I’d be really interested in reading a book or two covering the events immediately after the end of A Dance With Dragons, but alas, we probably never will.
I came here to say the same thing. Lol.
He probably has it finished but is going to release it after he’s dead. That’s my theory.
My theory is that he was already well known but the show made him actually famous. He got caught up in celebrity life and his writing slowed down even more, and then, the shows ending really was his ending. And everyone thought it was fucking stupid. So he stopped writing. There will never be another main sequence book.
I think you’re mostly right - afterall the ending being the same as GRRMs is basically confirmed, and ultimately the basic building blocks of the show ending could be made into a satisfying ending if they weren’t so damn rushed and if they had better motivations.
I do think he is still writing though, I just think the fire has gone out. He just keeps writing drafts, trashing them, starting over, repeat. I will be shocked if we ever see TWoW, and I’ll eat my shoe if we ever see aDoS. And frankly if we do see TWoW, I think it’ll be a let down, because it’s clear that GRRM is mentally checked out of the story now
I still don’t think the ending of the show is all that bad, for me it’s mostly a failure of writing more than anything. If he’s still got the motivation to wrap this story up and wants to go with a significantly more fleshed out and nuanced version of what we’ve already seen, I trust him to deliver that.
What worries me is that he’s tied himself into so many knots that he’s never going to be satisfied with what he ends with, and then we end up missing out completely because of it.
I’d love for him to continue the spin-off he already started: Dunk and Egg. I’m much more interested in that than in the main books.
I’m less and less sure we’ll get a satisfying conclusion to the events of the main series, but I’ve still got a lot of hope for Fire and Blood II and whatever continuation of the Dunk and Egg books we get. Summerhall and all that.
I’m afraid we won’t get any more Dunk and Egg, I think it’s low priority for GRRM 😢
Maybe the show will reignite interesting?
I’m affraid to keep hoping in anything involving GRRM. But I do wish you were right.