Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson Interview Database

[SauceyBlueConfetti]

Do you have a time frame you think you narrow down for the missing tour?

[Terez]

Late 2000 and 2001.

[SauceyBlueConfetti]

I assume you have these letters...but I did a quick search in Aes Sedai to see if the Amyrlin stuff was there from the 4/3/95 letter and I didn't see it.
http://web.archive.org/web/199704261.../rj/table4.htm

Sorry, I need to dig in harder in the database. You have collected SO MUCH it is hard to keep it all straight.

Again, great job.

[Terez]

I had missed your last post, SBC. I have gotten dependent on the 'unread posts' thing, and I hate that vbulletin is all screwy with it. Anyway, I will do an overhaul on the Fusinato letters probably tomorrow. Too braindead at the moment to try.

[FelixPax]

Originally Posted by Terez

Late 2000 and 2001.

Aren't you missing this particular New Zealand interview, Terez?



------------------------------------------------

Source: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~brunton...t%20Jordan.htm

Compiler: AUKON

Interview by: Michael Brunton AUKON_NZ@YAHOO.COM

Notes Collection Named: Michael Brunton, Aukon, .NZ – March 2000

Most Current WoT Book at the Time: The Path of Daggers

--------------------------------------------------

E-Mail Interview March 2000.

August of last year Robert Jordan was in New Zealand. At that stage I was asked if I wanted an interview with him which I gave a big yes. Trouble was we could not match up for a face to face interview so I went for the next best thing one via e - mail. This interview took place early March.

1)Did you enjoy your time in New Zealand and will you be back?

I enjoyed my visit to New Zealand tremendously, and I certainly hope to return. New Zealand is the most beautiful country I’ve ever seen, and on top of that, I hope to return at the right time of year to do some serious trout fishing.

2) How are the plans for the tele-movie version of Eye of the World coming along?

So far, the contracts have been signed, and I know no more. NBC has purchased an option, and while I hope the series will be made, many more options are purchased than shows see the light of day.

3) Have any actors been cast yet?

Not that I know of.

4) I read a two year old interview on the web which had you say you could not see your series turn into movies; what changed your mind?

The words "mini-series" and "at least four hours and possibly six." I still don’t see any way that one of the books could be pared down enough to fit into the usual two-hour theatrical release, but four or six hours makes a difference.

5) When are you hoping this project will be broadcast in the U.S. and will it be released on video/DVD?

I could wish for next week, but if wishes were wings, pigs would fly. I really have no idea as to the answer of either question.

6) Where did the idea of the Wheel of Time come from?

If you mean simply the concept of time as a wheel, that comes from the Hindu religion, though many cultures have or had a cyclical view of the nature of time. If you mean the books, then the idea came from many things. From wondering what it really would be like to be tapped on the shoulder and told, "You were born to save mankind. And, by the way, you’re supposed to die in the end, it seems." I wondered what a world might be like where the feminist movement was never necessary simply because no one is surprised to see a woman as a judge or ruler, a wagon driver or a dock hand. There’s still some surprise at a woman as a soldier – a matter of upper body strength, and weapons that need upper body strength – but by and large, the question of a woman not being able to do a job just doesn’t arise. I wondered what it wold be like if the "wise outsider" arrived in a village and said, "You must follow me on a great quest," and the people there reacted the way people really react when a stranger shows up and offers to sell them beachfront property at incredibly low prices. I wondered about the source of legends, about how events are distorted by distance – either spacial or temporal – about how any real events that might have led to legends would probably be completely unrecognizable to us. This is getting entirely too involved, so let’s just say that the books grew out of forty-odd years of reading everything I could get my hands on in any and every subject that caught my interest.

7) When are you hoping to have Book Nine released (do you have a title and is it possible to know what it is)? Is it also possible to give us a teaser to what the next book will be about?

The next book will be called WINTER’S HEART. The good lord willing and the creek don’t rise, I expect to finish the writing by the end of May 2000, and my American and British publishers are planning to put it out in November 2000. As for teasers, read and find out. Though I expect Tor Books will post the prologue on their website, as they have done for the last few volumes.

8) Is it possible to know how many volumes the Wheel of Time will be?

