No, not that. He’s announced that he’s finished principal photography on Night of the Cooters, based on the Harold Waldrop short story, with a screenplay by Joe Lansdale, and directed by and starring Vincent D’Onofrio.
It’s about what happens when the Martians from HG Well’s “War of the Worlds” land in Texas, and discover the inhabitants to be…. A bit harder targets than the British.
I am a former fan. I enjoyed Nightflyers, Sand Kings, Fevre Dream, Tuf Voyaging, Max Headroom, Beauty and the Beast, and Wild Cards. I had enthusiastic anticipation for each new project. Once he started writing the Song of Ice and Fire books, and it became evident that his progress would be glacial (all ice, no fire), my enthusiasm progressively waned with each geological epoch that elapsed between entries in the series. At this time, I find GRRM to be a source of annoyance. I might watch Game of Thrones or read future books if someone was willing to pay me for performing that chore.
I feel a little bit bad for George at this point. He can’t share anything about his life, up to and including what he had for breakfast this morning, without the internet saying, “Scrambled eggs? You wasted time making fucking scrambled eggs? Get your ass back to work on Winds you scrambling motherfucker!!!”
Games of Thrones, 1996
Clash of Kings, 1999
Storm of Swords, 2000
A Feast for Crows, 2005
A Dance with Dragons, 2011
And 10 years later I reserve the right to feel bitter if he’s helming new projects instead of finishing the blessed book we’ve been waiting for since 2011.
Now, there’s an argument that artists don’t owe their product to their audience, to which I respond that the man signed a contract and he’s clearly NOT interested in meeting it.
Big Wild Cards fan (I found the first two books at the same time in '87; gold!), and still a fan today, but less and less. I’ve had the latest (I think), Joker Moon, for weeks and barely a third of the way in.
I’ve yet to read a single one of his Game of Thrones stuff, or whatever it’s called. Not really my genre anyway, and never liked that it ‘took away’ from Wild Cards time. I’m not bitter!
Yeah, I don’t really see it as very realistic he ever finishes A Song of Ice and Fire, it isn’t like he’s been sitting at home with writer’s block for a decade+. He has been incredibly active with any number of projects; the man keeps busy working. It’s just quite obvious the work he wants to do isn’t finishing his book series. He has given regular updates on the next book in the series, and certainly it seems he’s made time to do some writing on it over the last decade, but it’s equally obvious the era of his life where he was willing to work on it day, in day, out, 8+ hours a day which can produce a finished novel fairly quickly, has long since passed him by.
Most authors I’ve ever seen interviewed about their writing process, in terms of authors who have a long-published list of novel-length works, say they work at writing a novel like it’s a full-time job. They keep a discipline, and they don’t work on other things until it is complete. That sort of discipline is how what I guess you’d call the famous “prolific” authors with a steady rate of finished novels all said they worked. Your Tom Clancy / John Grisham / Stephen King types. Certainly, some great novelists who will go down as some of the best writers of all time took decades on their seminal works. No offense against Martin, but he’s working on an installment in a long running popular fantasy series, he’s not writing Ulysses or The Sound and the Fury (although hilariously both were written in much shorter time than any of Martin’s recent installments in Ice and Fire; and in Faulkner’s case he was basically working on several short stories and another novel at the same time.)
I’d have to go back and re-read at this point. While I enjoyed the books, there is no way that’s happening even if something else came out. I’m too salty about being left on huge cliffhangers for years, not that I really remember what they were anyway.
I’m not seeing what’s in it for him at this point; his story’s been told via the TV show, and he’s going to get bitched at regardless, so why finish if he can just do other stuff and fend off the low-key griping that he’s received for a decade plus now, instead of finishing, getting a louder outcry, and starting the timer on “A Dream of Spring” all over again.