So when that phone call came, Brandon, how did that happen? Who called you?
It was Robert Jordan’s widow. And there’s an interesting story there, because she actually was his editor. She discovered him, and then she married him. I guess that’s a way to make sure that your editorial advice gets taken. (laughs) And before he passed away, he had asked her to find someone. She said to me that finding someone himself felt like facing his mortality too much. So, as soon as the funeral, actually, she started hunting, and a bunch of names were bandied about, and just through kind of a freak series of coincidences. . . I had written a eulogy for him on my website—many authors had who really enjoyed his work. It was very short; it was only a couple of paragraphs, but just from the heart, what he’d meant to me. I was a published author at that point, and I mentioned how he’d inspired me. Someone printed that off, and put it on Harriet’s—that’s his wife’s name—on her desk. And she glanced at that, and she read it. She called up my published and said, “Hey, send me this kid’s books.” And she read them, unbeknownst to me, and called me one day, and just said, “I was wondering if you would be interested?” She’d liked my books; she felt something in them—perhaps she felt the way I’d been inspired by Robert Jordan—but whatever it was, she called and asked me to do it.
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