I was astounded and humbled by the possibility. I’d been reading the Wheel of Time books since the release of The Eye of the World nearly twenty years before, and I was honored to be considered. But it was certainly a tremendous responsibility that I considered with some trepidation. I thought, “Wow, if I screw this up, I’m in serious trouble. People will find me and burn my house down. Wheel of Time fans are hardcore.” I struggled with this, and it almost caused me to say no. One writer I know mentioned, or posted somewhere, regarding this: “This is a thankless job. Anything that Sanderson gets right will be attributed to Robert Jordan, and anything he gets wrong will condemn him.”
In the end, I felt I could do a good job on this, and that it could be a sendoff I could give one of my favorite authors, someone who deeply influenced me as a writer. And I felt that if I passed on it, someone else would be found and would get to do it. The question that it came down to for me was, “Knowing that someone who is not Robert Jordan is going to do this, can you really pass and let anyone other than you do it?” And the answer was that I couldn’t let someone else do it. I had to do it. So I said yes.
As I worked on writing the book, it eventually became clear that there was too much material to satisfyingly squeeze into just one volume, and everyone involved decided it would have to be split into three books. For more on this decision, please read my explanation. The first of the three volumes, The Gathering Storm, was released October 27, 2009, with the final two volumes following in 2010 and 2013.