When Hollywood Saves the Day

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my frustrations with books that get made into movies.  I now find myself in the strange position of relying on Hollywood to solve another of my literary problems.

In this case, my problem is that one of my favorite authors is writing a seven book series.  To be more specific, one of my favorite authors is taking forever to write a seven book series.  This series is the “Song of Ice and Fire” by George RR Martin and it has been in the works for over fifteen years.  It started with "A Game of Thrones" in 1996 and since that time, Martin has published another four books in the series.  These are:

·         "A Clash of Kings" in 1999

·         "A Storm of Swords" in 2000

·         "A Feast for Crows" in 2005

·         "A Dance with Dragons" in 2011

As you can see, the time between books has been growing substantially and, given Martin’s penchant for cliff hangers, it is slowly driving me nuts.

It is into this situation that Hollywood enters to save the day.  HBO has licensed the series and turned the first book into a ten part mini-series of the same name, “A Game of Thrones”.  This series was a wild success and much to my brother’s delight, HBO debuted the second season this past Sunday.  This season is based on the second book in the series, so it appears that HBO is taking the approach of one book per season.

Sad as it is to say, this fact excites me almost as much as seeing the series premier itself.  I did some quick research and found that Martin is currently outlooking the completion of book six, “The Winds of Winter” for 2015.  I also did some quick math and found that if HBO keeps at its current pace that it will only last until 2015 before it runs out of books to turn into mini-series. 

This means that Martin will have to start cranking on the sixth and seventh books if he wants to keep cashing those sweet HBO checks on an annual basis.  Hopefully this is the swift kick in the posterior that he needs to get to work writing.  Otherwise I may have to wait another five years for the next installment in both my favorite book and TV series.