If you were today, Tuesday, March 7th 2017, to look at the literary field and pick out some of the bigger names/books around, you’d likely list, among others, the works of Stephen King or J. K. Rowling. Perhaps, today, you might be in the mood for Neil Gaiman or James Patterson. I hear George Orwell is making quite a comeback, too.
(I’d love to include myself in this list…perhaps one day?) 😉
Another very big name on the list is George R. R. Martin. His Game of Thrones fantasy series became red hot -and positively volcanic- after HBO started their adaptation of the series.
Most of you who are fans of Mr. Martin’s books know all too well that the HBO series has already leaped over the last of Mr. Martin’s published novels and will very likely end well before the final book in the series is released.
If it is ever released.
There are those who are growing increasingly pessimistic about the chances of the series ever being published/finished. Currently, fans await The Winds of Winter, the sixth book in the seven book series and that means there remain two books to be released while it looks like HBO will finish the storyline -granted, one which is their own at this point though they did consult with Mr. Martin as to where he intended to go with the story- well before the last book is released and possibly before the second to last book is released.
Amusingly, Mr. Martin is still involved in other literary properties he’s started up, including the superhero universe of the Wild Cards. On February 28th he tweeted about the publication of the latest Wild Cards book and that earned him this amusing rant by Patrick Redford theconcourse.com:
Mr. Redford’s very small post essentially wonders where The Winds of Winter is and why this Wild Cards novel is even being announced.
Let me tell you, I see Mr. Redford’s point. I’ve been a fan of book series and there is nothing more infuriating than waiting for an author to finish up a series. It’s almost as frustrating as starting a series and then finding it fades away over time. For example, I was really, really into David Weber’s Safehold series (currently running 9 books worth, which is apparently the entire first “big” story line) but after four books and what appeared to me to be minimal advancement, I jumped off that particular boat.
With my Corrosive Knights series, which in the end will run eight books long, six of which are now available, I’ve tried mightily to a) give readers something new and interesting with each new book and b) not overstay my welcome.
Because I’ve experienced both the writer’s and the fan’s side of getting into a novel series, I can certainly sympathize with Mr. Redford and the many who are impatient to read the next Game of Thrones book but, likewise, can sympathize with Mr. Martin as well.
The fact of the matter, and I’ve mentioned this many times before, writing a novel is not an easy task. In my case it takes incredible concentration and patience. How many of you out there can write a 100,000 page (or longer!) work, then spend many, many months revising and re-revising and re-re-revising this same work until you’re satisfied it is ready for release?
In my case, I’m writing alone.
In Mr. Weber’s case (and I suspect Mr. Martin’s as well), I’m certain he has staff to help him keep names and characters in some kind of order. Even so, these are books filled to the brim with at times hundreds of different characters and getting everything to “work” in the course of the story is not an easy task.
And let’s face it, some suspect its not made any easier when, like Mr. Martin, you’ve probably already made more money than you’ll ever spend on the success of both the novels and the HBO series.
Why bother finishing up the series, they may wonder, when its being done for you?
I can’t speak specifically for Mr. Martin but I will say this: If my Corrosive Knights series was a successful HBO show and I was down, as I currently am, to the last two books in that series and it was looking like the show would “beat me to the punch”, I’d still finish the two books I was working on.
Writing for me is a part of my being and its impossible to stop. Further, I don’t have everything all worked out. New ideas pop up and I can’t help but wonder when/if the last two Game of Thrones books come out they prove to be very different -moreso than anyone thought- to the HBO series.
If I had the entire story line of Corrosive Knights already planned out to the smallest detail, trust me when I say that the series would have been done years ago.
I suspect the same can be said for Game of Thrones.