A included finding out that the most rewarding part of writing GS for Brandon was working with Harriet. It took 18 months of 14 hour days (although that includes a chunk of Towers of Midnight) to finish the book. The Two Rivers and Andoran charcters were the easiest for him to write, while the Aiel and Seanchan were the hardest.

The crowd is hungry for answers!

Also, look for Way of Kings next year. It will be the start of Brandon’s own EPIC series!
The signing of books took about two(ish) hours, but Brandon handled it well even though things sometimes got chaotic and his voice was starting to go. We kept him fueled with hot chocolate though! Fans came up with more good questions as they came through the line. One fan gave Brandon a Magic: The Gathering deck. I offered to battle him as I had deck of my own on me, but we didn’t have time (or maybe he was just scared of my amazing skillz. That’s what I’ll choose to believe anyway).

I walk through the crowd asking trivia questions. The girl in the grey coat could recite Matt’s fate word for word!

Waiting patiently

Brandon seemed to connect really well with his fans, and they all seemed to love him! He especially seemed genuinely thrilled to meet aspiring writers. He always had words of encouragement for them. He told one girl “the world needs to hear your voice.” And even if the people waiting in line weren’t writers, he thanked them for being readers and for giving his books a chance!

Eventually we got to the last few fans and it was time for even the Storm Leaders to leave for the night. Brandon was left signing a few books for the store. I packed up my stuff and made my way back to Rhode Island. It was successful event, and we’re all thankful Brandon came to Boston!!

A fan gave Brandon a deck of Magic: The Gathering cards

Winners of the signed poster

Bella was one of the winners of the Eye of the World comics that we gave away

Thank you to The Harvard Coop to hosting the event, and thank you to my fellow Storm Leaders: Nora, Andrew, Peter, and Jared (I’m Shannon- also known as Eadon Sedai here on Dragonmount, by the way). And a HUGE THANK YOU to Brandon Sanderson!

To see more pictures from this event, please visit our Photobucket album here: http://s936.photobucket.com/albums/ad210/BostonSigning/
To read the Harvard Crimson’s article on Brandon Sanderson, visit this link: http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=529983