[Roland_85]

Why do you even bother? At this point nobody cares about the facts. It's all about how annoyed people are, and facts only get in the way of that. I'd say let them ("us" in some cases) rant. Not like it's gonna change anything.

[Job]

Roland_85, on 10 August 2010 - 11:06 PM, said:

Why do you even bother? At this point nobody cares about the facts. It's all about how annoyed people are, and facts only get in the way of that. I'd say let them ("us" in some cases) rant. Not like it's gonna change anything.

Some of us do indeed care about facts.
Back to the main feature: Sideprojects, and do GRRM spend any time on them at all ?
1. Between 1995-2000 GRRM had few, if any side projects. In this period he finished AGOT, and wrote ACOK and ASOS at the average pace of 2 years, 4 months.
2. After 2000 the number of side projects have gone trough the roof, and we are still waiting for the second part of a split book : Here is a qoute from GRRM, describing his working year of 2007

Quote

Another year about to end. They seem to go past very fast of late.

I had hoped to be able to finish A DANCE WITH DRAGONS during 2007. Way back around this time last year, I had even hoped that the book might be published during 2007. Neither of those happened, and to that extent the year was a disappointment... for me, as well as for my fans.

Other projects fared better. THE ICE DRAGON, HUNTER'S RUN, DREAMSONGS, the SWORN SWORD comic book, the incredibly cool miniatures from Dark Sword, and soon to come the minibusts from Valyrian Resin and the replica of Longclaw from Valyrian Steel. The rebirth of Wild Cards has been especially exciting. INSIDE STRAIGHT will be out in less than a month, BUSTED FLUSH has been delivered, our new Wild Cards website is up and running, and the Wild Cards comic series and RPG are on the way (from DBPro and Green Ronin, respectively). And then there are the two new anthology projects that I'm co-editing with Gardner Dozois, WARRIORS and SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH, both now well underway. So it's certainly been a productive year. In some ways an exhausting one.

Still, the new year looms. I am not a big believer in New Year resolutions, but I do have some goals for 2008, both personal and professional, and the most urgent of those remains A DANCE WITH DRAGONS. For more about DANCE, see the Update page of my website, which I intend to update in the next day or so. See also the Samples page. I've been alternating the first Tyrion chapter and the first Dany chapter there for the past year, but as a holiday gift to my readers, and a thanks for all their patience, I'm going to put up a new sample soon.

(It may take a few days to get the update and the sample up, be warned).

Here's hoping that 2008 is a year of triumph and wonderment for all of us.

At a quick count I get 13 projects for 2007. The numbers have in no way decreased. We now also have the really big "side project", HBO

3. Do this effect the writing of ASOIF which everybody , including GRRM, admits should be his main focus. Indeed, most of these projects would never have seen the light of day without the success of ASOIF.
Werthead et.al. likes to describe GRRM's working habits as this: 3-4 hours on ADWD every day, then on to sideprojects and hobbies. A lot of authors work this way. Here is what GRRM himself sayes about this issue [NAB April 2007]

Quote

I had a good day's work on A DANCE WITH DRAGONS yesterday.

It's one o'clock in the afternoon as I write this, and I'm just working on my morning cup of coffee, still half-conscious. One of the things that happens when I'm writing well is that all my normal schedules go out the window. I vanish into Westeros, and lose all track of time in the real world.

Which is what happened yesterday. I finished an old chapter that had been partially written months ago, did a lot of work on a newer chapter that I'd decided to add to the early part of the book, revised a couple of other sections, made some structural changes to the outline... in other words, I spent the whole day at DANCE. By the time I noticed that it had gotten dark outside, it was already close to ten o'clock at night. I worked a little more, finally signed off, went across the street and had a midnight supper, but I was too wound up to go to sleep... which is also something that happens when the book has me in its grip. So I watched a little television that TIVO had caught for me earlier (oh, I love my TIVO), then read some of the latest Bernard Cornwell (excellent, as always), and finally went to bed around three. And even then I did not go straight to sleep, but tossed and turned for a long while, my mind full of Dany and Jon and Q and so forth and so on.

