What has been the most enjoyable part of working on the Wheel of Time?
Damn near all of it? Um…[laughter]…seriously.
You can tell us ‘read and find out’ on that one. [laughs]
You know, I came in and I started this job—it’s been almost fifteen years now—and I came in and I was not helping with the books at all; I was doing fan mail and filing, and about that time they decided to do the audiobooks, and they were doing them, you know, male and female, and Jim looked at me one day and said, “They’re doing male and female; I need somebody to read the books and mark when it changes from male to female point of view. Can you do that?” And I’m like, “Uh-huh, uh-huh! Get paid to read the Wheel of Time?” I mean, I was a big fan before I started the job, you gotta understand…so it’s like, this is, you know, a dream come true. I’m getting paid to read the Wheel of Time. It’s just so great. And Jim…he was just so much fun. He would come in in the morning, singing, and forget I was here and set the alarm so I would step out of my office and set it off, and the police would come. [laughter] He knew everything . I mean, he just knew so much, talking with him was, was…wonderful. And Harriet is just an amazing lady, and Brandon is way cool. I mean, this job is a dream. I love it. And I get to talk to great people like you guys, and go to cons.
Can I tell you how extremely jealous I am of you right now?
Oh yeah.
I’m sorry!
Jealous enough to turn to the Dark One! [laughter]
Perfect servant! Perfect servant.
What about you, Alan?
Well, I’ve been here, I guess, a little over nine years at this point, and just to back up what Maria said, you know, just being able to hang out with Jim and work with him on a daily basis was such a great kick. We’re here surrounded by a physical representation of Jim’s mind, in a way; there are 15,000 volumes in our offices, many of which are reference books, and it’s just so wonderful to be able to, you know, tap that side of your mind. And Jim would ask the most obscure questions to be dug out in various places, and that’s just such a great amount of fun for me, just digging out useless information of any possible sort. He would…you know, there are things that go into the books that are important to know about, and as you know, Jim was very, very fastidious and rigorous in his background of what he was writing about. If he wrote about blacksmithing it was going to be absolutely correct in all ways, as best as he could make it, and so Maria and I both became part of that process, just digging up a lot of things for him. So it’s, you know…what we’ve got here is essentially a job where she and I come in 8, 9 hours a day, live in a total fantasy world. 8 hours, 7 or 8 hours are spent asleep. Much of that is very vivid dreams, so it’s another fantasy world. That only leaves about 8 hours of reality that we have to deal with. And you know, we’ve found ways of making that kind of disappear also. So, it’s great. I mean, I figure I’m living about 85% total fantasy at this point [laughter] so that’s…it’s a wonderful place to be. I’d recommend it to everyone out there.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, there’s something of a limit to the number of Robert Jordans that there are in the world, although that leads me right into my next question…
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