re: A Song of Ice and Fire (GoT "I read the book" thread)

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There's no way the book is coming out this summer. It's not even finished yet, and it typically takes 6+ months from completion to see a book on the shelves at Barnes and Noble.

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Gurm's problem is that he's made enough money that he doesn't have to work. He can go to nerd cons and blog about pizza and the Jets/Giants all fricking day long and it doesn't negatively affect his lifestyle.

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t'd be easy to blame the delay on Gurm's decision to forgo his original plan of a 5 year gap. The gap would have let Dany, Bran, Sansa, Arya, and Jon grow into believable young adults. It would have made sense. Now he has to figure out how the frick to get Dany from a 16 year old girl with no education and near-feral dragons to a world-spanning conqueror and savior of Westeros from the forthcoming invasion of the Others.

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The real reason is that he's a lazy fatass resentful of his most famous and lauded work, and would much rather eat himself into an early grave and ogle young girls at every nerd convention around the globe.

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You should read The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.

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My first mentor called me E'lir because I was clever and I knew it. My first real lover called me Dulator because she liked the sound of it. I have been called Shadicar, Lightfinger, and Six-String. I have been called Kvothe the Bloodless, Kvothe the Arcane, and Kvothe Kingkiller. I have earned those names. Bought and paid for them. But I was brought up as Kvothe. My father once told me it meant "to know." I have, of course, been called many other things. Most of them uncouth, although very few were unearned. I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep. You may have heard of me.

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But no, that's too easy a thing to blame it on. The real reason is that he's a lazy fatass resentful of his most famous and lauded work, and would much rather eat himself into an early grave and ogle young girls at every nerd convention around the globe.

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This statement is legit:

"Gurm's problem is that he's made enough money that he doesn't have to work. He can go to nerd cons and blog about pizza and the Jets/Giants all fricking day long and it doesn't negatively affect his lifestyle. "

GRRM does appear to seek every distraction he can find to keep from writing the books.

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What are you all waiting for, anyway? What could be worth this?

The fifth and final* volume of GEORGE R.R. MARTIN'S A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE will be tited A Dance with Dragons. When he finished Feast in 2005, he said that Dance was half-done and would be published the next year. 2006 came and went, with no progress. So did 2007. In 2008, the GRRM posted on his blog that he should be done that year, and his publisher promised a release date of September 30th. The GRRM said he would need to be finished with the manuscript by June in order to accomplish this. He was not.

In February of 2009, the GRRM posted again that he would try to be finished by June, for a publication date in September or October. He said "I think I can do that." He could not.

He pushed the date for completion back to September or October. He missed those, too. He temporarily stopped giving estimates on his completion.

On October 10th, 2010, his publisher reported that the book had only 5 chapters remaining unfinished, and that they expected to have the completed manuscript by December. Viconia, in a gleeful frenzy, closed the current iteration of the Bad Thread and posted her own, proclaiming to the heavens that there were only five chapters left. December came and went; in an interview, the GRRM claimed he was almost done. 2010 ended without seeing a completed manuscript.

In January 2011, the GRRM posted that he had recently had a near miss with death, by means of a urinary tract infection that progressed to generalized sepsis. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth in The Bad Thread that he had not, in fact, died.

On March 3rd, 2011, the publisher set yet another release date, this one for July 12th, 2011. The GRRM proclaimed his commitment to meeting this deadline, saying that all the other release dates had been "wishful thinking, boundless optimism, cockeyed dreams, [and] honest mistakes."

The book is not done.

*Although the series will require at least two more novels to wrap up all the story lines, if not more, the GRRM will not live long enough to complete them. Even in the unexpected outcome that he manages to finish Dance before he dies, the rest is going to have to come from the work of another author. Brandon Sanderson comes to mind.

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