Brandon Sanderson, the author of the last Wheel of Time book, has a long blog post up about A Memory of Light. As he reread the series and took note of the plotlines remaining to be closed, the book kept ballooning. In the end, it looks like the final “book” will be three books. They’re currently looking at publication of the first chunk this year (November of 2009), with the remaining books probably coming out in 2010 and 2011.
He does a great job of explaining how this came about and gives us a glimpse at the way authors, editors, publishers, and booksellers interact and direct changes back and forth.
I enjoyed Mistborn very much, and look forward to these novels, despite falling off of the Wheel of Time wagon some time ago. It sounds like there’s a plan, which has me excited and waiting for November. Maybe now I’ll get around to reading Knife of Dreams….