Has anyone heard when the next book in the "Wheel of Time" series by Robert Jordan will be published?

Question

It always seems to take for ever for the next one to come out, doesn't it?

Answer 1

it is not out yet but he is working on it, by the way Robert Jordan is a pen name, the real name of this writer is James Oliver Rigney, Jr. (born October 17, 1948), under which he is best known as the author of the bestselling The Wheel of Time fantasy series. He also writes under the name Reagan O'Neal.

The Eye of the World (15 January 1990)
The Great Hunt (15 November 1990)
The Dragon Reborn (15 October 1991)
The Shadow Rising (15 September 1992)
The Fires of Heaven (15 October 1993)
Lord of Chaos (15 October 1994)
A Crown of Swords (15 May 1996)
The Path of Daggers (20 October 1998)
Winter's Heart (9 November 2000)
Crossroads of Twilight (7 January 2003)
Knife of Dreams (11 October 2005)
A Memory of Light (working title)

Answer 2

He put himself in a fix in the early books. Set a variety of circumstances for the story to proceed to and now has run out of ideas on how to get there. So he is forced to either sit and spin which might cut the interest in the series to almost none, killing the cash cow in his life or to figure out how to square the various circles and move toward the ending circumstances. If the latter, there's no reason why it might not take twelve more books to get there so the cash cow can moo for a long time, but just how does one do it when the hallmark to date has been incredible detail and working progression? Less of both and one could just use the standard story advancement technique of most S&S or Sci Fi writers ("And so, after all that and bit more, we came to this next book in the series and real fans will have to wait until I have time to flesh the interim out (some years after I finish the main line). You know, movie people sniffing around, making demands, that kind of thing. Not that I'm just too lazy or too stupid to write through my story's careless contradictions.")

And, to be a little fair, it IS a cash cow and I imagine (boy, wish I could do more than imagine...) the changes that makes in one's life are tremendous. It might be that we are just lucky he bothers, assuming he is still bothering..., to write more at all. But with the stable of writers who work on material not their the current publishing industry has available, I think he'd just sub-let a book or two rather than leave it all behind. So I still tend toward the fact that he carelessly built a future in which the conflict would come to a head that is so far from his present mileau that I honestly do not believe he can figure how to proceed more than agonizing bit by agonizing bit.

Answer 3

Nobody really knows when it will be out, because as mentioned before, Robert Jordan is dying. It might not occur for a few years, but his disease is fatal. It's unknown how his chemo is affecting his writing, but he writes that he's trying on his blog. Last I heard, A Memory of Light was going to push 2000 pages, so I hope he's feeling up to it.

Answer 4

The last I heard, was that he has been ill. From what he writes below, it's pretty serious:

Important note from Robert Jordan: March 25, 2006,
I have been diagnosed with amyloidosis. That is a rare blood disease which affects only 8 people out of a million each year, and those 8 per million are divided among 22 distinct forms of amyloidosis. They are distinct enough that while some have no treatment at all, for the others, the treatment that works on one will have no effect whatsoever on any of the rest. An amyloid is a misshapen or misfolded protein that can be produced by various parts of the body and which may deposit in other parts of the body (nerves or organs) with varying effects. (As a small oddity, amyloids are associated with a wide list of diseases ranging from carpal tunnel syndrome to Alzheimer's. There's no current evidence of cause and effect, and none of these is considered any form of amyloidosis, but the amyloids are always there. So it is entirely possible that research on amyloids may one day lead to cures for Alzheimer's and the Lord knows what else. I've offered to be a literary poster boy for the Mayo Amyloidosis Program, and the May PR Department, at least, seems very interested. Plus, I've discovered a number of fans in various positions at the clinic, so maybe they'll help out.)

Now in my case, what I have is primary amyloidosis with cardiomyapathy. That means that some (only about 5% at present) of my bone marrow is producing amyloids which are depositing in the wall of my heart, causing it to thicken and stiffen. Untreated, it would eventually make my heart unable to function any longer and I would have a median life expectancy of one year from diagnosis. Fortunately, I am set up for treatment, which expands my median life expectancy to four years. This does NOT mean I have four years to live. For those who've forgotten their freshman or pre-freshman (high school or junior high) math, a median means half the numbers fall above that value and half fall below. It is NOT an average.

In any case, I intend to live considerably longer than that. Everybody knows or has heard of someone who was told they had five years to live, only that was twenty years ago and here they guy is, still around and kicking. I mean to beat him. I sat down and figured out how long it would take me to write all of the books I currently have in mind, without adding anything new and without trying rush anything. The figure I came up with was thirty years. Now, I'm fifty-seven, so anyone my age hoping for another thirty years is asking for a fair bit, but I don't care. That is my minimum goal. I am going to finish those books, all of them, and that is that.

My treatment starts in about 2 weeks at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where they have seen and treated more cases like mine than anywhere else in the US. Basically, it boils down to this. They will harvest a good quantity of my bone marrow stem cells from my blood. These aren't the stem cells that have Bush and Cheney in a swivet; they can only grow into bone marrow, and only into my bone marrow at that. Then will follow two days of intense chemotherapy to kill off all of my bone marrow, since there is no way at present to target just the misbehaving 5%. Once this is done, they will re-implant my bmsc to begin rebuilding my bone marrow and immune system, which will of course go south with the bone marrow. Depending on how long it takes me to recuperate sufficiently, 6 to 8 weeks after checking in, I can come home. I will have a fifty-fifty chance of some good result (25% chance of remission; 25% chance of some reduction in amyloid production), a 35-40% chance of no result, and a 10-15% chance of fatality. Believe me, that's a Hell of a lot better than staring down the barrel of a one-year median. If I get less than full remission, my doctor already, she says, has several therapies in mind, though I suspect we will heading into experimental territory. If that is where this takes me, however, so be it. I have thirty more years worth of books to write even if I can keep from thinking of any more, and I don't intend to let this thing get in my way.

—Robert Jordan