New TWOW chapter coming 10/29

[Colonel Green]

Would someone please remind George that he is 65?

Martin's in good health, and the average white American male life expectancy is 77 years (not to mention that Martin is now a very rich man and can afford the best medical care money can buy). People overly fixate on this issue.

[Stark Revenge]

Would someone please remind George that he is 65? and for audiobook users like me, Roy Dotrice is flipping 90!!!

Dotrice did an awesome job on the first 3 books but his performance went down with books 4 and 5.

And I hate to say it, but he may not live to see book 7. Can we just get a finish while there's time!?

Who cares about him being 65! Hes got plenty of time as long as he dosent contract some deadly disease! No if he were 10 years older then i might be concerned.

[Lady Isobel]

I would like it to be Sansa's chapter - which I'm 100% sure it won't be- but to be honest I want the entire book to be released already! Is that too much to ask for? :eek:

[Dragonman1979]

He's actually 25% finished with the final 2 books. He's writing them in tandem.

That's my crackpot of the day anyway.

[The Human Abstract]

He's actually 25% finished with the final 2 books. He's writing them in tandem.

That's my crackpot of the day anyway.

Don't think he's writing them in tandem but read somewhere that he has continued writing some of the characters into the final book for efficiency's sake. Your idea wold be awesome though.

[bloodsteel bitterraven]

Don't think he's writing them in tandem but read somewhere that he has continued writing some of the characters into the final book for efficiency's sake. Your idea wold be awesome though.

According to one of the reports from Worldcon he is working on them at the same time. I think the reason he is doing that is because one of the biggest problems with AFFC and ADWD (apart from his laziness) was that he didn't have a very clear plan of what to write when he finished ASOS. He knew there would be a 5 year gap and what the characters' arcs would be, but when he began writing, he realized nothing worked and he had to start from scratch. That's another reason why the format is quite different in the last two books, with characters having only one POV chapter.

I am guessing he is very close to finishing TWOW, but he wants to make sure that before the book is released, he has a very clear idea of how ADOS will be structured, and that what he has in mind for ADOS is consistent with what will be published in TWOW.

[Stark Revenge]

According to one of the reports from Worldcon he is working on them at the same time. I think the reason he is doing that is because one of the biggest problems with AFFC and ADWD (apart from his laziness) was that he didn't have a very clear plan of what to write when he finished ASOS. He knew there would be a 5 year gap and what the characters' arcs would be, but when he began writing, he realized nothing worked and he had to start from scratch. That's another reason why the format is quite different in the last two books, with characters having only one POV chapter.

I am guessing he is very close to finishing TWOW, but he wants to make sure that before the book is released, he has a very clear idea of how ADOS will be structured, and that what he has in mind for ADOS is consistent with what will be published in TWOW.

Very close? Hardly! Id say hes 40-50% done if we're lucky. Im hope for a Christmas 2014 release date.

[Järv]

I am still not sure what I will do when the TV series finishes before the last book is published.

I hate the idea but I will probably not be able to restrain myself from watching it. Which will be the first time in my life that I finish a reading a book series by watching TV. Ugh!

[Lady Isobel]

I am still not sure what I will do when the TV series finishes before the last book is published.

I hate the idea but I will probably not be able to restrain myself from watching it. Which will be the first time in my life that I finish a reading a book series by watching TV. Ugh!

:agree: :bang:

[Black Crow]

A Jon chapter might be fun... :cool4:

[Sour Billy Tipton]

Please stop going off topic and predicting the release date of TWOW. Some people are starting to say very rude things and this thread will be locked soon.

[Werthead]

Comments on GRRM's health and mortality are rude and inconsiderate, bearing in mind that some of GRRM's family visit and post on the site. I've had to delete a couple of posts and more will be deleted if they appear.

Constructive discussion of the issue is fine, although we are straying somewhat off-topic here.

Interesting that he says he made "rapid progress" during the last half year. I was worrying that he uses most of his writing time and energy for writing "history" for the TWoIaF-Book ...

AFAIK, GRRM's contributions were completed early in the year and then he switched his focus back to TWoW, where it's remained ever since.

It's not impossible, but if he does a book tour, it will be. Martin has previously talked about 500 pages a year being a good year for him. Books 6 and 7 have been estimated to be about 1500 manuscript pages. That sets three years as kind of a minimum (without talking about him having a "great" year, which is not something I would expect; he's been slowing down over time, not getting faster).

Substantive work on the sixth book has to be finished by the end of 2014 for there to be any chance of finishing ahead of the series. From that point, he needs to have three "good years" in a row (2015, 2016, 2017) to get the final book ready in advance of the final season, due out early in 2018. And that's in the best case scenario, where he doesn't at any point get bogged down in narrative knots.

Doing a book tour can take six months out of GRRM's schedule, maybe even longer, so yes, foregoing a book tour might be a good idea. IIRC, Steven Erikson completely gave up any PR work or tours for the penultimate Malazan book to get cracking on the last one immediately. There may be wisdom in GRRM doing the same thing, especially if he wants to stay ahead of HBO. OTOH, GRRM doesn't write anywhere near as fast as Erikson, so it wouldn't be putting off a tour for just twelve months, but maybe three or more years, which may be harder to justify from a PR and marketing standpoint.

You also have to remember that hes been working on aDoS as well

Can you confirm where this has been said? It's actually fairly likely that he'll probably write some material for TWoW tha he'll hold back for ADoS (as that's happened with every book in the series so far, possibly only bar ASoS) but I don't think there is a firm plan for that.

Would someone please remind George that he is 65?

