ADWD Publish Date? (I hope not)

[Tysha]

The clues about Aegon being alive: When Dany enters The House of the Undying Ones, one of the prophecy sights was:

The man had her brother’s hair, but he was taller, and his eyes were a dark indigo rather than lilac. “Aegon,” he said to a woman nursing a newborn babe in a great wooden bed. “What better name for a king?”
“Will you make a song for him?” the woman asked.
“He has a song,” the man replied. “He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire.” He looked up when he said it and his eyes met Dany’s, and it seemed as if he saw her standing there beyond the door. “There must be one more,” he said, though whether he was speaking to her or the woman in the bed she could not say. “The dragon has three heads.” ​

More details:
http://www.chronicles-network.com/forum/8403-the-dragon-has-three-heads-11.html

 

[TK-421]

This was posted on a three way interview on GRRM's latest project Hunter's Run

Question: If one looks back upon your writing career, it's obvious that you have a variety of interests that range from writing, collaborating, editing, etc. In recent years the pressure is definitely on you to complete whatever ASOIAF installment you're presently working on to the detriment of anything else that might interest you. How difficult is it to reconcile every project you wish to work on? Do fans' expectations weigh you down on occasions, or is that just the price one must pay for the sort of success you have achieved?

GRRM: A bit of both, actually. I've had a long career, and there have been times when nobody gave a damn what I was working on or when it might come out. I can still remember those days, and believe me, it helps to put it all in perspective when I get snarky emails about A DANCE WITH DRAGONS being late. At least they care. That being said, the pressure does bother me at times, and I have some "fans" who are quite blunt about their disinterest in my other projects. Of course, many other writers have had to deal with the same thing. I once heard Stephen R. Donaldson speak about the day he realized that some of his readers were Donaldson fans and some were Covenant fans, and that the latter far outnumbered the former. Frank Herbert went through it too, with DUNE.

I do have a variety of interests, as you say. I enjoy editing as well as writing, and when I write I like to write different things. You can't just do one thing over and over and over; that way lies creative stagnation and madness. I don't expect that any of my other projects will ever be as successful as A Song of Ice and Fire, but that's cool, they don't need to be. Just to be clear, though, doing other projects does not mean that I have "lost interest" in Ice & Fire, as some of my more obsessive readers seem to fear. It just means I am interested in other things as well. Just because I still love Popinjay and the Turtle and my other Wild Cards characters does not mean I have stopped loving Arya and Tyrion and Dany.

See the full interview: Pat's Fantasy Hotlist

 

[TK-421]

Sorry, Werthead, but I had to copy what you had posted on the General Book Discussion forum and put it here for all to see:

Locus Online are now postulating a June 2008 release date for A Dance with Dragons (Book 5 of A Song of Ice and Fire) by George RR Martin. Locus only release dates, even tenuous ones, when they get information from the publisher, in this case probably Bantam US (remember that the UK publishers, HarperCollins Voyager, usually publish the books a month or so earlier). This is in line with other information, particularly that gleaned from Pat's Fantasy Hotlist when he spoke to GRRM's editor (that the manuscript was expected in autumn/winter for release a few months later).

As usual, take nothing for granted until official announcements are made, but this news is nevertheless encouraging.

 

[Florian the Fool]

If that's accurate, I'll be seeing it next May. My birthday is in May. That'll be a nice treat for me.

 

[Werthead]

It should be borne in mind that apparently publishers also sometimes whack books they hope will be out the following year on the end of Locus publishing schedules and just keep pushing them back until they have a final release date.

So whilst ADWD appearing on the schedule could be taken as a positive indication, it's also possibly just the publishers hedging their bets that the book will be out sometime in 2008, which frankly we already knew from GRRM's updates. Apparently AFFC first appeared on some schedules in late 2003, two years before the book finally appeared, so take this news more as positive indicator from the publisher that the book's on the home run rather than as a finalised date for release.