Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

They still do speak the Old Tongue among themselves, but the first two who were freed, Aginor and Balthamel, had been held very near to the edge of the sealing, the reason they were so visibly affected and twisted while the rest came out whole and healthy, and they were very much aware of what had gone on in the world outside. You might say they had floated in limbo while watching three thousand plus years roll by, with the ability to zoom in. That is probably the only reason they didn't emerge entirely mad. In truth, those two have a much better understanding of the current world than any of the others because they watched it forming. They don't have a complete knowledge, because they couldn't see and hear everything at once, but they have an overview that is unavailable to any of the others, excepting Ishamael to a lesser extent. But then, he's a special case.

For the rest (aside from Ishamael), who spend those thousands of years in a dreamless sleep, the language spoken "here and now" was derived from the Old Tongue. I've heard the analogy used of a well-educated, highly intelligent citizen of ancient Rome needing to learn modern Italian. It would hardly be a slam-dunk, but he or she would have the roots of the language already. In the case of the Forsaken, the task is actually easier than that of the ancient Roman, since modern Italian is a more complex language than Latin, while the Old Tongue, as I have said time and again, is more complex and nuanced than the language of "today."

BWB 9:

Almost nothing is known about the organization of Aes Sedai during the Age of Legends, but it is generally accepted that ajah played an important part, though apparently they were nothing like the present-day Ajah. In the surviving twenty-three consecutive pages of a dictionary from circa 50 AB, ajah, in the Old Tongue, is defined as “an informal and temporary group of people gathered together for a common purpose or goal, or by a common set of beliefs.” In thirty-one pages all in the same hand, located in the Royal Library in Cairhien, which appear to be random survivors of a larger manuscript reliably dated from the same period, the organization of Aes Sedai in the Age of Legends, or perhaps their manner of functioning, is described as “a vast sea of ajah (note: word deliberately left untranslated), all constantly shrinking, growing, dividing, combining, melting away only to be reborn in some new guise and begin the process once more.” In the first centuries after the Breaking, the nature of ajah or Ajah changed. We cannot be sure exactly when the change occurred, but another dictionary (circa 200 AB; 219 surviving random pages) defines Ajah as “a sisterhood of Aes Sedai,” and no lowercase form is listed.

Jeff Edde

Brandon Sanderson

BRANDON SANDERSON

BRANDON SANDERSON

KRIT PETTY

BRANDON SANDERSON

LEE DAVIS

BRANDON SANDERSON

SLEEPINGHOUR

TEREZ

FELIX PAX

BRANDON SANDERSON

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BRANDON SANDERSON (7 JANUARY)

BRANDON SANDERSON

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BRANDON SANDERSON (10 JANUARY)

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ADAM DOWARD

BRANDON SANDERSON

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Dear Bruce et al.,

Your questions are complex, or at least their answers are, and I'm afraid that the time I put into answering letters is time not put into writing, but I will try to answer you. Though I suspect not as fully as you would like. (I have 60 letters to answer today.)

What language is the Old Tongue based on? Gaelic, Russian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and some additions of my own—bridging material, if you will. Grammar and syntax are a blending of English, German and Chinese, with some influences from a set of African languages, read about long ago and all but the oddities of structure long since forgotten. There are inverted constructions, for example (as in Mordero dagain pas duente cuebiyar!—literally, "Death fear none holds my heart!") and places where the article is omitted, especially where the word is a title or has gained enough importance to now incorporate the article; the absence of article indicates that it is the important or special meaning of the word that is intended. Though even then, it is not a hard and fast rule; the same inconsistencies of English are incorporated here. I am attempting to create a language which has grown, not one which was made.

Ye means "I." He is "sin," she is "sar," you is "asa," and it is "aso."

One of the difficulties is context and flexibility: for example, al can mean "the" or "of the." The word cuebiyar can mean simply "heart," or "my heart," or when capitalized, "the heart" as in the heart of a people or nation. The word moridin means "grave" or "tomb," but when capitalized it means "the grave," standing for "death." It is intended to be a language of subtlety, where the meanings of words can change to a great extent according to context. Remember Moiraine's comments on the difficulty of translation.

The Fourth Age titles are not Old Tongue, though influenced by it. Some common names are from the Old Tongue, and some aren't. Sorry I can't go into more detail, but we're talking a treatise.

Well. I am going to have to cut this off, now. Thanks for writing. Keep me posted on your deductions. One of these days, maybe I'll have time to give congratulations on the hits and point out the misses. One clue to some: sometimes when words are combined and the end of the first word is the same as the beginning of the second, they overlap.

With best wishes, I am,

Etc, etc.

The concept of the unified language he basically explained as there had been a single language in use (the Old Tongue), and the writing and printing of books continued throughout the Breaking, albeit in a very limited extent. The written word introduced a very large conserving factor in the language-change mechanism.

Hey everyone...

WARNING... The following contains answers to questions that you may not want to read. Proceed at you own risk....

Well I got to meet RJ Friday & Saturday at the Marcon Science Fiction Convention in Columbus Ohio. *Sorilea sticks out her tongue to everyone who said that RJ was just a stoggedy old man who wouldn't talk to me.* He was very charming, and even more important, answered some questions that I thought were very interesting. Some of these were questions that some of you had asked when Dark Asha'man posted a question for non-RAFO questions...

—There is no simple standard way to make plurals, to shift the irregular verb, it's all adapted because of the merging of different languages. (Just like around 900 AD when the Saxons encountered the Danes and began creating a Lingua Franca, so the Old Tongue is also supposed to have been created by mixing different languages, and thus has a lot of the same sort of irregularities as English has.)

—He started with that list of 880 English words with which you should be able to manage in 95% of English conversations, removed what he found unnecessary and added others he needed.

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He said that if you can speak the Old Tongue, learning to understand and speak the new "Vulgar" tongue is not that difficult. When the Forsaken are together having their meetings, they speak in the Old Tongue. (RJ: "But I translate it for you guys.")

Another very interesting note: Modern-day Sharans speak a form of the Old Tongue in their everyday speech. The exact analogy he used was a Roman landing in modern day Italy and having to figure out Italian from Latin. For someone extremely bright and well-educated like the Forsaken it wouldn't be that hard. This is also consistent with information in the books. The Old Tongue is more complex, so learning the Vulgar from Old Tongue is much easier than vice versa. It also gibes with Graendal's thought while she is writing a letter that the modern script was so easy to learn and duplicate.

He also went on at length about his thoughts on language drift and the impact of the printing press on continuity.

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Robert Jordan

Sunday 9/4/05:

Sunday began quietly with a book discussion group and the fan art panel. The art panel had low turn out due to being scheduled against Robert Jordan's final signing.

However, things picked up again when we hosted a Q&A session with Robert Jordan and his wife. If you don’t know already, Harriet is the editor of the series. She is probably the only person who knows as much about the series, including background details, as he does. They are also very much in love with each other, even after all the years of living and working together. They pick on each other constantly.

For Infested Templar, two women linking have slightly less of saidar available to them than the two women would have individually. But it can be used much, much more precisely, and therefore more effectively, than they could manage working merely as partners. The reduction also occurs for men entering a circle. One man in a circle means that only the amount of saidin that he can handle, less the reduction for being in a circle, is available. Men can be much stronger than women in the pure quantity of the Power that they can channel, but on a practical level, women are much more deft in their weaving and that means the strongest possible woman can do just about anything that the strongest possible man could, and to the same degree.

And finally, the Old Tongue is written in a script that has more letters than the English alphabet, some representing diphthongs. That script will be in the Encyclopedia that Harriet will do, along with 950 or so words of the Old Tongue derived from what is called Basic English, the 950 words necessary to carry on a understandable conversation. Some words I dropped as essentially unnecessary to the books—electricity, for example—while others—such as sword and names of birds and animals—I had to add. The total might come nearer 1000 words by now.

For Comet Sedai, no, Slayer didn't kill Laura Palmer. But Lanfear can tie a cherry stem into a knot with her tongue. In fact, she can tie it into a square knot. Or a bowline. Or.... Well, the list goes on too long.

Yes, the Ayyad's eyes were popping, as well as those of damane in Seanchan.

Anyone who can channel, to however small a degree, is vulnerable to the circle of 13 trick.

For kcf, again, we have never met anyone who has the Talent of emulating the effects of a ta'veren over a small area.

I give my input on the design of the chapter icons whenever a new one seems needed, but Harriet actually decides where to place them, and I am happy to leave the job to her.

Yes, Ingtar was seen at the Darkfriend Social.

The Wheel creates ta'veren at need, making someone who is already alive one. You aren't born ta'veren. Can you imagine being around a ta'veren who is teething?

It would be possible for a Darkfriend or Forsaken to be made ta'veren, but it seems unlikely. Ta'veren are part of the Wheel's self-correcting mechanism. When the Pattern seems to be drifting too quickly, and especially if it is in the wrong direction, one or more ta'veren are created. I can't really see how making a Darkfriend or Forsaken ta'veren would help with correcting the drift of the Pattern.

Ta'veren can oppose one another, when their conflict is what the Wheel "sees" as the necessary corrective. And, no, ta'veren is not Old Tongue for Deus ex machina. It came out of musings on luck, charismatic leaders, and the theory of the indispensable man.

Katerine escaped with the help of Darkfriends. Galina, who is much more closely watched by Wise Ones than Katerine was, would have little opportunity to use their help for an escape even if she wanted to, and she doesn't, not until she can get her hands on that rod. She'll put up with anything to get that.