Sigh! At least three more. I know I’ve said that before, but it’s still the case. When I started this, I really believed I could finish it all in four or five books. Maybe six, I said, but I didn’t think it would take that long. By the end of THE EYE OF THE WORLD, I was pretty sure it would have to be six, and by the end of THE GREAT HUNT, I knew it would be more. I have known the last scene of the last book since before I began writing, so I know where I’m heading, but as to how long to get there, I am just putting my head down and writing as hard as I can. Two minutes left in the game, four points down, and we’ve got the ball on our own five-yard line; they’ve been covering the receivers like a blanket and cutting off the outside like pastrami in a cheap deli, so we’re going to do it the old-fashioned way, straight up the middle, pound it down their throats, and nobody slacks off unless he’s been dead a week and can prove it. If you know what I mean. If I can finish it in three more books, I will, but I can’t make any promises on that, just that I will reach the end as soon as I can.

9) If and when you start another series of books after the Wheel of Time series will you use some of the characters from that series?

No. Absolutely, positively, never under heaven! I have no plans ever to return to this universe once I reach the end. If I have such a compelling idea one day that I simply must go back, then I’ll shift the story so far in time that it might as will be a different universe. Anything else would be doing the same thing over again. For the next set of books, I will be in a completely different universe with different rules, different cultures, different people. I expect I will examine some of the same issues – the clash of cultures, the tide of change, the difficulty men and women alike have in figuring out the rules of the game – but I certainly don’t expect to chew my cud twice.

10) What inspired you to write?

I decided that I would write one day when I was five. I had finished FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON, TOM SAWYER and HUCKLEBERRY FINN, and I stood them up on a table and sat staring at them with my chin on my knees – I was rather more limber, back then! – and decided that one day I would make stories like that. But by age seven or eight, it seemed to me that writers who made a living from writing all lived in Cuba or Italy or France, and at that age, I wasn’t sure about that big a move. I followed my second love, science and math, got my degree in physics and mathematics, and became an engineer. I didn’t try writing at fifteen or twenty, because I didn’t think I had enough experience; I had nothing to say. At thirty, I was injured, spent a month in the hospital, nearly died, and took four months to recuperate enough to return to my office. I decided it was time to put up or shut up about writing one day, and the rest followed.

11) Have any writers influences you?

Yes, I think so. I believe that the major influences on my writing are Jane Austen, John D. McDonald, Mark Twain, Louis L’Amour and Charles Dickens.

12) Do you read fantasy yourself: and are you aware of the other fantasy writers out there?

Yes, I do. If anyone is looking, I suggest, in no particular order, John M. Ford, Isabelle Allende, Guy Gavriel Kay, C.S.Freidman, Barry Hughart, A.S.Byatt, Robert Holdstock, Tim Powers, Terry Pratchett, and George R.R.Martin. There really are too many excellent writers to list them all, or even come close, but these names are a start.

13) If so would you want to work with any in the future?

I’ve never really thought of collaborating with anyone. It might happen, I suppose, but it just hasn’t occurred to me.

14) Did you expect the Wheel of Series to be as well received as it has been?

Good God, no! I’ve been told I have a healthy ego – a necessity for any writer – but I would have to be a stone cold egomaniac to have expected anything like what has happened.

15) Do the events of the outside world (i.e. current affairs, politics and the like) affect what you write in your books?

They must filter in, to varying degrees. I follow the world news assiduously, and I can’t see how I could keep events in the world from affecting events in the books. But it happens when and as I choose. Refugees in Kosovo, ethnic cleansing, famine in Africa, civil wars, upheavals, floods, whatever – you might say I use those events to give authenticity to similar events in the books. I don’t like preaching, but I always hope my readers will think a little beyond the story, and I think that acquired authenticity helps.

16) What is the best thing about being Robert Jordan and the worst?

The best thing is that I get to put my daydreams down on paper and make a living from it! I’m not sure there is a downside. I suppose that people always want to know when the next book will be coming out – even when they are getting me to sign the latest book, which they have just purchased and haven’t even begun yet.

17) What does the future hold for you?

Well, I’d like to catch a thousand-pound black marlin, a thirty-pound brown trout, and a sixty-pound Atlantic salmon. I’d like to shoot a twenty-four point whitetail and a perfect round in sporting clays. I’d like to get another royal Flush in poker – I got one, once – finally learn how to play go beyond the basics. I’d like to learn to sky dive, and.... Oh. More writing, certainly, for as long as I can find a way to put words on paper. I used to keep notebooks of story ideas, until I realized that I wold need three or four lifetimes to write just the ideas already had. I would like to do different sorts of writing, too. History, stage-plays. I’ve been noodling around lately with the idea of musical composition, too, something I haven’t touched in many years. Given the way medicine advances, I might have lived little more than half my life so far, which means I have a few decades remaining. Not enough to do everything I want to do, but I think I can fill them up.

