This is gonna be unpopular because he’s not dead, but George R. R. Martin.

The man is brilliant and spends a lot of time thinking. His love for his work is evidently in the fact that he’s telling something like 6 stories simultaneously and only 2 of them are obvious. Some of his best highlights to his work were the twists, the turns and the surprises.

I think the wind got taken out of his sails for GoT not just because the show caught up, overcame and ruined the ending of the series by doing it wrong, but because the fans of the show and books figured everything else out.

Being the author that outsmarts everyone is great, but this means that all his twists, all his secrets, all his surprise plots, all his upcoming shocks became the target of collective international groupthink. GRRM is smart, but he’s not smarter than millions of people with literal years of time and a rabid thirst to consume more of the world.

His Mad Queen got figured out, L+R=J got figured out, the Three Eyed Raven stuff got figured out. There’s further theories out there that are vast, detailed, pull evidence from other books and are debatably better than what he’s likely got on paper. I can’t imagine what it’s like to try to produce something - anything - that would satisfy my fans after they’ve quite literally figured everything out and then some.

I’d likely lose all love and desire to write anything further. I’d likely spend most of my time playing in the parts of my sandbox that haven’t been excavated by fans who’ve studied my psychological blueprint like their lives depended on it, like a new show or video game or project that deals with a different period on the timeline.

With all the vitriol and eye-rolling that gets flung his way with every non-update, I become more convinced he’s just given up and is doing what he wants because that’s what he’s got time for. If I’m his age, I’m too fucking old to try appealing to an audience that doesn’t trust me. I can recgonize he’s done himself no favours by making his promises and moving his deadlines, however, he’s just a human. WoW will never be what people want it to be, especially after all these years; it’s only saving grace will be that it came from GRRM and that grace won’t save him from some of the shit people will say about it.

I just don’t want to wait until the guy is dead to read people saying, “yeah maybe we were a little too mean and harshed his mellow and that’s why he spent his last 10 years focusing on dunk & egg while we waited to find out wtf was going on in the Vale.”

I think he’s just old now, knows it’s a losing battle and has decided to focus on what he likes before he croaks. Someone else can finish GoT and deal with the fans, he’s obviously decided 1-2-3 not it. I don’t approve of it, I have many nasty things I can say as a fan, but I also on some level completely understand it.

So, yeah. Resentfully, GRRM.

This past weekend I was at the Miami Dade Book Fair that happens once a year in Miami. And on two of those days, they have a street fair with booths/tents. Some of them are just generic venders and publishing companies. But another fair amount are actual authors that are trying promote their book.

And although I would love to stop and talk to each one, it’s almost impossible, and also impossible to really buy everyone’s book. The one that really broke my heart was this mother and a child, about 8 years old. As I was walking by their booth and looking at their book, she says “welcome, come meet the star of the book” :/

So I would say I feel bad for new authors that are still trying to get a book out.

Edgar Allen Poe. He’s a household name now, but during his lifetime no one appreciated his work. I wish he could see just how widespread his words have become.

Flannery O’Connor died at 39 from lupus, and was writing with full knowledge that her own life would likely be cut short. Such a brilliant author.

Herman Melville. I know he’s loved by everyone but his life was pretty sad. He had a whole crush on this dude and it went no where, and his book barely sold any copies when it came out.

Jack Kerouac.

His life was really a mess. His first book was published 40 years after his death!

Paul Kalanithi- died at 37 of metastatic non-small-cell EGFR-positive lung cancer.

While not primarily a writer, Paul was completing his neurosurgery residency and a postdoc fellowship in neuroscience when he was diagnosed 2 years prior to his death.

He wrote about going from the doctor to the patient and unfortunately didn’t finish his book prior to his death.

Even if you don’t read his book - When Breath Becomes Air, I would highly recommend his numerous essays about death and dying.

How Long Have I Got Left? (I think this is the only subscription only one)
Before I go: Time warps for a young surgeon with metastatic lung cancer
My Last Day as a Surgeon
Terra Incognita: Remembering Sherwin Nuland

The title for his book came from this poem

You that seek what life is in death,
Now find it air that once was breath.
New names unknown, old names gone:
Till time end bodies, but souls none.
Reader! then make time, while you be,
But steps to your eternity.

BARON BROOKE FULKE GREVILLE

Caelica 83

Jonathan Ames. He seemed super neurotic and self-hating. I just wanted to give a hug while I was reading “I love you more than you know”.

I suspect her Christian, anti-fanfic phase was a result of mental illness and manipulation from the publishers, although I don’t think she ever apologized.

I’m confused by this part because it sounds like you’re conflating her conversion and her anti-fan fic phase and so I thought you were saying she converted to Christianity due to manipulation and mental illness. I used to be an evangelical Christian and from I understood when I read about it is that she was genuinely interested until she got tired of the hypocrisy. She is quoted saying she didn’t realize the lengths the church would go to prevent same-sex marriage. I don’t think she was coerced into anything but you can correct me.

Kurt Vonnegut’s writing is something I’ve only ever been able to describe as written PTSD. Everything he wrote was brilliant and darkly hilarious, but his life story (especially his mother’s suicide and his experience in Dresden) is horrific, and so much of the point/message behind his writing is so bleak. Slaughterhouse Five is brutal. I hope he got some peace as time went on.

Marcel Proust. Guy wrote tens of thousands of pages. And he was not only in the closet until he died, he was basically literally in the closet 24/7 (well, bedroom)

Peter Beagle for decades thought the last unicorn was a flop. He got almost no royalties. Then the rights reverted to him like 15 years ago. Then he went on a screening tour. When he did it, he had no idea the theaters would sell out. Q&A with tears and everything. We met him, he was so tired but still signing anything you wanted for free. Then the tour organizer ripped him off. (I got bad vibes from that guy, he was like a used car salesman)

There is an online artist alliance now to protect him from exploitation.

Hans Christian Anderson. Reading about his life can really be somber.

All of the great authors who people like those on this sub neglect because they read shit books and only shit books. It takes fifteen minutes of research to support obscure authors that are some of the best that have ever lived but you people settle for drivel. It’s pathetic.

Lovecraft. He became much better towards thr end of his life. He was deadly afraid of being forgotten and he likely died a better man and a sadder man then we know.