Happy Groundhog Day to those who celebrate! 

This will be a place to see some of the top news items pertaining to The Wheel of Time, as well as memes, fan art, idle speculation about the show and casting, and anything else within our sci-fi/fantasy community.

February is Black History Month in the United States.  To kick it off, our friend and JordanCon guest, Gerald Coleman had a fantastic summary of speculative fiction by black authors.  Rather than list the well known within the genre, Gerald dives deep and gives a thoughtful list of lesser known writers.

Gerald writes:

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… I decided to compile a more genuine list of black authors doing interesting and engaging work in speculative fiction (yes, I included my own novel - sue me - no, actually, don't sue me, at least not until I hit the bestseller list). In the hopes that you will have the opportunity to be exposed to authors you have to yet heard of - a real guide to some of the best science fiction and fantasy out there, and a real introduction to black authors working in that particular field. So, here they are. My picks for the best places to start if you're looking for black scifi & fantasy! Here they are, in no particular order. They are all available on Amazon. Enjoy, and you're welcome.

You can read Gerald’s summary of each book on his website.

On the fanart side of the community, I stumbled up several amazing works by Gal Or.  The representation of Shaidar Logoth is incredible, and as the show draws ever closer, the cursed city is going to be an interesting place to visit.  This event is so important to the character development of Mat, I hope we get a satisfying rendition of its creepy eyes and dark shadows.

You can see more of Gal Or’s artwork here.

For news with the show, we had a large batch of casting announcements over the past few weeks.  Many of them came about with the actors holding scripts.  (You can check out Dragonmount’s coverage of these announcements here and here.)  One I saw of Josha Stardowski (who is playing Rand) and Marcus Rutherford (who is playing Perrin) really pulled at my heartstrings! 

(Photo from Wheel of Time News on Twitter)

It’s easy to get caught up in the adventure the three ta’veren get pulled into.  But at the start of the story, our heroes are best friends!  They have twenty years of history between them before Moiraine comes and collects them.  The two of them together in this picture captures the feeling of best friends to me.  I can see how amazing their on-screen chemistry will be.

For anyone in need of a humor fix, there’s a fantastic Facebook group called The Wheel of Time Shai’tan Posting, a private group, but one you can join.  As you can tell from the name, this group has the worst (and best) meme in existence.  This definitely isn’t a group for everyone.  But if you like your humor a bit dark or sometimes borderline inappropriate, this group is for you!  Here’s a few of the milder memes.

There’s plenty of Wheel of Time content going around!  This is a great time to be a fan!

That concludes this Community Round-Up.  Have you read any of the books on Gerald’s list?  Are you sensing the good vibes between Rand and Perrin?  Don't you agree "DangerGingers" is the perfect name for the Aiel?  Let us know in the comments.