Hey, everyone! Brandon with our Weekly Update.

All right. We are inching toward the ¾ mark with Stormlight 5. We are at, Bing! 73%. That means next week, almost assuredly, we will be at 75%. So, we need a special graphic for that, Taylor, that just like, a little confetti explosion when we get there. So, look forward to that. I am still writing for a couple of days, and then I’ll be going to revisions. So, probably we’ll announce that next week, would be my expectation and then there’ll be two weeks of no progress.

But Skyward Legacy is, Bing! Still at 34%.

So, apparently, I’m told, I was a little unclear last week about how you get signed editions of defiant. So, let me go down. They’ve given me very clear instructions this time. Defiant bundle is available to preorder. All right? This includes the book and some cool items, one of which I came up with and I’m super excited that we are doing. I can’t announce what those are yet, right? Oh, it’s on the shelf behind me? Oh, it is! So, we have a Hesho plushie as part of that, if you’ve been reading the Skyward series. Let me—yeah, go ahead and grab that for me. And so, we’ve got our Hesho plushie. He is so cute. We’ve got (laughing) I didn’t know if we could announce this. So, these are our things. They tell me that kids love lunch boxes these days. Who knew? But if you do the Defiant bundle, you will get the Slug Squad lunch box. You will open it up, and it will have your Hesho plushie inside, along with a pin, which is Hesho’s mask. So, it’s super, super awesome, and I really like this. And this is available as a bundle with a signed copy of the book, which will also be numbered. Right? So, if you buy it from us, the bundle can be shipped directly to you. You buy it through our store. You get the book, and you get the cool swag, and the book will be signed and numbered. If you want to pick up your bundle at the convention with a valid badge, you order through our convention website, and the links to all this will be below. That you can pick up in person and don’t need to get shipped to you. We will have bundles for sale at the Dragonsteel booth at the convention. So, Barnes & Noble and everybody else, they will have Defiant for sale individually. It won’t be signed. But it’s everywhere you expect to find a book. OK? So that is how it’s going. I’ve gotten a thumbs up from Kellyn. Looks like I’ve made it clear this time. That’s how you get your signed and numbered editions, and you also get your book bundle. We’re just going to put Hesho hanging out right here. So, there we go. Our little fox gerbil.

Barnes & Noble has a preorder sale. This is probably US only, being Barnes & Noble. This is September 6 through 8. It’ll be 25% off for Defiant if you preorder on those days. So, if you want a cheaper version of the book, that’s how you do it.

Regarding adaptations of my books. Here at Dragonsteel, we support the writers’ strike and wish them the best and are in their corner, and are happy that they are, you know, pushing to get the money that they need to survive on. Things have been really rough in the streaming world for them. People have been asking, you know, they were expecting some announcements from me for adaptations of my books, and they’re wondering if the strikes have delayed that. A little bit, but that’s not the main reason that you haven’t heard any updates on adaptations. More things are just pretty chaotic in Hollywood right now. Things that everyone expected to do well in the theaters have not been doing well. Things that people expected to do well on streaming have not necessarily been doing as well in streaming. They’re still figuring out how their business model works in the post-COVID and post-streaming wars era, and that’s caused a lot of uncertainty, and that’s why you haven’t heard anything. People like to start talking. I’ve noticed a lot of people saying, “Oh, he’s going to do a big announcement at Dragonsteel.” Do not expect a big announcement at Dragonsteel. That’s just me managing your expectations. I really thought we would have an announcement this year. I was wrong. I don’t expect an announcement this year. Just things in Hollywood—Hollywood does its own things. They’re going their own way. And we’ll give them the time to sort out their stuff. I do think it’s inevitable that we will have some adaptations, but probably no announcements this year. I know that’ll be very disappointing to some of you. But I continue to work and try and navigate that world as best that I can.

But on to happier things. I’m going to do a livestream with Joe Abercrombie on Daniel Green’s YouTube channel. That’s Thursday, September 7, at 1 o’clock. So, if you want to see me and Joe chat about things, Joe is fantastic. He is extremely entertaining and he’s a very, very good writer. And so, look forward to seeing us both there. That’s Mountain Daylight Time 1 o’clock.

Our own livestream on this channel will be that same day, September 7, but ours will be at 6:00 Mountain Daylight Time. Link below to ask your questions. We have a Reddit thread for that. We will do, as part of that, some spoilers at the end for Frugal Wizard. So, we’ll probably be doing an hour of nonspoiler, and then we’ll add a little bit of time on. We’re not going to go the full two hours because, you know, we have a livestream earlier with Daniel and Joe. So, we’ll go a little bit longer than an hour. But probably expect maybe 15 to 20 minutes of spoiler questions for there. So, if you have burning spoiler questions for Secret Project 2, then we’ll talk about that then.

Last thing is to announce our podcast Week 12 winners. So, this is Week 12. This is the last of our pushing into the Final Four bracket. We have our food heist, The Great Maple Syrup Heist, Dan’s favorite of the food heists, well, the one that made him a food heist afficionado, has severely trounced Pure Illegal Butter Guarantee, 76% to 24%. So not very surprised there. That’s not an upset. That’s how we expected it to go. And in bad stories it was a little bit closer, not terribly a lot closer but a little bit closer. Vikings Versus Cthulhu at 63% had defeated Freefall Burrito World. Which Freefall Burrito World, you did better than I expected you to. Vikings Versus Cthulhu, that’s a t-shirt in the making, so I’m not surprised to see that. And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, come watch Intentionally Blank with us every Wednesday.

All right. I’ll be back next week, theoretically, with the big announcement that we are ¾ of the way through Stormlight 5. So, I will see you there.