I was incredibly fortunate to attend Dragonsteel Nexus 2025 with my husband and two eldest children. We had a blast! My son told me that this was his version of Disneyland and that we need to come back every year.

Before the Convention

I actually applied for an indie author table back in the spring, but my application was rejected. Maybe they were already full by the time I applied or I’m not famous enough for them. Who knows. But when that happened, I decided to see if we could get tickets to attend as regular people instead.

This year, the tickets were handed out on a lottery system. You had to sign up for a special newsletter, and then they emailed waves (groups of people) of that list telling them they had the option to buy tickets. I was in the second to last group.

I had this crazy idea to make a shirt that said “Don’t ask me about my book” with a QR code that people could scan to sign up for a free copy, but I chickened out. I also thought that maybe I could get one of these awesome shirts so that people might ask me what it was from (maybe it’s close enough to the Cosmere symbols to make people confused enough to ask?). But I ran out of time for that.

In the end, I went as just a fan and I’m glad I did. I was able to spend some quality time with my family geeking out over a shared fandom.

Signing with Brandon Sanderson!

My son was the only one to get a signing with Brandon Sanderson, so my daughter and I were just waiting around when the man himself appeared pretty close as he went down the line of people waiting for their lightning signings. We decided we just HAD to take pictures of each other at that EXACT moment for no particular reason. The email my son got had sounded so draconian about “no pictures!” But they were a lot more lax and even let me film my son at his signing.

Art of the Cosmere at Dragonsteel Nexus 2025

The artwork they had around was incredible. Some of it was familiar, and some was new to me.

Panels at DSNX 2025

As expected, we got to see a variety of panels with Brandon Sanderson, other authors, and his art department.

The first panel we got to see was with Brandon Sanderson, Pierce Brown (author of Red Rising), Toni Adeyemi (author of Children of Blood and Bone), and Matt Dinniman (author of Dungeon Crawler Carl). They were hilarious! They also said some pretty interesting things, though. My favorite was comparing a book to a clay figurine that doesn’t come to life until a reader breathes life into it.

On the first evening, my kids were so exhausted from a super early flight that we took them back to the hotel, and my husband and I returned to catch the second half of Sanderson’s evening panel, during which he spoke about the impact of AI on writing and fantasy, and finished up with a reading of the first few chapters of his upcoming Cosmere book, Fires of December.

My favorite thing he said was, “Let the art be the art, warts and all.”

Especially in the age of AI, when supposed perfection is easier than ever to get, there’s a value in the imperfections precisely because to be imperfect is to be human.

You can watch that panel here:

If you want to jump ahead to where he starts the reading, click here: Brandon Sanderson Reads “Fires of December”

We also got to see a panel from the Dragonsteel art department. They showed how much work goes into each piece of artwork, starting with talking to Brandon, figuring out what a character looks like, making a style guide, and then using that across different media.

My kids and I attended a Sanderson Jr. panel about all of Brandon Sanderson’s works geared towards younger audiences. It cracked me up how obsessed the kids were with the slugs from Skyward. I have to admit they are pretty cute. I decided that if I were to design a new Tanix, I’d make them whitish grey and able to turn invisible and walk (scoot?) through walls. I’d call him Ghostslug.

Oliver Sanderson, Brandon’s youngest son, was on the panel and seemed to have a lot of fun talking about his dad’s stories. My daughter got up the courage to stand up during the Q&A to ask if any of his ideas had ever made it into one of his dad’s books. Oliver said that yes, he and his brother had co-written a story called Super Awesome Danger that’s getting turning into a middle grade graphic novel. We loved the panel. Afterwards, we all wondered what would it be like to have a super famous and rich dad like that who lets you write books with him.

DSNX 2025 Convention Game

When we first checked in, they gave us each a packet for the convention game, which was basically a scavenger hunt that spanned three days.

The scavenger hunt was insane. We had these booklets that gave us coordinates that we had to hunt down at the con in order to find these placards written in the particular script of our chosen Cosmere world.

After having to decipher just one placard written in Rosharan women’s script, I may have started muttering about how whoever designed this script was a horrible, psychotic person who hated us and obviously had never been forced to use their own script.

Scadrial’s steel alphabet was a lot more forgiving.

After we decoded the script, it would either give us another clue or another coordinate, and we’d run off in search of the next scribbles. Some of the “quests” were puzzles that had me wondering if I’m actually an idiot and didn’t realize it.

After we finished each “quest,” we had to go turn it in at a station or outpost, where we waited in very long lines until we got to the convention employee (squires) who then told us the next part of our story and gave us our next encounter, where we had to pull investiture tokens out of a bag to see if we won. If we didn’t, we had to roll a d20 to see how we were cursed. On the second day, I found myself with two curses: to speak like a sports announcer and to speak like a weather announcer for the rest of the day. My son had to narrate everything he did. I’m sure we would have sounded a little insane to anyone who didn’t know what had happened. 😂

Each time we went to a station and finished an encounter, they gave us a new sticker with the next part of the story. Each booklet had a slightly different story based off the world you chose. We had Roshar and Scadriel, but there was also Nalthus and Sel.

At the end, we needed to collaborate with someone from each world to figure out the final puzzles.

That was the most involved scavenger hunt I’ve ever been on, and by far the most satisfying. We struggled, we got mad, we wondered why, and eventually, we conquered.

Christmas in the Cosmere

There was also a group of people caroling to Stormlight-inspired carols. You can download them here if you’d like: Cosmere Christmas Carols.

Other Stuff to Do

I was amazed at how many things they had at the con besides vendors and panels. Besides a scavenger hunt-style convention game that everyone got to participate in, there were crafts, free board and card games, and a storytime/song time for the kids.

The cosplays were amazing, too! I couldn’t believe how detailed some of those costumes were! I didn’t get many pictures of those, but it was definitely a highlight for me.

Conclusion

I won’t be able to go back for a few years at least, and even then there’s no guarantee that we’ll survive the lottery again to get tickets, so I’m glad we got to go this year. Maybe the next time I attend Dragonsteel Nexus, it’ll be as a vendor with my own books.