If you didn’t hear the news, we got a call on Wednesday informing us that THE GATHERING STORM had hit the number one spot on the New York Times hardcover Best Seller list. This was accompanied by hitting number one on the independent bookseller’s list and being the bestselling hardcover fiction book at Barnes & Noble and at Borders. (And at the last one, I believe, we were the overall #1 book regardless of genre, which is impressive.) We did, in fact, knock Dan Brown out of the #1 spot—by a wide margin.

Either way, the last four Wheel of Time books had all hit #1, and I worried a lot that it would be on my watch where we failed to do so. It is a testament to the beloved nature of the series, mixed with the ardor of the readers, that we have weathered a change in authors without a dip. We actually outsold KNIFE OF DREAMS’ first week, which is amazing.

The thing is, I don’t feel I can take much—if any—credit for this. The reason this book turned out as well as it did (and thank you all for your kind emails, posts, and reviews) was because of the work Robert Jordan did before he passed away. He literally lay on his deathbead dictating scenes for you, too weak to write. He loved his readers dearly, and those of you lucky enough to meet him know that he was a truly kind and generous man.

Beyond that, the strength of this book is directly tied to the excellent storytelling that came before it. It doesn’t take much experience with construction to realize that the foundation of a building is far more important—structurally—than the roof. Robert Jordan’s skill with worldbuilding, characterization, and plotting was amazing. Working on these books has only increased my respect for his abilities.

David B. Coe, writing as D.B. Jackson, sold the first two books in his Thief-Taker Series to James Frenkel at Tor. The Knight Agency’s Lucienne Diver, who made the deal, says the books were “pitched as Harry Dresden meets Sam Adams.”

Under his own name, Coe is the author of the Lon Tobyn Chronicle trilogy, the five-book Winds of the Forelands series, and the Blood of the Southlands trilogy (the third volume, The Dark-Eyes’ War, will be published in February 2010), all of which were published by Tor.

From my WFC chatter w/ David, i think Samuel Adams, of Tea Party fame, is correct. I think it’s set in colonial America.