Date: 2005-10-29
Type: Paraphrased
Location: Santa Cruz, CA
Reporter: Jeremiah
I was at the Santa Cruz signing on Saturday. Sorry I couldn’t report sooner, I had to drive the 650 miles to get home first…
Santa Cruz wasn’t really much different from all of the others before it, at least from what I’ve read.
He started out by answering the the questions he knows are coming. The ones about the next book, how many more books, and who killed Asmodean. He also mentioned Infinity of Heaven and his ‘maybe’ idea in the WoT universe. Then he took questions.
I got two questions about his writing process answered, one concerning when exactly he began WoT (if he knew he would write it while he was writing The Fallon Blood as Reagan O’Neal).
He said that there were a few things in his head, but nothing solid yet, nothing close to a coherent story. That didn’t happen until a couple of years later.
The other concerned if he did book drafts or chapter drafts, to which he replied that he did chapter drafts.
And then he RAFO’d my question about the Tinker caravan that Mat comes across in Lord of Chaos .
Too bad, but at least that means that he will be answering that in the last book. And I still feel special that I got to ask three questions of him!!
The scene is in Lord of Chaos , Chapter 22.
A guy asked if Birgitte were to be born in an Age like today, would she still be an archer, or would she be an Annie Oakley type of a person—a great sniper?
RJ said that she would always be an archer, no matter what.
Another guy asked about how Rand has not been in the forefront of the series for the last few books, and he asked how long RJ knew that that would happen, or if it just happened.
RJ said that he knew it would happen from the beginning, because he wanted to show that the “man on the shining white horse, the man who is the only hope, he can only do what he does because of the help of ten thousand other people.” He wanted to portray that Rand has to be at the Last Battle to win, but he cannot be the ONLY one there.
Someone else asked about why the female characters don’t seem to be as well done as the male characters, as if RJ spent less time on them.
To this RJ responded that he takes just as much time with the female characters as the male, and that his greatest compliment was women saying, “No man can write women that well.”
Well, the guy didn’t look very happy about getting slapped down.
I can’t remember what, now, but some guy asked about something that RJ RAFO’d, and the guy just left after that!! I can’t understand that, I was more than happy to be RAFO’d by the Creator himself!
There were a few other questions, but I don’t remember them all now, and I apologize. But then he signed books, and I was the second in line for that. I left afterwards, since I didn’t have any more hardcover books to be signed by the man.
Jeremiah.
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