You cannot imagine how much it thrills me to be able to tell you all that A STORM OF SWORDS is finally finished.
The manuscript is being xeroxed at Kinko's even as I type, and should be winging its way to my various editors, publishers, and agents by tomorrow.
I do feel as though as I have given birth to a wooly mammoth -- this is a BIG beast, with a nasty disposition, and pretty damned hairy too. It weighs in at 1521 manuscript pages, some 350 pages longer than A CLASH OF KINGS. There are 79 chapters, a prologue, =and= a epilogue.
I fear I lied about the four weddings and the funeral. Now that I am done, I see there are four weddings, =two= funerals, and a wake. Four trials as well. And three dragons, four bears, many mammoths, an unkindness of ravens, and a turtle of unusual size. More battles, swordfights, and deaths than I can count, but two births as well, just to remind us all that life goes on.
There's plenty more work after this, of course; editorial revisions, copediting, proofreading,correcting galleys, notice to mention the maps and the appendices, to which I must now turn my attention. But the mammoth is at least on its feet; the rest is just a matter of polishing up its tusks.
Thank you all for your patience, and your continued enthusiasm. I hope you'll feel the book was worth the wait.