How did you first get involved in this project? Were you approached by Tor and/or Harriet, or did you dust off your resume and send it to them for consideration?
When I heard that Mr. Jordan had passed away, I was deeply saddened. Like everyone else, I was waiting for the final book—and last I had heard, he was doing better and was confident that he’d be able to pull through.
After I got over the shock of his death, I did think “Wow. I wish I could help out on this project somehow.” I loved the books, and if someone was going to be involved in finishing the series, I wanted to be there. However, I didn’t feel it was appropriate to solicit work on it. There are a couple of reasons why.
1) I figured that Harriet, Tom, and the people at Tor would be busy grieving as I was, and it just didn’t feel right to me to respond to Mr. Jordan’s death with a play for the series. As I noted in the essay I wrote about his passing, with Mr. Jordan’s death, the fantasy community suddenly changed. There would be time for thinking about the final book later. For now, it was time to think about what this man had meant to the genre and its readers.
2) I assumed that there was a good chance someone had already been chosen to work on the project. I trusted that Harriet and Tom Doherty knew what they were doing, and would see that the book got written in good time.
So, I didn’t send in a request—or even a question—about the future of The Wheel of Time. I was dumbfounded and honored when—a month or so after the death—Harriet called me on the phone to inquire if I was interested. I got the impression that she was calling several authors (I don’t know how many) and making sure that they were willing before she invested the time in reading their work.
About a month later (this would be around mid November) she called me again and said that she had been touched by the writing of Mistborn, and had decided she wanted me for the project immediately. However, she’d made certain to take time and think about the decision before offering it to me officially. At that time, she made the offer—and I accepted. (With great excitement.)
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