After a few pronunciations, RJ described some of the original details about his contract with Tor.
(At this point, let me say that I’m reconstructing RJ’s comments to the best of my ability. I did take a few pages of written notes during the session, and the content should be accurate, but I’m forced to paraphrase the information since I don’t know shorthand and didn’t actually record his exact words.)
RJ had his first contract with Tor in 1984. He expected to write about one book per year, and would need five or six books to complete the story. In fact, it took him four years to write The Eye of the World , and 16 months to write The Great Hunt , and about 15-16 months to write each subsequent book until A Crown of Swords . Up to Lord of Chaos , Tor was trying to publish the books every 12 months. RJ turned in Lord of Chaos in August of 1994 and the book was published in November of that year.
During this period of trying to maintain Tor’s once a year publishing schedule, RJ said that Harriet was doing what he called “drive-by editing.” That is, RJ would give Harriet chunks of chapters as he finished with them, and she would basically edit them on the fly. Once a book was finished, they would slap it together and send it to Tor for a barebones editing process and publication.
After Lord of Chaos was published, RJ informed Tor that there was no way he would be able to provide them with the next book in time for a November 1995 publication, and Tor told him that he could take two years for the publication if he needed it. About a year after that, his Tor contact (Sorry, I didn’t write down that name) came back to RJ and said something to the effect of, “We agreed you’d be done in 16 months, right?” RJ remained adamant about the two years for A Crown of Swords , however.
RJ then talked a little bit about Knife of Dreams , saying that he was done writing at the beginning of April, which apparently means the end of April in author-speak. Which also apparently means in the middle of May in author-speak. That bit was fairly confusing, but I got the impression that he was basically finished in April, but Tor didn’t really get the book to begin their editing process until May. Once Tor had the book in hand, they tried to push up the publication date to August, but RJ refused and insisted on the full editorial review and publication in October. RJ then said the result of that fully editorial was to add a single sentence to the book (This was actually quite funny and drew some considerable laughter from us in the audience.)
Wrapping up his initial comments, RJ reiterated that the twelfth book would be the final book. I did write down the following quote: “If I have to make it a 1500 page publication it will be the final book.” He then warned us that we might need to wheel this final tome around in a cart.
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