Into Shayol Ghul: The Making of the Cover of A Memory of Light C

[Vambram]

https://theartofmichaelwhelan.substack.com/p/into-shayol-ghul-the-making-of-a

 

I met Robert Jordan in 2005, early on The Knife of Dreams tour when he signed at my store in Santa Cruz. One of the great pleasures of my bookselling career was the lovely chat my staff and I had with him and his wife Harriet McDougal before the event. They were truly a remarkable and charming couple.

Tragically Robert Jordan died in 2007 after struggling with a rare blood disease. Fans feared his work would go unfinished, but McDougal—his longtime editor—enlisted author Brandon Sanderson to complete The Wheel of Time based on notes left by Jordan.

Darrell Sweet, of course, provided art for the epic series until the very last book. When he passed away in 2011, the publisher commissioned Michael Whelan to illustrate the cover for the final book, A Memory of Light.

Upon seeing the finished painting, Harriet McDougal remarked: “That is the Rand I have waited to see for twenty years.”

Today, I’m so pleased to expand on Michael’s story of how that cover came to be.

Michael Everett