Longklaw.com

It’s come out in the past few days that Robert Jordan has a rare blood disease called amyloidosis. You can read the note he wrote on his publisher’s web site here. He gave a lot of interesting statistics, but is seems like he has a median life expectancy of 4 years. Of course he could live less than that or a lot longer than that.

I think the 12th and supposedly final book in the series was scheduled to be released in 2007 or 2008, but that may be up in the air now. I’ve known since I started the series that he wasn’t a young man. I used to jokingly say that if the died before he finished The WoT, I would find a way to kill him a second time. I don’t really care about all those other books he wants to write, I just want him to finish The WoT. I wonder if we would ever find out what was supposed to happen if the last book was never published.

I know I’m being insensitive by focusing only on the fact that I may not get to see the ending. I don’t know what it’s like living with amyloidosis and I don’t know what it’s like knowing that your life may only have a few mores years left in it. I hope that his treatment is successful, he gets those 30 years that he wants, and he can give us many more books. Where would we be without his long, drawn-out, artificially-inflated stories? We love them and we him for writing them.