Okay, first of all, I’d like to say I was a little scared with a new writer coming into the series…
Justifiably so… [laughter]
I’d like to say, when I read the first book, it was like he didn’t pass.
Well, thank you.
How did it feel to be the chosen one?
I’ve told this story, some of you have heard it before. When I got the phone call, I…it came out of the blue, like I really had no idea. Everybody knew before me. Paul knew before me, I’m pretty sure—yeah, he’s nodding; he’s an editor for Tor; he’s like “Yeah, I knew”—everyone knew before me, and I was foolish enough to be asleep when Harriet called me, so I just got it as a voicemail message. “Please will you call me back; there’s something I want to talk to you about.” And so I had to spend hours trying to get ahold of Harriet, being like “Robert Jordan’s wife just called me,” and I was so nervous I couldn’t speak. And I eventually called up Tor because nobody was answering—my editor and my agent—nobody. And I got hold of Patrick Nielsen Hayden and and it really is, what he said is “Oh yeah, you …it’s probably what you think it is, I’ll have her call you back.” And I’m like, [makes a distressed face, audience laughs], “What do I think it is!?” He didn’t even tell me, he wouldn’t even tell me, he just said that.
And so, I eventually….Harriet calls me back and says, “Well, I was just wondering…we’re putting together a small list of authors that we’d like to consider for this—finishing my husband’s series—and I was wondering if you would be interested.” She later mentioned that the short list included one name, which was mine. [laughter] But she didn’t want to be backed into the corner until she made her final decision. And so in that one she asked, and I said yes. And for those of you who have heard this story, I’m sorry, but I’ll repeat it. That night, I was scared out of my wits. I laid in bed—is that the right term?—I lay in bed just completely terrified of what I’d just done. And I really, seriously considered backing out because I realized that nobody could write the books that Robert Jordan was going to write. And so, in taking this project, I was going to fail. And I believe I have failed in a slight amount, in that nobody can replace him, right? As good of a job as I can do, I cannot do the job he was going to do, and by definition, the job he was going to do is the right book.
And because of that I almost said no, and then in considering that, I had this like even deeper fear that I would say no, and that they would get someone else and those people would screw it up way more than I would screw it up. [laughter] And the phrase I frequently use—and I do believe this—laying there that night, I said, “How many authors out there have read the books as many times as I have? There probably aren’t many, if any. I’m not the best author out there, but I’m a pretty good one. I’m not the biggest Wheel of Time fan out there, but I’m a pretty big one. And if you do the intersection of pretty decent authors and pretty decent Wheel of Time fans, there’s not a lot of people in that. And I really feel that if Robert Jordan can’t write the book, that kind of writer in me said, “Well, I wanna do it, because I feel like then at least somebody who cares has ahold of it. And I feel that I will screw it up the least.”
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