I don't know if there are any other Patrick Rothfuss fans around here, but this one is hurting. I can't even remember when I first picked up The Name of the Wind – the first entry into his super long Kingkiller Chronicles – but given that it's been nine years since Rothfuss released volume two, The Wise Man's Fear, it was probably a while.

They are fantastic books. One of the first epic fantasies I ever read (yes, I came late to the game) and as close to old fashioned literature as makes no difference. My son is obsessed with them.

It might be time to take a deep breath and move on, however. Newsweek reported yesterday that Rothfuss’s editor, Betsy Wollheim, finally brain spasmed at the delay and posted on Facebook, "I've had enough."

Wollheim was moved to post by reports in a trade mag that the delay was due to 'a lengthy editorial process.'

"I've never seen a word of book three," she wrote, before going on to add that, "I don't think he's written anything for six years."

Man, that hurts. I cannot tell you how unusual it is for an editor to go public with complaints about a writer. They complain all the time about us in private. And fair enough. We are the worst.

But things must be getting pretty tight at DAW Books for Wollheim to unload like this.

Given the state of the world, the struggles of one guy with a crushing case of writer's block, hardly amount to a hill of goya beans. But I do feel for this guy. I would love to read that last book, but I don't know that it's ever coming. For what it's worth, I think the chances of getting the final volume of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series aren't much better than even money either.

In Martin's case he has to get over the fact that Benioff and Weiss both finished and fucked up his magnum opus by rushing to wrap the last season so they could move on to their ill-advised Confederacy project. And of course, neither Rothfuss nor Martin are hurting for a dollar. Don't underestimate the motivational power of needing to pay the rent. It's how most deadlines get met.

Speaking of which, I'd better go tend to mine. (Yes, dammit, I know, writers who can't finish a series in a reasonable amount of time of the worst, shut up you).

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