First I will give a little background. The Wheel of Time (WoT) is a huge fantasy book series, and if you haven't at least heard of it, you should have. Read it. Anyway, the author, Robert Jordan (RJ), died in September of 2007, leaving the series unfinished. He completed a portion of the final part of the series, and his wife, according to his wishes selected an author to complete the work. This author is Brandon Sanderson, and the book he completed is called The Gathering Storm (TGS). There are two more books forthcoming (Towers of Midnight (ToM) and A Memory of Light (AMoL)), but that's not particularly relevant as far as the topic of this post goes.

I have been selected to be a Storm Leader for the TGS book tour at the Las Vegas signing. There were about 500 total applicants for the tour at large, and about 100 were selected, so that makes me a 1 in 5. My instruction manual says that I'm supposed to help out (on location and before for promotion), and share my experience (tell DragonMount, the largest online WoT community, how it went in as much detail as is possible). For performing these tasks, I get to hang out with Brandon and brag to my friends.*

I'm waaaaaay excited! Dudes! It will be awesome!

You all need to come to the signing. It's on Halloween at 2:00 PM, so it won't mess with your evening plans. Go to Vegas and have lunch, then go to the signing. Make it a (spooky!) date if you want to!

These events are super-fun. First, Brandon reads from the book. Then he signs the books. After that, he answers questions. When you're getting your books signed, you can talk to Brandon as long as you supply him with stuff to sign, so I'd advise you to bring as much stuff to be signed as possible.

This is a great opportunity to talk to an author that I feel will become a legend. He's a wizard when it comes to magic theory, and his novels are some of the most exciting and well-written fantasy novels released in EVER. Seriously. You'll also get the opportunity to score some minor swag ("bumper stickers, bookmarks, etc.") and hang out with some other WoT fans if you so choose. PLUS, as I mentioned earlier, IT'S HALLOWEEN! Dress to the nines and impress everyone!

If this signing stands out to Brandon and his entourage, I think that they will make it a bigger deal next year for the release of ToM. Vegas is a common stop for book tours, but it's usually a fairly minor one compared to the coastal big cities.

Event Details:

West Charleston Library
6301 W. Charleston Blvd.
Las Vegas, NV 89146
(702) 507-3940
Saturday, Oct 31st (Halloween!): 2:00 PM

*This paragraph is HIGHLY based on the second paragraph of the Storm Leader Handbook.