Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

I’ve been a long-time lurker on Dragonmount.com and thought I'd jump into this mess and give a little insight into the Lexington, KY signing event. An audio file of the main portion of the event can be found HERE. Here goes!

After following the online reports from other places, I kinda knew what to expect. Though things weren't drastically different from what I had read earlier, this signing was still interesting enough. I have been a fan of the series since way back in high school, but had never attended a signing before. This was my first one so I was just a little nervous.

I arrived at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington, KY at around 6:00pm. I expected a large crowd, but found that there weren’t many fans there at all. The store had a large counter just inside the entrance holding hardcover copies of quite a few books in the series if not all. Paperback versions were available on another table behind the main stack. Both tables seemed to be getting quite a bit of attention, and then I noticed that almost every other person in the store was either reading or purchasing a copy of Knife of Dreams.

After making my way back to the signing area, I found several people sitting on the floor. There were to be no chairs at this signing, but no one seemed to mind. I grabbed a nice seat up front between the signing table and the podium. After a short while, the floor area began to get crowded with people coming in and finding their own places on the floor.

At about 6:50pm a lady came out and announced that Mr. Jordan would be coming out at exactly 7:00 to just find a nice spot on the floor and be patient. By my watch it was closer to 7:10pm when he finally made his way out to a warm round of applause from the crowd, which had grown from 10 people to around 250.

The audio file is no longer available.

Mr. Jordan made his way up the steps to the podium and applause died which resulted in a "don't stop" from the man, and everyone took up the applause once more. Like most of the other reports, Jordan was a warm, inviting, humorous man from the start. He opened with a run-down of pronunciations regarding some of the most commonly misspoken words followed by a Q&A session where some old questions were rehashed, and some odd questions were given odd answers.

As per the other reviews he stated that there will only be one more main sequence book, and that there may be two or three outrigger novels in the Wheel of Time universe. He stated that he still needs to "poke around at it" for a couple of years.

how many more books?

,

a memory of light

,

outriggers

Naturally there was one RAFO when asked about the swirling colors the ta'veren experience when thinking about each other which pleased everyone to some extent because it's such a trademark of the man himself.

ta'veren

,

rand

,

mat

,

perrin

Eventually Mr. Jordan turned to his quest of finding females that wanted some questions answered and got a good one when a lady asked why the most powerful women in the world get their power in a pale, white shaft (the White Tower).

The answer was, "If you can't grasp the symbolism, my dear... Because I thought about having them have their center of power be a hole in the ground and I thought it wasn't really going to be as significant. It wasn't going to stand out and have people say 'Wow, Gee...look at that on the horizon'. You sorta have to walk to the edge and say, 'Welp, don't wanna fall off into that, now do you?'"

clue stick

tar valon

,

white tower

,

sexuality

,

gender

,

clue stick

,

maps

After the Q&A people were instructed to get in line according to their letter which was given to them from the main desk and were informed that Mr. Jordan would only be signing two hardcover Wheel of Time books per trip through the line, and if time permitted attendees could take a second trip through to get more books signed. Mr. Jordan also announced that he had no problem with taking photos as long as there was absolutely no male nudity, which got a nice laugh from the crowd.

fandom

,

male nudity

Overall it was an enjoyable experience. I met some nice people, enjoyed the company of fellow WoT'ers, and spoke with the man himself. My only regret is that I didn't get more time to sincerely congratulate and wish him the best of luck because the line was itching for their turn. This was definitely one of the better experiences of my life, and I hope the next book tour is just as much fun.

—Jarrod