Anyone who can channel, however weakly, can see the glow of saidar and feel someone channel. For sul'dam who have been sul'dam for a time, some begin to be able to see what might be called a ghostly image of the flows. Others convince themselves that this is, of course, only imagination and manage to give themselves a block.

Wow, you have a lot of questions. One more, and then I'm off to the next person.

Someone who sees ta'veren sees them as glowing. The more strongly ta'veren, the brighter the glow. This is a Talent, and is something that only someone who can channel can do. While she was stilled, Siuan could not see ta'veren, nor could she have if she had been burned out.

For someone—Marigan, I think, but my notes are a little wonky right about here—the Crystal Throne is not the High seat of the Tamyrlin, none of the Forsaken were among the Nine Rods of Dominion, and the "Rods" were symbols of office.

Mil Tesen was really just a peddler who happened to be in the right place to pass on news of Morgase's supposed death to Gawyn. Not everyone is somebody other than who they seem, you know.

And finally, Da'concion means "the Chosen Ones" in the Old Tongue, which is used with more frequency among the Seanchan than among inhabitants of the eastern side of the Aryth Ocean.

This is a collection of quotes that were organized by Raina (presumably an old rasfwrj person) some time in 2001. Most of the original sources for the quotes she collected were found online, so those quotes aren't included here. These are only the leftover quotes, and as a result we have no idea where they came from or when they were asked, unless there are clues in the text. Sometimes it's not entirely clear if consecutive paragraphs are from different reports or the same report. We are, however, always searching for these lost interviews, and when we find them, we'll delete the quotes from this collection. I'll include Raina's introductory comments below, along with a list of the categories, each of which links to a Google Doc containing a link to the original category and an annotated copy of the page's original contents, linking to known sources and highlighting lost sources, which are the ones included here. Raina also drew from these interviews for her collection (and those quotes are not included here):

SOURCES

Letter to Tom McCormick: December 1993
Sense of Wonder interview: October 1994
Compuserve chat: October 19, 1994
AOL chat 1: October 21, 1994
AOL chat 2: October 21, 1994
Sci-fi Channel Interview: April 23, 1995
East of the Sun Con�Karl Johan Nor�n: June 16, 1995
East of the Sun Interview�Helena Lofgren: June 17, 1995
Balticon XXX�Bill Garrett: April 5, 1996
Balticon XXX�Pam Korda: April 6, 1996
ACOS Signing Report�Brian Ritchie: June 21, 1996
Compuserve chat: June 26, 1996
AOL chat 1: June 27, 1996
AOL chat 2: June 27, 1996
ACOS Signing Report�Hawk: August 4, 1996
ACOS Signing Report�Robert Watson: August 23, 1996
ACOS Signing Report�Lara Beaton: August 23, 1996
ACOS Signing Report�Greebs: August 25, 1996
ACOS Signing Report�Erica Sadun: October 9, 1996
ACOS Signing Report�Mike Lawson: October 12, 1996
AOL chat: October 19, 1996
DragonCon Sci-Fi Channel chat: June 28, 1997
Barnes and Noble chat: November 11, 1997
Waldenbooks Interview: October 1998
Barnes and Noble chat: October 19, 1998
TPOD Signing Report�Aaron Bergman: October 20, 1998
TPOD Signing Report�Pam Basham: October 22, 1998
TPOD Signing Report�Drew Gillmore: Octoer 24, 1998
TPOD Signing Report�Justin Howell: October 24, 1998
TPOD Signing Report�Chris Mullins: October 24, 1998
TPOD Signing Report�Rick Moen: October 25, 1998
TPOD Signing Report�Kevin Bartlett: October 29, 1998
Sci-fi.com chat: November 1, 1998
Amazon.com interview: November 6, 1998
TPOD Signing Report�Matthew Hunter: November 14, 1998
TPOD Signing Report�Michael Martin: November 15, 1998
TPOD Signing Report�John Hamby: November 18, 1998
TPOD Signing Report�Melinda Yin: November 18, 1998
TPOD Signing Report�John Nowacki: November 20, 1998
TPOD Signing Report�John Hamby: November 21, 1998
TPOD Signing Report�Rachel K. Warren: November 21, 1998
TPOD Signing Report�John Novak: November 21, 1998
Brisbane Signing Report�Joel Gilmore: September 21, 1999
Locus Magazine Interview: March 2000
Orbit interview: October 2000
Barnes and Noble chat: November 11, 2000
WH Signing Report�Ryan R.: November 12, 2000
Sci-fi.com chat: November 14, 2000
CNN chat: December 12, 2000
Author's Table Interview: 2001
Leiden Signing Report�Aan'allein: April 2001
Amsterdam Signing Report�Aan'allein: April 5, 2001
Rotterdam Signing Report�Aan�allein: April 6, 2001
Dromen and Demonen chat: April 6, 2001
Elf Fantasy Fair�Aan'allein: April 7, 2001
Elf Fantasy Fair�Aan'allein: April 8, 2001
Interview with RJ�Kurafire: April 10, 2001
Marcon Report�Sorilea: May 2001

Below are collected various Jordan questions and answers, and reports from interviews. Not all quotes are guaranteed to be here, although I try to be thorough, and in some cases I've deleted answers that repeat material more or less verbatim. They are organized into categories by topic, and some are in more than one category, so you shouldn't find it hard to find a quotation you're looking for. Try 'Miscellaneous' if none of the categories seem to fit. As for such categories as 'Sex and Sexuality' and 'Bela'�you asked the questions, I just sort them.

And please stop asking who killed Asmodean or if Moiraine will be back. 'Read And Find Out' is already far too long!

In several cases, the people who provided the quotes have included comments of their own on the questions or answers. As such, any interpretations of Jordan's words do not necessarily represent my personal opinion. A few comments were written by me, and they are in blue text and signed Like this�Raina. so you should have no trouble working out which is which.

Robert Jordan Himself
How long will the series be, how long will it take, and does he know the end?
What if he dies before finishing it?
How did the series originate?
How does he go about writing the books?
What are his sources and inspirations?
What else has Jordan written?
What else is in the Wheel of Time universe?
What is he planning to write?
Fan reaction to the books
Spin-offs: movies and so forth
The Wheel of Time game
Fantasy as a genre
Jordan and Tolkien
Advice to aspiring writers
Guide Art and Cover Art
WoT versus reality
Themes of the series
What books does Jordan read?
Timing of events in the series

Workings of the Wheel
Women and Men
The One Power, the True Power, and channeling
The Dragon
The Heroes and the Horn
Tel'aran'rhiod and other dreams
The Age of Legends
Is he his characters?
Rand al'Thor
Mat Cauthon
Perrin Aybara
Egwene al'Vere
Nynaeve al'Meara/Mandragoran
Moiraine Damodred
Al'Lan Mandragoran
Min Farshaw
Elayne Trakand
Aviendha
Thom Merrilin
Faile ni Bashere t'Aybara
Berelain Paeron sur Paendrag
Tam and Kari al'Thor
Padan Fain
The Daughter of the Nine Moons
Birgitte and Gaidal Cain
Verin Mathwin
Cadsuane Melaidhrin
Galad Damodred
Sharina Melloy
The Shadow
The Black Ajah
The Forsaken
Shadar Logoth
Slayer
The White Tower
The Black Tower
Warders and the Bond
The Aiel
The Aelfinn and the Eelfinn
The Oath Rod
Language and the Old Tongue
The Ogier
Geography
Theology
Prophecy
Blademasters
Other Lands (Shara, Seanchan, the Land of the Madmen)
Sex and Sexuality
Bela
Trivia
Miscellaneous
Read and Find Out!
Questions for the future
Raina's Hold

First, I'll be teaching at BYU's Writers for Young Readers conference this summer. They suggested I post a link, and I thought it would be a good idea. I think my session is filled up, but there might be other authors you can work with. Conferences like this one are expensive, but can really give you a leg up if you're wanting to break into publishing.

Secondly, Amazon has put up the cover art for Mistborn 3, which is nifty. It's still odd that the promotional Mistborn 1 and Mistborn 2 paperbacks still have no cover art posted, but whatever.

Finally, here is an amusing Librarian reaction to Alcatraz. If you haven't read the book, then you might want to know that this is tongue in cheek. All part of the joke. Which reminds me, I really need to get around to posting some of the Alcatraz concept art I commissioned from the talented Shawn Boyles. I keep intending to use these things on EvilLibrarians.com, which I own, but I never can find the time. Here's one he did of Alcatraz. alcatraz_color

Here is an alphabetical list of names chosen, with details if given. They will be linked to EWOT pages when those are updated after the A Memory of Light comes out. The main auction for the speaking part was won by Sandip Mehta.

