O_O you'll NEVER believe this....

[RedStockings]

Noooo Abaratian, I'm clutching at straws here!! I agree with everything you've said, I just don't want to believe it. *shakes head* Imagine if JK Rowling had taken this long. The woman would have bee kidnapped and held at gunpoint until she'd written the ending.

[malingomango2]

oh...ugh....LATE 2010 ?!!!!!! This is the longest I've ever waited for a novel to come out. I kid you not! :l

[bd16]

Well, i don't know if any of you have read the Dark Tower series by Stephen King (great series by the way, i highly recommend it), but apparently stephen king took around 15 years to finish book 4 of the series. That's a really freaking long time. But, the fourth book ended up great and one of my favorites of the 7 book series. So, if we can just hang on for a little longer, we could be in for a treat. Just think of it this way, the longer it takes the author, the better it will probably be.

[Abaratian]

I don't think that's true... Admittedly I haven't finished reading the Dark Tower series, but I'm pretty sure that the fourth one was only published 6 years after the third one. In fact, I THINK that most of the books were published 6 years apart. And during the years between the Dark Tower books getting published, he was writing loads of other books. In fact, during the five year period between The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three, 12 other books by him were published, including the over 1000 page long It (probably my favorite King book, along with The Shining).

In the same amount of time, since 2004, when Abarat 2 came out, Clive has published ONE book - Mister B. Gone.

I mean, I know I shouldn't compare Clive to Stephen King. I love them both so much, they're two of my three favorite authors (the other being Terry Pratchett, who, btw has NEVER gone more than 3 years between publishing Discworld novels). I don't mean to say that Clive is slacking or anything. Just... I'm not used to being let down for 5 years. I can't take it.

[bd16]

ha i know what you mean
i may have been wrong, i was just trying to remember off the top of my head. I remember that Wizard and Glass just took longer because King was afraid to write a book about Roland's past or something.
You're right about how King published more books though, maybe that's why this wait sucks so much!

[Kaito]

Well, I've never read King, and I'm not much of a one for horror, but I figure if he really *did* whip out Abarat books in a year or two, it would be a two-hundred page crappy paberback novel. (Think those disgusting smut novels with titles like "Snowfire." I kid you not, my church book sale has about a hundred pounds worth of those things. We entertain ourselves by trying to find the most outlandish ones possible.)

Or Brian Jacques. Has anyone read his Redwall books? There's about forty of them, which he published in maybe twenty-thirty years (at a guess), and they're all the same. Down to finding some useful manuscript (containing many cryptic puzzles, of course) in the attic. It's like he has a plot template with <insert name here> written all over it.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, I prefer quality to quantity, and the Abarat books are good enough that they're worth waiting for.

[Abaratian]

I do agree that quality is much more important than quantity. The reason I get so... frustrated, I suppose, with waiting for the third Abarat book is that we've had about a dozen (not exaggerating) release dates. I've read the books since the first one was just published, and I remember him in interviews saying the books were all going to be two years apart. And then, on time, the second book came out (I remember that day... it was a school day and I asked my grandma to pick me up early and stop by Zainy Brainy - a toy store - where I knew they were having a 15% off sale on books because they were about to close down... oh the memories!). The third was supposed to come out fall two years later, but got delayed for next season, then next year, then next season of the next year, then the following year... and well, we're where we're at now. If he had said from the beginning, "Oh, it'll probably be 7 or 8 years before the third Abarat book comes out" then I would have been so much more accepting of this wait.

And I wouldn't have mentioned King if the poster above me hadn't brought him up. King is a writer through and through, and he writes professionally so popping out a book a year since 1974 is no big feat considering he is doing what he loves for a living (although I do have to say his books are of... oh... ORGASMIC quality... there are some mundane sentences, like one from It where a character is making toast... that just haunt my memory forever and make me feel like I could float). Same with Terry Pratchett, who I mentioned in my post as well... his writing isn't technically of the best quality but his stories are so genius and unique and new... I could go on forever, but again he is a professional writer. Which Clive isn't, although he does write books I adore with my whole heart. Clive is a visual artist first and foremost, and he puts his movies, art, and visual projects before his books. Which is completely understandable - do what you love (plus he makes loads more money from those projects anyway) - but please don't promise us something just to put it off twenty times for another couple of months!

These five long years have made me a bitter, pessimistic person. LOL

PLUS - I'm relatively young (20). I wish I could speak with Clive again so I could tell him that 1/4 of my life has been spent waiting for this novel!