Starslayer72 wrote:How many more books are planned? 2 or 3 ??
I read (Over at his webpage), from his own mouth, that he had planned to have the story arc finished in 5 books. That obviously didn't happen. He said the reason is, when he writes he doesn't stick to a finished outline. He lets the characters go in a direction they want to and as he writes the stories get longer and require more books. He also said that his writing style means he often writes himself into a corner and is forced to revise chapters.
A Feast for Crows had originally some chapters that now appear in;
Dance with Dragons. He said, at the time that the good news was that because they split the book;
A Dance with Dragons was half written. But, think how long;
A Dance of Dragons took for it to get out. That being said, he admitted that he really didn't know how long the series is going to take. He estimated to have it all done by the seven books, now, but it could even go into nine books... in a nutshell he has no idea.
As far as the HBO show goes, there is probably a little motivation, now, to finish the series, but I think the exact opposite is true. Mr. Martin is heavily involved, in many aspects of the TV show, it takes time away from the actual writing of the books. And, if you have ever read his Not a Blog, blog you get a real sense just how busy he is. Tours, writing the HBO series as well as over-looking it (His direct involvement is why the TV show really captures the elements of the book. Unlike;
The Pillars of Earth TV show that I couldn't continue watching.), writing short stories about Westeros, over-seeing the;
A Game of Thrones and the;
Wild Cards rpgs, other projects like editing the;
Wild Cards series of books, the impressive amount of books he reads, his own life, traveling etc. etc. To me there is no real surprise that it takes him so long to write this one series. If you take into consideration that;
Game of Thrones is doing one season per book and most series do not go past 5 years, That would bring us to the already written;
A Dance with Dragons. The future of the television media is so murky that one never knows when it'll be cancelled or let it runs its own course and finish. Or, even if they announce a cancellation and the writers try to cram the remaining story into one season, (Which usually makes it suck.) he'd even be more heavily involved in the TV series.
Game of Thrones is doing very well, in the ratings, so that is encouraging, but again who knows how well that will carry over to subsequent seasons. Obviously Mr. Martin wants the series to continue which probably means his fingerprints are all over the TV series. Which goes full circle, back to the time he has to actually write new books.
Before, Mr. Martin would tell his readers that he estimated that book X was to be finished around a certain time frame. With the many delays of;
The Dance with Dragons I think he learned to not do that again. This time on his Not a Blog, he not only did not say when the next book was estimated to be finish, he didn't even mention
anything about the next book.
"Paranoia is just another word for ignorance." - Hunter S. Thompson