I think it's entirely possible that he might be aware of that.

According to one of the reports from Worldcon he is working on them at the same time

Really? Where was this report?

[Khal-a-bunga]

I didn't come to the A Song of Ice & Fire saga until around 2003, so I supposed it's rather selfish of me to wish that he would really get cracking on these last two novels, but at the same time I have to wonder what happened to the speed with which he wrote the first three books. I understand that he had less obligations, a clearer vision of what was going to happen (maybe; just spit-balling on that one), and no Mereneese Knot to deal with, but still... Five years for A Feast for Crows and another five for A Dance with Dragon (which was really the first book I had to wait any considerable amount of time for) is a little excessive. You can't rush writers, and all that, I know, but often times a deadline is what pushes people to do great work, in my experience. Not all the time in the world. Plus, I really do want George to be able to finish his saga before the show, but that might be a pipe dream, at this point.

Anyway, he's only 65, people. No need to worry about if he'll finish the book; that's kind of morbid.

[Chun-Li]

Probably one of the chapters that he already read. I highly doubt it's a Sansa chapter.

[Werthead]

ACoK and ASoS are the outliers. The other three books in the series each took five or more years to write (including AGoT). A big difference is that AGoT/ACoK/ASoS were originally envisaged as one novel, so they were less three separate narratives as one mega-novel written over nine years and split off into three books whenever the MS got too big to publish in one volume. GRRM also had a very, very rough outline for the story during that time period, and AFFC and most of ADWD (which take place outside of that outline, in the period previously skipped by the gap) were instead written totally on the fly.

The question is whether TWoW, which apparently is firmly back on the scheme he had mapped out 15+ years ago, will be helped by this and will thus come out faster (and even if it comes out in 2015, that's still two years faster than ADWD), or if other issues will arise.

[bloodofwinterfell]

Does anyone know if the chapter will be a new one or a chapter he's released already? The paperback edition was delayed so many times that so it's possible he's already released it. Here's to hoping it's a new one though!

I really hope it's Sansa or Arya, but I'd be more excited for Sansa since we haven't heard from her since AffC. I'd be happy if it was one of them either way since their storylines are the hardest to predict. On the other hand, I really don't want to read a Damphair chapter, no matter how creepy it is.

[The Human Abstract]

Can you confirm where this has been said? It's actually fairly likely that he'll probably write some material for TWoW tha he'll hold back for ADoS (as that's happened with every book in the series so far, possibly only bar ASoS) but I don't think there is a firm plan for that.

Really? Where was this report?

Joseph Nobles who started the Worldcon thread said so. Around page 2. Secondhand info, of course, but we get few nuggets so we cling to them. Someone else had mentioned this as well, but I can't recall. Apparently since he writes one character at a time, he has carried the momentum for some characters into the next book.

I take it with a grain of salt and I doubt both will be finished at the same time anyhow.

[The Crow's Third Eye]

Sorry but as someone from the UK I don't understand why there is such a wait for the paperback edition of DwD. Although I don't but hard copies of books myself, I seem to recall seeing paperback DwD in the stores for a long while now. Why does it take so long in the US and anywhere else it isn't out yet?

[The Human Abstract]

Sorry but as someone from the UK I don't understand why there is such a wait for the paperback edition of DwD. Although I don't but hard copies of books myself, I seem to recall seeing paperback DwD in the stores for a long while now. Why does it take so long in the US and anywhere else it isn't out yet?

Because the publisher decides and they were selling tons of hardcover books in the U.S., so they waited until sales slowed down.

[Werthead]

Joseph Nobles who started the Worldcon thread said so. Around page 2. Secondhand info, of course, but we get few nuggets so we cling to them. Someone else had mentioned this as well, but I can't recall. Apparently since he writes one character at a time, he has carried the momentum for some characters into the next book.

I take it with a grain of salt and I doubt both will be finished at the same time anyhow.

I think that might have been GRRM's general comment that he keeps writing one character until he gets bored and sometimes finds he's written into the next book. For example, he wrote Tyrion's storyline for ACoK and when he finished discovered he'd also written most of his chapters into ASoS as well.

It's a nice idea that he could write both books simultaneously and say release them a year apart six or seven years out, but that's not possible with the HBO situation. TWoW needs to be out in 2015 or the very start of 2016, and that precludes him being able to take that approach. Unless GRRM gets to the point where he feels that HBO is going to overtake regardless and he wants to minimise the time between the last two books, almost treating them as separate situations. But it's clear he hasn't reached that point yet and last we heard was still hopeful of finishing ahead of HBO.

Sorry but as someone from the UK I don't understand why there is such a wait for the paperback edition of DwD. Although I don't but hard copies of books myself, I seem to recall seeing paperback DwD in the stores for a long while now. Why does it take so long in the US and anywhere else it isn't out yet?

Different market approaches. In the UK the hardcover is retired after a year, regardless of how well it's selling, and the paperback is rolled out. In the USA the paperback is published only when hardcover sales wind down, which is actually usually around a year as well, but for massive sellers can take a lot longer. In both countries a series with this level of sales success will actually stay in print in both hardcover and paperback; in the UK's case the paperback is released anyway but in the USA's they still wait for hardcover sales to drop a bit before releasing the paperback.

As a very rough generalisation, hardcover books are much more popular in the USA than they are in the UK. This may be due to the fact that US hardcovers are superb in quality (whilst UK ones will usually disintegrate after a few reads) and US paperbacks are not very good, so Americans prefer the superior format. In the UK people are much more willing to hang on and wait for the paperback.