Since you established that all the worlds you created in your books are linked, any chance to see in the (very) distant future a book/series that delves into this overarching story/universe/rules more directly?
I’m thinking of something with a crossover of characters from your different stories, specifically characters that became “immortal” or at least achieve a “different” state: Sazed, Kelsier, Raoden. Is that something you would even be interested in doing?
Or will you stick to placing subtle hints in your different books/series about the overall system?
VERY distant future is correct. I will confirm that I do have stories planned that delve into what is going on behind the scenes. There will be short stories dealing with Hoid, most likely available as ebooks.
Some of these stories are novel length, and I can’t say what I’ll do with them. Perhaps I’ll write them out in novel form and release them in bookstores, but I have a feeling that most of my readers would be completely confused by them. So perhaps these will just ebook or limited edition only.
The subtle hints will continue until then. Mostly, I want the stories to be enjoyable and self-contained. I don’t want anyone to HAVE to know any of the behind the scenes, regarding Hoid, Adonalsium, and the rest. (Yes, there is more.) Those are there for the readers who want to dig, and who want to see the greater story. But I don’t want them to overshadow the stories of the books themselves. At least not yet.
The Stormlight Archive will not be about the story behind the story, though someday I will write a book series about that. There are basically two large epics in the greater sequence of books I’m writing, and the Stormlight Archive is one of them. There is another one, and both of the large epics will have certain amounts of influence from Hoid. Other books will be written that will not have nearly as much influence. But I’ll go ahead and say that Hoid’s origin story is not in the Stormlight Archive. That’s not what this series is about.