Here's my schedule as Writer Guest of Honor of this weekend's BayCon. There's not a signing on the schedule, which means that I'll sign books whenever you catch me somewhere at the con, unless I'm running to get somewhere else.

I'm also doing a Magic: The Gathering draft, probably Avacyn Restored or something in the Innistrad block, Saturday night. See below for details.

The most recent Writing Excuses podcast episode starts a new "Project in Depth" series where Mary, Howard, Dan, and I take a project that one of us has completed and grill the creator about it. These episodes necessarily contain spoilers. The first one covers Howard's Hugo-nominated Schlock Mercenary volume Force Multiplication. In future episodes (not all in a row) we'll do THE WAY OF KINGS, GLAMOUR IN GLASS, and THE HOLLOW CITY. Check the first one out here.

This week's ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS annotation covers the Alivened attack. Those are the big monsters made from bad romance novels.

Today I'm highlighting two pieces of fan mail I received recently, the first related to ALCATRAZ and second to ELANTRIS.

Here's the first one, from the dinosaurs.

There's a new ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS annotation up. This one talks about chapter thirteen, when Alcatraz breaks out of the Librarians' holding cell.

This week's Writing Excuses episode is another one that was recorded at Life, the Universe & Everything in front of a live audience. It's about writing carthartic horror and features Michael R. Collings and Michaelbrent Collings.

Richard Allred sent me a recording of a Mistborn Adventure Game session that he did at Epic Puzzles & Games at the end of March. It's almost three hours long, but if you're curious about the gameplay, you might want to give some of it a listen.

That leads me to today's big announcement. You know that I play Magic: the Gathering with readers a lot, but have you ever wanted to play an RPG with me? At Gen Con in August, Crafty Games will host a special session of the Mistborn Adventure Game with me as a player. This is going to be a five-hour session, and six seats will be raffled off at the Crafty Games booth during the con. For more details, see the Crafty Games site. You can also find out more about the Mistborn Adventure Game there.

Scott Ashton has uploaded another of my creative writing class lectures. This one covers plotting, with a short introduction by my former student Peggy Eddleman talking about her experience getting a publishing deal. Her novel THROUGH THE BOMB'S BREATH will be published by Random House next year. (Part 3 of the video is currently not working, but I assume Scott will fix that soon.)

The most recent ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS annotation covers the chapter where Alcatraz gets tortured. Check it out.

This week's Writing Excuses podcast episode features Q&A with James Dashner at Life, the Universe & Everything. We cover the following audience-supplied questions:

Right now I'm in Las Vegas for this year's edition of the Superstars Writing Seminar where I'm an instructor. I posted about this several times over the last few months, so I hope it's not a surprise to anyone!

Hal-Con in Halifax, Nova Scotia has been added to my events calendar for October this year. I'm looking forward to meeting lots of Canadian readers! That should be my final convention for 2012, and then will come the book tour in January, which is in the planning stages. For my current schedule as it stands, see the previous link.

The most recent Writing Excuses podcast episode is another one that was recorded in front of a live audience at Life, the Universe & Everything. It features James A. Owen talking with Dan, Mary, Howard, and me about discovering your voice.

This week's ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS annotation covers one of my favorite chapters, number eleven. It's the one where Alcatraz talks about how authors like to torture people. But that's not what makes it one of my favorites.

Also, in case anyone missed it last week when I mentioned it on Twitter and Facebook, Tor.com has put up the excerpt of the prologue to A MEMORY OF LIGHT that Harriet read recently at JordanCon. As for the rest of the book, we are still hard at work on revisions.

My former student Scott Ashton posted another of my class lectures. This one is about characterization. There's also an email group for people who want to recreate the entire class experience online.

Hey, all! This weekend is the Avacyn Restored prerelease, and as with the previous two sets, Dan and I are going to head up to Epic Puzzles & Games for their midnight release party. We're hoping you are all interested in playing with us again, because as long as we have a small crowd, Epic will rent us our own room to play in again.

