Aw yes! A new blog post on the status of The Winds of Winter!
Just kidding. It’s football!
I hate you so much right now.
I’m sorry.
Really though, I’ve made my peace with the idea that while I may get to read The Winds of Winter someday, there’s almost no chance of me ever getting to read a GRRM-penned Dream of Spring.
I’m thinking of finally caving this year. Give up on waiting for the next book and just start watching the TV show finally, from Season 1 Episode 1.
You might as well since they are no longer following the same script. And the TV version will actually have an ending.
No wait! An actual real update from GRRM on the book!
Post from GRRM in the comments.
[quote]
Not done yet, but I’ve made progress. But not as much as I hoped a year ago, when I thought to be done by now.
I think it will be out this year. (But hey, I thought the same thing last year).[/quote]
Ha ha, I love this guy. He’s just poking us with a stick at this point.
And he agreed with the publisher to have it done by Oct 31st, 2015. The man really has no idea how to manage his time.
I think he really has no idea how to finish the series. And I don’t think he plans to.
I think he has a vague idea, kinda like Tolkien thinking “well such and such will happen and then they drop the ring in the volcano.” But not sure he knows how to get from where the series is to that point.
If I remember correctly he told the show runners how he thought it would end as part of the HBO contract.
Said it many times before, but at this point the HBO series is canon. The books are likely never going to be finished by Martin.
One hundred percent. The show has basically usurped the series like some sort of Baratheon.
I guess that depends on how they end it. If you don’t like the ending, you can still wait for the book if you do, why bother?
I’d be pretty surprised if the endings were significantly different. While they’ve definitely made changes at the margins, the major beats have been pretty similar.
LIKE!
I doubt he signed a contract that promised he wouldn’t change anything. I know he’s known for the minute details, but…
HBO will be into season 3 of the GoT spin off series before he gets the next book out…
Necro
From that interview:
Interesting. @Sharpe was just arguing in the other thread that he worked himself into sort of a dead end with the Mereen Quagmire. I don’t agree with that, but watching the TV show really did prove how much Mereen could have been simplified, I have to admit.
GRRM himself said that was his holdup. You can say that he’s not being truthful, but that’s a different take entirely.
An interviewer asks:
Now that we know how the “Meereenese knot” played out, what was the problem with this? For example, was it the order in which Dany met various characters, or who, when, and how someone would try to take the dragons?
GRRM Responds:
Now I can explain things. It was a confluence of many, many factors: lets start with the offer from Xaro to give Dany ships, the refusal of which then leads to Qarth’s declaration of war. Then there’s the marriage of Daenerys to pacify the city. Then there’s the arrival of the Yunkish army at the gates of Meereen, there’s the order of arrival of various people going her way (Tyrion, Quentyn, Victarion, Aegon, Marwyn, etc.), and then there’s Daario, this dangerous sellsword and the question of whether Dany really wants him or not, there’s hte plague, there’s Drogon’s return to Meereen…
All of these things were balls I had thrown up into the air, and they’re all linked and chronologically entwined. The return of Drogon to the city was something I explored as happening at different times. For example, I wrote three different versions of Quentyn’s arrival at Meereen: one where he arrived long before Dany’s marriage, one where he arrived much later, and one where he arrived just the day before the marriage (which is how it ended up being in the novel). And I had to write all three versions to be able to compare and see how these different arrival points affected the stories of the other characters. Including the story of a character who actually hasn’t arrived yet.