DANCING AS FAST AS I CAN
Yes, I know. Back in January, I said I would post another update on A DANCE WITH DRAGONS in April, and it's now July. Thanks to all of you who have emailed me to point this out.
Actually, I have posted a number of updates since January. Just not here. They have been more in the nature of informal progress reports, sandwiched in between my ruminations on the rest of my life, and I've posted them on "Not A Blog." A number of you have read them there. Judging from the number of emails I have been getting of late, however, a larger number of you have not.
It has become plain to me (belatedly) that a lot of visitors come to this website only to check this Update page. They don't care about my home renovations, my collection of miniature knights, my political views, or even my various other literary projects, WILD CARDS and FEVRE DREAM and the like. What they care about is A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, particularly A DANCE WITH DRAGONS, so when they log on here, they check the Update page and leave.
OK, fair enough. January to July is too long, I agree. And updates probably should go on the page called Update as well as on the one called Not A Blog.
One of the recent emails I received said rather plaintively, "Please just tell us that you're still working on the book, that you haven't given up the series." That startled me.
Yes, I am still working on A DANCE WITH DRAGONS. I am writing and I am rewriting and I am moving things around. I am also working on the new WILD CARDS books, and some other ICE & FIRE related projects that I can't talk about just yet, and I am going to conventions and doing speaking gigs and trying to keep up with a steady and impossible river of email that streams across my screen relentlessly...all in the midst of major home renovations...but my first and main priority remains A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE and that's going to be true until the series is done.
If you would like a few specifics about some of the sections and characters I've been working on since January, go check out "Not A Blog." Yeah, I talk about other stuff there as well, sorry. You're free to skip over those bits.
I still hope to deliver the book before the end of the year, and maybe sooner than that. But I swear, just as I did with A FEAST FOR CROWS, that the instant the novel is done I will log on and post the news here. You will be first ones to know, aside from Parris and my editors.
And if you don't see a post that says, "It's done," that does not mean I have died or retired or decided to become a playboy crimefighter instead of a writer. All it means is that I am still working on it.
I will try to get back here to update Update before the summer's done.
—George R.R. Martin, July 7, 2006
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Before, you are wise; after, you are wise. In between you are otherwise.
Fravashi saying (from the formularies of Osho the Fool) <i></i>
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