Every year in the United States there's a popular tournament in which the best college basketball teams compete for the National Championship. The tournament has become known as "March Madness".

Well, even though the Wheel of Time is not basketball (although Rand and his tall Aiel buddies would make one incredible team!) , there are several tournaments going on right now which feature The Wheel of Time.

• Suvudu's Cage Match: This tournament features characters from various fantasy novels facing off in a bracketed "cage match". Rand comes into the tournament as the #5 seed. In the first round of the tournament, he's facing Locke Lamora, the protagonist from Scott Lynch’s Gentleman Bastards series. As of this writing, Rand has a substantial vote advantage, but he probably wouldn't mind your support to make sure he made it to round two, where he'll battle either Conan the Barbarian or Harry Dresden. (Did you know Robert Jordan actually wrote several Conan novels as well?)
  
• Audible.com's Tournament of Audio Books: A tournament where voters select their favorite audio books. The Gathering Storm is one of the "contestants". Head over there and vote for it!

Because this news post is rather unusual anyway, here are a few other quick links. Don't forget to check out our new WoT haiku contest going on over there where you can win ninja stars. Yes.... Ninja. Stars.

Follow us on Twitter to hear Jennifer Liang and myself "tweet" about random things related to the books and WoT fandom on a daily basis.

And finally, check out this music video from a bank called Neverland. The song is "This Voice Inside". It's about Rand: "It mainly speaks of Rand’s unwilling turn into a anti-hero type while constantly trying to battle with the voices inside his head."