Eric Allen (In the Tower Guard; gets sworn at by someone who swears a lot. Perhaps Uno?)
Jesamyn Angelica
Charlie Bachelder (Aiel fighting in Last Battle)
Johnnie Lee Barrington, Jr. (Deathwatch Guard)
Paul Benish (Malkieri)
Melissa Bergevin
Jonathan Brockelman (Whitecloak)
Joff Brown (a city)
Brandon Bryant (Band of the Red Hand)
Jonathan Burt (Whitecloak)
Helen Cousins
Jay Dauro (Deathwatch Guard)
Shaun Davis
Gavin Doyle
Natalie Doyle
Daniel Egonsson
Kevin Fanshier
Jacob Figler (Band of the Red Hand)
Craig Foster (Borderlander; does not live long.)
Filis [Emery?] (Green Ajah)
Shani Gamble
[?] Gilbert, son of Chris
Courtney Gliszczynski (First name used.)
Cindy Goodman
Michael Gonzalez
Mione Haak
Laura Hayden
Laura Hepburn
Hugh Hill
Andrew Holcombe
Steven Karam
Rion Kinosaki
Einar Laastad Kjosavik (Asha'man who is balefired by a Forsaken.)
Sean Little
Nils Loodin (Aiel scout)
Glen MacDonald (Deathwatch Guard)
Sandip Mehta
Mikayla Micomonaco (damane)
Robert Moreau
Bach Payson (Borderlander; does not live long.)
Eric Peters
Eleanor Pettener (Wise One, or perhaps an apprentice.)
Alex Prescott
Bryan Ragon (Borderlander; does not live long; dies well.)
Sally Rankin
Kimberly Readdy (Wise One, or perhaps an apprentice.)
Kris Ring (Seanchan Blood)
Anna Roberts
Nikhil Rode (Aiel scout)
Robert Rose
Angela Ryddingwood
Maureen Sampson (Aes Sedai)
San D'ma Shadar (Group referenced by Mat which fought in a historic battle; translates to "Slayers of the Shadow".)
Michael Sarcone (Darkfriend, on request.)
Nathan Sawyer
Eric Silva
Shane Spears (Aiel, of course.)
Leisha Springer
Margaret St. John (Maiden name [not tweeted] will be a Seanchan general.)
Caitlin Sullivan (White Ajah)
Roger Trask (Aiel fighting in Last Battle)
Lindsey Turnbow (wolf)
Neil Tweed (Some woods, named after the original owners.)
Pia Maria Vaajakallio (Aes Sedai)
Kurt Wagoner (Two Rivers man)
Eyal Weinstock
Jordan White (wolf)
Shiv Whorra
Harm Wieringa
Savannah Rose Young (Seanchan general)
Jason Zigmont

SHAWN J

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AUSTIN MOORE

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ALCHEMIST

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NATHAN SMITH

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JAMES STARKE

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SHIVAM BHATT

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FANTASY AUTHOR

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CHAD ROSENTHAL

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ZACAJ

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BRANDON SANDERSON (18 OCTOBER)

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SELENE O'ROURKE

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JALIL JAMES

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COEN ZUIDERVAART (20 OCTOBER)

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JEFF WEISSBERG

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BRANDON SANDERSON (21 OCTOBER)

DAMIEN BAUMGART

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BRANDON SANDERSON (24 OCTOBER)

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BRANDON SANDERSON (25 OCTOBER)

BRANDON SANDERSON (1 NOVEMBER)

BRANDON SANDERSON (3 NOVEMBER)

BRANDON SANDERSON (4 NOVEMBER)

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BRANDON SANDERSON (29 NOVEMBER)

Thursday is the final day to enter the drawing to get your name in A Memory of Light. Details here.

BRANDON SANDERSON (1 DECEMBER)

Today's the final day to enter the drawing (& support JordanCon) to get your name in A Memory of Light. Last chance.

BRANDON SANDERSON

The drawing to get your name in A Memory of Light closes to entries in 4 hours. I still have a lot of names to draw.

DAN GOLDMAN

How many more names are left to draw?

BRANDON SANDERSON (2 DECEMBER)

Still a good fifty, I'd say.

REBECCA LOVATT

Have you been using people's names for characters? Haven't seen any posts/updates with that in a long time.

BRANDON SANDERSON

I've been putting in placeholders, and will be drawing out names over the next few months to replace them.

BRANDON SANDERSON (28 DECEMBER)

Shaun Davis, I just used your name in A Memory of Light.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Shiv Whorra, I needed another name, and you're in too.

KELLY

Is there a running list somewhere of the reader names you've used? And I hope you're feeling completely well soon. : )

BRANDON SANDERSON

We'll post them all once I'm done.

BRANDON SANDERSON

For those asking about names: this was done as a fund-raiser for JordanCon, so I'm no longer taking names. (Sorry.)

BRANDON SANDERSON

Explanation follows. (I do this sort of thing for all of my books, though, so there will be chances for other books.)

BRANDON SANDERSON

Robert Moreau and Robert Rose, you two are next. Welcome to A Memory of Light.

SIMON ST. ERIC

It is so exciting to see you pulling the names out of the hat... how many do you think you'll end up using? :)

BRANDON SANDERSON

Still many more.

BRANDON BALLENGER

Since you're not taking names anymore and have a full rough draft, could you make a guess at our odds of being drawn?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Really hard to guess. I have about 1,000 placeholders in the book, as told to me by Word, but...

BRANDON SANDERSON

Most of those are not "replace a name here" notes, but instead "Look this up" or "describe this better" or "continuity check."

BRANDON SANDERSON (29 DECEMBER)

Brandon Bryant, welcome to the Band of the Red Hand. (Unfortunately, we're not accepting new names. Details)

CHRISTOPHER SKINNER

I know no new names—for those of us who put ours in the hat before, how many spots approximately are left? What are our chances?!

BRANDON SANDERSON

I have no idea, I'm afraid. There are about 2k people in the drawing. Maybe a hundred names? Rough guesses.

BRANDON SANDERSON (3 JANUARY 2012)

Daniel Egonsson, I drew your name for A Memory of Light. (Unfortunately, we're not accepting new names. Details: http://www.mistborn.com/blog/1021/)

HUNTER SESTREN

But for those of us in the drawing we still have a shot right?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yes.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Gavin Doyle, you're in too. (Yes, I will eventually post a list of all of these.)

BRANDON SANDERSON

Jacob Figler, you're next. (Sorry, ladies. I'll draw some female names soon.)

JACOB FIGLER

Hey that's me!!! Are you saying my name is going to be in A Memory of Light???

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yup. You're in the Band of the Red Hand.

JACOB FIGLER

YES!!! Check out the shirt I got yesterday hahaha! Perfect! And THANKS!!! http://yfrog.com/ob7i2zpj

BRANDON SANDERSON

Useful picture. Now I can describe you. :)

JACOB FIGLER

haha, well if you need any details let me know!

BRANDON SANDERSON

Okay, here's a woman: Jesamyn Angelica, you're in A Memory of Light.

BRANDON SANDERSON (4 JANUARY)

Kevin Fanshier, I only needed one name for A Memory of Light today, but yours is it.

BRANDON SANDERSON (12 JANUARY)

Kurt Wagoner, you're in A Memory of Light as a Two Rivers man.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Laura Hepburn, I have chosen your name for A Memory of Light.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Leisha Springer, your name came up next.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Nathan Sawyer, you were drawn next.

ROBERT ROTH

Do you or your assistant keep a list of drawn names? Can you post them?

BRANDON SANDERSON

I do keep a list, and will post them eventually.

SEAN RYAN

When you write a book do you fill the less important names in later?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Often I do just that. It can break the flow of writing to develop the right name, particularly when I might cut that scene.

BRANDON SANDERSON (13 JANUARY)

Angela Ryddingwood, I have drawn your name.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Bach Payson, I put you in A Memory of Light, but immediately killed you. Sorry 'bout that.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Oh, and Bryan Ragon, same goes for you. You died well, though.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Craig Foster, you round out the trio of dead Borderlanders I needed for this scene.

GREG LINDSEY

Just curious Brandon, are the names coming out of the proverbial hat, or do you look for names that can be easily WOTified?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Most things are pretty easy to wot-ify. And, since I can use either first or last, I haven't yet found any that don't work.

SEAN CORSON

Are you changing the names of people you put in A Memory of Light to make them more "Randland" appropriate?

BRANDON SANDERSON

They are changed.

BRANDON SANDERSON (16 JANUARY)

Michael Gonzalez, your name came up next. (Yes, I am wot-izing all of these.)

BRANDON SANDERSON (20 JANUARY)

Mione Haak, I drew your name for A Memory of Light.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Neil Tweed, you too.

NEIL TWEED

Who am I? Dark or light? Do I die well?

BRANDON SANDERSON

I try not to use fan names for the shadow very often. I actually named some woods after you.

BRANDON SANDERSON

You would have been one of the original owners of the land where the woods were, I should think.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Nikhil Rode and Nils Loodin, I needed two Aiel scouts.

BRANDON SANDERSON (23 JANUARY)

Kris Ring, you're a member of the Seanchan Blood.

BRANDON SANDERSON (24 JANUARY)

Johnnie Lee Barrington, Jr. and Jay Dauro, you are members of the Deathwatch Guard.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Paul Benish, hope you look good in the hadori.

DANIEL NELSON

I'm confused. You are still using names but won't take anymore? So my name may still come up assuming you aren't done us ...

BRANDON SANDERSON

It very well might. If you are on the list, there is a chance.

BRANDON SANDERSON (25 JANUARY)

Pia Maria Vaajakallio, you are Aes Sedai.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Maureen Sampson, you're in the White Tower too.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Natalie Doyle, your name came up for A Memory of Light.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Melissa Bergevin, your name came up next.

BRANDON SANDERSON (26 JANUARY)

Harm Wieringa, your name came up next.

SHAUN DUQUETTE

Taking a long time to add the names hehe

BRANDON SANDERSON (27 JANUARY)

I'm doing the first revision, and running across places where I left placeholders instead of names.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Jordan White, you're a wolf.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Lindsey Turnbow, you too.

M. KLOMPENHOUWER

Is anyone keeping track of the names that are being drawn for A Memory of Light?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yes, they are. We'll post them eventually.

BRANDON SANDERSON (30 JANUARY)

Savannah Rose Young, you're a Seanchan general.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Sally Rankin, your name came up too.

ZACHARY NORTH

They all get changed. Some as little as Thom or Mat (if appropriate.) Some to things very different.