It was the most productive day I've had in months, at least where DANCE is concerned (I have had very productive days working on the WILD CARDS, dealing with contracts and subrights, approving artwork and design and giving notes about some of the spinoff projects, and the like, but that's a different thing). One thing that helped that happen was that yesterday, for whatever reason, the world left me alone. The phone never rang. No one came knocking on my doors. None of my friends dropped in unexpectedly. I had no doctor's appointments, no dinner dates, nothing on my calendar but work. I did not even go out for my usual daily walk to get some exercise in.

I need more days like this. Lots more days like this. That's how DANCE will get done. I have lots of writer friends who can turn it off and on at will, who can live their lives and do their work as well, even work on one project in the morning and switch to an entirely different project in the afternoon... but that's never worked for me. When it's going well, my writing tends to swallow me. And when "the world is too much with us," well, that always throws me off my game.

In the past, though, one good day does often lead to another, and another, and another. So you'll have to excuse me, friends. I'm going back to Westeros....

The quote fairly well describes his writing habits. IMHO, we will never see the end of ASOIF until GRRM realizes that he must reduce his total workload. I have no problems with his conventions, football and other leisure activities. Everybody needs some time off, but not everybody should spend time editing Wild Cards.
GRRM can, and will, of course do whatever he wants. As he says himself :"Nothing to be done about that".

[pat5150]

Considering that the Wild Cards books are kind of like GRRM's baby, don't expect him to stop editing them any time soon. . .

Patrick

[Use Of Weapons]

Also, Wild Cards rocks. Totally. If I had to choose between him working on them or ASoIaF, I'd pick Wild Cards every time.

[Paran]

Hah! Dude, you should start a Wildcards website!

No seriously, there isn't one - you should start it!

[Use Of Weapons]

Maybe I will! I need to read more than the recent books though, haven't read any of the original series -- they're really hard to find!

[Job]

jitsukerr, on 17 August 2010 - 10:10 AM, said:

Maybe I will! I need to read more than the recent books though, haven't read any of the original series -- they're really hard to find!

Not much of a fan, are you ? Anyway, you can buy mine. Are you willing to put your money where your mouth is

[Cobbles]

jitsukerr, on 16 August 2010 - 01:30 PM, said:

Also, Wild Cards rocks. Totally. If I had to choose between him working on them or ASoIaF, I'd pick Wild Cards every time.

I've never heard of the Wild Cards series. When I look it up at Wikipedia it sounds pretty cheesy (at least for my taste): superpowers, mutants, alternate history with real-life people (the most cringeworthy aspect IMHO) and baseball geekyness. Would you mind giving the series your best pitch in a paragraph or two?

[Use Of Weapons]

Cobbles, on 18 August 2010 - 07:21 AM, said:

jitsukerr, on 16 August 2010 - 01:30 PM, said:

Also, Wild Cards rocks. Totally. If I had to choose between him working on them or ASoIaF, I'd pick Wild Cards every time.

I've never heard of the Wild Cards series. When I look it up at Wikipedia it sounds pretty cheesy (at least for my taste): superpowers, mutants, alternate history with real-life people (the most cringeworthy aspect IMHO) and baseball geekyness. Would you mind giving the series your best pitch in a paragraph or two?

As my paragraph would have been pretty much what you said, with added exclamation marks for coolness in case those elements hadn't already grabbed you, I can only surmise that you're not the target audience. (Except for the baseball, which I haven't seen in the books I've read. I guess it featured in the earlier installments.)

Great characters. Some excellent writers, and the ones who are below the generally high average don't stick around long enough for you to get tired of them. Genuinely interesting concept, played with intelligently and without the standard comics strategy of resetting everything back to the status quo all the time. There's even what you might call a wasp D'ivers in the later books

[Tapper]

Cobbles, on 18 August 2010 - 07:21 AM, said:

jitsukerr, on 16 August 2010 - 01:30 PM, said:

Also, Wild Cards rocks. Totally. If I had to choose between him working on them or ASoIaF, I'd pick Wild Cards every time.

I've never heard of the Wild Cards series. When I look it up at Wikipedia it sounds pretty cheesy (at least for my taste): superpowers, mutants, alternate history with real-life people (the most cringeworthy aspect IMHO) and baseball geekyness. Would you mind giving the series your best pitch in a paragraph or two?

