Brandon Sanderson’s Co-Author Reveals What It’s Really Like Writing ‘Blightfall’ and ‘Skyward’ Books With Him

For most writers, building a successful career means creating worlds of their own. For Janci Patterson, it has also meant earning something far rarer: the opportunity to help guide one of modern fantasy’s most beloved universes alongside its creator. Although readers first came to know her through Brandon Sanderson‘s Skyward novellas, Patterson’s journey to the Cytoverse began years earlier through her own novels, countless critique sessions with Sanderson and a deep understanding of the craft of storytelling. That combination of experience, talent and trust ultimately positioned her not simply as a collaborator, but as one of the few writers entrusted with expanding a universe followed by millions of devoted fans.

With the forthcoming Blightfall, the first novel in the new Riftwake trilogy, Patterson faces perhaps her biggest creative challenge yet: launching a new era of the Cytoverse that welcomes first-time readers while satisfying longtime fans who have spent years invested in these characters. Along the way, she reflects on what she’s learned from working with Sanderson, why his stories resonate with such a passionate audience, the unique relationship he’s cultivated with his readers and how the lessons she’s absorbed have helped shape her own voice as a novelist. The result is a fascinating look behind the scenes of one of fantasy’s most successful creative partnerships—and the writer helping carry it into its next chapter.

On working with Brandon Sanderson

Few contemporary fantasy authors have attracted the kind of passionate readership Brandon Sanderson enjoys. His interconnected worlds, intricate magic systems and memorable characters have made him one of the genre’s biggest names, while new adaptations promise to introduce his work to an even larger audience. For fellow author Janci Patterson, joining Sanderson’s Cytoverse wasn’t simply another writing assignment—it meant stepping into a universe she already admired, collaborating with a writer she’d known for years and helping continue a story beloved by millions of readers.

JANCI PATTERSON: “Working in Brandon’s world is a huge honor. He’s a storytelling genius. His settings are so much fun and his characters are so compelling. I feel like readers respond to characters that have a depth of realism in addition to the exciting plots and things. So yeah, seeing it all take off is really exciting.

Patterson says years of writing her own novels—and years of working alongside Sanderson in a critique group long before either collaboration was on the horizon—gave her the foundation she needed when the opportunity finally arrived.

JANCI PATTERSON: “Coming into this series was really intimidating. Brandon has a huge audience, and the existing books are so good. I love these characters and I wanted to do them justice. It was really helpful to have a lot of writing experience. If this had been my first project, I would’ve died. I’d also worked with Brandon before. We’d done critique groups together, so we weren’t working on the same books, but I had a sense of how he thinks about story and the ways that he thinks about story informed a lot of my early work. That laid the groundwork for the collaboration.”

“He was getting into middle grade and young adult when we were doing critique groups together. He’d been writing adult fantasy and I read a lot of YA, so I recommended books to him and we’d talk a lot about story and how it worked in the young adult marketplace. Then, when he was reading my work and giving me feedback, the comments he’d make about my characters shaped a lot of the way I think about building them. There was some give and take then that set us up to work together really well, which is really exciting.”

Finding the right world for the story

Although Patterson has become closely associated with Brandon Sanderson’s science fiction universe, she has never viewed herself as a writer confined to a single genre. Her bibliography is varied, with each story dictating the kind of world it needs to inhabit.

JANCI PATTERSON: “I like to go back and forth. I’ve done some collaboration with other people in fantasy worlds. I have a science fiction series that I did as a single author, but I also write romance and contemporary young adult. To me, sometimes a story really calls for a realistic, contemporary world because it’s specific to some of the issues we deal with now. And sometimes it’s nice to visit a fantastical world and get away from that a little bit, but those themes of things that we deal with in our lives creep into my work no matter what I do. Even when I’m writing in a fantastical setting, some of those issues people are dealing with still come up.”

Entering the ‘Skyward’ universe

For readers unfamiliar with Brandon Sanderson’s work, the Skyward series has grown into one of the author’s most popular science fiction worlds. What began as the story of a determined young pilot has expanded into an interstellar saga of alien civilizations, exploration and discovery. With Blightfall, Patterson isn’t simply continuing that universe—she’s helping launch an entirely new chapter within it.