ADAM GOUCHER

How many names got submitted?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Three thousand, I think.

BRANDON SANDERSON (6 FEBRUARY)

Anna Roberts and Andrew Holcombe, I drew your names most recently for A Memory of Light.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Caitlin Sullivan, you're in the White Ajah.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Courtney Gliszczynski, your name came up next. I think I'll adapt your first name, not your last, if that's all right...

BRANDON SANDERSON

Michael Sarcone, you asked to be a Darkfriend for some reason, and I obliged.

BRANDON SANDERSON (7 FEBRUARY)

Chris Gilbert, you entered your son's name into A Memory of Light and it has been used.

BRANDON SANDERSON (8 FEBRUARY)

Drew a bunch of names I didn't report. Eric Silva, Hugh Hill, Sean Little, Rion Kinosaki, Helen Cousins, Eyal Weinstock.

SEAN LITTLE

This is Sean Little, the guy that emailed you previously regarding putting in a group name. Did that entry have...

SEAN LITTLE

...San D'ma Shadar as the name?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yes.

SEAN LITTLE

Thank you very much.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Trying to figure out the San in that phrase, though. Is the "San" a name, or a word in the Old Tongue I'm missing?

SEAN LITTLE

The translation used on the site (made by our Old Tongue experts) is Slayers of the Shadow. I could ask for the exact translation.

BRANDON SANDERSON

That works for me. I actually put the name in a place where it could refer to a group, so I'll tweak it to do so.

ANTHONY AZIZ

Your favorite Two Rivers man, Azi al'Thone, back to bug you again :D I had put in an entry for SDS as well... and since...

ANTHONY AZIZ

...I'm a member of SDS of TV.Net, I'm wondering what (if any) possibility there is of making Azi part of it?

ANTHONY AZIZ

Of course, I understand if that's complicated or doesn't fit with the story—had to ask anyways.

BRANDON SANDERSON

The group is referenced by Mat as being part of a historical battle.

ANTHONY AZIZ

Oh okay! Yes, that would be really hard to make work then :P Thanks for the response, Great Lord :)

BRANDON SANDERSON (14 FEBRUARY)

Working on one of the big, climactic sections at the end of A Memory of Light right now. Not many names left to draw, I'm afraid. A handful, maybe.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Remember, there is a special group of Dragonsworn in the Last Battle representing all who donated, so even if you aren't named, you're there.

BRANDON SANDERSON (15 FEBRUARY)

Roger Trask and Charlie Bachelder, turns out I needed two more Aiel to fight in the Last Battle.

RAFO, but I will tell you something about the Horn. People always ask why the inscription on the Horn is in the Old Tongue, if it's so old. It was added in the Age of Legends.

Terez

It should also be noted that, when a panel moderator asked the audience if we wanted to see the Heroes of the Horn come back before the end, Maria raised her hand high.

Sunday

Maybe a little too much of a good time, as I woke up Sunday feeling really, really not good. I tried to eat breakfast with Jason and Harriet and Tom Doherty and a bunch of other people, but ended up mostly just kind of staring at everyone in a nauseous daze, which I'm sure was thrilling for everyone involved. It was a goddamn barrel of monkeys from this end, I can tell you. Yes, yes, I have no one to blame but myself, blah blah blah bitemecakes.

It did have one good result, in that I apparently looked so piteous that Mr. Doherty was moved to rescue me by offering me a ride with him to the airport, as we both had flights out that afternoon. Because he is a Prince Among Men. I accepted gratefully, and said goodbye to everyone I could find before heading out to brave the dark and foreboding clutches of the airline travel industry once more.

And here, pretty much, ends my extremely long-winded tale. I'd like to thank the Academy, and also Jennifer, Dot, Jason, Pablo, and anyone else who had anything to do with getting me to this thing and steering me gently in the directions I needed to go while I was there, and buying me tasty beverages while they were at it. Y'all are the bizzomb, yo.

And, of course, deep thanks to Team Jordan, for being the thoroughly gracious and awesome group of people that you are, and for sharing your time and your expertise and your memories of a singular man with us. I am honored, and I do not say so lightly.

So, that's my report on JordanCon 2009! I had about a billion tons of fun, and met some of the coolest people on this here mudball, and I am eternally grateful to all y'all for being the kickass fandom that you are. As my people say, laisse le bon temps roule, which is Old Tongue for "Whoo!" Indeed.

Fin!

Alan Romanczuk

Ted Herman

I called Gerald up and we brainstormed some ideas for questions. I brainstormed with Sean also and discussed how similar the Old Tongue is to his friend's gypsy language. We were ushered to stand against the wall while we waited. Then ushered to stand in the middle of the hallway. Perhaps the Library staff was bored. We discussed the sign on the wall:

Robert Jordan will not sign mass produced paperbacks
Questions are allowed, photographs are allowed
Robert Jordan will sign 2 books per trip through the line:
10 books, 2 books per trip = 5 trips

So that's why people were running to the back of the line when they were done getting their books signed.

Finally our turn came.

Hmm.

MARIA SIMONS

Okay...we don't really know. No one really knows. It's an ancient artifact, probably not a ter'angreal.

ALAN ROMANCZUK

Excuse me, Maria, I have to interrupt for just a moment. I actually found some notes on this, in the bottom of Jim's desk.

MARIA SIMONS

Oh, really?

ALAN ROMANCZUK

I don't know if anyone's interested.

VIRGINIA

Oh yes.

SPENCER POWELL

Just a little?

MARK

Please, please?

ALAN ROMANCZUK

The Horn of Valere, as Maria said, it was created by mortals—we know that; Jim has said as much publicly—and the Horn was created in the Age before the Age of Legends, or at least one Age before; it was not known how far back. But I've discovered that the Horn actually was the original Horn played by Dizzy Gillespie. [laughter] It was manufactured by King—it was the silver flare model. And something happened after this Age...there was so much Bebop imbued in this instrument that it took on its own magical qualities, and when it was found during the Age of Legends, the bent bell was refashioned into a curve, and they put in the Old Tongue inscription inside the bell. [laughter]

ANDREW GELOS

That is awesome.

VIRGINIA

Wow. I never would have guessed that.

ALAN ROMANCZUK

Well, it's really obscure. The power of Bebop is unlimited, and it just transformed through the last couple of Ages, to get into Rand's world, with its current...now, originally, when he blew it, musicians would appear.

VIRGINIA

AH. Backup band.

ALAN ROMANCZUK

But because of the needs of the time, you know, it suddenly became, Heroes would emerge when it was played. So, that's all we can really say about it. Do you have anything else to add, Maria?

MARIA SIMONS

No.

JENNIFER LIANG

I can't wait until the Theorylanders get ahold of that.

VIRGINIA

Oh yeah. So now we know that the Wheel even weaves inanimate objects into the Pattern, and makes use of them as it wishes.

MARK

Now, that story I expect to see in the next Great White Book, version two. [laughter]

Well, 1) we haven't seen Elayne in a whole book; we don't really know what she's doing, and 2) she has problems channeling because of this pregnancy deal, and 3) everything's going to be in the Old Tongue and she's a little busy to sit down and translate documents.

VIRGINIA

That's true.

ALAN ROMANCZUK

But you don't understand the significance of that ter'angreal: Jim foreshadowed the creation of the Kindle. [laughter]

VIRGINIA

Oh, no!

ALAN ROMANCZUK

Mmhmm, he did. And actually, Elayne—right now as we speak—is in her bed reading fiction on that.

JENNIFER LIANG

I bet they're dirty romance novels.

SPENCER POWELL

I was going to peg her for an urban fantasy fan.

MARK

No, no, no, no, no. She loves the Harlequins. Case closed.

VIRGINIA

Oh, the Harlequins. Yeah.

JENNIFER LIANG

Yes, totally.

MARK

Either her or Aviendha, but one of those two is definitely into the Harlequin super-romance.

VIRGINIA

How can she get all excited about the cover art of Fabio when she's got Rand? [laughter]

ANDREW GELOS

Have you seen the cover of Lord of Chaos?

VIRGINIA

Yeah, I'm telling you! No comparison.

JENNIFER LIANG

Yeah, that one was nicknamed at our house 'Passion of the Aes Sedai'. I actually had to take the dust jacket off of that one when I would take it to school, when I was in high school, because I was like, "I do not want people to think I'm reading some kind of filthy romance novel in class."

VIRGINIA

Well, I'm thinking more of, what was it? A Crown of Swords? Where he's got the, uh…all he needs is some baby oil and a little less clothes and he looks like he's posing…

JENNIFER LIANG

We love fist-pumping, body-building Rand.

MARK

Don't make me get out the water bottle to squirt you ladies. Jeez… [laughter]

JENNIFER LIANG

I have a big cardboard cut-out of fist-pumping, baby-oil Rand in my garage right now. I use it as a [decoration] at conventions. [Amusingly, it was stolen at JordanCon 2011, a few months after this interview.]

VIRGINIA

Oh, cool.

SPENCER POWELL

Is that cool, or is that creepy?

JENNIFER LIANG

Well, it's a little insane I think.

Yes, yes. One thing you have to remember about Jim is he never did a single reference in any of his descriptions, whether it's a military uniform, a city, a character—everything seemed to draw from multiple sources. So yes, Cairhien was most likely in part based on London, but you look at the map of it, and you can see it's very different as well. It's laid out in a very rigid grid fashion. You could say in that case, well, maybe it's based on New York City in part as well, and it has a palace up on the highest hill within the bounds of the city. That's not true of London, but it's true of other places. And London wasn't the only city burned by attack; there were many others. But yeah, I mean Jim had a huge number of books in his reference library, and he traveled a lot as well, so he saw many of these places, and in typical Jim fashion...you know, I wouldn't be surprised if he had eight or ten or twelve influences in the creation of Cairhien.

