Robert Jordan, whose real name was Oliver Rigby, wrote the eleven novels that made up the series, “The Wheel of Time”(and a prequel) but tragically passed away two years ago before he was able to finish the 12th and final installment of the series. I spent literally hundreds of hours of my life reading and following his characters through this amazing story, and it was devastating when Rigby passed away without completing it. After his passing, Rigby’s wife asked writer Brandon Sanderson to take up the daunting challenge of taking Oliver Rigby’s extensive story notes and turning them into that final novel. Tor Books has announced that the novel will be published in three installments, with the first being published November 3. As a long time reader of Rigby/Jordan’s work, and a new reader of Sanderson’s work, I can’t tell you how excited I am that this story is continuing.

Story from Dragonmount follows:

`Dragonmount` | News

Wheel of Time News – Provided by Dragonmount.com
« Main News page

A MEMORY OF LIGHT to be released in 3 volumes. + Release date
Posted by Jason on March 30th, 2009 in the A Memory of Light, Brandon Sanderson, JordanCon category

Tor Books announced today that A MEMORY OF LIGHT, the 12th and final novel of The Wheel of Time series, will be initially released as three separate volumes. The first volume will be entitled THE GATHERING STORM and will go on sale November 3, 2009.

Here’s the press release:

Tor announces The Gathering Storm, Book Twelve of Robert Jordan’s legendary Wheel of Time® fantasy series

Tor Books is proud to announce the November 3rd, 2009 on-sale date for The Gathering Storm, Book Twelve of The Wheel of Time and the first of three volumes that will make up A Memory of Light, the stunning conclusion to Robert Jordan’s beloved and bestselling fantasy series. A Memory of Light, partially written by Jordan and completed by Brandon Sanderson, will be released over a two-year period.

Robert Jordan, one of the greatest storytellers of the 20th and early 21st centuries, passed away in 2007 after a courageous battle with the rare blood disease amyloidosis. Brandon Sanderson, the New York Times bestselling author of the Mistborn books, was chosen by Jordan’s editor—his wife, Harriet McDougal—to complete the final book.

The Wheel of Time series has sold over 14 million copies in North America and over 30 million copies worldwide with translations into 28 languages. The last four books in the series were all #1 New York Times bestsellers, and for over a decade readers have been eagerly awaiting the conclusion to the epic story.

Harriet McDougal said on the process behind A Memory of Light: “The scope and size of the novel was such that it could not be contained in a single volume, It was a piece of marvellous good fortune that Brandon Sanderson undertook the work. He is a great pleasure to work with, as well as a wonderful writer.”

President and Publisher of Tor Books, Tom Doherty, also expressed his happiness with A Memory of Light, saying: “It is a magnificent closure to a great American epic fantasy whose journey began almost twenty years ago. There is no way Robert Jordan would have squeezed it to a single volume, and somehow it seems fitting that what began as a trilogy will also end as one.”

The first ever JordanCon will take place this April 17th – 19th, 2009 in Alpharetta, GA. Harriet McDougal, Tom Doherty, Brandon Sanderson, and other members of “Team Jordan” will attend as featured guests and speak personally on The Wheel of Time and The Gathering Storm and the stories behind the rich literary legacy of Robert Jordan. JordanCon will also include a special preview of The Gathering Storm.

This year will also see major publications of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time comic books and graphic novels with the launch of The Eye of the World comics in May and the New Spring graphic novel with bonus material in November. The Dabel Brothers will be releasing the comic book series, which will then be collected and published as graphic novels by Tor Books.

Universal Pictures acquired the movie rights to The Wheel of Time in August 2008, and currently plan to adapt The Eye of the World as the first movie.

So there you have it, folks. A Memory of Light will be divided into three volumes. According to Brandon Sanderson, the titles of volumes 2 and 3 are tenatively “Shifting Winds“, and “Tarmon’Gaidon“. The release dates of the second and third novels are not known at this time. (See the note below abour Brandon’s blog post for more information about these items)

In past interviews Brandon Sanderson has said that if A Memory of Light was split, it would still be a treated as a single novel. He has also said on his blog and in interviews that he will push to have an “omnibus” edition published after the third volume is out. In this way, if you prefer to read the complete novel in one piece, the omnibus will provide that opportunity.

Also, neither Brandon or Harriet or Tor has any intention of inflating the size of these books. We’ve known for a long time that this book was going to be huge, and the possibility existed that it would be split up.

To go along with this news, we did an interview with Harriet where she was kind enough to give us some more answers.

Be sure to check out our updated page for A MEMORY OF LIGHT. It will give you a nice summary of everything we know so far about the book, as well as links to various interviews and announcements.

NOTE: Brandon Sanderson has posted an article about this news on his blog. He addresses directly the concerns of various upset fans. If you are frustrated by this news, please read his article.

About false rumors: There have been rumors floating around which supposedly contain the cover artwork for the book. While the artwork might actually be a mock-up for the cover, it has NOT been approved by Brandon, Harriet, or even Tor. It was probably an in-progress image that somehow found its way out of the Tor offices. We’ll be one of the first to show you the actual book cover once its ready.

What do you think of this news? Share your thoughts in the comments section below, or on our community forums.