[FelixPax]

Originally Posted by Terez

Late 2000 and 2001.

Not sure you had this information to help narrow down the places to look for additional RJ interviews. Here is the Winter's Heart Book Tour Schedule, which occurred in November-December of 2000:


Source: http://home.earthlink.net/~wwjames/H...s_on_Tour.html


Upcoming signings by Robert Jordan for Winter's Heart

• NEW YORK CITY - November 7th
• Borders Books & Music - World Trade Center - 12:30pm
• B. Dalton - Meadow Brook Parkway, Garden City, NY - 7:00pm
• SAN DIEGO - November 8th - Mysterious Galaxy - 7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd. - 4:00pm
• LOS ANGELES/PASADENA - November 9th - Vromans’s Museum Collection Store - South Lake Ave., Pasadena - 6:00pm
• SAN JOSE/SAN FRANCISCO
• November 10th - Barnes & Noble - 3600 Stevens Creek Blvd., San Jose - 7:00pm
• November 11th - The Booksmith - 1644 Haight St., San Francisco - 7:00pm
• SEATTLE - November 12th - University Bookstore - 4326 University Way - 2:00pm
• PORTLAND - November 13th - Powell’s - 8725 SW Cascade Ave., Beaverton - 7:00pm
• DENVER - November 15th - Tattered Cover - 1628 16th Street - 7:30pm
• CHICAGO
• November 16th - Stars Our Destination - 705 Main St., Evanston - 6:00pm
• November 18th - Meijer’s - 808 N. Route 59, Aurora - 12:00pm
• SAVOY, IL - November 17th - Pages for All Ages - 1201 Savoy Plaza Lane - 7:00pm
• CLEVELAND - November 19th - Joseph-Beth Booksellers - 13217 Shaker Square - 5:00pm
• CHARLOTTESVILLE/RICHMOND - November 27th
• UVA Bookstore - University of Virginia, Charlottesville - 12:00pm
• Tower Books - 1601 Willow Lawn Drive, Richmond - 7:00pm
• RALEIGH - November 28th - Quail Ridge Books - 3522 Wade Avenue - 7:00pm
• CHARLOTTE - November 29th - Little Professor - 4139 Park Road - 7:00pm
• FAYETTEVILLE - November 30th - Waldenbooks - 438 Cross Creek Mall - 7:00pm
• FT. KNOX/FT. CAMPBELL, KY
• December 1st - Ft. Knox Military Base - Main PX, 127 Gold Vault Rd, Ft. Knox, KY - 4:00pm
• December 2nd - Ft. Campbell Military Base - Main PX, Bldg. 2840 Penn. & Ohio Ave. - 11:00am
• BLYTHEVILLE, AR - December 3rd - That Bookstore in Blytheville - 316 West Main St. - 1:30pm
• MEMPHIS - December 4th - Davis-Kidd Booksellers - 387 Perkins Road Extended - 6:30pm
• ATLANTA - December 5th - Chapter 11 - Emory Commons Store - 2091 N. Decatur Rd. - 7:00pm

[GonzoTheGreat]

I have known the last scene of the last book since before I began writing, so I know where I’m heading, but as to how long to get there, I am just putting my head down and writing as hard as I can.

As the Irishman said to the lost traveler: If that’s where you want to go, sir, I wouldn’t start from here.

[Terez]

Originally Posted by FelixPax

Aren't you missing this particular New Zealand interview, Terez?

Not exactly, since it hasn't got anything really plot-relevant in it, and I only concern myself with plot-relevant interview questions. I can add it to the Wikia page later.

As for the tour schedule - that's a good start. Perhaps I can find some actual tour reports from there.

[Terez]

Marie found the rasfwrj archives, so there have been massive updates to the database. Not too many earth-shaking 'new' questions, but some nice tidbits, these among them:

Winter's Heart book tour 11 November 2000, San Jose - Brandon Downey reporting
Q: What happens to an Aes Sedai's Warder bond if she enters a stedding? Can she still detect it?

RJ: No, of course not. An Aes Sedai would still be able to detect her Warder in the stedding.
Q: What if I tie off a weave, and enter a stedding? If the weave vanishes, will it reappear when I leave?
RJ: The weave would go away, and would not come back when you left.

