So from the standpoint of notes, because I know there were a lot of notes involved in this book, and it was funny because Ringo was talking today, you know, we were talking about e-books and things like that. If you had a say, would you have written more? I know there is some sort of, you know…We talk about the three books. And there is some sort of…From a publishing standpoint, could you have written a book that was seven books? Did he leave enough notes, and do you feel like that maybe sometimes in the standard of e-books, some would like to have seen your rough drafts of the Jordan work, would that be of interest because of that?
I think it’s unlikely to see the rough drafts. Because I know that the team working on the Wheel of Time—Harriet and those—are somewhat more…skeptical is the wrong word. Robert Jordan didn’t like to show his work to people until it was on the twelfth draft. Harriet didn’t see it until it’d gone through twelve drafts. He was very…Didn’t like to show unfinished work to people. That was just how he was. Different authors approach things different ways. With Warbreaker , my own book, I put the first draft on my web site. I do stuff like that. I work from a different kind of angle. I don’t know what it is.
But I’m going to probably push to get her to let me publish the notes, or to publish a book talking that includes part of the notes along with a discussion of how I translated the notes to book. Something like that. I would like to do something like that. The call will be Harriet’s. And I probably won’t even talk about it with her until the book is done. ‘Till, you know, we’ve got the Wheel of Time done. Then I might approach her and say, “Hey, would you mind if I did something like this? Would you be interested?” Because I think the fans would really like to see it.
I think it would be definitely an interesting idea.
You mentioned the three books. And, I mean…The Wheel of Time is huge. There’s lots of different places we could go. They are not places that I think we’re going to go. Because we don’t want to see this turn into something…Not to say anything against the media properties, that’s fine, but we don’t want to see the Wheel of Time become that. Robert Jordan left notes on this book, which has become three, but it’s become three that are collectively of the same length as the book he was going to write. That’s the thing you have to remember with the split. He was writing an 800,000 word book, I’m writing an 800,000 word book—8 to 900,000 word book—Tor has decided to slice it up and release it in three segments. It’s not like I’ve decided to write two extra books. I’m writing the one book and I’m allowing them to split it into three. I don’t really have the call on it. But that’s something different.
He did leave notes on a few other things. One was called the Outriggers, which he had talked about with his fans writing. He actually had a contract with Tor. I don’t know what happened with those, but that was a trilogy that he had planned to write that he had notes for. And then he also had notes for two additional prequels. He had done… He had told Tor he wanted to do three of those; he wrote one of them called New Spring. There was going to be one that was focusing on Tam’s story—that’s Rand’s father—and he was going to do one that was essentially the sequel to New Spring , with Moiraine, how she arrived at the—how she and Lan arrived in the Two Rivers. That sort of thing. And those were planned. There’s a chance you’ll see those. A chance. My suggestion to Harriet has been to, you know, to be very careful. We don’t want to exploit the Wheel of Time to make it go on and on and on. And so, while you may see those books—I know Tom Doherty is pushing for them a lot—we’re not going to go back and do the prequel about Lews Therin. We’re not going to do a prequel about Artur Hawkwing. We’re not going to… You’re not going to see this—
Shared world.
—shared world sort of thing. And so, if Harriet asks me to do those, I probably will. Meaning the Outriggers or the prequels. Because I don’t want anyone else to do them, if that makes any sense.
Since you’ve taken over, it’s a little bit now your baby.
Yeah. But if we do those, there’ll be years between. If that makes any sense.
I think there has to be, yeah.
I mean, I got into this because I want to write books. My own stories. And that’s what I’m excited about, that’s what I do, and I’m really having a blast doing that. And so…the Wheel of Time is an exception. It’s a special thing, that I am really honored to be part of. But I don’t want to make my career doing other people’s books.
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