Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

I was at the Northern Virginia signing Thursday evening, January 23. Mr. Jordan's introductory remarks seemed to follow exactly what has already been reported for earlier signings.

I went through the line twice. My first question to him concerned the status of the unabridged audiobooks. I told him that I had tried to buy them from Books on Tape and had found out that they had lost the rights to them. He said that he hadn't known that, and that he would check in to the matter. I also mentioned that The Eye of The World had been listed by Amazon as being released by The Publishing Mills in October, but I never got my copy before they changed the listing to "out of print".

He said that the original company with the audiobooks rights had been sold to another company, and that "it was a big mess". He said Books on Tape had been sold, but I think that it is The Publishing Mills that has been sold to New Millenium Publishing. He reiterated that he would find out what was going on. I asked how I could find out what the status was after he found out, and he said he didn't know of any way to manage that. I then suggested maybe he could send a message to Dragonmount after he had checked into matters, and he said that yes he might send an answer to Jason (??). [Editor's note: Woo hoo! That's me!] So Jason (??, I hope I got the name right) maybe you could remind him to check into this, or maybe you can find out what is going on through your WoT-related contacts. He did say that the audiobook publisher of Crossroads of Twilight is a Tor company, so I guess The Publishing Mills only had rights to the first 8 or 9 books.

wot audiobooks

My second question to him concerned the various songs that he has scattered throughout the books. I asked him if he had a particular tune in mind for each song, thinking that I would get an answer like "Jack o' Shadows is based on an old English drinking song ...", etc.

Instead, he said that he had tunes for each of the songs but that they existed only in his head right now. I asked if he ever planned to let us know what those tunes were, and he said maybe if he ever found time to put them down on paper.

music in wot

These weren't your usual type of questions, but I didn't think I could ask one clever enough to avoid a RAFO. I hope these answers are of interest to you, and I really would appreciate it if you find out any thing about what is going on with the audiobooks. I make two 600 mile trips a month and unabridged audiobooks are my friends.

Thanks and keep up the good work.

Sincerely,

Neill Smith

JASON DENZEL

Editor's note: RJ is pretty good about following up on things like that. When I hear something about these books, I'll make sure it goes onto our news page and into our newsletter. Thanks for suggesting to him that he contact Dragonmount!