George has updated!!

[Onlythepine]

George said in his Not A Blog that he included a marriage into ADWD. And now I wonder...a lot. Could it be Dany? Or a less important character? Maybe Hodor marries Coldhands..
Any thoughts?

[Raven]

There is a marriage due - Ramsay and Fake Arya/Jeyne Poole. Could be that. But equally, it could be something we don't know about yet. I do like the idea that it might be Dany, though.

[TomServo]

She does have one betrayal left coming to her and a marriage could set these wheels in motion. Jorah was love, Mirri Maz Duur was blood, maybe a new husband will be the gold betrayal.

[Onlythepine]

Originally Posted by Raven

There is a marriage due - Ramsay and Fake Arya/Jeyne Poole. Could be that. But equally, it could be something we don't know about yet. I do like the idea that it might be Dany, though.

I somehow got the impression that the marriage was a big deal... That we were, at least, told about it through a PoW of a character who was there. And I don't know who could've ended up in Dreadfort..Maybe Davos on his way to White Harbor?

[Lith]

Actually I'm a she.

Killing characters can be highly effective, if it's not done too often (I'm looking at YOU, Lost!). Otherwise it tends to take you out of the drama. That said, Martin kills a lot less characters than his reputation suggests. The only part that really bothered me as machinations by the author was Jon's time with the, uh, great- what were they called? The ones living north of the Wall. It felt forced.

The Starks are mostly the ones I'm interested in, and their numbers are indeed shrinking.

[pyan]

Originally Posted by Lith

The Starks are mostly the ones I'm interested in, and their numbers are indeed shrinking.

I was as well, Lith, and shrinking's the right word.
I think the thing that is, well, annoying about the storyline, and the main reason for me having lost a lot of my initial enthusiasm for the whole saga, is that the Starks were originally set up as the main protagonists in it - the "good" ones, the heroes, if you like, the force for all that was decent in the story. This made me naturally want to side with them against such as the Lannisters, and I would expect them to have their fair share of triumphs as well as disasters.
Instead, the winnowing of their ranks has been continual ever since Ned was executed , and whereas I agree that killing off major characters as GRRM does adds gritty realism to the books, when you do it excessively to the characters that your readers have engaged in, you risk those readers saying "to hell with it"

Or am I being too set in my "fantasy heroes always win" outlook? Maybe, but if that's what I like, I reserve the right to stop reading if I'm not happy with the way it's going. There's always more books, and more authors to read.

[Valko]

Maybe, if GRRM stopped spending so much time trying to set up all these mechandising deals, he would be able to finish ADWD.

No point in trying to make more money grabbing deals from a franchise that ultimately will lose the average reader because they're tired of waiting for the next book.

Personaly, I've already given up on him because of this. He just comes over as greedy, self centred and egotistic in his 'not a blog'

[Werthead]

Given that these mechandising deals don't exactly take up a lot of time for him, this is clearly not the main reason for the delays on ADWD. The main reason for the delay is that after writing the book with 30% of the material removed from the pre-split AFFC as a headstart, he simply decided to rewrite it all to make a much better book, and in doing so had to perform changes that impact on the structure of the series (so the series ends in 7, not 8 books). If so, than the changes are clearly for the good of the series, and I will happily wait however long for the next book.

It's not exactly as if there's a lack of other decent books out there to read in the interim.

[Raven]

Originally Posted by pyan

I think the thing that is, well, annoying about the storyline, and the main reason for me having lost a lot of my initial enthusiasm for the whole saga, is that the Starks were originally set up as the main protagonists in it - the "good" ones, the heroes, if you like, the force for all that was decent in the story. This made me naturally want to side with them against such as the Lannisters, and I would expect them to have their fair share of triumphs as well as disasters.
Instead, the winnowing of their ranks has been continual ever since Ned was executed , and whereas I agree that killing off major characters as GRRM does adds gritty realism to the books, when you do it excessively to the characters that your readers have engaged in, you risk those readers saying "to hell with it"

The clever thing about Ned's death is that he is set up as if he is the major character... but he's not. GRRM clearly can't pull this off again. No way are we going to see Jon, Bran or Dany die before the end, and the chances are excellent that Tyrion, Arya, Sansa and Jaime are going to survive too. It would simply be too much of a wrench to the storyline to lose any of them.

Originally Posted by Onlythepine

I somehow got the impression that the marriage was a big deal... That we were, at least, told about it through a PoW of a character who was there. And I don't know who could've ended up in Dreadfort..Maybe Davos on his way to White Harbor?

There's a POV who's already there.