ANDREW GELOS

That's great, because what actually caught my notice—because, even the Great Fire of 1666 probably would have passed me by in connection to the Wheel of Time world, except for the fact that, then I looked at the semi-Puritanical dress that the nobles in the city were taken to wearing, and then we were…I actually on the day I thought of this question was sitting there looking at a screen with the picture of Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector, and I was just like, "You know, that's like, almost what I kind of envisioned the Cairhienin nobility to kind of look like."

VIRGINIA

Well, one thing we've never seen in any of the Wheel of Time history that I can recall—and London, just talking about it brought it to mind—is, we've never seen a large-scale plague in history, like with the Great Plague of the year…I've forgotten now.

ALAN ROMANCZUK

Mmhmm.

MARIA SIMONS

Yeah.

ALAN ROMANCZUK

Well, of course, so many of the rats have been eliminated, but they're back now.

VIRGINIA

They're back! Maybe your plague is coming, like they need more trouble. [laughter]

MARIA SIMONS

The Last… (cross-talk)

VIRGINIA

No, go ahead…

MARIA SIMONS

The Last Battle is…

JENNIFER LIANG

It's funny that you brought up London as an influence, because most people when they're talking about influences on Cairhien, they really pick up on the court of the Sun King and Marie Antoinette because the style is very, you know, 1700s, late-1700s and Marie Antoinette, and there's also a lot of Japanese influence, and that tends to be what people pick up on. So this is the first time I've had somebody say, "You know, I think there's a London in Cairhien," so that's kind of interesting.

VIRGINIA

I guess everybody brings something different to the books, and interprets them in their own way.

JENNIFER LIANG

Oh yeah, definitely.

ALAN ROMANCZUK

Yeah, another interesting point: anyone remember what the name Cairhien means in the Old Tongue?

ANDREW GELOS

Hill of the Golden Dawn.

ALAN ROMANCZUK

Hill of the Golden Dawn. The Order of the Golden Dawn was an occult society in London back before the beginning of the 20th Century.

FOOTNOTE

VIRGINIA

Yeah, that's right. I'd forgotten that.

ALAN ROMANCZUK

Which I just bring out as, you know, yet another thing that Jim latched on to and threw into the mix.

JENNIFER LIANG

Most people think 'the hill of the golden dawn' is like, 'Oh, the land of the rising sun!' which would be Japan, because there's a heavy Japanese influence in just the style of the buildings and things like that seem very Japanese.

ALAN ROMANCZUK

Sure. And the Sun King of France.

JENNIFER LIANG

Yeah. It's kind of like he just pulled everything that was related to the sun and just kind of melded it together to make Cairhien.

ALAN ROMANCZUK

Yeah.

MARIA SIMONS

He liked mixing things up.

JENNIFER LIANG

And it works really well. That's the surprising thing to me is that he was able to pull from so many different sources and make things seem very coherent and logical for the cultures.

VIRGINIA

Yeah, I like the fact that everything that you read as you're going along, all these things sort of tug at the back of your mind and you're thinking, 'Oh, this reminds me of this, and this reminds me of that', and it makes you really think that it adds a depth to the thing that you can come back later and explore it again.

ALAN ROMANCZUK

Okay, I've got a game for you. Go to Wikipedia. Put in something like 'golden dawn', let's say…or just anything. Pull anything from the Wheel of Time books that's distinctive. Put it into Wikipedia until you find a hit. I almost guarantee, within that article, you're going to find yet another reference from the Wheel of Time. Track that. See how many hits you can go before you run out.

VIRGINIA

I'll have to try that.

ALAN ROMANCZUK

I did that the other day, and I wound up spending an hour and a half of just going from one thing to another. It was really amazing.

JENNIFER LIANG

Yeah, I can see myself losing an afternoon doing that.

VIRGINIA

Oh yeah, easily.

SPENCER POWELL

Very easily.

JENNIFER LIANG

I've lost too many hours to Wiki-walking already.

VIRGINIA

I guess that's why it bothers me so much about that library ter'angreal…if I had that, I'd never be able to put it down, and I guess I just don't understand how somebody could…if they can't deal with it, then delegate, but this is me. It's the equivalent of having a computer hooked up to the internet; I could not walk away from it. It would be a Mindtrap for me. [laughter]

Oh, you're spot on. Spot on.

VIRGINIA

Yay Andrew!

ANDREW GELOS

Sweet!

ALAN ROMANCZUK

Jim actually spoke pretty extensively in public about the Old Tongue, and I even pulled up a letter that he had written about it in which he says, "The Old Tongue is based on, for example, the languages: Gaelic, Russian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and some additions of my own—bridging material if you will. Grammar and syntax are a blending of English, German, and Chinese with some influence from a set of African languages read about long ago, and all but the oddities of structure long since forgotten." He has converted constructions…the thing about the Old Tongue, the way that it's constructed…it is a very loose language, like Latin I guess; it can be presented in almost any order and be intelligible to someone who knows it, and there are several conventions involved in it which could be explained for a longer podcast, but those are the basics. He really did pull them from a lot of different areas, and he started by constructing the language—as I recall there is a list of 850 or 880 common words that you need to know to be able to speak in English, and I don't know who created these, but he had that. We have file, and he modified that, kicking out some words like 'electricity' and so forth that wouldn't be useful in this, and adding some others, and putting definitions to them in Old Tongue. I never added it up, but he said we had a file of about a thousand words, and this dictionary will be published at a later time.

VIRGINIA

Great.

ANDREW GELOS

That is awesome.

ALAN ROMANCZUK

And that will be part of the encyclopedia, actually.

ANDREW GELOS

That'll be great.

VIRGINIA

I can't wait. That sort of leads me into my next question which is something that, two years ago when Brandon was out on the Mistborn tour—the last Mistborn book tour—during an interview, I asked him if he could please come up with some way for us to say phrases having to do with the Light, such as 'Walk in the Light,' or 'May the Light illumine you' in the Old Tongue, and he said he would do his best, and I think he just forgot. But we do have the audio; he kind of sort of promised us. We're hoping that maybe you can bail him out on this one. [laughter]

ALAN ROMANCZUK

Well, I think all will be revealed in the encyclopedia.

VIRGINIA

Aww, I can't wait that long!

ALAN ROMANCZUK

Except what isn't revealed.

JENNIFER LIANG

How far is the encyclopedia coming? People ask me about it occasionally, and I'm like, 'I dunno; they're working on it.'

MARIA SIMONS

Well, it's been back-burner recently because we're doing Towers of Midnight, but that's my next project to get back into, doing basically the skeleton for it, and after A Memory of Light we will go full bore on it.

JENNIFER LIANG

Oh, excellent. I remember Harriet saying that it was due one year after the final book, whenever the final book is out.

MARIA SIMONS

Right.

ALAN ROMANCZUK

And we're working on it in between when we get time, when we're not doing podcasts and so forth. [laughter]

VIRGINIA

Oh, now you're making us feel guilty. [laughter] But not very.

I need to learn Old Tongue for 'Read And Find Out'. [laughter]

VIRGINIA

I'm still waiting for 'May the Light illumine you'! [laughs] I was hoping somebody'd pop up with that for the podcast, and that's how I try to close each episode, so that's why I asked Brandon for it. I'm just gonna have to hound him.

Once again, I just want to thank Jennifer, Alan, and Maria for being able to join us today. It's phenomenal talking to all three of you; it is just amazing to be able to get to interact so closely with people who are so closely ingrained with the series. It's been a very true pleasure.

VIRGINIA

We sure do appreciate you coming out, and it's…

It's been a blast; this has been fun.

ALAN ROMANCZUK

It's been an honor, and thank you so much for having us, and we hope to see you at one of the cons.

MARIA SIMONS

Yes.

VIRGINIA

I hope so too. And we want to issue an open invitation, if you ever have, you know, any time at all, and you want to, we'll make it work if you want to talk with us again. Maybe after the next release or something…any time. Just…we'll make it work.

MARIA SIMONS

Okay.

ALAN ROMANCZUK

Okay! And if you have a spare couch where you live…[laughter]

JENNIFER LIANG

I have a spare bedroom.

SPENCER POWELL

Yeah, if you wanna come to know where I know (?)…

ALAN ROMANCZUK

It's a date.

VIRGINIA

I actually live in Nowhere, California (?) We're one of the last really rural areas in California; I joke that it's like the Two Rivers, only without the amenities. [laughter]

ALAN ROMANCZUK

Without the water.

VIRGINIA

We don't even have an inn! We have no inn. [laughter]

MARIA SIMONS

Wow.

ALAN ROMANCZUK

Alright! Well, thanks so much.

MARIA SIMONS

Thank you.

ANDREW GELOS

Thank you.

VIRGINIA

We wanna thank everybody who showed up for this; we really appreciate it.

ANDREW GELOS

And thank you Jennifer.

JENNIFER LIANG

Oh, thank you! Gave me something to do this afternoon besides beat my head against that paper I'm trying to write. [laughter]

SPENCER POWELL

Then maybe we shouldn't have…no.

JENNIFER LIANG

I'm actually ahead of schedule on this paper, so it's okay.

SPENCER POWELL

Alright.