Children of the Mind (Ender, Book 4)

The Fountainhead

Xenocide (Ender, Book 3)

Ender is back, and still struggling to save the Pequininos, the Hive Queen, and the human inhabitants of his adopted world, Lusitani, from looming destruction by the Hundred Worlds’ Fleet. In order to save his home though, Ender must reach out for help from another world, and do nothing less than rewrite the rules of space travel and unravel the mysteries of the universe. In Xenocide, the 3rd book in the saga of Ender, Card takes the reader on a chaotic ride through universe, exploring human relationships, alien minds, politics, physics, and yes, even the source of the human soul. While a little slower paced than the first two novels in the series, Xenocide is much more intellectual and thought provoking. Definitely worth the read.

Rating:

Rafters
A Ghost Story
By
Island D. Richards

There was just enough light seeping into the cavernous basement from the few windows scattered along the walls to dimly illuminate the bare-boned skeletal walls of rotting two-by-fours that zigzagged through the underground room like a maze. Wonderful, Jerry thought as he peered into the seemingly endless darkness, fumbling with the battery powered lantern trying to get it to light up again, where the hell are we gonna find a fuse box down here.

“Shit,” Michael said from behind him, “the fucking door is locked!”

“What do you mean it’s locked? That door doesn’t lock!” Jerry was on the verge of blowing his top. First the house lights, then the lantern, and now this.

“Fuck you if you’re so smart. Try it yourself, asshole,” Michael answered with a hiss.

“Knock it off guys, this is bad enough without you two chewing each other’s heads off down here,” Sally said from the place near the wall to the door’s right that she had moved to after coming out of the stairwell. “Can you please just get that light back on?”

“I’m trying, babe. Let me see if the connections are loose. It’s a new battery dammit, it shouldn’t be dead already.” Why me, he thought as he fumbled with the screw-on bottom of the lantern. All I friggin’ wanted was a night alone with Sal. Why’d she have to bring along her sister and that thick headed fuck, Michael?

“What the hell is that?” Michael said. “What are those?”

Jerry could hear a tremble beginning to build in Michael’s voice, in fact, he could almost feel Michael’s fear start to charge the air that filled the few feet between them. In that same moment, he could swear that the temperature in the previously warm and humid basement dropped twenty degrees. “Come on you pansy, there isn’t anyth…” Just then, Sally screamed, and Jerry looked up to see what they were so afraid of.

There, in the darkness among the struts, were a pair of pinpoint lights that hovered there in the air, almost as they were floating on air currents, watching them like…like eyes, Jerry answered himself. But, as Jerry stared at them, trying to see what they could be attached to, they flittered from his sight. Then more pairs of these eyes began to twinkle into existence in his peripheral vision. First one, then three, five…but every time he tried to focus on any particular pair, they simply flickered away like candlelight in a cold breeze.

“Jerry! What are they?” Sally was crying now, he could hear her behind him over his right shoulder.

He noticed now that every time he attempted to focus on any one pair and prompted its disappearance, the others that he saw in the periphery seemed to get closer. As they did, he thought he could start to make out shadows floating behind the pinpoints. Almost like entities, but he just couldn’t get a visual grasp on them. Every time he tried, they once again disappeared and the rest drew closer, seemingly bringing the darkness with them. In a panic now, he tried to simply focus on the darkness of the room and found, surprisingly, that the many pairs of starlight, in the dozens now, seemed to stop advancing and, yes, he was sure of it now, to even retreat.

“Don’t look at them Sally, OK? Just look down and pretend you don’t see them,” Jerry told her.

“But I…”

“No! Just do what I tell you,” Jerry said as he started to slowly back toward her, the hair on his neck prickling and a lump forming in his throat. Is this what a deer feels like when wolves corner it? Are we being hunted?

“What the hell are you?” Michael suddenly began to yell at the pinpoints in the darkness. “Stay away! I’m warning you! I got a gun you fuckers!” He was screaming at the top of his lungs now.

Did he just say he had a gun? “Mike, listen to me! Don’t look at them. Don’t look, do you hear me? Pretend they aren’t there!”

Michael wasn’t listening though. He’d drawn his .380 from its hiding place in the small of his back and was trying to hold his sights on a pair of the tiny eyes as he yelled at them. But every time he would sight in one pair, it would disappear and more would come closer. One after another he pointed his automatic at them, and one after another they would disappear, only to bring the others nearer. Then, a pair appeared virtually right in front of him, mere feet from his face. Panic stricken, he lifted the gun, pointed right between the eyes and pulled the trigger.

Jerry felt as if he’d just received a sledgehammer blow to his left ear when the first shot rang out. Then came another, and another, with white hot flashes filling the darkness, but illuminating nothing. “Stop! Stop shooting,” he screamed. Then Sally grabbed him from behind, wrapping her arms around him and pinning his arm against his torso, making him drop the lantern to the dusty floor.

When it hit the ground, it suddenly came alive, flooding the basement with its light. Jerry was looking directly at Michael as the light began to fill the room. As it reached out and filled the air around Michael, Jerry could see something else reaching out of the darkness toward him as well. What looked like a burly and grotesquely muscular arm, hairy, gray, and with long, yellow, talon-like claws at the tips of it’s long fingers swiped through the air at Michael’s head, as if were about to tear it from his shoulders. But, as the light covered it, it seemed to dissolve in midair as a dawn shadow does when it is found out by the sun’s morning rays.

Michael saw it, too. He didn’t stop screaming for a long time.