When Fans Become the Book Tour’s Support Crew

Earlier this month, GalleyCat editor Jason Boog did a Morning Media Menu segment with Brandon Sanderson, the fantasy author tapped to complete Robert Jordan‘s The Wheel of TIme series after the latter’s death two years ago. We’re just a week away from the publication of The Gathering Storm (the twelfth book in the series, and the first of the final three) now, and Tor Books is doing everything it can to rally the fan base—they’ve even gone so far as to handpick a crew of “Storm Leaders” who will lead “community outreach” in each of the cities on Sanderson’s tour, including online promotion and coverage of the events. (According to the webmaster at the Dragonmount fansite, applicants outnumbered the available team positions by 5 to 1.)

Among those selected, clockwise from the top: Virginia O’Connor, posing with Sanderson at a signing last year; Jim Burnell, showing off his collection of Jordan’s Wheel of Time volumes; and Mary Morse, at an event with Jordan himself.

The 26-city tour begins next Tuesday with a midnight release party at Brigham Young University, where Sanderson graduated with a bachelor’s in English and a master’s in creative writing (and currently teaches a class in fantasy and science fiction writing). In the meantime, here’s a video clip with Jordan’s widow, Harriet McDougal, and Sanderson explaining how he got tapped to complete the Wheel‘s final turns…

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