We won't be participating in the Helvault promotion, as that is a closed thing that only a certain number of people can join. (And I'm sure it's full already.) As is normal for us, we're kind of deciding this at the last minute. But it will still be fun. We'll probably do a kind of two-headed giant format as we did last time, so feel free to bring a friend! We'll have our own tournament, with prizes. And, like last time, if you beat Dan and me you will be able to steal cards out of our decks. Sweet, eh?

Details are below. If you want to be guaranteed a spot, please call Epic Puzzles & Games and sign up, leaving your phone number. This will also let us know how many people we're going to have ahead of time. (We'll want at least sixteen, which is about what we've been getting at these things.) Also, note that it will probably be one of your last chances to see Dan before he moves away to Germany for a year.

Day: The night of Friday the 27th of April
Time: Midnight (so technically this starts on Saturday the 28th)
What: 18-person sealed deck two-headed giant tournament, with special games against Brandon and Dan
Where: Epic Puzzles & Games
3612 W 4700 S #4
Salt Lake City, UT 84820
How: Preregister by calling this number: (801) 982-0167

Just a quick note that my good friend and Writing Excuses cohost Mary Robinette Kowal will be appearing tonight in Salt Lake at Weller Book Works. This is Sam Weller's new store in Trolley Square, where there's actually parking unlike at their old location. Go see her and get your copy of GLAMOUR AND GLASS signed!

Location: Weller Book Works
607 Trolley Square
Salt Lake City, UT
801.328.2586
Reading, Signing, & Shadow Puppet Show
7:00 p.m. April 25, 2012

I arrived home from Australia yesterday to find that yet another surprise home makeover had taken place. (The previous one was after my New York Comic-Con trip.)

In this week's Writing Excuses podcast episode, Larry Correia joins Mary, Howard, Dan, and me in front of a live audience at Life, the Universe & Everything to talk about guns in fiction. If you don't know much about guns and want to use them in your writing, give it a listen.

While I was in Australia, I did an interview for ABC Radio. You can find it here. My assistant has also uploaded a new Twitter posts archive.

The most recent ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS annotation covers chapter ten, where I torture the reader some more by interrupting cliffhangers.

One of my students has started releasing my creative writing class lectures from this year online. Eventually you'll be able to find them all on this page.

Supanova Gold Coast 2012

Date: April 20–22, 2012
Address: Gold Coast Convention & Exhibition Centre
2684 Gold Coast Highway
Broadbeach
QLD 4218, Australia

FRIDAY
6:00 p.m.: Opening Ceremony

SATURDAY
10:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.: Signing at Dymocks booth #67
1:50–2:35 p.m.: Panel in Filmink Features room B
3:10–5:30 p.m.: Signing at Dymocks booth #67

SUNDAY
11:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m.: Signing at Dymocks booth #67
1:30–2:15 p.m.: Panel in Filmink Features room B
2:50–5:30 p.m.: Signing at Dymocks booth #67

The official schedule lists my panel topics as "Wheel of Time" on Saturday and "Warbreaker!" on Sunday. Since I'm the only one on each panel, I will probably switch things up and do a reading, Q&A, or something else. See you there!

Note that JordanCon in Atlanta is also this weekend, and I'm unfortunately not attending due to being on the wrong continent. But I'm sending my assistant Peter in my place, and all of Team Jordan will be there, as well as Author Guest of Honor Mary Robinette Kowal and Artist Guest of Honor Sam Weber, among other luminaries. You can see their schedules here.

And a reminder that I will be in Las Vegas for the Superstars Writing Seminar on April 30th through May 2nd. You can see all of my upcoming events on my events page.

This week's Writing Excuses continues our discussion of Mary Robinette Kowal's outline of a middle-grade novel she planned back in 2003. At twenty-five minutes it's a lot longer than our typical episode, but if you're wondering about outlining, a listen will be worth your while.

My assistant has put up another of my annotations for ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE EVIL LIBRARIANS. This one covers chapter nine, when the talking dinosaurs show up.

He also put up another Twitter posts collection. If you're in Sydney and aren't following me on Twitter or Facebook, you missed my announcement about a Tuesday night Magic draft at my hotel. Should be fun.

A reminder that I'll be signing in Sydney on Wednesday night. Details are below. I'll also be in Gold Coast for Supanova this weekend; I'll post my schedule later this week.