[Slow Ben]

Abyss, on Feb 23 2009, 09:54 AM, said:

Darkwatch, on Feb 23 2009, 12:04 AM, said:

Abyss, on Feb 20 2009, 09:56 AM, said:

- Abyss, because romance is better with gunfights in it...

And that's why you watch "Shoot 'em Up".

You're not wrong. Also, TRUE ROMANCE.

- Abyss, is so cool.

Great friggin movie.
"Dont condescend me, man."

[Arthur Dayne]

I'm still hung up on the rule about bacon. GRRM should qq less in public and get back in the kitchen and whip up some more pie.

[Morgoth]

blackzoid, on Feb 23 2009, 06:10 PM, said:

I find people complaining about waiting for Dance of Dragons amusing.
Stephen Kings Dark Tower series took 20+ years to be finished. With generally 4-5 years between books. (except for the last 3)
Now that was an ordeal.
Read something else in the meantime. Have more hobbies.

I find people complaining about the weather amusing.
Huricane Katrina took the lives of 1800 people with another 700 missing.
Now that's an ordeal.
Put on warmer clothes. Do more indoor activities.

It's nice to find someone else sharing my passion for irrelevant comparisons.

[Werthead]

SF author John Scalzi comments here on the issue (Charlie Stross weighs in during the comments with his own problems on his long-running Merchant Princes series).

He boils the whole thing down to one question: do you want a book, any book, right now, or a good book x number of years down the line?

Even Erikson has been here before. When the Hideous Computer Hard Drive failure took place and wiped out 30% of Memories of Ice he decided he couldn't face rewriting it immediately and wrote Deadhouse Gates instead, because that's what he needed to do from a creative standpoint. And DHG turned out to be awesome and MoI v.2 turned out to be even awsomer. True, this was before GotM was even published and he had fans clamouring for the next book, but he'd also just signed the biggest advance in fantasy history and was under a lot of pressure to deliver. And that worked out well.

[QuickTidal]

blackzoid, on Feb 23 2009, 01:10 PM, said:

Read something else in the meantime. Have more hobbies.

When my eyes grazed over this last statement the first time my brain thought it said "Have more babies"...and I thought to myself....yep...having sex with the girlfriend would definitely be a better thing to do than wait for a book to come out.....but have babies...oh no no, not yet....LOL.

~Quicktidal (because your brain isn't as strange as mine)

[Werthead]

QuickTidal, on Feb 24 2009, 12:12 AM, said:

blackzoid, on Feb 23 2009, 01:10 PM, said:

Read something else in the meantime. Have more hobbies.

When my eyes grazed over this last statement the first time my brain thought it said "Have more babies"...and I thought to myself....yep...having sex with the girlfriend would definitely be a better thing to do than wait for a book to come out.....but have babies...oh no no, not yet....LOL.

~Quicktidal (because your brain isn't as strange as mine)

I thought it was "Have more hobbits," which was altogether more disturbing

[HoosierDaddy]

What if your hobbies are only reading and bitching about stuff? Perfect situation!

[Arthur Dayne]

If I spring for T-shirts Hoosier, can you and I start a club?

[blackzoid]

Putting together all the misintepretations of my words, you should pass the time by
having more babies with hobbits.

[blackzoid]

Morgoth, on Feb 23 2009, 11:28 PM, said:

blackzoid, on Feb 23 2009, 06:10 PM, said:

I find people complaining about waiting for Dance of Dragons amusing.
Stephen Kings Dark Tower series took 20+ years to be finished. With generally 4-5 years between books. (except for the last 3)
Now that was an ordeal.
Read something else in the meantime. Have more hobbies.

I find people complaining about the weather amusing.
Huricane Katrina took the lives of 1800 people with another 700 missing.
Now that's an ordeal.
Put on warmer clothes. Do more indoor activities.

It's nice to find someone else sharing my passion for irrelevant comparisons.

I bring up a previous instance of waiting for a book series to be finished. A not irrelevant comparison I believe as it addresses the same subject (waiting for a book to come out)
You bring up a natural disaster in which a lot of people were tragically killed and somehow then assume that its the same sort of comparison that I made?

This post has been edited by blackzoid: 24 February 2009 - 11:31 AM

[Illuyankas]

Perhaps we could hit GRRM with a minibus - hard enough to properly induce a fear of dying without finishing his work, but not too hard as to make him burst.

[Cougar]

Topic split out so you guys can discuss the Gunslinger elsewhere. Now, tell me more about this minibus.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

Cougar, on Feb 26 2009, 07:09 AM, said:

Topic split out so you guys can discuss the Gunslinger elsewhere. Now, tell me more about this minibus.

Sorry, can't tell you about the minibus. It's part of the Stephen King conversation, and has been banned from this thread. Shame, really. It's a good story.


To GRRM: Sorry we gave you a hard time.