VIRGINIA

Well, anyway. Thank you Alan, thank you Maria, Jennifer, Mark, Spencer, and Andrew for showing up, and I think that'll pretty much wrap up this episode, so this is Virginia, saying "May the Light illumine you", until we meet again, or until Brandon gives me my catch-phrase in the Old Tongue.

MARK

Alright, well thanks again for coming out. For Maria and Alan; you guys have been great, and thanks again for having me on the podcast; it's always great to be here.

SPENCER POWELL

And until next time, may you find water and shade.

ANDREW GELOS

And for myself, Andrew Gelos, and everyone here at The 4th Age: Suravye ninto manshima taishite.

Did not get a chance to ask:

1. Why did Ishamael split in two at the end of The Dragon Reborn?
2. Who was Kari al'Thor? And what did it mean to be Second Captain in Illian?
3. Is Egwene the reincarnation of Eldrene of Manetheren? And is Eldrene's veil significant? Will you explore Egwene's understanding of the Old Tongue at all?
4. Was Lews Therin Beidomon?
5. What did your readers guess that you thought they'd never pick up on because you thought it was too subtle?
6. Why do some characters go in and out of the woodwork? Like Rand in The Dragon Reborn...
7. What made you choose to have a protagonist who will be going mad?

Please do identify yourself as a 'net Darkfriend. He seems to like us, be aware of us, etc. And Judy: "All is forgiven".

All right. Kelsier and Moiraine are facing each other in the Suvudu cage match next round. Guess I should do a write up.

BRANDON SANDERSON

I think I'll just flip a coin to decide who wins, then write something that makes it seem logical.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Though this is (for a Suvudu Cage Match) actually quite even, I'm going to have to play it very tongue-in-cheek. Just a warning.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Don't expect an epic battle. I don't have the time to spare to write up something like that in this case.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Okay, that's done. Quick and dirty, I'm afraid, but it's all the time I could spare. Should be up on Suvudu soon, maybe on my website also.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Warning: it not only contains huge spoilers for both series, but a lot of WoT and Mistborn in jokes.

BRANDON SANDERSON

If you disagree with the results of my coin flip, feel free to vote however you wish in the cage match poll. :)

BRANDON SANDERSON

Write up I did for Kelsier and Moiraine will go up Monday, I believe. I'll post a link when it goes live.

AIDAN MOHER

You stole my cage match, Brandon! ;)

BRANDON SANDERSON

Ha! You were the one who would tackle this, eh?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Well, if you had something cool you wanted to do, I'll post it on my site if you still want to write it.

BRANDON SANDERSON (26 MARCH)

In case you haven't seen it, my Moiraine vs Kelsier write up is here.

BARRY ARNOLD

I liked it, it was a fun read, still voted for Moiraine though :P ^_^

BRANDON SANDERSON

I actually tried to leave it ambiguous at the end. The thing people should be asking themselves is this:

BRANDON SANDERSON

"As the write-up was from Kelseir's viewpoint, can we assume that the whole thing happened as Moiraine wanted it to?"

BRANDON SANDERSON

You need to ask yourself that whenever you end a conversation with an Aes Sedai. :)

If you missed it on Twitter or Facebook, here's the link to my Suvudu Cage Match writeup of Moiraine vs. Kelsier. Don't expect an epic battle. I don't have the time to spare to write something like that in this case. Instead, I played it very tongue-in-cheek. I flipped a coin to decide who won, then wrote something that made it seem logical. Warning: it not only contains huge spoilers for both series, but a lot of Wheel of Time and Mistborn in-jokes. If you disagree with the results of my coin flip, feel free to vote however you wish in the cage match poll.

Louie Free

Brandon Sanderson

Louie Free

Brandon Sanderson

Louie Free

Brandon Sanderson

Louie Free

Brandon Sanderson

Louie Free

Brandon Sanderson

Louie Free

Well, the first thing is that Brandon writes, and...you could talk about that, Peter. I don't really know much about Brandon's writing process except that it tends to be at night. (laughter)

Peter Ahlstrom

Well, for those who aren't aware, Brandon...(sigh)...Brandon tends to stay up until four o'clock in the morning writing, and then he gets up at noon. So he gets up at noon, and then he writes from about one to five, and then he is with the family until bedtime for the kids, and so from about...I guess he starts writing again at about eight, and then he keeps going until four. Some of you may be interested to know that he has a walking treadmill desk, so he does a lot of his writing standing up, walking on the treadmill (laughter) and when he's not at the treadmill, he's got multiple fireplaces around the house now, so he's usually in front of one of those.

Harriet McDougal

Are they wood-burning, or gas, or what? (laughter) I love fireplaces!

Peter Ahlstrom

Uh...they are gas fireplaces.

Harriet McDougal

Yeah, those are fun. Then Brandon gives us the first draft, and some bits are rough, and some are polished. And we go through it with our three various combs. Mine is characters and prose. Maria is continuity. I am not. (laughter) And she's a wizard at that, and Alan is a military wizard. And notice it's...I guess sexist, to give him the boy's stuff. (laughter).

Alan Romanczuk

I get all the alcohol as well. (laughter).

Harriet McDougal

That's just 'cause he's lucky.

Maria Simons

And Alan does Old Tongue and geography as well, because I kinda stink at both of those.

Harriet McDougal

And I just kind of lose my temper with the geography. (laughter) And then, we get this stuff, and with this book, we're doing a better...it is a better thing we are doing for our country this time. (laughter) We send our combined nit-picking to Brandon section by section, and right now he's had...what did I send you last week? Five?

Peter Ahlstrom

Part six.

Harriet McDougal

Six! I'm in eight; so is Maria. (to Alan) Where are you?

Alan Romanczuk

Seven.

Harriet McDougal

Seven. And we'll wait until Alan has finished eight before it goes back to Brandon, so that he doesn't lose his mind, and nine is followed only by the epilogue, so we're almost through. And then Brandon will send it back and there will probably be more animated conversation (laughter), and this time it will include words from Brandon that sort of say, "But you said..." (laughter) And we'll work it out, and we hope to have it in New York June 15th, and that might seem like a long time for January 8th. Believe me, it's not. And it will...is Paul Stevens here? Yeah, hey Paul! This will save...if we can do it, it will save the coffee cart from adding Prozac and Gelusil in massive amounts, right?

Paul Stevens

Yes.

Harriet McDougal

But it might be...there is [?] [whispered conversation with Alan, something about June 15th]

Maria Simons

Scary, isn't it? (laughter)

Harriet McDougal

That's the goal.

Melissa Craib

It is in two months.

Harriet McDougal

But, we don't think Brandon really needs to sleep. (laughter)

“Aviendha and Tuon are the ones I worked the hardest on, but I expected them to be hard. I wasn’t expecting Mat to be hard. That blindsided me.” Brandon explained that in general the Andoran characters are the easiest for him to write as, “They feel like friends from high school.” So it surprised Brandon when he sat down to write Mat and discovered that he didn’t have an immediate grasp on him. Brandon eventually realized it was because, unlike the other characters, “Mat is an untrustworthy narrator. He doesn’t always believe what he says and he doesn’t even always believe the thoughts in his own head. He’s a character I’ve struggled to write but I think I’ve gotten as close to him as it’s possible for me to get.” (The positive reaction to the Mat chapter he read certainly put weight to this statement.)

He also, tongue-in-cheek, admitted that before he wrote Cadsuane she was his least favorite character. “She was just too mean!”

Magic Explained. Definitively.

Well, for my books. Well, mostly.

(I'm jumping back a couple of posts here—but both Brandon and I have been traveling on and off during this Babel Clash, so apologies on some non-linearity.)

From a storytelling standpoint, the more magic you have in a world, the more problems you create, so I've dealt with magic differently in my two series. In the Night Angel books, I wanted to start with magic users being incredibly rare. The paradigm was that magic users were like professional athletes—the average person would go their whole life without ever seeing one in person, though they would hear about them. Of course, if you're in the right circles, you might know or see a lot of pro athletes. But, like pro athletes (depending on the sport), the average person might walk right past one of them on the street and never know it.

That built in some mystery from the start. Then I did something that seemed to hit different reviewers differently. I had a magic system that I understood, that had scientific limits, and costs and clear delineations—but then I filtered that through a medieval, pre-scientific worldview. Then, I figured that each culture is going to have different views of magic: even if magic works the same physically everywhere, a culture is going to affect how people use their magic or understand it. Then I layered in the fact that my main character is an ignorant kid, and some people lie to him about how magic works. And then I put in—for one culture—a parasite that would feed on magic, making those infected more powerful in the short run, but ultimately destroying them.

Sound complex? It was, but I had a handle on it. It had costs and limits—they just weren't what the main character always thought they were. That preserved some of the mystery, made things fun as they unfolded, and makes re-reads of the books fun. (Wait, you're telling me Durzo lied?! Um, yep, Durzo lies.)

But the complexity comes at a cost. And this is why I was asking Brandon earlier about how he thinks outside perceptions of a book or its author affect how you read a book. I think Brandon can get away with explaining little about his magic system (systems?) in The Way of Kings precisely because he's known as a magic system guy—his magic is always well thought out. Because I was a new guy with The Way of Shadows and because there are contradictory statements made about magic and no Irving the Explainer to say How Things Are, you could see the magic as just a mess. Contradictory. Contrived. Deus ex machina stuff.

I don't know if there's a way around that except having your reputation grow. It's like when you show an awkward teen romance: Is this dialogue awkward because the characters are tongue-tied, or because the writer sucks at dialogue?

