Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

This report is written by Aan'allein.

Today Jordan would start with a signing session, having a public interview and audience questions in the afternoon. (Just the opposite of Terry Pratchett's schedule, so that they'd always manage to keep the number of people seeing the other small enough to actually fit in the rooms.)

At 10:00 I went up, seeing only one other person standing in line. In fact, when the doors opened half an hour later, there were still less than 50 people there, as opposed to the 150-200 people of the day before. Early mornings are good.

I liked how everything went today. I liked it very much. I actually got to talk an unbelievable amount of time with Jordan...

Let's see, seeing how many people there were I'd already decided to just keep on going back to the end of the line each time, having yet another thing signed. The first time I came to Jordan (as the third person in line, KuraFire had managed to sneak past me earlier... ), the conversation went something like this:

... and on. I don't know, maybe Jordan secretly thinks I'm a horrible person and would like nothing better than to scream at me to get away, but if he does, he manages to hide it very well...I like the guy. He's got a great sense of humor and can talk very interesting. Plus he's the author of WoT of course.

Anyway, getting back in line for the first time I noticed that Isabel had finally arrived as well. Well, actually, she noticed and recognized me and said hi. As the line moved forward we talked and I began to like her. Now that she has left the nervousness of the first few days behind she's pretty cool. (Well, besides the tendency to still talk a lot about WoT-related subjects using the translated words... *shivers*) Oh, and when she arrived at Jordan for the first time, he said something like "I'm sorry for teasing you so much", and then loudly stated that she really was 17, so we could all jump on her.

Ah, it's like the passport scene, something for which you should have been there to truly comprehend; it's hard to capture the humor in a report like this.

I also saw Iwitness again, and Beidomon Sedai and Lord Agelmar, two of my friends who very occasionally post here, showed up as well. Plus a few TFD members...

Isabel, KuraFire, Iwitness and me made quite a few rounds, having something signed (I had a lot of cards from the card game with me), asking questions, moving back to the end of the line, discussing what questions we'd ask next and what the previous answers meant, and then all over again. I think we made at least 10 rounds, although the group changed every now and then with one of the other stopping for a moment, not making the round. And if people who hadn't been there yet showed up just as we stood at the back of the line, we let them go first, and waited on each other, and took pictures, and discussed WoT and talked more to Jordan and... It was just amazing fun. We got a few RAFOs here and there of course, but the amount of questions answered was really awesome.

Let's see what my memo-recorder has...

I think so. It seemed to me so. It seemed to me that there was no need to go into any more detail. I thought that if I went into any more detail, I was being blatantly obvious, and you know...what do I need to do? Caper around with a sign saying, "Here! Here! There he is, see?"

I mean, I assumed that the people who read my books are intelligent to a certain degree, have a reasonable level of intelligence, and are able to deduce things that you know...I mean, I don't have to tell them water is wet. They know that. I don't have to tell them that if they fall off the roof, it's gonna hurt when they hit, you know, they know that.

So I...no, I...At this point, I must tell you: although I will continue to put clues into the books. Again. A bit here and there. If I see a spot where I can put a clue, for those who are slow of wits to catch up...I will not tell you. For the simple reason I am enjoying watching you all try far too much to deprive myself of the pleasure of that.

Yes...I particularly like, actually, Mick Jagger as answer to that.

Then he looked very closely at the card I had him sign...

Me: It's supposed to be Graendal.

Yeah, well, it is...I just never knew that Graendal had nipple-rings, that's all. Now for once, it's just a thing I hadn't realized about a character in my book, that's all.

I see fantasy writers sometimes at conventions. And no, we don't sit around talking about fantasy. We sit around drinking beer, talking about contracts, mainly. And John M. Ford comes to visit me almost every Christmas, he's a close friend of me, uhm, almost as long as I've been married. [I think that was what he said.] And no, we don't talk about fantasy either. We talk about other writers, and contracts. When...has his book finished, that sort of thing.

Hrm, but that wasn't all. I distinctly remember someone asking, "Did Demandred recognize Flinn?", getting answered RAFO, followed by a question "Would Taim recognize Flinn in a similar circumstance?", being answered that "yes, he should" if the distance wasn't too large or something.

