[drosdelnoch]

Hi A/all,
I remember that GRRM got quite a bit of stick for taking so long to write the next novel. However as part of his UK tour I have an interview with him, so nows the chance to get those niggling questions asked.

All the best,

gareth

[ChrisW]

No question, but tell him to keep his mouth shut and die as soon as he finishes the series so I can complete it without any of the money going to him.

[Hume]

^^^

Are you going on about that semi-political statement he made shortly after the last presidential elections ?

[ChrisW]

semi political? Yes and other rudeness directed at fans who dared to complain about him taking 5 years to write a book.

I'm not going to support an author who is rude to me and calls me a bigot no matter how good an author they are.

[No-God]

Well, I love the guy's books. I don't care much whether he's an asshole or not. So long as he continually writes good books, I don't care how long he takes to do so.

[McLovin]

GRRM is fantasy's rightful naffing master. He has taken 5 years to put out Feast because he would rather release a quality book than, say, RJ-style Extruded Product. Although I am as frustrated as most fans at the wait, I respect the guy for having standards and refusing to compromise his vision. Let's face it, ASOS is going to be an incredibly tough act to follow-if he had just rushed through the next installment in a year we'd probably all sit around and gripe about how it didn't measure up.

[Roland]

Shall I point out that some authors (I don't seem to be good with names, but I do believe this forum is dedicated to one...) don't actually need half a decade to write a fantasy book and still write way better than Martin?

I don't mean to be nasty, but this "I want it to be great" stuff is just plain hypocrisy. And what about the other three (ex-two, may be in the future five?) books? If we're gonna have to wait that long for each one of them, some of us will have long forgotten the meaning of the word "fantasy" by then. I mean, come ON, I don't want MY grandchildren to wait for the thirteenth part of the series, just cause the guy "wants to do it right".

[McLovin]

Roland said:

Shall I point out that some authors (I don't seem to be good with names, but I do believe this forum is dedicated to one...) don't actually need half a decade to write a fantasy book and still write way better than Martin?

SE is a very talented and prolific writer, otherwise I wouldn't be here. But GRRM is the better writer. Compare GRRM's "pinch of pepper" conversation (ACOK, IIRC) to Lull and Duiker's "children are dying" conversation in DG. Both comment on the endemic cruelty and injustice of their respective worlds, both are moving, but GRRM slips his point in like a rapier, while SE clubs you over the head with it.

[caladanbrood]

Clubs work:D

Martin and Erikson are incomparable, they write about entirely different things. And anyone who hasn't had that argument three or four times already obviously has too much of a life;) It just comes down to personal enjoyment between the two, which isn't really something you can debate;)

[Roland]

Well, it's simple for me - Erikson IS Martin without the pornography, with far better and soffisticated style, far more inteligent characters and loads of magic. That's enought for me

Besides, I wasn't talking about the quality of Martin's work but the way he's delaying his book for five years. You simply DON'T do such things if you respect your fans, no matter the excuses you make about quality-control. The least I can say about this delay is that it was so big I just stopped caring what's gonna happen to Vesteros. And I know lots of people who feel the same way. I don't say I won't read Feast the moment it hits shelves but it's just... not the same anymore. Too much time has passed.


P.S. Oh, and where I come from Erikson is not really that popular so the usual argument is "Is Tolkien the best thing that happened to humanity, or just a mediocre literature profesor?"

[drosdelnoch]

Heres the full tour list for you, I'll be at the Manchester signing, anyone else going?

Tuesday 18th October

12.30-1.30pm Ottakars Bookshop Kings Lynn (Book signing)

Ottakars, 138 Norfolk Street, Kings Lynn

Norfolk



From 6.30pm Otakars Bookshop Norwich (Talk and book signing)

Ottakars Bookshop

11-17 Castle Street, Norwich



Wednesday 19th October

1.00-2.00pm Borders Books Music Café (Book Signing)

94-96 Briggate,

Leeds, West Yorkshire



From 7.00pm Waterstones Deansgate, Manchester

(Talk and Booksigning)



Thursday 20th October

1.00-2.00pm Forbidden Planet Birmingham (Book Signing)