Regardless, I decided to go the opposite way with The Lightbringer Trilogy, to take on something harder, and juggle the problems having lots of magic creates. This world has a proto-scientific understanding of magic. They're disciplined in their study, and they get most things right. (It helps that I'm using light as the basis for the magic, and light is innately funky and mind-boggling and cool and mysterious.) I also have the kid taught stuff that is (mostly) true. The fun comes from me making solid rules and making each magic obey the laws of physics: you want to throw a fireball the size of a house? Fine, can you lift a house?

Each color of magic has its own attributes: red is sticky and flammable, blue is hard and smooth, and so forth. Then I gave each drafter a finite amount of magic they can use in their life—use it fast and you're hastening your own death. Then I gave each color a metaphysical effect on the drafter who uses it: using lots of blue makes a person more orderly, etc. Then I—well, there's more.

But the rules are simple and analogous to those from real systems. I think this does strip away mystery, but adds wonder. It's like a physician who comes to understand many processes of the human body, but becomes more and more awed by life itself.

To use a less grandiose metaphor, I see this magic as a box of toys. I hope people will play with them and put them together in ingenious ways. Indeed, the enjoyment and the terror for me as a writer is feeling like I'm in a footrace with my own fans. Who's going to come up with the coolest uses of these luxins? Them, or me?

It's an experiment, and I think that's one of the greatest things about fantasy. We get to play. And if we keep that sense of play, of fun, then the magic—and the stories themselves—will be wondrous.

So on that note, Dane, thank you for having me on to talk about some of the things that I love. And Brandon, thanks for sharing your thoughts—and for swatting aside a few hand grenades. It's been a real pleasure talking with you. And to my fans out there, if you haven't already, Check this guy out. His books are great.

How was the Old Tongue created?

Maria Simons

Then, the store supervisor in charge of this event auctioned off the A Memory of Light poster that they had put on display. It sold for over $200, and the money went towards a local program which taught reading to at-risk children and adults who also needed help reading.

About half of the Memory Keepers helped out with the signing process, making sure the flaps were in the right place, helping out with keeping the right books with the right people, giving the books back, and calling out the numbers.

The rest were leading games in a different area of the store. For a short time, we had three different trivia games going, but eventually those combined into one and a hangman game started. We had other games planned, but those two lasted us through the night. There were new people that came around for trivia after the first group had ended, and so we got to "recycle" questions. The hangman was also fun—especially when the phrase was in Old Tongue. I enjoyed floating through these games as I dashed about.

One of the trivia games:

The hangman game (fuzzified):

It was based on a lot of different languages. He had shelves and shelves of language books—every language, practically, known to man—but it was a lot of creativity on his part to put it all together.

Brandon Sanderson

Another fun story here. At one point, when I was visiting Charleston, I was talking about the mythological significance of certain things, and I'm like, "I can't figure out the mythological significance of the ashandarei." I knew pieces of Mat's mythological significance—not based on language, but the mythology—and Harriet said, "Oh, I know where it came from." She ran out to his library, selected a specific volume, came back with it and gave it to me and said, "It's this chapter right here." And showed me a chapter in that book that I could read that talked about the mythological significance of that specific piece of the Wheel of Time world. And so, there are all sorts of things like that that he used.

Well, your Mistborn series did bring attention to you. I mean, that's one of the reasons why you are writing the Wheel of Time series. Robert Jordan wrote the first one in 1990, it's called The Eye of the World. Eleven books later, he passed on, suddenly, and left millions and millions people with their mouths open like, "Well, what's next?" Tell us a little bit about how you jumped on board to complete the Wheel of Time series.

Okay. I got up in the morning one day in October of 2007, fumbled downstairs to my long commute to my couch, picked up my phone to see if anyone had called me. And lo and behold there was a message from someone I didn't know the number of. And so I picked up my phone and I listened to it and was completely dumbfounded and shocked to hear a message from Harriet Rigney, Robert Jordan's widow, asking me if I would call her because there's something she wants to talk to me about. To be perfectly honest, my response was something on the lines of, "Blah, blu, blahb".

Matthew Peterson

[laughs]

Brandon Sanderson

I mean I couldn't even talk. Well, turns out that I was well known at TOR as a big fan of the series. I had written, when Robert Jordan had passed away, a eulogy for him, that kind of explained how he had been such a big influence on my life and upon how I had decided to become a writer and why I even chose my publisher. And so that eulogy had ended up on Harriet's desk and she had read it and then called Tom Doherty the publisher, and asked him, "Is this one of your guys?" He's like, "Yeah, this guy's a good writer. You should look into his work; he's a possibility." And so that's how I got brought on. I've described it like being hit by a freight train that I wasn't expecting.

That’s the first I had heard of it. It was out of no where. At least as far as I was expecting it. So at that point, she requested some copies of the Mistborn books and she called me. Her initial call was a call to ask me if I'm interested before she did the work to search through my books and decide if she wanted to choose me. And so that initial phone call, when I finally got a hold of her. . . It was actually pretty hard to get a hold of her. She had left the house and I was just kind of running around in circles like a chicken with his head cut off because I didn't know what was going on and I was very tongue tied. And I eventually got a hold of her and she just said, "I want to see if you're interested before I do the work of reading one of your books and deciding." Well, to be perfectly honest, my response was something along the lines of "Blah ble blahh . . ."

Matthew Peterson

[laughs]

Brandon Sanderson

I mean, I couldn't even talk. I wrote her an email the next day that I sent care of Tom Doherty, that really essentially said, "Dear Harriet, I promise I'm not an idiot, even though I sounded like one."

Matthew Peterson

[laughs]

Brandon Sanderson

But she then sat down and read Mistborn, and it was about a month later. She read Mistborn. She considered some other people. She called me up and said, "Yes, I would like you to do this. Are you still interested?" And of course I was. It is one of those things that just happens unexpectedly.

Matthew Peterson

Just an amazing thing.

Brandon Sanderson

And it changes your life.

All right, let's see...

San Diego signing, Mysterious Galaxy bookstore, Feb. 6.
Both Brandon and Harriet attended.

My mom and I got there fairly early (just after 5:30 PM), and there were already a large number of people there—I'll say around 50—and chairs were quickly disappearing, but we snagged a couple. Freelancer was already there, of course (being a Memory Keeper), and after I waved him over and we started chatting, s'rEDIT, who was sitting right behind us, introduced herself, and we talked for a long while.

Around 6 PM or so, Free announced that he had some wonderful crossword puzzles for us (courtesy of Wetlandernw) to pass the time, and they certainly did. (Of the 79 clues, I was able to answer 64 of them correctly, though I did misspell several (i.e., wrong vowel). The other 15 I was unable to answer, and researched them when we got home. Thanks, Wetlander!)

I first noticed Brandon and Harriet in the store at around 6:30 (though they must have arrived earlier, because Free claims to have had a private Q&A session, which I will leave to him to disclose). At 7 PM Brandon and Harriet were introduced, and Brandon went over how the night was going to proceed. The Memory Keepers then got set up for the Q&A (Free had a video camera, and many had voice recorders).

Sometime during the shuffle (or possibly before 7PM? I can't recall), Harriet noted the photo of RJ that is on the wall behind the counter. She remembered that it was taken at Mysterious Galaxy during RJ's last tour (for Knife of Dreams, in 2005), and asked us if anyone knew who took the photo—at which point Mom and I both put our hands up, and told her. Our good friend Jeanne (who lived near us until she moved to the Bay Area) took this photo at the bookstore during the 2005 signing; it now adorns RJ's Wikipedia page, and she made the letter-size print for the MG store. In gratitude (for Harriet is very appreciative of the photo), she gave us a DVD of photos from that signing, including the one linked above, to send to Jeanne. It was a touching moment for us.

The Q&A went splendidly; as there were to be no spoilers for the book, most of the questions were the usual kind, like asking Brandon and Harriet how Brandon was selected, and how he thought about it; what the most difficult character was for him to write; what his favorite of Rand's three girls was; that sort of thing. And most of those were fairly long-winded answers, with plenty of good humor mixed in from both of them. One daring fellow asked Brandon (tongue-in- cheek, undoubtedly) who killed Asmodean; Harriet insisted on answering, and him (loosely paraphrased) that it was an exercise in being able to read the Glossary, and we all laughed. One question was asked about the "River of Souls" story in the Unfettered anthology; this was the first I'd heard of it being a deleted scene from A Memory of Light, so that was kind of neat. A question was asked about one of Brandon's other books (one which I haven't read, so it didn't make any sense to me).

It wasn't until about 7:45 or so that he finally called an end to the Q&A, and had Harriet do a very short reading from the book, which I will probably never forget, because the paragraph she read was the one used in each of the 14 volumes of TWoT: the wind scene. When she got to "There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time", she paused, and let us recite with her, "But it was a beginning."

Mom and I were second in the signing line, so we had plenty of time to get a group photo:

Sorry for the poor image quality; it was taken with my iPod touch, as I had neglected to bring a better camera. (And, indeed, I forgot to take any more pictures of anyone that night, which I regret a little.)

After we got our books signed, we went to get some fresh air, stretch our legs (imagine standing up after sitting on a hard folding chair for two hours, and you'll know what it felt like getting up), and get some dinner at the McDonald's. s'rEDIT was also there (her number was far enough in the line that she could wait a while), and we talked with her for almost an hour, and with another group from the signing (several of whom were sporting very nice outfits, including a Blue Aes Sedai and an Asha'man).

After dinner, we walked back to the bookstore and had another chat with Free out front. Mom and I elected not to stay for personalizations or additional questions; it was late and she was tired, so we said good-bye and left.

So... that turned out rather wordy, didn't it! Shame on me. Looking forward to Free's report.

Bzzz™.