JANCI PATTERSON: “So it starts with Skyward, the first book. It’s the ‘boy and his dragon’ trope, except it’s a girl with her spaceship, which is how Brandon originally pitched it to me back before he wrote it. I thought that was brilliant. You’ve got this girl and her spaceship, and they’re being attacked by aliens. They’re stuck on this planet and don’t really know why they’re being attacked. Then the story expands into these humans learning about alien cultures and having adventures on new planets, which is where we come in with Blightfall, the first book in our new trilogy. They’ve escaped from their planet and they’re ready to go off on a new adventure. They’re looking for other humans in the galaxy, and when they finally find a planet with humans on it, it isn’t quite what they expect.”

“The ones that I wrote are technically around 50,000 to 60,000 words, so they’re short novels, although they’re shorter than the other books in the series. Brandon did two books in the series, and then his main character went off in one direction while the side characters from book one stayed behind. People loved those side characters. When he pitched me the idea of writing these books, he said, ‘Janci, I made a mistake. I made my side characters too interesting. Now people are mad.’ So he said, ‘Would you please write some adventures with them back home while Spensa is gone so people can still have stories with them and not be mad at me?’”

“It started out as, ‘Just write some fun side adventures with them.’ Then they grew because Brandon’s ideas just spiral. He’s always saying, ‘What if we did this? What if we did this?’ So now they tie into book three. His third book happens at the same time as the three novels, and then all the characters come back together for book four and the end of the first series in the Cytoverse.”

Launching Blightfall presented Patterson with a different creative challenge. Instead of expanding a story already in progress, she was responsible for opening the door to an entirely new trilogy while remaining true to characters readers already knew.

JANCI PATTERSON: “Especially having to pick up and start a new story. Before, I was picking up with characters who were in the middle of a plot, in the middle of a story, so I was carving out a space for them. Defiant, book four, brings the original series to a close, but it also leaves it open for further adventures. Opening that back up and establishing a whole new series was very different, and it took me a while to figure out how to do it with existing characters. But I’m really proud of what we accomplished.”

Why Brandon Sanderson connects with readers

Sanderson’s novels have attracted millions of readers around the world, with several now in development for film and television. Patterson has spent years studying his work—not only as a collaborator, but as a fellow author—and while she admits there may never be a simple formula for his success, she believes several key ingredients consistently set his stories apart.

JANCI PATTERSON: “If we could figure out what it is Brandon does exactly that is so compelling and bottle it, we would be very wealthy. I am not 100% sure how he does what he does, but I think it is the combination of the ideas, which are fresh. He likes to take familiar tropes—like the boy and his dragon—and twist them. Now you’ve got the girl and her spaceship. So it’s familiar and yet it also feels new, which helps bring people in because they feel grounded while still giving them something exciting.”

“Brandon is excellent at the twist at the end that doesn’t feel cheap, but instead feels surprising yet inevitable. His plots are really good, and then the characters are deep. It’s really hard to find an author, especially in science fiction and fantasy, who can do really excellent characters, really excellent plots, really excellent world-building, and still have a book that moves at a clip with great pacing. It’s really easy to find two or three of those, but it’s really hard to find all four in one. I think it’s the way he manages to do all of those things that makes so many people happy. That’s what resonates about his work.”

Those lessons naturally found their way into Patterson’s own writing. Early in her career, she consciously studied Sanderson’s approach, eventually discovering that learning from another writer doesn’t mean becoming that writer. Instead, she says, the experience helped her refine her own voice while preparing her to contribute authentically to the Cytoverse.

JANCI PATTERSON: “When I met Brandon, he’d sold Elantris, but it hadn’t come out yet. He was the only writer I knew at the time who had sold a book. For a long time I thought, ‘Well, if his way is how you do it, that’s what I’ll do.’ I tried to be just like Brandon. I eventually grew out of that and realized, ‘No, I can’t be Brandon. I have to be myself.’ But those years of trying to harness what he was doing—not copy his stories, but copy the work ethic, the attention to detail, the compelling characters and the pacing—served me really well. I’m really proud of the way those things shaped my work, and they pay off now when I’m trying to write books that fit naturally into his universe and appeal to the readers who already love it.”

Embracing the Sanderson fandom

Stepping into an established fictional universe can be intimidating, especially one with millions of passionate readers. Patterson admits that before her first Skyward book was published, she worried about how fans might react to another writer helping expand Sanderson’s world. Instead, she discovered one of the most welcoming communities she’d ever encountered.

