‘It’s got everything you want, plus dragons’: Brandon Sanderson on the joy of writing fantasy | Books | The Guardian

It's 1pm in American Fork, Utah, and the author of one of the biggest books of the year - in physical size and sales potential - is in his bedroom, having just woken up. This, it turns out, is typical. "I usually write until about 4am, then get up around noon," Brandon Sanderson tells me over video call, leaning forward in a large chair.

The Nebraska-born author has been writing through the night ever since he was a student some 25 years ago, when he spent his graveyard shifts at a hotel drafting a succession of unpublished novels. In 2005, his debut, Elantris (about religious extremists and a cursed city) was published to acclaim. His hugely successful Mistborn series (metal-fuelled wizards battle an immortal tyrant - then deal with the consequences) began a year later. But the Stormlight Archive, a saga that sits somewhere between Final Fantasy and Ragnarok with a sprinkling of Paradise Lost, is Sanderson's defining work, accounting for more than 10 million of the 34 million copies he has sold throughout his career.