Shadows of Self, my new Mistborn novel coming out in October, now has an awesome cover by the ever-talented Chris McGrath. Tor.com has the full reveal.

I have more exciting news for the Reckoners series. Steelheart was nominated for the 2014-15 Georgia Peach Book Award for Teen Readers.

In this week’s Writing Excuses episode, Q&A on Character, we answer topical questions from our attendees at the 2014 Out of Excuses Workshop:

• How do you have a character grow in power and/or expertise without needing to ridiculously overpower the villains?
• How do you give a flawed character a growth arc without changing what originally made that character likable?
• When you have a 1st person POV, how do you convey the emotional complexity of the non-POV characters?
• How do you create an interesting an engaging story with a main character who is not the protagonist or hero of the story?
• Is there an easy way to tell when the plot is driving the character instead of the other way around?
• How do you write a character with egregiously offensive views without you, as the author, appearing to espouse or condone those views?
• How do you write a character who has a belief that is different from your own?
• What are some tips for writing a sympathetic antagonist?

Tor.com is continuing their reread posts for Words of Radiance. Last week, Carl Engle-Laird went on a small rant regarding the International Phonetic Alphabet and danced with beautiful con-women. This week, in Chapter 29, Alice Arneson gets in the unwholesome mind of our of favorite sleazeball, Sadeas.

My assistant Adam has updated the Twitter posts archive for February.