A: Oh,I read everything, myself. At the moment I read Stephen King's 'Dreamcatcher'. I've read about half of it this afternoon and I'll catch the other half of it tonight when we get back to Amsterdam. I read anything and everything. If you're talking about in the field I would suggest people try John M. Ford who's just had another one come out the last time recently and it's very good. He's a winner of the world fantasy award. Twice. Once for his fantasy novel 'Dragon Waiting', and once for short fiction, which he won with a long poem, he made them change the rules, so that he could enter poetry and be nominated for short fiction catagory. He is a stone-cold good writer. Uhm, beyond that uhm, lots of people, uhm let's see now uhm, I must start blowing names uhm, Ah, the guy who wrote Mythago Wood, Holdstock. Robert Holdstock, Tim Powers, C.S. Friedman, J.V. Jones, there are a lot of good writers. But I read everything, I read mysteries and western and history. I don't read as much as I used to. I'm not certain I'm still averaging over one a day. About half fiction, and half non-fiction.

A: Well, there's some contempt everywhere.

A: I think it's foolish. There are many more people who write fantasy than are tagged with the ghetto-phrase fantasist, or fantasy writer. If you read A.S. Byat, or 'The Magic Realists' you're reading fantasy. If you read any novel which has ghosts or spirits or time-weaving back and forward many, many supposed main-stream writers write fantasy. And they just don't call it fantasy, the worlds in their books are not set in reality at all, and that is fantasy. And, Midsummernight's dream, the epic of Gilgamesh, which is all over, it's a fantasy. I like to think of science fiction and horror as subsets of fantasy. They're particular sorts of fantasy.

A: So people will know what they're getting. If you see something by Jackson O'Reilly you know not to expect a fantasy, you know that that's a western book. Although now my publisher is mixing that up. He's resissued some of my old books: 'Robert Jordan writing as' And I made them agree that they could only do this if they put the original penname on the cover in letter as large as they use for Robert Jordan.

A: [first sentence paraphrased only started taping again halfway through this] I don't know how it in other places, but the best known legend for the American audience, that I had in mind when I wrote this for that legend is King Arthur. I would imagine that more people know the complete story of King Arthur and Guenever and the round table and the whole nine yards than know any other myth or legend, or perhaps more than know all the other myths put together. Now there are Arthurian elements in these books, but I had to try to bury them, for that reason, make them not so readily apparent. And while I had a particular part of the Arthurian legend mentioned form the first book, it was not until the third book that people began to realize what it was. In fact my editor, who is my wife, and who is a very very sharp woman, had edited the book and was writing the first version of the flap copy for the book, when she suddenly shouted down the stairs to me (if you're young, forgive me) : [loud] You son of a bitch, you've done it it to me again! [laughter] Because she had suddenly spotted, not until reaching this not until reaching the cover flap, she suddenly spotted by a chance connection of words, this one particular Arthurian thing. And that you see, to me it's very obvious that the Arthur Legend and all of the others are in there. If you spend time on the net, you find sites where they discuss these legends. I have to tell you that if you visit any of these FAQ's I haven't seen one in a couple of years, but the last time I was sent copies, I've read the printout of the FAQ, and when I was through it. And about a third of the answers in there were correct.

A: He also mentioned some things about the variation in his readers. This group of Hell's Angels a couple of years ago who came to him when there was some question about his health, telling him that they'd desecrate his grave if he died before finishing the story. Around the same time something was asked about him knowing the final scene (or maybe that was even earlier), because Rowling, the Harry Potter author at least, I think it was her that was mentioned here had already written the final sentence of her work. Jordan came with the usual story about him knowing the scene since before starting the series. He doesn't have it written down anywhere. Harriet already knows the final scene, she's very good at getting things out of him (at least, that's what I think I recall), but no one else. And then later he said absolutely nobody knew it besides him. He also talked about how the early stages of the story evolved, about Rand starting out as Tam, coming back to Emond's Field (although it wasn't Emond's Field yet back then) after 20 years, realizing he'd outgrown it. And then prophecy tapping him on shoulder with the message that he was fated to save the world, and oh yeah, he'd die in the process. He went for Rand instead, because he wanted an innocent character, a character who could realize how little he knew, and thus could grow a lot more. There was a question about the Tolkien movie and if anything similar would be done with WoT. Jordan mentioned the NBC miniseries, and the option to take options on the other parts. Also that each book deserved at least a miniseries. Perhaps New Spring could be done in a three hour feature length movie. "I'm not saying that it will be done, but it could." He also said that his editor was telling him that perhaps it was "time to start shopping this around again. I didn't have to go to him to say 'hey you think anybody would be interested'" Another point he mentioned was that if nothing would happen he wouldn't mind it too much, he never set out to write movies. Jordan took the lead by first answering the common questions. The next book will be out very soon after he's finished writing it. He don't know how many more books there'll be. At least three. If he can finish it in three, he will. (I think it was also at this point that he mentioned that if TEotW contained all that he had originally planned for it, it would go all the way to what is now TDR. Some pronounciations. Nine-eve. Schwan Sanche. Avi-endha.

A: Yes, Sammael is really dead, and so is Asmodean. Asmodean's killer should be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer. He won't answer who it was, but he has been trying to sprinkle around a few more clues, but I refuse to put up big neon signs saying 'here!'

A: Yes. it would have to be. In the differences between the same Age in different turnings of the Wheel, are that as for an analogy: imagine two tapestries hanging on a wall, and you look at them from the back of the room to the front of the store. And to look at them, they look identical to you. But as you get closer, you begin to see differences. And if you get close enough, they don't look anything at all alike. That is the difference between the Ages. Between the Age in one Turning and the Age in another. So it's quite possible that someone other than Rand could be the reborn soul of the Dragon Reborn. And that's the phrase that ended my jubilation.

