re: What changed with GRRM to allow D&D to do this?

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GRRM has had a bad tendency to jump into a new series, get things going really well, and then get bored with it and get the itch write something new. You can only describe feasts and rape so many times in a fantasy setting before you get the urge to write about them in, say, a science fiction setting.

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You're pretty wrong here. Check his bibliography. Since 1996, he's pretty much only written stuff related to the world of A Song of Ice and Fire.

Though, he is also the editor for a number of anthology books over that span.

I don't fault any writer that takes a break between books from one series to write in another series or add short stories to flesh out the universe, but book fans have every reason to gripe about, what has become, his ever increasing gap between volumes.