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I’ll be honest, Brandon Sanderson is something of a hero to me.

Years ago, maybe around 2004, I picked up a book in the Carlisle Book Shop in Omagh (may it rest in peace) called “Eye of the World” – Book 1 from the Wheel of Time series. I was astounded at the size of the series. The shop had maybe 5 or 6 of the books and they all were chonkers at a minimum of 600 pages, usually more like 800.

At that point I’d read a good bit of introductory fantasy (Harry Potter / His Dark Materials / Darren Shan etc.) and loved them, so I remember thinking maybe it would be worth reading one of these ‘grown up’ fantasy series’.

As it turns out, and as many of my friends will shake their heads in despair at how often I’ve tortured them with talking about it, The Wheel of Time turned out to be my favourite book series. (Incidentally one that is now being adopted by Amazon Prime to be a TV series, featuring Roseamund Pike as one of the main characters.)

It may surprise you to note that the guy I started this blog about(man, these things really do get away from me) didn’t write the Wheel of Time. A guy called Robert Jordan did that. But Brandon Sanderson finished them, when the original author sadly passed away before he’d completed the series.

Brandon, using the notes left behind by RJ, wrote books 12 -14 in the series and by all accounts – including my own – did an incredible job.

He has since gone on to write around 21 books (I’m not sure of the exact number as there are few novellas and some really big books of his that are counted as one despite usually being published in two parts). This is in the span of about 15 years, which is frankly, an unbelievable output.

In addition he has written audiobooks, created an amazing website (which I’m one day hoping to make my own a bit more like), uploaded for free his creative writing courses which he lectures in, got married, had 3 kids, travelled the world doing book signings, kept up his faith, done reviews of loads of video games and books which I’ve yet to get through and created a vibrant and responsive community of followers through his interactions on social media and reddit that resulted in one of the most successful Kickstarter campaign EVER.

So yeah, he’s a pretty cool guy. I didn’t even mention there, but his books are some of my favourites – so he’s an incredible writer too.

What I one day hope to master though is his approach to writing. He doesn’t make any secret of how he keeps his output so high – it’s consistency. The key to succeeding at almost everything. He’s just a shining example of how it works. So that’s what this website is to me at the minute. A challenge to be consistent and to continue to write.

Thanks for reading!

PS – Thanks to my dear chum Dee for his suggestion (a surprisingly tricky one I found) this week. The prompt / first line was “He’s trying to reconcile what he should have done with what he’s just done.“ Enjoy!