“People say science fiction looks to the future, fantasy looks at the past. Fantasy is wonderful to me in that it can take you to a fantastical new place, show you lots of amazing things, but also can talk about what’s going on in our lives right now,” he says. “I’d always wanted The Way of Kings to be my calling card to the fantasy genre. Tor was also interested in The Way of Kings, but Sanderson, in an unusual move, decided “something wasn’t quite right” and pulled it. In 2003, a publisher, Tor, finally showed interest in one of his novels: Elantris, an epic fantasy set in a former city of the gods, now devoid of magic. In 2002, he finished writing The Way of Kings. If he died with 100 unpublished novels in his closet, he would be “a bigger success than if I give up now because I’m discouraged”. Photograph: © Michael WhelanĪfter so many rejections and some soul-searching, he decided to keep at it.

His attempts to write grittier books were terrible, he says, so he became “kind of depressed”.Īn illustration by Michael Whelan from the anniversary edition of The Way of The Kings. But publishers kept telling him that his epic fantasies were too long, that he should try being darker or “more like George RR Martin” (it was the late 90s, and A Song of Ice and Fire was topping bestseller charts). The books were written over a decade while Sanderson was working as a night clerk at a hotel – a job chosen specifically because as long as he stayed awake, his bosses didn’t mind if he wrote between midnight and 5am. Most writers have novels that never see the light of day. All this for a book that was just one of 13 Sanderson wrote before he’d even landed a publishing deal. With 15 days still to go, he’s raised more than $5.6m. In less than 10 minutes, it became the most-funded publishing project of all time when it topped $1m. The fantasy author initially set out to raise $250,000 (£198,500) to release a 10th anniversary, leather-bound edition of his doorstopper novel, The Way of Kings. W atching the numbers tick up on Brandon Sanderson’s Kickstarter is a remarkable way to pass the time.

List of brandon sanderson books