Robert Jordan was the pen name of James Oliver Rigney, Jr. (October 17, 1948 – September 16, 2007) He used this pseudonym for fantasy novels, including the bestselling The Wheel of Time series for which he was best known; he also wrote historical fiction as Reagan O'Neal, a western as Jackson O'Reilly, and dance criticism as Chang Lung, and he had ghostwritten an "international thriller" that is still believed to have been written by someone else