It seems to have been a weekend for people to die. Which is odd, because it was an otherwise unremarkable weekend in this part of the world, and as such I had a fairly pleasant time of it. Now, of course, in true human fashion, I'm feeling rather guilty about that.

I heard – entirely the wrong verb; I read – this morning that Jim Rigney, known to the most of us as Robert Jordan, died yesterday afternoon. Not a surprise, exactly, since he had a pretty well-publicised terminal condition, but still something of an "oh, fuck," moment.

I first came across Rigney/Jordan's work in 1997, in my first year as an A-Level student at Blackburn College. I was introduced to the Wheel of Time by Dan Critchley, the same guy who turned me on to Ultima Online (about which there's a post to be written if I ever find the time). I remember picking up a hardback copy of The Eye of the World in the also now sadly gone Wardleworths in Accrington and being reassured by its very heft. This was a book that, I felt, could have stopped just about any offensive weapon at any range. I took it home, devoured it, and returned a couple of weeks later (it took me rather longer to read it than I thought it would) to buy the next book in the cycle.

And so it went for a couple of months; the series capturing me in a fashion that only Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons had hitherto managed. I bought some books, borrowed others from the library, borrowed yet others from Dan himself, pretty much by annoying him until he lent me them as I recall, until I was as up-to-date on the cycle as I could be (without having referred to the interwebs, of course; I was unaware in those days just how much material there was to be found out there. Oh innocence, why have you deserted me so?).

Long-time readers of this blog will know that I fell out of love with WoT, mostly due to what I saw as overlong, over-intricate plot lines that left me cold and more than a little confused, and I stick by that opinion, not least because an author's death doesn't serve to change what they've written in any way. But longer-time readers, and long-time friends, especially those from University, upon whom I tried to foist my copy of Eye at just about any opportunity (the other option was to offer them Lord of the Rings, but a lot of them seemed to balk at that), will know that Robert Jordan and the Wheel of Time left an indelible mark on me.

Naturally, looking back at the stuff I wrote back then (not much because I didn't have proper writer pants in those days and most of my "I'm a writer" moments were confined to statements made whilst inebriated), I tried to ape his style and failed miserably. This is what usually happens when I fall in love with an author's work, before I realise that there's already someone in the world doing the job of being that author and realise that I'll do a better job (hopefully) of being myself.

Well today there's no-one doing the job of being James Oliver Rigney Jr., and the world is worse off for it.