Book signing with Brandon

Friday we went up to the University of Washington bookstore again to see Brandon Sanderson and Dave Wolverton, who are doing a book signing tour together. Brandon is a friend of my brother Peter's. He's apparently one of those disgusting people who make aspiring writers green with envy, able to write thousands of words in a sitting. He's been writing unpublished fantasy novels for years, during which time Peter has been a frequent alpha reader and sometime editorial consultant, and he made the break into print a couple of years ago with Elantris. Brandon's particular gift is for long, complex fantasy novels with very detailed and original magic systems. He's also just come out with a YA book called Alcatraz Versus The Evil Librarians, which he describes as "a cross between Lemony Snicket and The Da Vinci Code." I bought a copy and got Brandon to sign it. I'm about halfway through now and enjoying it. It's quite goofy.

Brandon is currently in the middle of a trilogy called Mistborn which I have also been enjoying, though the second book ended with a most dreadful cliffhanger and now we have to wait a year to find out what happens. (Aaaagggghhhh!) Brandon has included Peter in the acknowledgments of all his books, and the first Mistborn book mentions a place called Ahlstrom square. In the second book he thanks "the incalculable Peter Ahlstrom." We spent a while trying to figure out if incalculable was a good thing. I told Peter he should make a T-shirt with "Incalculable" on it. He did, and wore it to a recent book signing in their area. Brandon told me he's going to have to make a point of coming up with unusual adjectives for Peter now. Ha. (Alcatraz also has an internal nod to Peter, in the form of a misspelled Pterodactyl.)

Brandon and Peter met on the staff of The Leading Edge magazine at BYU. This is also where Peter met his wife, Karen. Our friend Fen says that between The Leading Edge and Quark, the science fiction club, they have more inter-club marriages than any other organization at BYU. In fact Doug and I were also both on staff, but not at the same time.