A: It would be the same soul. That is, that is the belief of the world that I've set up, that it's the same soul. It's a soul of someone bound to the Wheel, which is spun out for the purposes, for the Wheel's purposes really, to attempt to rebalance the Weaving of the Pattern.

A: So the soul of the Dragon Reborn is always going to be male, just as Birgitte's soul is always born as a woman, just as Ameresu's soul is always born as a woman. There are divisions here, and they are not interchangable.

A: You don't think it's obvious? Let's see. You have using both repulsion and attraction of opposites here. Repulsion of things that are opposite and repulsion of things that are the same. The Taint upon saidin versus the conduit, which is made of saidar through which the saidin passes. The saidin and saidar, as men and women, are in many ways opposite. It repels one another. It is safe to make this conduit of saidar between saidin and Shadar Logoth, because there can be no mixing. As the saidin passes through, as the taint passes through, the saidar actually repels it, pushes it away, alright? Now, you have a taint on the the source, the male half of the source, you have the taint on Shadar Logoth. They're not the same, yet they are. The Taint on Shadar Logoth did not come from the Dark One. The taint was created by humans, who believed that they must do whatever was necessary, anything that was necessary to defeat the Shadow. And because they would accept no limits to what they would do, to what could be done, to what needed to be done, they created their own destruction. Their evil is, or was, as great as that of the Dark One, but diametrically opposite. It is an evil created for the best of intentions, created for good intentions. So it is the opposite. So, this attraction created the conduit begins to pull the Taint from saidin to syphon it off. Remember, it's always been described as not at all mixed through saidin, it is like a thin skin of rancidness, think of a thin skin of rancid oil floating on a pond, and if you get through it, you've got clean water, but you can't get through it without putting your hand in that oil. You're getting it on your hand. To attract one another because they are opposites, but because even being opposite, they have gone far enough around the circle, they act to destroy one another. You see, it's not opposites along a straight line. We're actually talking opposites along a circle. Continuing the motif of the Wheel of Time, if you will. So you've got two things that are both opposites and the same. He's been waving his hands in the air for this. Hands far apart for the straight line versus hands together, making a circle and coming together again, that will both attract one another and negate one another.

A: I think of myself as Lan. [laughter] The truth of the matter is that Lan Lan embodies the ideals I was raised to aspire to. He also mentioned Harriet thinking of him as Loial. One standard question or another leading to the usual anecdote of him assuming the identity of his characters, getting inside their heads:

A: Before they saw me, they had assumed that Robert Jordan was the penname of a woman, because, they said, no man could write women that well.

A: Nynaeve is the name of the nymph who in some versions of the Arthur Legend, imprisoned Merlin. Amyrlin is of course a play on Merlin, as is Thom Merrilin, a play on Merlin, and Rand al'Thor is a play on Arthur, as well as on Thor, but then so is Arthur Hawkwing a play on Arthur, because as I said before it's not a retelling of the myths. As things are done by in the myth, in the legend, if things were done by one man, were actually in both done by several perhaps and had become inflated in time. But the names come from everywhere. I read the in the New York Times, or the London Times, or something mis-seen on the street, I see, I catch a sign from the corner of my eye, and I misread a word on the sign because I only see it out of the corner of my eyes. And I jot it down, because it sounded like a good name.

A: Uh yeah, uh well, no no. Uh, some of them do, yes, some of them have ageless faces, but not all of them. "But do the two who were in the circle with Flinn have ageless faces?" Oh, let's see oh, the two who were in the circle with Min?? "Flinn" Flinn, ah Just trying to remember which ones I had with which one "Sarene and Corele." Sarene Nemdal does have an ageless face.

A: The first thing I heard when I came in was a question about how he researched things. He talked about Perrin making that barrelshave in TDR, said that he'd done a lot of research into 18th and 19th century blacksmithing (and couln't find anything from before). Then he wrote the first version and sent it to a blacksmith (do those still exist in this day and age? I feared the profession had died out completely), who gave a lot of useful critique. As answer to a question about his other writings, he mentioned once ghostwriting a *ponders* To my shame I must say I don't recall what he said. Either a mystery, a ghost-story, or a horror-novel I think something in that direction anyway. It wasn't something I'd heard before. Westerns, historical novels, even the dance critiques, they're all known, but this was new to me. (You do all know what ghostwriting is? Somebody has a great idea for a book, but lacks the time or skill or whatever to actually write it. So a ghostwriter is brought in to write the book under the first person's name.) Sitting in the back of the room, my memo-recorder didn't pick up very much, but the following is what I can make out of it and remember as answers to a question about how he created the Old Tongue (always a topic some people are very interested in) : - 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 france, 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.

A: No, it's a matter of assimilation. All these people now think of themselves as part of the country they live in, they've taken on these new cultures. Lan is the only one who hasn't done this, who at heart remains a Malkieri.

A: As many times as needed. Each time he makes a major change, he saves the file with a new revision number. For Winter's Heart, the prologue had 97 revisions. This was by far the largest amount, most chapters only have 9 or 10 revisions.

A: No, he doesn't. He sometimes tries to clear up misconceptions that people have gotten (he does admit that there have been times that he has made mistakes, put down a wrong eye-color (probably a reference to the Faile/Moiraine gaze at Perrin in TDR) / blinked and missed an editor's typo, but this is not what he's talking about). But he does try to use things that have been there a long time, and he likes to plant seeds, so that things don't fall out of the blue sky (the major reason I love WoT so much). Giving us the little tidbits of information that don't mean anything now, but that in three books will come around again.

A: Read And Find Out.