Originally Posted by Valko

Maybe, if GRRM stopped spending so much time trying to set up all these mechandising deals, he would be able to finish ADWD.

No point in trying to make more money grabbing deals from a franchise that ultimately will lose the average reader because they're tired of waiting for the next book.

Personaly, I've already given up on him because of this. He just comes over as greedy, self centred and egotistic in his 'not a blog'

Wow. That must take some selective reading.

Surely the 'money grabbing', 'greedy' thing to do would be not to take any interest in the merchandising deals, but to simply agree to whatever deal offered him the most cash and let them do whatever they liked with the property?

I appreciate that not everyone has the same sort of info on this that I have, but for the record GRRM has turned down the big-money offers in preference to working with smaller, less established companies on several occasions, because he felt that they could offer a better product to the fan.

I would say that sometimes this has been the wrong decision: some of those companies have let him down. Moreover, the amount of money an author is going to make off an RPG, CCG or limited edition collector's set is never going to amount to even a tiny fraction of what he'll make off a new books, so the 'money-efficient' thing to do is, well, write more books.

[that old guy]

Originally Posted by Valko

Maybe, if GRRM stopped spending so much time trying to set up all these mechandising deals, he would be able to finish ADWD.

I agree with this up to a point. When I heard he was going to be involved in writing at least some of the episodes of the HBO series I kind of went "uh-oh." So, yes, I do think he's spreading himself a bit thin.

No point in trying to make more money grabbing deals from a franchise that ultimately will lose the average reader because they're tired of waiting for the next book.

However, I don't see this happening as long as what is finally produced is of the same quality as what has gone before. Personally, I've been generally pleased with the series to this point, even as I've bitched with everyone else about how long it is taking from book to book.

Personaly, I've already given up on him because of this.

I gave up on Robert Jordan not because he was taking too long between books but because he was saying very little in them when they were finally produced. Though there're some things Martin is doing I'd rather he didn't, that's the one thing he could do to me at this point to get me to drop the series. And given second rate writing received more quickly vs. decent quality writing received more slowly I'll always opt for the latter.

He just comes over as greedy, self centred and egotistic in his 'not a blog'

How does anyone not come across as egotistic or self-centered on their own blog? (Or 'not a blog' in his case.) By definition they're all about one person, aren't they?

And if he were really greedy he'd pull a Weis & Hickman and employ a legion of hacks to churn out second rate fiction set in his 'universe' or like that embarassing bilge marketed by Isaac Asimov's estate. I agree that a lot of the art work or whatever Martin's pushing is downright awful, but nobody's forcing me (or you) to buy it, anyway.

[TK-421]

Well, that's one less heretic to read on these threads. Considering the way Valko has unfairly judged our dear GRRM, I'd say there's no big loss there if he's "already given up on him".

[JDP]

Why shouldn't an author make the most (financially) from their works? I think it's pretty unrealistic to expect an author-on-a-leash to just churn out books to order. An author should, of course, have a certain loyalty to their readers (where would they be without them?), but to berate an author for taking advantage of their hard-earned success is pointless.

Besides, some people may have trouble reading and will be overjoyed that GRRM has taken the time to oversee a tv version of the series.

[Werthead]

George has a producer's credit and he's taking questions from the writers and advising, but he's only actually writing one episode per season (maybe a month's work, tops) and he won't actually be on-set when they're making it (difficult as it'll be be made in New Zealand or Eastern Europe and he lives in Santa Fe). It's a demand on his time, but hardly a dominant or critical one.

[that old guy]

Originally Posted by Werthead

It's a demand on his time, but hardly a dominant or critical one.

Yes, but look at how long it has taken him to get from one book to the next without this demand on his time. I certainly have no problem with him making a buck, but I think this should make everyone even more skeptical about release dates than they were already.

[Boaz]

To GRRM,

Lochaim! Long life! Good health! Slainte! Gan bei! Prost!

Don't rush ADWD, though I must admit I'm highly anxious.

The Russians commited themselves in WWII to the proverb... Quantity is a quality all it's own.

This applies in war, but not in literature.

Guiness lists one Mary Faulkner as the most prolific author in history. She lived from 1903-1973. If we assume that fifty of her seventy years were spent actively writing, then she'd have cranked out over eighteen books a year to achieve her grand total of 904. Her fans only had to wait about three weeks for their next fix... I don't know anything about the quality of her works, but three weeks from typewriter to bookstand would leave little time for editing.

I admit I've complained before, but I'd rather have a quality middle and end to ASOIAF than an ordinary one. So please, don't pull it out of the oven too soon.

Sincerely, Boaz