My dad told me about Brandon. He's a WoT fan. He read the sample chapters of Mistborn on-line and figured I would like it, so he called me to tell me to check it out. Which I did, right after I got off the phone...
If it had been the way I am now, I probably would've went out and bought the book immediately just based on those chapters, because I loved them so much. But alas, I'd just bought 3 books that I really shouldn't have bought since they turned out to be just terribad, and so I wasn't feeling too risky. I checked it out from the library instead...And THEN I bought it. Later. After I'd bought Elantris. Since the school bookstore had Elantris but not Mistborn, which I thought was odd, since it's BYU-I, but whatev.
And now I'm a huge fan. He's my favorite author. I personally think he's a literary genius. At least, literary in the fiction fantasy world...and I would say the whole fiction world in general, but that's just me....