The Class that Made It Big Brandon Sanderson Leading Edge Success Stories 35, M 8 December 2011 Former Editor Chen’s Noodle Shop, Orem, UT Future Professor Dan Wells Peter Ahlstrom Karen Ahlstrom 34, M 35, M 34, F Former Editor Former Editor First LE Webmaster Stranger Stranger Stranger Personal Data: Brandon Sanderson is the bestselling author of the Mistborn series, and is finishing Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time epic. He also teaches Engl 318R (How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy) at BYU every winter semester. Dan Wells is the bestselling author of the I Am Not a Serial Killer trilogy. Peter Ahlstrom is Brandon’s personal assistant, and Karen is Peter’s wife. All four of them worked on Leading Edge at the same time. Special thanks to Emily Sanderson, Brandon’s wife, who watched the Ahlstrom daughters so that both Karen and Peter could attend this interview. Social Data: The trick to getting people to do things for you in the real world is to take them out to lunch. We met together at Chen’s Noodle House, a Chinese restaurant in Orem, UT (the place was Dan Wells’ idea). There is an authentic Chinese theme in the restaurant, right down to statues, chopsticks, and Chinese ambiance music. There were other customers in the restaurant at the time (though not too many), as well as wait staff &c. Cultural Data: “TLE” is this generation’s acronym for The Leading Edge, as it was called at that time. Quark Xpress is an older design layout program that has since been replaced in the university curriculum by Adobe InDesign. Penguin is a large, well-known publishing house. Starcraft is a popular science-fiction-themed real-time strategy game that you can play online against your friends. Connecting several computers together to play such a game via a Local Area Network is called a LAN party. Asperger’s Syndrome is a mild form of autism that only affects an individual’s social interaction skills. For more details, consult a medical dictionary. Insight is the student journal of BYU’s Honors Program; Inscape is the literary journal of BYU’s English Department. Cheers is a sitcom (I’ve never seen it). The Violent Femmes are an American alternative rock band; “Blister in the Sun” is one of their songs. An “info dump” is a term used to describe the practice of certain novice authors telling you, either directly or indirectly, the history, culture, technology, or magic system in great detail all at once. They are usually very boring and a horrible way to begin a story. Editors hate them. Sherlock Holmes is the most famous 19th-century British detective in literature. The Nebula awards are annual awards given to science fiction stories. The Chesley Award is given annualy to the best cover illustrations in science fiction at the World Convention of Science Fiction (WorldCon). Temples are the most sacred structures in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the temple in Nauvoo, IL, has special historical significance for the church. Rebuilding the historic structure was a big deal at the time (1999–2002). Warhammer is a strategy game played with little miniature models (called minis) that have to be constructed and painted by hand. As such, each player can build an army with a unique color scheme if he chooses. It is an expensive and time-consuming hobby. Locus is a sci-fi/fantasy magazine that reviews the science fiction and fantasy published each year; getting exposure in it does a lot for one’s publicity. Star Wars: Episode I is subtitled The Phantom Menace. The first release of the Star Wars prequels was a big day in nerddom, resulting in long lines of dressed-up fans waiting for the midnight showing of the picture. Christopher Paolini is the author of the Eragon series, and first became published when he was still a teenager. A “pub” is a British term for a bar, where alcoholic beverages are served. Of course, Mormons don’t drink alcohol. Diablo II was a much-anticipated PC video game in which the protagonist tries to kill the devil. Wizards of the Coast is a Seattle-based company that makes board games and card games. You can see the influence of their Magic: The Gathering in Dan Wells’s Leading Edge card game. A “forum” is a name for an online message board of a website. Moshe is Brandon’s editor at Tor, the biggest speculative fiction publisher in America. Orson Scott Card is the quintessential Mormon author of science fiction and fantasy; Tracy Hickman also publishes in these genres, though is not quite as well-known. Harry Potter, by J. K. Rowling, is possibly the best-known and best-selling fantasy series of the early 21st Century. Jimmer Fredette was the star of BYU’s 2010 to 2011 basketball season; he has since gone on to play in the NBA. Mistborn was Brandon Sanderson’s first really successful fantasy novel. Michael Crichton wrote Jurassic Park, and many other thrillers with a science fiction flavor. Item: The interview was recorded on my laptop (I spent a lot of my time turning the machine towards the person who was speaking) and later transcribed, omitting filler words and sounds. Peter: So I did go one day in 1994. Brandon: That’s what I was referencing. Peter: I think it was February of 94. I took a “college day.” At my high school we could take college days. We could take three days off of school and go visit a college if you were a junior or senior. I was a junior, and those were actually the only three days I missed the entire year. The only year I ever had perfect attendance. [laughter from all] And since it was college days it didn’t count as being absent. But they were doing LTUE; I mean my sister was out here, and she was at TLE, so I was like, “Oh, I want to see this place.” Brandon: How was it different then? Peter: Leading Edge, as far as the meeting that I went to, was the same. I’m not sure about how much they were talking around the table, but they were sitting around the table reading slush. Dan: You didn’t have the “too many loud people” problem? How many staff members did we lose to Brandon: Me, Alan, and Eric Dan: And Eric Ehlers. Peter: Well, the thing is, Karen can probably –you were there for the issue that took a whole year, right? Karen: I guess. I wasn’t as much on the staffing side. I was the fiction director, so paying attention to who’s reading slush and what needs to get read, and what needs to get sent back, and stuff like that. Peter: But wasn’t it when Vanessa was in charge that she was strictly enforcing the rule of “no talking around the table,” and that people just stopped coming because it wasn’t fun enough. Karen: I don’t remember that. There are large gaps in my memory. I was clinically depressed at the time, and times when I’m depressed, half of my life is gone from memory. It just doesn’t exist anymore. I went once before I started really going. Doug, my brother, went on his mission the year that I came to BYU, and he told me that I should go to The Leading Edge and that I should say that Doug sent me. So I went, and everybody said, “Hi,” and “OK, you’ve got a cool brother. OK.” And I was like, “OK. See ya! He says ‘hi’!” And so I didn’t really go back until he came back from his mission and I started going with him. Dan: I got there after my mission, which would’ve been beginning of the school year of ’98. Like August of ’98. I was dating a girl before my mission whose parents were both English teachers at BYU, so we were long broken up, but I was still good friends with her mom, so I came back, and she’s like, “You should totally go do this thing!” And so my roommate and I, Ben, went like the first or second week of the semester and we were there forever. And I think all three of them [Brandon, Peter, and Karen] were already there when I got there. Brandon: I can’t remember how I found out about it. I just came in one day and Vanessa was editor, so you [Peter] would’ve already been there, probably. But I was immediately, for whatever reason, made a production lackey. I guess they had a hole. And so, in the old Leading Edge, production was in the basement. I don’t know how it is in this new fancy place you guys have, but production was in the basement; everyone sat around a table upstairs. It was an old house. Dan: I miss that house. That house was sad. Brandon: Yeah. So I got moved downstairs to be production, and learned Quark Xpress and things like that from Jeremy Caballero. And didn’t get to know a lot of people upstairs because I was down there. Dan: I actually didn’t know you very well until we were in the writing class together, and didn’t even know that you were a writer until you showed up at the writing class, and I’m like, “What’s the production guy doing in the writing class? I thought he was a production guy.” Brandon: Yep.