Most of the questions during the Q&A centered on the writing process in one way or another, either of these last three Wheel of Time books or of his other works. I had never before had a grasp on the sheer size of what Mr. Jordan had thought about and committed to (digital) paper about this series, all the details that will probably never see the light of day, until Brandon commented that his attempt to put Jordan's massive document onto his own computer resulted in it crashing after 32,000 pages. If we ever need a metric to relate how real the world Jordan created was, that is as good as it gets.

Brandon also shared the funny and idiosyncratic way Mr. Jordan would get his inspiration for names; it wasn't all just Norse and Hindu myth all the time, but apparently also everyday objects—streets in his home town (Ogier Street!), his washing machine, and random strolls through the phone book. If you've lived in Charleston in the past 23 years, who knows, you may have made an appearance as an Andoran Noble or the Old Tongue name for an Aiel warrior society!

Um, was there any connection between Mat's luck and the dagger?

Um, not that I know of. Good question, but we can MAFO that one, but you can give the, "not that I know of". I'm still kind of...you know, the Mat's luck being beyond him being ta'veren, is one that's very interesting to me, because everything that I know says that his luck does extend beyond his ta'verenness, but...

Terez

Well, it's like his whole plotline seems kinda designed as like this revenge story for Manetheren against Aridhol, you know?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, uh-huh. Yep.

Terez

And, you know, he starts speaking the Old Tongue right before they go into Shadar Logoth; that's the first time he speaks it...

Brandon Sanderson

Uh-huh. Yep.

Terez

...you know, and then as soon as he wakes up from the Healing, he's got memories, he's got this luck, you know?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. Mmmhmm.

Terez

So...yeah.

The name...how do you pronounce it? Is it no-tay, or no-tie?

Oh, it's...you pronounce the K.

Terez

Oh, you pronounce the K!

Brandon Sanderson

....according to Alan, who is the Old Tongue expert, who corrected me on it even though I named him.

Terez

So say it!

Brandon Sanderson

k'no-tie. But Alan can correct me, because Alan is the expert.

Terez

Does it have any mythological basis that you know of?

Brandon Sanderson

No, it does not that I know of, because that one, as most of the names—not all of them, but most of them that I named, because I named him—came from me writing something in English, and saying, "Alan, give me the Old Tongue."

Terez

Okay.

Brandon Sanderson

And so, there are times where he'll find something, and I'll be like, "Oh, that sounds like this! Let's use it. Oh, this sounds like this; let's use it." Most of the time, it's...he comes up with the direct translation.

Terez

Like, Shaisam, actually...

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.

Terez

Yeah, I mean that's easy to figure out for us, right?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. And there are some where I say, "Let's find something that feels like this..." and then, you know, of course, Perrin's hammer, right?

Terez

Yeah.

Brandon Sanderson

That's one where you're like, you know, let's find an Old Tongue translation that works for what the mythological symbolism is.

Terez

And that works well. It's hard to pronounce though.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, it is a little hard to pronounce though.

Terez

Can you pronounce it?

Brandon Sanderson

MAH-HAHL-in-ear? Eh...ask Alan.

Terez

(laughs) Okay.

Two words that I find very evocative are Dreadbane and Balescream. What's yours?

You can usually guess that if it's not Old Tongue, it's probably me.

Question

I mean what's your favorite word? What's the word you find most evocative from the series?

Brandon Sanderson

In the series. Let me see. Hmm. I've always liked the term Heartstone. I would think. That one is very evocative to me.

Chris Cottingham asked, Is Nakomi's dealing with the soup for Aviendha the same as Rand and the pipe?

What do you mean?

Question

Is it the same power?

Brandon Sanderson

(Laughs) No, it is not. I'll go ahead and, wow, you actually managed to get a question out of me about Nakomi. No that is not the same.

Footnote—Terez

(Brandon later said that he didn't know anything more than the fans do about the pipe.)

Question

Is "Nakomi" from the Old Tongue, and is there a translation?

Brandon Sanderson

I'll go ahead and RAFO anything else dealing with Nakomi. You did get an answer out of me on one thing, so that's good.

Harriet McDougal

Nakomi wandered in from the Song of Hiawatha.

Brandon Sanderson

There you go.

Question

That's what we thought, yes.

Just got done at the Salt Lake signing!

My buddy and I drove 7 hours for this. I got the last question at the Q&A too! Brandon talked to us for a good five minutes, since my buddy and I were the only two to bring leather bounds in, being 2 of the only 125 made for the public, he was very impressed and took the time to make sure the personalizations were special. I wrote Lan's "I am just a man, that is all I have ever been." He liked that so he wrote it.

For my buddy he wrote in there "there are neither beginnings not endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time, but it was an ending."

He was really impressed that we both brought a leather bound. In my ToM I threw in "it's time to toss the dice." And he goes, "do you want it in Old Tongue?" I about freaked out. That man is a true fan. And in my hard backed AMoL I asked him to put the Androl quote I wrote in there, and he was happy to oblige. Needless to say it was a good night. They also had Wheel Of Time iPhone cases and I'm getting one of those.

Why is the Old Tongue always the same Old Tongue? Shouldn't some of Mat's previous lives speak Old Old Tongue? Or Old Old Old Tongue?

I've envisioned it as the Old Tongue being a kind of 'perfect' language, so to speak. An ideal language that goes beyond simple language development. When Mat speaks it, he's tapping into something greater than himself. This is my personal feeling, however, as the notes do not answer this question.

The Encyclopedia's already been published [BWB], but we have the raw notes. To keep track of what I've written, I have all sorts of "Remember" files. Every nation has a file listing culture, customs, everything about that country I might need to know plus every character who has been mentioned as a native of that country, all the information that's been given about him or her in the books, even some things that haven't been used yet. There's a file for everyone: named and unnamed, living, dead, historical, whatever! "Who Is Where" is a file that lists, country by country, the last place every character in the book was seen. "ABC" (which used to be called "The Glossary") has every word or term or name I've created including every word in the Old Tongue. If I printed out all the "Remember" files, they'd be somewhere between 1,300 and 1,500 pages—but there are limits! They would probably be insanely boring for most people, but I want to make sure I remember what I created on the fly.

Tor has set up a website with a Question and Answer of the week. And Jason Denzel at Dragonmount.com set up a blog for me. When I'm not touring I'll post maybe once every week or two. I haven't been flamed yet on my site and trolls haven't shown up, but I don't know that I expect them to. My fans are generally pretty nice, polite people. In their discussion groups they say who they hate and what they hate about what I've written—that's OK; if I can create somebody powerful enough that people really hate them, I'm doing my job even if I didn't mean for them to be hated. The characters don't have lives of their own, though. Whatever my readers may think, I'm an Old Testament God with my fist in the middle of my characters' lives: I created them and they do what I want, when I want them to! I do figure out why they're behaving that way, as if they werereal people, and that helps the reader believe in them.

This one is from Terez, about WoT. It says "Does Moridin have anything to do with the Knife of Dreams?"

She thinks that his name "Tedronai" translates into Knife of Dreams in WoT.

BRANDON SANDERSON

(slightly surprised) Oh. If that is the case Terez,which it very well may be, I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s mostly because I don’t do anything with the Old Tongue- I let Alan handle it, because he’s so good at it, I pretty much just refer to him. The only thing I tried to name on my own was Perrin’s hammer. And even that, he had to fix a few little things to make it work right.

So I won’t kill that theory, but I can’t confirm it either.

Each spren is based on the Ideal of Fire.

Kurkistan

And is that sitting in the Spiritual Realm?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, we're using sort of a Platonic Ideal, and that concept is in force, so < sounds hesitant > "yes", but [spren] are manifestations of it.

Kurkistan

So these Ideals in the Spiritual Realm: Divine Breath, does that heal by accessing some Ideal of Human Health: so a guy who had never had a tongue and doesn't know how to speak all the sudden has a tongue and can speak? [Note: Talking of Susebron here]

Brandon Sanderson

You are... < LONG pause > You are, um, on the right track.

Kurkistan

Okay...

Brandon Sanderson

Because the Breath is... eh. How can I explain this? You are, yeah... So... So each Breath is a shade of deity, right?

Kurkistan

Yeah.

Brandon Sanderson

And each Breath incorporates into it this sort of idea of being endowed by the deity Endowment, correct?

Kurkistan

Yes.

Brandon Sanderson

And so each Breath you hold brings you one step closer to becoming like that, and so what you're saying is... is "yes", kind of true, yes.

Kurkistan

But it's like within the Breath, not sitting off by itself—

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, yes yes exactly.

In Well of Ascension, it mentions that the language of Terris had a gender neutral pronoun. If you actually constructed the language, what was that pronoun? Or did you just leave it as its English translation of "it"?

I didn't spend a long time on the languages in Scadrial, since most people were speaking the same tongue. I just used "it" in my own writings. Roshar has a lot more detail on the languages, because culture-clash is a bigger part of the theme of the series.

The Wheel of Time Encyclopedia is dead! Long live The Wheel of Time Companion as it will now officially be called.

The book will be 350,000 words long (comparable to several of the novels in the series; the longest, The Shadow Rising, is 389,000 words).

The book will feature a lot of new artwork, arranged by Irene Gallo at Tor.

Publication date likely to be November 2015.

The book will feature all of the already-published maps and also some new ones, including one of Thakan'dar.

The book will have a large vocabulary of the Old Tongue, with a minimum of 1,000 words.

The book will feature character profiles and sketches for almost every character in the series. Even Bela has her own entry.

The book will be written from a post-AMoL POV. It will have spoilers for the entire series.