Q: Can shielded/tied channelers such as Asmodean or Liandrin simply enter a stedding to have their shield dissolved?

RJ: No. That's different.

Winter's Heart book tour 12 December 2000, Atlanta Chapter II - Br00se reporting

The next lady asked some question about one of Min's viewing of Rand with three women. She was confused because Min didn't recognize someone in the viewing that she should have known. RJ had to repeat three or four times that the viewing wasn't clear at the time. He seemed to be stressing that Min's inability to recognize the person didn't mean anything important. Her viewings don't always tell everything. This is only important because it means that you can't use anything that was missing from Min's viewings as proof of anything.

The Path of Daggers book tour 24 October 1998, Palo Alto - Michael Steeves reporting

[adding to Drew Gillmore's report] He also mentioned that Myrddraal aren't sterile, but that they would make a woman sterile.

Lord of Chaos book tour 29 October 1994, Concord, VA - Tom Burke reporting
I told him that my feeling was that the number of Darkfriends in Randland were probably between 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 100,000. He replied, "closer to the latter, of course we see more of them because of the Ta'veren." I asked if there were fewer amongst the Aiel than in the great cities. He responded, "Yes, of course." I asked if the Aiel attacks were done by the Shaido and their allies. He responded, "If someone thinks otherwise, they should read the books." I stated that 20 Darkfriends would be a heavy investment to lose all at once. Jordan replied, "Not at all. It's very easy for me to make some more. It is their trustworthiness that is more of a problem."

[GonzoTheGreat]

I told him that my feeling was that the number of Darkfriends in Randland were probably between 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 100,000. He replied, "closer to the latter, of course we see more of them because of the Ta'veren."

???

That would seem to suggest that the Whitecloaks are on to something after all. Amongst the AS, the proportion is about 20,000 times as high as the norm.

[Terez]

That's actually not all that surprising, if you think about it.

[GonzoTheGreat]

That it would be higher, no. That it would be that much higher, yes.

Suppose that the population of Randland is a hundred million. That would then translate into a thousand, or a few thousand, DFs altogether. Having ten to twenty percent of that as full AS is rather surprising, especially considering the fail rates at the Tower.

[Terez]

The reason I don't think it's odd is because the organization for Darkfriends in the Tower is well-established and also insular. I can't imagine that the regular assortment of Darkfriends across the lands could hold a candle to it, without the Forsaken running around to keep them in line.

[ka243]

Thanks for making this database, its awesome. Could you make an RSS feed for the updates to it so that we could read them in reverse chronological order?
That would be great.

[Terez]

That all depends on how much work it would be. It's hard enough keeping up with Brandon's feed right now (not that I am complaining, really...he has given us some good tidbits). Most of the new stuff comes from Brandon's Twitter feed, though.

[Marie Curie 7]

Originally Posted by Terez

That all depends on how much work it would be. It's hard enough keeping up with Brandon's feed right now (not that I am complaining, really...he has given us some good tidbits). Most of the new stuff comes from Brandon's Twitter feed, though.

Actually, it doesn't appear that Google Docs support RSS feeds at present. I may be wrong about that, but it looks like something that they perhaps hope to enable in the future.

Also, it's not really clear to me how useful that would be, anyway.

[Terez]

It would only be useful when we make updates. The point of the database is mostly to keep all the quotes in one place for the purpose finding them easily for WoT discussion. If you want them on-the-minute, follow Brandon on Twitter. I will post on Twitter when I add quotes as well, though that won't include the quotes Marie is adding to Future Books right now, or anything from Brandon's feed. Just other new reports.

[GonzoTheGreat]

Originally Posted by Terez

The reason I don't think it's odd is because the organization for Darkfriends in the Tower is well-established and also insular. I can't imagine that the regular assortment of Darkfriends across the lands could hold a candle to it, without the Forsaken running around to keep them in line.

That would be like saying "in the real world, perhaps one person in a thousand is a member of the Mafia, but in the Roman Catholic Churc, with its well established insular organisation, one in five is a Mobster". Frankly, I don't think it is really that high, not even in the Italian branches of the Church.

[Terez]

95% of statistics are made up on the spot. Makes for bad comparisons sometimes.

[GonzoTheGreat]

I know, but if you have such a large disparity, then it needs more than just a bit of hand waving to make it believable.