But then I mentioned that the distance wasn't all that great, just a couple of meters, he'd said so just a few days before, and he looked at me in a way that said, "you know all you need to know about this, I'm not going to make it any more obvious."

Aan'allein

I know it isn't proof, and I hate my guts for not taping this so I'm capable of showing something tangible, but the way it was all said, the way it played out...I don't believe Taimandred anymore. Not just because of this actually. I already had the feeling last Friday, after another mention of the "seen something pretty out of the corner of their eye / for the last third they must have read someone else's books" about the FAQ. Although there was something more, something about that he doesn't work "that way." Again it wasn't anything concrete, but at that point I began to doubt all our "person x = person y" theories. Added to his look at my remark about the distance (which he told me himself just two days before; he really shouldn't have tried to evade the Taim question using that), I've stopped believing in Taimandred. I hope KuraFire has a good recollection of exactly what Jordan said here.

Oh, by the way, it is pronounced Taa-eem, not tame.

Jordan would have another interview with audience questions at 14:30, so an hour before that I went up to listen to Brian Froud. That was pretty interesting actually. Some of you might know him from "Lady Cottington's Pressed Faery Album," or maybe a weird movie like "The Labyrinth." He's a fantasy-artist: painter and puppet-maker and pretty cool.

A while later I was joined by Isabel again, and together we waited on Froud to end, so that we could rush towards the chairs on the first row which were vacated. Okay, I know, my bad, but still... *grins* it was fun always being there, close enough to sometimes see Jordan's eyes through his sunglasses. (Which, on retrospect, he only seems to wear when he's really interviewed. When only somewhere to sign, or when there are only audience questions, he doesn't wear them.)

Maryson would be interviewing Jordan again, and I almost sank through the floor when realizing he was just going to ask the same questions as the day before. Jordan seemed to feel the same way. Luckily there were some new questions thrown in the mix and those were fairly interesting, but the exact same questions as the day before got the exact same answers, although even shorter where possible. And Jordan said things like, "as most of you will have heard me say before..."

No. I'm the writer. I'm supposed to be a professional at this. I am not tap-dancing around blind. I'm not like one of those tap-dancing chickens, you know.

You know, I am doing something that, supposedly, I am knowing how to do. And if I surprise myself in any but the most minor fashion, then I must have been asleep for the last few days. And writing as a somnambulant.

Well, I hope to god, 'cause if I'm not, I'm a bloody hopeless case. I try to be better. I want each book I write to be better than anything I've done before. I don't always achieve it. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't. [At this point my memo-recorder apparently began having troubles recording, cause playing it now, the speed just seems to keep on increasing. Hearing Jordan talk in this chipmunk voice may be very funny, but it plays hell on my ability to type it all out.]

At one point, obviously I will reach the end of my abilities. That is, I will plateau. That I will have gone as far as I can go. I'll still try. You never can tell. You might eke out another tenth of a second, you know.

[Jordan was repeating every question because most of the audience couldn't hear the questions] He wants to know... [on a tone that set people laughing already, then: louder, with a malicious gleam in his eyes] Sander wants to know whether there are questions that I think fans should ask me, and haven't been asking. [more laughter]

Sander...I am not going to tell you what sort of underwear I'm wearing. [spontaneous applause] There are very few questions that fans have not asked me. There are many questions that fans have asked me that I have not answered. There are a number of questions that fans have asked me that have made me blush. There are one or two questions that fans have asked me that have made me require smelling-salt to get out of the room on my feet.

No, I am not going to give you more ammunition. You know, this is like the Calvin & Hobbes strip. I've just been assaulted with snowballs all the way from the sidewalk, and when I manage to reach the door, a voice calls out to me, "Hey, come out here and help us make some more snowballs!"

No. And if I had she would lie to me. A woman is as likely to tell the truth about that as men are to tell them, and if you think about how many of that you would tell anyone on god's green earth about that. And if you come upon that teaspoon of liquified truth you would tell, know that that is five times the truth that she would tell you.

No, what I do is, I eavesdrop. [laughter] One time when he was younger and eavesdropping on women, he received Veritas. He knew everything there was to know about women. And it turned his hair completely white, and beyond, so that most of it is dark again, except for that piece in his beard there, plus it also erased all knowledge he had gained straight from his head.