Writing Lessons from a Puppeteer and Final Alcatraz 3 Sample Chapter

Today over at Writing Excuses we posted our first podcast episode recorded at this year's Worldcon in Montreal, where we were joined by special guest Mary Robinette Kowal, last year's John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer winner and this year's Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America secretary. She's also been a professional puppeteer for two decades, and in this episode Mary expounds upon the four principles of puppetry and how they apply to writing. Completely because of her, it's one of our best episodes ever. Give it a listen.

ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE KNIGHTS OF CRYSTALLIA is coming out any day now (the previous books have consistently showed up weeks before the announced date), and I've put up the second and final sample chapter today. Also available are the foreword and chapter one, as well as sample chapters from book one for those who haven't read the first two books. If you're planning on buying it, it's a good idea to preorder a copy at your local bookstore to show them that there are people who want this book. So far, they haven't been quite as convinced as they should be.

In the most recent MISTBORN 3 annotations I discuss who Spook sees in the burning building and a little more about the kandra. Especially the first one is an extremely spoilerific annotation that will ruin a big surprise if you haven't read THE HERO OF AGES, so as always, read the book first before checking the annotations!