NaBloPoMo Blog Post #3 - Oh, How I WISH I could Dance With Dragons!

I've been waiting for George R.R. Martin to finish "A Dance With Dragons" for nearly two years. I started reading his "Song of Ice and Fire" series in the summer of 2009 (one should only read these books in the summer, or on a long vacation if you're not a teacher or student who has down time in the summer, because you will NOT be able to do anything else until you've read every single one of them). I was between books, and a friend from Montana who loves Sci-Fi / Fantasy as much as I do told me about them. I got them from the public library, and could not put them down. I read straight through all four of the books that had been published to date, and after all of that serious investment and commitment was left in a cliff-hanger!  How cruel.

So I went to George's website to see if there were any clues about when "A Dance With Dragons," the next installment, would be completed. Oh, joy! He said it would probably be out in October. No problem--I'm impatient, but if I can get urban high school teenagers to sit for 90 minutes in my classes, then I could certainly hold it together for just a month and a half.

October 2009 came and went. There were rumors it would be out in February 2010. February 2010 came and went. It is now November 2010, and he announced at the New York Comic Con in October that it would be  "sometime in 2011." AAAACCCKKK!!!

This blog post is supposed to (a la the handy prompts provided by NaBloPoMo) "Describe the plot of the next book you want to read, even if the book doesn't exist yet." Forgive me if I've taken the opportunity to RANT about the long overdue appearance of ANY plot for "A Dance With Dragons"!

OK--I'll step back a little. I mean, here we are, well into November, the annual season of frenetic and frantic writing, the season of NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo. At this time of year, it's probably good to remember that the very reason we have these two fine traditions is that so many of us never get off our respective arses to write that book that we've been saying we'll write "someday." In all fairness to Mr. Martin, if tens of thousands of us wannabee writers have to use props like NaNoWriMo and NaNoBloPo to get our poop in a group, our pen to the page, our electrons onto the screen, why should it be any different for George R.R. Martin? Perhaps he has writer's block? [SPOILER ALERT]: Or perhaps he is tired of killing off all the "good guys" in his books, and is mourning over these losses and reconsidering his strategy. [END SPOILER] Or perhaps (gods forbid) he has lost interest in the story or the characters or both, and just can't bring himself to finish it.

I don't know. But I'm thinking that whatever it is that is the equivalent of clapping for Tinkerbell should be undertaken immediately by all "A Song of Ice and Fire" fans everywhere. Perhaps the equivalent life-saving (or in this case, book-series-saving) activity is just what we are all doing here: raising our pens to the page in solidarity and support of each other in developing/maintaining a good daily writing habit.

So, with my pen raised and my fingers anxiously poised over asdf jkl;, I salute you, George, and wish you godspeed in your effort to get "A Dance With Dragons" on book shelves everywhere by....oh....let's say Christmas, just for kicks and giggles, shall we? That would make such a nice holiday read. (And I'm going to clap furiously and repeat over and over, "I believe in fairies! I believe in faires!" just to hedge my bets.