Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

Wheel of time encounters a bump

My wife has had an addiction. She's been reading a series of bulky novels known collectively as The Wheel of Time by an American author named James Rigney, (aka pen name Robert Jordan.) The blurb on the cover of book eleven says, "Jordan has come to dominate the world Tolkien began to reveal."

With ads etc, there are 818 pages in volume eleven - my wife is up to page 803. Yesterday she decided she had better do something about buying volume twelve. She did her research online and soon came up with an alarming discovery. The author Robert Jordan had expired last year part way through writing it. The discovery seemed slightly amusing to me; but she didn't think so.

Curiously enough there is a short biography about him at the end of volume eleven. The final sentence reads, "He has been writing since 1977, and intends to continue until they shut his coffin."

That's well and good for him. They've now shut his coffin and sent him to Episcopalian heaven. However, my wife is staring at a bookshelf with the eleven volumes assiduously acquired over a few years. She's suddenly become an unfulfilled woman. It was very inconsiderate of the author to succumb to a terminal illness before he'd finished churning out volume number twelve.

I guess his publishers were shocked too. They'd been on a winner. Almost as good as Harry Potter. In an attempt to salvage the situation an emergency writer has been hired to finish volume twelve. It's expected to be in the stores about June. There's sure to be some close editorial scrutiny of it before it's released. I expect most of his fans will understand.

Mr Rigney (aka Jordan) maintained a pretty fancy blog. Not a cheapo like this one. It was called Dragonmount. His friends and admirers have been contributing new entries and photos since he died last September. I'll tell my wife about it.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!