[MecnunK]

This whine does GRRM no good in my opinion. I believed that he had ADWD almost completed and had split AFFC to give us a an early release or so I expected ..foolishly that ADWD will only take about a year.I love the first 3 books..genre classic as far as I am concerned..was willing to even forgive the pile of steaming rubbish that was AFFC..every writer should be allowed at least one holding/mediocre offering in an otherwise excellently written series but I have been waiting ..and waiting and waiting...while mr.grrm does everything but finish ADWD...I mean the mugs, the portraits, the medals, the tee shirts.....do they come before your defining series? Ok the guy wants to make some cash from his success, secure his future etc and he deserves every penny he makes but don't milk it for too long Martin.....lest the same fans forget about your series!

[LadyMTL]

I agree with GRRM that he does deserve to have a life outside of writing DWD (I mean, if I weren't allowed to live outside of my job I'd be throwing myself in front of this minibus that you guys have so thoughtfully procured) but what gets on my nerves--as others have mentionned--are the constantly changing publication dates. I mean, it's been close to 5 years that we've been waiting and, although I would rather he take his time and produce a wonderful novel, it's getting to the point where I just don't give a #%$@ anymore. My tastes evolve, my life changes, etc etc etc. I started reading ASOIAF when I was in my early 20's and I'm in my early 30's now...priorities change. I think he risks losing a lot of his original fanbase just because we *gasp* grew up.

Anyway...that said, I do hope that people will give him a break. I don't care when it gets published but I do have other hobbies (yay!) so I can keep myself well entertained until 2020 or 3013 or whenever it is released.

[Werthead]

Maia Irraz, on Mar 2 2009, 10:37 PM, said:

I agree with GRRM that he does deserve to have a life outside of writing DWD (I mean, if I weren't allowed to live outside of my job I'd be throwing myself in front of this minibus that you guys have so thoughtfully procured) but what gets on my nerves--as others have mentionned--are the constantly changing publication dates. I mean, it's been close to 5 years that we've been waiting and, although I would rather he take his time and produce a wonderful novel, it's getting to the point where I just don't give a #%$@ anymore. My tastes evolve, my life changes, etc etc etc. I started reading ASOIAF when I was in my early 20's and I'm in my early 30's now...priorities change. I think he risks losing a lot of his original fanbase just because we *gasp* [i]grew up.

The date issue seems to be down to Bantam panicking. They had a lot of problems when the credit crunch hit and managed to work through them, but they are in a position where they really need a big hit book, a #1 NYT bestseller as ADWD will almost certainly be (unless it happens to launch at the same time as the new Dan Brown or the last Wheel of Time book or something, but that's unlikely to happen), and they've been throwing out these release dates to shore up confidence. As GRRM says, it's not really helpful from his perspective that they are doing this.

[Abyss]

i suspect a weighty element to all the silliness is that there was a long wait for AFFC, and then many (meaning maybe a hundred or so people on the internut) were disappointed in it and now there's a long wait for a book that was supposedly almost done, and many (same hundred) are dreading further disappointment.

Me, i can safely slot myself into the 'it gets here when it gets here and it rocks or it doesn't' group. I have enough other great authors who deliver on a steady schedule that my fantasy reading life doesn't suffer.

- Abyss, ...and there's always his brainzzz...

[Malaclypse]

More interested in Brandon Sanderson's effort to wrap up the Wheel of Time at this point. Also, more or less resigned to being disappointed by the rest of ASoIaF. It's too bad, but I've just lost interest. It's not THAT good, certainly not good enough to hold my attention this long with essentially one (edit:mediocre) book in what, 7-8 years now? ridiculous - even Jordan wasn't this bad and he fucking died. GRRM has lost the plot, face it.

[amphibian]

Werthead, on Mar 2 2009, 06:55 PM, said:

The date issue seems to be down to Bantam panicking. They had a lot of problems when the credit crunch hit and managed to work through them, but they are in a position where they really need a big hit book, a #1 NYT bestseller as ADWD will almost certainly be (unless it happens to launch at the same time as the new Dan Brown or the last Wheel of Time book or something, but that's unlikely to happen), and they've been throwing out these release dates to shore up confidence. As GRRM says, it's not really helpful from his perspective that they are doing this.

Does Martin have the leverage to negotiate control of the release date? I know the traditional model is for the author to basically dump the book on the editor and take off until the promo tour, but it makes a huge amount of sense for authors to take more control of the publishing process these days - at least the checkpoints.

[Abyss]

amphibian, on Mar 5 2009, 01:16 PM, said:

... but it makes a huge amount of sense for authors to take more control of the publishing process these days - at least the checkpoints.

No no no and dear god no.

Publishing is a business. 'Self-publishing' aside, publishing consists of decisions made by business people.

You want authors to focus on writing good books. You want businesspeople to make business decisions. When the two overlap, you get WINTER's HEART and its ilk.

The better the author, the more they can push back when publishers push for deliveries, but the publishers retain the option to tell the author the deal is off. Crap authors lose publishing deals. Annoying publishers lose good authors.

It's the circle of life.

- Abyss, *cues Lion King sountrack*.