Is this dead author about to be bigger than George RR Martin?
Robert Jordan was the biggest fantasy author of the 1990s before he tragically died in 2007. His widow helped finish his legendary series which is now being turned into a television show — with more money spent on each episode than in Game Of Thrones.
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He was the biggest fantasy author of the 1990s who tragically died before finishing his legendary Wheel Of Time series but now a new television series and a 40-year-old unseen novel are about to make him a household name again.
Robert Jordan — real name James Oliver Rigney — died in 2007 but his best-selling series was finished by his widow Harriet McDougal and author Brandon Sanderson.
Amazon this week began shooting a television series based on Wheel Of Time in Prague, promising to spend more on each episode than was poured into the groundbreaking epic Game Of Thrones and with a cast that includes Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl and Jack Reacher) and Barney Harris (Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and Billionaire Boys Club).
The icing on the cake for books fans though it that this week Jordan’s debut novel Warriors Of The Altaii finally hits the book stores, a full 40 years after it was written.
McDougal was Rigney’s editor before she became his wife and admits seeing this book finally printed was bittersweet.
“It was the first thing I ever read of his and I thought: ‘This is a lot of writer, the guy is good,’ ” she says.
“It brings back lots and lots of memories. Good ones, really, memories of the man I loved so much and still do.
“It’s his birthday on October 17. I am heading to Prague to have my first look at filming for the Wheel Of Time TV series and I would like to do something for the cast that day, whether it is champagne or coffee and doughnuts.”
After reading Warriors Of The Altaii McDougal first sent the book to friend and fellow publisher Tom Doherty at fantasy publisher Ace Books, who signed it up.
But before it could be published he left to start a new publishing company called Tor — taking McDougal with him — and the pair persuaded Rigney to take up a contract to write the Conan The Barbarian books to tie in with the Arnold Schwarzenegger Conan movie.
“So Altaii was sitting there at Ace,” Doherty says.
“They were obviously thinking, ‘why rush a debut fantasy when we’ll never get another book from him’.”
McDougal says her husband did use his writing skills to get the rights back. “There was a wonderful letter he wrote to Ace, saying the manuscript was turning into a mushroom farm in a dark closet and not doing either him or them any good,” McDougal says.
By then, Rigney was writing Wheel Of Time on the side while cranking out the Conan books.
“Jim thought it needed some work but he wanted to finish Wheel Of Time first,” she says. “He never did get to finish because he died so young. It’s a darn good first novel. It isn’t Wheel Of Time but I think if you’re a fan, you’re going to want to read it.”
McDougal says Altaii does foreshadow many of the things Rigney would later find fame with in Wheel Of Time.
“There are a number of the major themes,” she says. “I think he would be very happy to see it finally published, like watching your child finally go off to college.”
Author and editor worked together for a year before going on a date. So how did love blossom? “He was a big man who actually went to college on a football scholarship,” McDougall says. “We had enormous interests in common, he was a pleasure to work with, a lot of fun — and he had a splendid beard!”
She says marriage meant Rigney had to change his writing habits.
“He was not a day or night worker, he could work a 20-hour stretch and then the next day
work just six hours without any apparent rhyme or reason.
“I never knew when he would want dinner or when I could get in there and make up the bed. So he kindly switched into being a day worker for me.”
As well as being Rigney’s editor, McDougal says she fed him and looked after him. “He would work a six-and-a-half day week,” she says. “He gave me things in hunks. With The Eye Of The World (book one of Wheel Of Time) he gave me the first quarter and that’s when I called Tom and said you have to read this one. Either I’m falling into the wife trap or this book is absolutely wonderful.
“As Wheel Of Time went on he didn’t have quite enough time to look over the book at the end because the publishing schedule was too tight. He would bring me something every other day. We used to call it kerbside editing, or drive-through editing.”
Rigney would have loved to see his world turned into a TV show but fame made him uncomfortable, McDougal says.
“All he wanted to do was write, his dream was to write something that would last, it wasn’t to be famous,” she says. “He loved meeting the fans, although he couldn’t quite believe it (how popular he was).”
That also led to an unexpected problem. Evening events used to go on for hours past their scheduled finish time as fans clamoured to talk to their hero leaving little time for matters such as meals.
The upcoming television series promises to create a whole new world of fans of his work.
Doherty says sales of Wheel Of Time books are up 20 per cent, just on the announcement of the show.
“If they do it well, if they do the kind of job that was done on Game Of Thrones, it’ll help a lot,” he says.
However, he says WoT is more for the “Tolkein market” than following in the Game Of Thrones footsteps with lashings of good characters killed. “It’s about good defeats evil,” he says.
McDougal also sees the TV show as providing a series of “one hour commercials for the books”.
“I don’t know whether he would be delighted if he saw it,” she says.
“It can be hard to see work of your own heart, that has taken so many years of your life, being put into a new medium where certain changes have to be made. But people can always go back and read the books.”
Both agree that fantasy provides the perfect antidote to the troubles of the world.
Doherty says that “people want the world to be a better place” and fantasy helps them imagine that.
He says the difference between WoT and GoT is Thrones was based on the real world and the Wars Of The Roses that saw England’s great houses tear themselves apart to take the throne.
“I bid on Thrones originally,” he says. “But I knew George R.R. Martin too well, I knew he would only deliver every five years and Tor was a smaller company so we couldn’t have that much money outstanding and waiting for him to deliver.”
McDougal says WoT has more of the classic fantasy about it.
“Fantasy has very clear depictions of good behaviour and evil behaviour and it’s easier to pick those things out,” she says. “Not like the problems we are having in the States right now … perhaps I’d better move on. I think you can guess who I didn’t vote for!”
Both say Rigney would have loved to finish his series and he had both sequels and prequels planned. There was also a spin-off in mind. So after seeing Sanderson finish off WoT’s final three books, would he like to see another author take on this project?
“Not sure I could persuade Harriet,” he says.
If Altaii had been published earlier, would it have changed Rigney’s writing career?
Doherty isn’t sure. He points out that WoT was written after Rigney had finished 10 books and he got “better and better” as a writer.
“He did WoT right — we couldn’t have done it better,” he says.
* Wheel Of Time will screen late next year on Amazon Prime; Warriors Of The Altaii is out now through Tor Australia, $32.99