JANCI PATTERSON: “So when I first started writing for Brandon, I imagined all of the things that happen to women in the Star Wars fandom sometimes, which can be really hostile, and I was really afraid. But I am thrilled to say that I have never had any kind of negative interaction with any part of the Sanderson fandom. My first book with him came out in 2021, and the fandom is just amazing. I’ve had really positive experiences. I love going to events and talking to fans, and they’re so excited.

“Having something to talk about and being able to talk about books is wonderful because, for most of us in our regular lives, maybe we know a couple of people who read these books, but books aren’t like movies. It’s a more niche thing where you’re not going to run into people whose favorite author is your favorite author every day. When we all get together, it’s really exciting and fun. I love the energy.”

Patterson believes that enthusiasm reflects something larger happening in publishing. While overall literacy remains a challenge, she sees readers becoming increasingly passionate about discovering authors, recommending books to one another and building communities around the stories they love.

JANCI PATTERSON: “It’s interesting because literacy is down, but among people who do read, books have become much more social. BookTok and online communities have made it easier for people to find books they love and then immediately share them with someone else. I also think people are looking for longer experiences. A movie is two hours. A television series might be 10 hours. But a book lets you live with characters for days or weeks. Then if it’s a series, you get to spend years with them. There’s something really special about that experience.”

Although she laughs at the idea of having a fandom on the scale of Brandon Sanderson’s, Patterson has discovered that she’s begun building a loyal following of her own among Cytoverse readers.

JANCI PATTERSON: “Certainly not one as big as Brandon’s, but I definitely feel like I have my own little corner of the Sanderson fandom that’s become my Cytoverse people, and I love them. They’re great. I don’t know that I’ve had work that’s caught on enough to create that kind of community around it by itself, but that would be amazing.”

Beyond the Cytoverse

Although Patterson is currently immersed in the Riftwake trilogy, she already has her eye on what comes next. As with much of her work, it blends familiar ideas into something entirely unexpected.

JANCI PATTERSON: “I’ve been really focused on this for the last couple of years, but I’ve written a King Lear adaptation. It’s a young adult novel. It’s a slasher horror with robots, so Shakespeare, horror and robots. I haven’t sold it yet and am still working on revisions.”

Making ‘Blightfall’ welcoming to new readers

Launching a new trilogy inside an already established universe presented Patterson with a unique challenge. Brandon Sanderson wanted the familiar cast of characters that longtime readers loved, while the publisher wanted Blightfall to serve as an accessible entry point for readers discovering the Cytoverse for the first time—two goals that don’t naturally go together.

JANCI PATTERSON: “When I was contracted to do these books, Brandon wanted me to stick with the same characters because, as he said, ‘This series is the characters. If we jump to new characters, we lose the readership.’ And I think that’s true. So I was, like, ‘Great, same characters. I love these characters. Sounds good.’ Six months later he was, like, ‘Oh, and by the way, the publisher wants it to be book one and accessible to new readers.’ And I was, like, ‘How do I do these two things? I can do this thing. I can do this thing. I don’t know how to do these two things.’ But he said, ‘Well, we’re going to figure it out.’ So I wrote the beginning of that book over and over and over again, and it just wasn’t working.”

The breakthrough came not from another rewrite, but from the editorial process itself. Patterson credits her editor with helping unlock the structure that ultimately allowed Blightfall to satisfy both longtime fans and first-time readers.

“Finally, I got it to a point where I was like, ‘Okay, I’m not embarrassed by this attempt.’ I turned it in and my editor said, ‘Oh, I see what you’re doing here is really hard.’ She wrote me a 10-page letter about how we were going to do it, and suddenly I could see it. Which is why I say I spent a year on it. It was the revisions after that letter, and then we did one more round getting it into shape, because it’s difficult to take four books’ worth of story, catch the reader up without spending a lot of time doing it, and figure out what the reader needs to know versus what they don’t necessarily need to know yet. Working all that out—and making the beginning move at a good pace instead of taking forever—was really difficult. But we got it there, and I’m super proud of it.”

“So I hope new readers will give it a chance, because we put a lot of effort into making sure they can pick it up and have just as good an experience as someone who’s read the previous series.”