New GRRM Update on ADWD

[Werthead]

The first substantive update in over a year.

The salient points:

* The current plan is to finish the book in June and publish it in October. This is not set in stone and may change. The US version looks like it has a new cover, which you can see in the blog entry.
* At least one ADWD chapter has been dropped and booted into The Winds of Winter instead.
* The first half of 2008 saw tons of really good progress on the book, the second half was much more problematic.
* The second the book is done, GRRM will inform the world via his Notablog and the update page on his website.

 

[dooley]

man, waiting for this new book is starting to anger me, and i've only finished AFFC like two months ago. I feel sorry for the guys who've been reading these since the beginning.

 

[Werthead]

man, waiting for this new book is starting to anger me, and i've only finished AFFC like two months ago. I feel sorry for the guys who've been reading these since the beginning.

Ha. It was about ten years ago exactly that I read AGoT and ACoK, and I bought ASoS on the day of release.

 

[dooley]

man that's got to be painful.

I kind of wish that I just waited until the series was completed to get into these books.

 

[Boaz]

Wert, as usual you have my gratitude.

Of course, I almost wet myself when I saw the title of this new thread.

 

[Bazza]

Honestly, that blog entry was very anti-climactic for me. I felt somewhat like what I'm likely to feel at the end of a Dream of Spring- a bittersweet ending. We'll get Dance, but will it be worth it? I hope he's not rushing it...

 

[chopper]

well, good luck to him on that score. having it for christmas would be nice... even if it's next christmas...

 

[chopper]

reading between the lines on GRRM's blog (and you don't even have to read that deep), you can see that he's pretty pissed off by the way people are trying to run his life for him. "Art isn't a democracy," indeed. there seems to be an even greater weight and demand on him from readers than there was on JKR for the Potter series, and that one had the national presses weighing in too. JKR wasn't quite as accessible as GRRM has made himself though (IMO) - i wouldn't blame GRRM if he just cut the line and let everybody else bicker amongst themselves.

 

[HareBrain]

Suppose GRRM had never made himself accessible - say he didn't write an internet blog, didn't attend conventions or give interviews etc. Suppose that the only news about ADWD was a yearly publisher's statement to say GRRM was still working on it. How would the world for ASoIF fans be different? And would he actually sell fewer copies when it did come out?

 

[chopper]

it'd still sell well - after all it did when he first started the series. fans would gather and discuss just as we do here with all the theories threads. and i don't think anybody should begrudge GRRM his life (interviews, conventions) or a place to sound off on the subjects close to his heart - whether it's NFL or Wild Cards etc, but it seems the internet can sometimes get the readers too close to the authors (again, my opinion).

 

[Bazza]

I agree. Him being more accessible enhances the perspective of discontent. But honestly, no matter who you are, if you're behind on your books, your fans are going to be upset. He just gets to hear about it more often than most. I want my books like anyone else, and there's not much you can do about it, I just hopes he puts out a quality product.

Speaking of quality products, I didn't like his responses to his fans about his choice of distributors. That is a legitimate concern, I still haven't gotten my calendar and decided to cancel the order. This isn't the first time either, I ordered a t-shirt last year and that never came. I wasn't even able to get a refund for it. He is getting very bitter!

 

[Raven]

I think it's a shame that a very small minority (and it is a very small minority) of bitter people are upsetting the man so much. I have to say I'm not sure that responding on his blog was in any way a good idea. He has mostly been monumentally patient with them until now, but this is not going to make the problem go away. After all, we're talking here about people who are attacking GRRM for not spending his time productively, while spending many hours of their own lives creating fake LJ accounts to harass and personally insult a perfect stranger. They are apparently dead to irony: I can't think that a telling-off will make much difference.

I'm not suggesting that everyone who criticises the lateness of the books falls into that category, of course. I think that there are many people who have an understandable reaction of frustration: and when we're frustrated, the urge to find someone to blame is very, very strong. But a moment's rational thought should confirm for anyone that there is nobody who wants the book finished more than GRRM. After all, it will in one fell swoop make him more money and grant him more kudos than every licensed product and the latest Wild Cards trilogy rolled into one. (Not to mention shutting a few of the trolls up for a few months.)

