[terpkristin]

Actually, from what I read earlier today (from [email protected]):

Official Post at http;//www.georgerrmartin.com will be Monday.

Info from another board I follow. Posted by George Wife Paris
herself. Confirmation that is.

George announced at the end of his reading that

A FEAST FOR CROWS IS FINISHED!

and no one is more pleased with this announcement than George and
myself. There will be an formal announcement posted to his web site
Monday, and as he said at the reading, as soon as the publishers
have firm pub dates, he'll let you know.

I've read many drafts of the book, and given the complexity of the
greter story he is creating for us, this is not only a good solution
to the problems of manufacturing such a huge book, it gives us
complete arcs for several characters sooner, rather than telling
half the story of more characters over a longer period of time.
There's enough blood and treachery and gorgeous writing in FEAST to
satisfy us for a good long read, I promise.

I hope most readers are happy about this, in the longer view of the
strength of the series. I have been saying for several years that
ASoI&F would be at least 7 books long. Check with me again in a year
and we'll see if that's changed.

More Info:

This is no hoax.

I swear it by ice and fire. I swear that I will never post again
should this prove false. I swear I will never touch wine again, if
it is not true.

George said it is done.

But he had to make a major change. It had grown too large.

Daenerys will not appear. There will be little if any action in the
North. Those chapters will be moved into the next book, which should
come out shortly thereafter.

AFFC will be the size of AGoT.

Expected release date is Sep-Oct, around the same time in US and UK
(maybe slightly earlier in UK but not significantly so)

Edit: Also confirmed by George is the fact that there will be 7
books.

GRRM explained it as follows.

The book was still incomplete and it was 80 (book) pages longer than
aSoS. He thought it would take an extra 100 manuscript pages to
finish it fully. His publishers were really anxious to get it
published this fall so he was left with 3 choices.

1) Find a quick way to wrap up the remaining chapters and try to
sweat the stuff he has already done to reduce the size of the book.
Even though it was unfinished, it was already too big for them.

2) Cut the book in half by timeline, publishing the first half this
fall.

3) Cut the book in half by POV.

The first option was a bad one in my opinion. You don't want the
author to cut chapters, or characters because of the publishers.
GRRM didn't like that either.

The second one has advantages in that it updates us with all the
POVs but OTOH it leaves the stories all unfinished. Everything just
suddenly ends.

Option 3 means a tighter book. We get 7 or 8 POVs like aGoT, rather
than 15. We don't get lost by the huge number of plotlines.

Spoilers GRRM said Dany and the Wall is excluded. That removes Dany
and probably Tyrion plus the Wall which presumably means Jon and
Davos. Probably Sam too although he may be going south. This leaves
the Dorne chapters, Jaime, Cersei, Sansa in aFfC. Arya is hard to
say. Similarly the Iron Islands. The latter seems more like the
North to me. But I haven't read them. And who knows where the
mystery POV falls into. End Spoilers

So aFfC gets published this fall. In October or September. Its
likely that the books will be published in the US and the UK at the
same time. Although the UK may get a couple of weeks headstart.

There will be no Daenerys chapters. There will be none of the
chapters up North. The chapters in the South are done and in the
hands of the publishers - George expects to announce a specific fall
publication date. That means he can spend a little more time
cleaning up the events in the North and present a coherent tale with
a beginning and an end.

The next book will still be called aDwD. (Dany will be in it after
all). This is where things get oblique again. Even though he was 100
pages away from finishing aFfC originally, he says he has 600 of an
expected 1100 pages yet to write in aDwD. So clearly he feels he is
putting stuff into it that he originally earmarked for the old
version of aDwD.

He expects some of his fans to be upset when their favorite
characters don't appear. But they can take comfort in the fact that
the fifth book is now 60% or more done. And they will have the
fourth in the fall.

This might refer to something he mentioned earlier in May about
finding a way to deal with some characters been too young and he
wants to skip ahead, while others are too active. He will just drop
them.

He has offically announced that the book will take 7 books. I think
aDwD will take 1 to 2 years to come out after aFfC. Getting aFfC
will relieve a lot of pressure and make things easier to progress.

Hurrah!!

/tk