Search the most comprehensive database of interviews and book signings from Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson and the rest of Team Jordan.
2012-04-30: I had the great pleasure of speaking with Harriet McDougal Rigney about her life. She's an amazing talent and person and it will take you less than an hour to agree.
2012-04-24: Some thoughts I had during JordanCon4 and the upcoming conclusion of "The Wheel of Time."
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Your chapter names are beautiful.
Thank you.
Did Jim take an interest in them at all?
Not really. He approved them all, and occasionally I'd come up dry, and he'd say, "I dunno." But I never did one without his looking at them.
Some of them have double and even triple meanings; Terez wants to know, did you always pick these out of the text, or did he sometimes go back and add extra layers of meaning?
No, no he never did that. Titles came after everything was written.
Or are we just imagining these extra layers completely?
Possible. I don't know which ones she's talking about.
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I'm sorry I don't have more specific WoT posts for you—I know that Harriet prefers me to be more closed-mouthed. However...
Maria from Team Jordan has finished her revision notes for the entire book, as has Harriet herself. So we're only waiting on Alan's notes.
As he's playing "Great Captain" for me on A Memory of Light, his notes are vital—and he needs to be detailed. When I get them, I can finish revising.
Sooooo...there might be a sooner release date than the current for January?
It is possible, but I don't know how likely.
Darn, I need to haste to be ready for A Memory of Light once it releases. Is there gonna be a ebook version along with the physical book?
(Winces.) Harriet has a distrust of ebooks; she prefers to delay the release. It is her call. (Ebook is a few months later.)
Do we have chapter names yet? Or do you know how many chapters there will be? Or is that a secret?
No chapter names yet, as it won't be until this draft is finished that I settle on the number of chapters. Some are being combined.
I'm truly hoping this book is 1/3 battles/fights.
More than 1/3, I'd say...
Forgive me for not understanding, but what does this mean? Release date's not going to change, is it?
Probably not. It's just a progress update, so people know things are still moving behind-the-scenes.
How's The Stormlight Archive coming? I need more.
A Memory of Light comes first. I will get to the next Stormlight book soon, but not until A Memory of Light is done to my satisfaction.
So this means we will be reading the final volume sooner than first announced?
It is possible, but I don't know how likely. I still need to do two drafts, I feel. Then there are beta reads, then proofreads, then we need at least two months to get the books printed and shipped.
What does it take to be one of the beta readers?
Be one of the major members of fandom for years, and personally know Harriet. (Sorry.)
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I also loved the ornaments. We worked with Matt Nielsen creating those. They were really good. The emblem that we used for the Blight is a tree, and I was trying to tell him what I needed. I said I wanted Arthur Rackham, and he said: "Who?" I said: "Well, okay, let's try and work on this."
He couldn't Google it at that point, either.
No, but he did such a good job. The fans really caught onto them, thinking about their symbolism. "What do these ornaments mean?" They did, in fact, have a bit of a coded meaning. Lanfear's symbol means Lanfear is lurking in this chapter, even though she's not named.
It was fun, working on those ornaments. From the beginning, I did most of the chapter titles, all but one or two each book. I was very proud when somebody told me, many years ago, that he saw a chapter titled "Footprints in Air" in the table of contents and that made him buy the book. Well, great, that's the idea.
Every piece of it counts. The whole package.
Exactly.
I really wanted to do something we hadn't followed through with: the Wheel of Time in front and back. Back in the twenties, there was a wonderful children's book with a bullet hole that ran through the whole book. It was by Johnny Gruelle, who later did Raggedy Ann and Andy. It was a wonderful thing. I would have loved a book that had the Snake Wheel in the front of the book, the big one, and one in the back of the book, so you could really hold them like that to reinforce "There are neither beginnings nor endings—"
"—in the Wheel of Time." Practically, to do that right you would have had to put it on the end papers. We had such nice end papers.
Oh, yeah. Well, the map was more important.
Exactly.