Author Robert Jordan, best-known for his Wheel of Time fantasy series, has died at 58.

Jordan, whose real name was James Oliver Rigney Jr., died Sunday at the Medical University of South Carolina. He had cardiac amyloidosis, a rare blood disorder that caused the walls of his heart to thicken, according to his personal assistant Maria Simons.

Jordan began writing in the late 1970s, and published a trilogy of historical novels set in his hometown of Charleston under the pen name Reagan O’Neal in the 1980s. During that decade he also wrote several ‘Conan the Barbarian’ stories.

His first fantasy book, ‘The Eye of the World,’ was published in 1990. It would be the first of 11 books in his best-selling Wheel of Time series. He had been working on the 12th and final book in the series, ?A Memory of Light,? at the time of his death.

Jordan is survived by his wife, Harriet McDougal Rigney.






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