38 Priory, Queensway

Birmingham



From 7.30pm Waterstones Nottingham



Friday 21st October

12.30-1.30pm Red Lion Bookshop, Colchester (Book signing)

125 Highstreet, Colchester



From 5.00pm Forbidden Planet London (Book signing)

179 Shaftesbury Avenue London



Saturday 22nd October

From 1.00 pm Borders Books Music Café Glasgow

98 Buchanan Street,

Glasgow



Monday 24th October

From 7.00pm Ottakars Bookshop Portsmouth (Book signing)

115 Commercial Road

Portsmouth



Tuesday 25th October

12.30-1.30 pm Ottakars Bookshop, Woking (Formal Book signing)

Unit 44 The Peacocks centre

Woking, Surrey



7.00-7.30pm Ottakars Bookshop, Basingstoke (Talk and Book signing)

Festival Place, Basingstoke

[McLovin]

Roland said:

Besides, I wasn't talking about the quality of Martin's work but the way he's delaying his book for five years. You simply DON'T do such things if you respect your fans, no matter the excuses you make about quality-control.

IMO, the highest respect an author can pay his fans is to refuse to give them anything less than his best work.

[Roland]

Yes but in today's reality if your best requires five years, then you simply aren't good enough or you're just lying about working on it so much. I sincerely doubt he has SO much more to think upon while writing than Erikson has.

[polishgenius]

Right, to *attempt to* clear up the whole "five year delay" thing.

He wrote A Dance With Dragons first, but many fans complained about missing seven years of their favourite characters lives. He went back to fill the gap in. People might say that that's selling out, but I can see the difficulty in jumping seven years, I'm sure he saw it and that's why he went back.
A Dance With Dragons is half done as a result, and won't take nearly as long to publish. There was a letter from him in the Amazon author comments at one point, but it's gone now. Maybe it wasn't really fom him, but it did do a damn good job of explaining the situation.
I don't know what he said about his fans, so I can't really comment, but it was probably caused by the lose/lose situation he's found himself in. Not that that excuses excessive rudeness, but then again I don't know if it was.

I still prefer SE as an author, though.

[ChrisW]

Izz said:

If you weren't the admin I'd lay a verbal smackdown! Come on, man! You should be ashamed of yourself!

I never heard any rudness towards fans from GRRM's mouth.

If ANYTHING, I find those fans who complained to be not only RUDE but JUVENILE.

The man is a saint, unlike that ahole Terry Goodkind. Someone should stick an assault rifle up his arse till the trigger goes click!

It wasn't from his mouth but his fingers. Both the things I mentioned were on his site in updates about the next book.

JUVENILE eh? I'll tell you what's JUVENILE. Using a section of your website that is for updates about your next book as platform to launch a political rant and to say you're so depressed about Bush winning that you don't know when you will be able to get back to writing.

Polish i'm well aware of why it took 5 years. It's called writers block.

Now get back on topic you fools!!

[Dagger]

I would just like to get his estimation on when the next book after Feast is going to come out. All the plot lines I want to follow are in the north or the east, I could give a damn about what's happening in the south. Not that I won't be buying A Feast the frigging day it comes out. No, make that the MORNING it comes out.

[Roland]

Er... no, actually Feast will NOT have any of the south. He said he cut it and put it in the next book and that's his excuse for making them 7 and not 6. THAT is why it (the ffifth) is supposedly half-written (although I don't believe him) and not the reason Polishgenius said. That is according to GRRM himself... And yes, I concur - an author's block. After all SE had ALSO written one third of MoI before DG and he even lost the text. It still took him less than five years.

And that **** about being depressed over Bush? I don't like Bush either (although I live too far away to actually care) but this is totally unacceptable behaviour for a writer on his official site.

[No-God]

Keep in mind, just because Steven Erikson can write a good novel in a shorter period of time that Martin can... doesn't say anything about either writer. I'm a fan of both series. Martin's novels take longer to come out. So what? They're still arguably the best fantasy novels avaliable. I'd rather wait an extra period of time - even in a matter of years - than him feeding us some R. A. Salvatore stuff (who writes like a book a month) or a Robert Jordan novel.