 

[Werthead]

Suppose GRRM had never made himself accessible - say he didn't write an internet blog, didn't attend conventions or give interviews etc. Suppose that the only news about ADWD was a yearly publisher's statement to say GRRM was still working on it. How would the world for ASoIF fans be different? And would he actually sell fewer copies when it did come out?

99.99% of people who have read the series have never met GRRM (and there's probably about a million of them), and about 90% have never posted anything online about the books at all, so no, it wouldn't make much difference at all to the success of the books. Some recent authors, such as Abercrombie, Lynch and Rothfuss, could probably attribute at least a few thousand of their respective sales and some of their profile to word-of-mouth built up over the Internet, but GRRM isn't really in the same boat. It's also notable that a lot of the established fan community was built up over the years when he didn't have a blog at all.

 

[viZion]

Honestly, that blog entry was very anti-climactic for me. I felt somewhat like what I'm likely to feel at the end of a Dream of Spring- a bittersweet ending. We'll get Dance, but will it be worth it? I hope he's not rushing it...

Whoa, this is the first time I've seen someone concerned that he might be *rushing* the book!

I liked the update. You can see his frustration coming through in the entry, of course. But that's ok. Now I can't wait to see the response from the angry bloggers and the bloggers that are angry at the angry bloggers. More internet drama!

 

[The Imp]

To be honest, GRRM's update made me reevaluate things that I've said in the past. WHile I never said that he should lock himself in a room and do nothing but work on ASOIAF, I would have been happy if he had done just that. His update makes me regret even thinking those things. I'm glad we have something to look forward to, June isn't that far off.

 

[Bayou Boy]

Ha. It was about ten years ago exactly that I read AGoT and ACoK, and I bought ASoS on the day of release.

I bought AGoT in late 1997 and read it in early 1998.

I still remember how disappointed I was when there was a delay in the publishing and release of ACoK. How young and naive I was.

 

[Ursa major]

I liked the animation....


(And as The Imp said, June and September/October are not that far away.)

 

[Clansman]

Ha. It was about ten years ago exactly that I read AGoT and ACoK, and I bought ASoS on the day of release.

I have the pain of being among the first buyers of A Game of Thrones (the cover was intriguing, and the blurb sold me, never having heard of Martin before, but wanting a new epic fantasy. I think that was 1996, might have been 1995. I forget now). The books are so darn good waiting between them has been painful. However, since AFFC, published these long five years ago, the pain has grown into a dull ache, forgotten when reading books from Janny Wurts and Guy Gavriel Kay.

 

[Werthead]

The oldest possible fans of the series would be those who got the Blood of the Dragon novella put out in early 1996 by Bantam (the one that collects Dany's chapters into their own self-contained story) or the Voyager one with the first six or seven chapters that they sold for 99p, again in early 1996, or people from around the same time who got ARCs.

 

[soulsinging]

reading between the lines on GRRM's blog (and you don't even have to read that deep), you can see that he's pretty pissed off by the way people are trying to run his life for him. "Art isn't a democracy," indeed. there seems to be an even greater weight and demand on him from readers than there was on JKR for the Potter series, and that one had the national presses weighing in too. JKR wasn't quite as accessible as GRRM has made himself though (IMO) - i wouldn't blame GRRM if he just cut the line and let everybody else bicker amongst themselves.

He's very clearly frustrated and I don't blame him. I can understand people being frustrated and impatient, but some of the personal attacks on him by angry fans are kind frightening and sickening.

That said, I only got into the series this past fall and haven't even read AFFC yet. I'm not terribly disappointed at the delay either, because I'll wait for paperback to read it and I want to reread the first 3 books and then read AFFC with ADWD. Given how many unread books I want to get through (Robin Hobb series, Memory Sorrow and Thorn, Joe Abercrombie), I'm perfectly content to wait a while