The first books are an enclosed storyline, starting in the first half of the twentieth century (iirc) and going through the decades afterwards, following history closely yet rewriting it... the McCarthy scare for example becomes one against superpowers. It may seem cheesy, but these are some very good writers and the ideas they come up with regarding characters are pretty awesome.

I haven't read past volume 3, which is the conclusion of the first arc, but I was personally impressed by it.

[Use Of Weapons]

Job, on 17 August 2010 - 11:06 AM, said:

jitsukerr, on 17 August 2010 - 10:10 AM, said:

Maybe I will! I need to read more than the recent books though, haven't read any of the original series -- they're really hard to find!

Not much of a fan, are you ? Anyway, you can buy mine. Are you willing to put your money where your mouth is

I will! Except that Tor are releasing omnibus editions of the early books, according to Wikipedia.

Also, this site would appear to be the official Wild Cards site: http://www.wildcardsbooks.com/

[Cobbles]

Tapper, on 18 August 2010 - 01:01 PM, said:

Cobbles, on 18 August 2010 - 07:21 AM, said:

jitsukerr, on 16 August 2010 - 01:30 PM, said:

Also, Wild Cards rocks. Totally. If I had to choose between him working on them or ASoIaF, I'd pick Wild Cards every time.

I've never heard of the Wild Cards series. When I look it up at Wikipedia it sounds pretty cheesy (at least for my taste): superpowers, mutants, alternate history with real-life people (the most cringeworthy aspect IMHO) and baseball geekyness. Would you mind giving the series your best pitch in a paragraph or two?

The first books are an enclosed storyline, starting in the first half of the twentieth century (iirc) and going through the decades afterwards, following history closely yet rewriting it... the McCarthy scare for example becomes one against superpowers. It may seem cheesy, but these are some very good writers and the ideas they come up with regarding characters are pretty awesome.

I haven't read past volume 3, which is the conclusion of the first arc, but I was personally impressed by it.

Thanks jitsukerr and Tapper, I think I understand it a bit better now. I feared the books to be like some kind of evolution of spiderman, where everybody got bitten and developed superpowers/mutations. What you're saying is that actions have consequences beyond the current story and there's actual character development; two concepts which are usually unused in comics (or sci-fi series such as Start Trek for that matter).

Could you also explain how the different real-life people work in this setting. Wiki said something about Frank Zappa being a general. Does that make any sense? Is the Zappa character in any way recognizable as our real life Zappa and if so, in what way? IIRC Zappa wrote a few political thoughts in his book, but I just can't wrap my head around how you can make a recognizable general out of a musician.

This post has been edited by Cobbles: 18 August 2010 - 10:19 PM

[pat5150]

Read the latest triad of Wild Cards books and really enjoyed them!

Patrick

[Abyss]

pat5150, on 19 August 2010 - 02:13 PM, said:

Read the latest triad of Wild Cards books and really enjoyed them!

Patrick

did you need to have read the earlier ones?

[Use Of Weapons]

Abyss, on 24 August 2010 - 07:21 PM, said:

pat5150, on 19 August 2010 - 02:13 PM, said:

Read the latest triad of Wild Cards books and really enjoyed them!

Patrick

did you need to have read the earlier ones?

I would say not. Not having read them, I don't know what it would be like to have read the recent ones with all the backstory, etc. I definitely felt that I was missing some info, especially about the older characters, the setting, the events of the past (and wikipedia is intriguingly vague here). But this didn't really affect my enjoyment of the latest books, as they deal with a new set of characters, with the older ones only making cameo appearances (pun there for readers of wild cards ;-) ). But you would certainly get more out of the later books if you'd read them in order. And I intend to find as many of the old ones as I can.

[pat5150]

Abyss, on 24 August 2010 - 07:21 PM, said:

did you need to have read the earlier ones?

No, the latest series was meant to introduce the Wild Cards to a new generation of readers. Sure, there are some references you don't always fully get, but it doesn't take anything away from the reading experience.

Patrick

[Roland_85]

I didn't find a more appropriate topic, so I apologize if this isn't supposed to be here, but I wanted to post my review of the first book. I am doing a reread of the series, and thought I might as well review it on my blog.

[Aptorian]

Awwh, I miss Haroos... sort of.