Wow. Wow, it sounds great. Now, I know that there are 30 million copies of the Wheel of Time that have been sold worldwide, so the series itself is a massive phenomenon. What’s it like to come on board? You’re a well-known author in your own right. What’s it like to come on board and write a sequel in a series like this?
You know, it’s really like becoming stepfather to 30 million people at the same time. The fans, number one, have been great. And they know that before Robert Jordan passed away, he asked his wife to find somebody because he wanted the series completed. And so, everyone knows that this is according to his wishes, which I think helps a whole lot. But at the same time, I feel a deep responsibility to not make these books about me, but to make them about Robert Jordan and about the Wheel of Time. I mean, I was handed a lot of very fascinating notes. In some cases, Robert Jordan had completed scenes for the books. In other cases, he had dictated on his deathbed some scenes that were to happen. He had millions of words of notes about the world and the characters and the setting, and I’ve been given access to all of that and asked to put together these last concluding volumes.
He’d been promising people for years and years and years that he knew the last scene of the very last book. And he actually wrote that before he passed away, and I have that in my possession. And so my goal is really to get us there without screwing it up. To step out of the way, to let the characters be themselves, and to let the world continue and the story continue as people have loved for so many years. And make sure that. . . I don’t want them to see Brandon, I want them to see the Wheel of Time. And so, that’s been a real challenge, to get out of the way, so to speak.
Right, so it can be a seamless experience for the reader.
That’s my hope. I mean, I haven’t been trying to mimic Robert Jordan’s voice. I worried that if I tried to do that, it would come across as parody. You imagine a stand-up comedian getting up and doing their Jimmy Carter or whatever, and I worried that would be me doing my Robert Jordan. And so instead I’ve tried to adapt my style to the Wheel of Time. Having read it for so many years, I know how the Wheel of Time should feel. And so I don’t sit and ask myself every sentence, what would Robert Jordan write? Because I can’t do that, I can’t replace him. Instead, I sit down and say, okay, how would I approach making this feel like the Wheel of Time? And so far, the response I’ve generally gotten from readers is, you know, if they pick up and they really study and they watch the first few pages they read, they’ll say, you know, I can tell the difference. But once they get a little bit into it and start to feel the characters and the setting, and the plot takes a hold of them, they’re able to just let that go and they don’t notice it any more, and the rest of the book just feels right. And that’s the best compliment I think I can get on this book.
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