This was posted on the discord server: April Updates I don't have any big changes to share, so I thought I'd at least put up some of the frequently asked questions. Where is book 9? The simple answer, with Covid and everything going on in the world in 2020/2021, Aleron had a difficult time getting in the right creative headspace. Aleron is now in a great place with his writing, and yes, he's working on multiple writing projects, but book 9 is his main focus. I don't have a date, but it's coming along well. Why hasn't Aleron done a Facebook live recently? Because he's been writing! Outside of family commitments, the man's been at that computer, plugging away. Is he too focused on other projects to write? Nope! That's why I'm here! Most the other projects, merchandise, etc, are all things I help him with, so outside of the occasional report on how things are going from me, he's fully focused on writing. Will Patreon supporters get to see things first? Yes, as with past books, Aleron will always share the chapters and art early on patreon. If you have questions (that I'm able to answer) please feel free to leave them in the comments, I'm happy to answer what I can!
2 quick things: makes me wonder if Aleron had book 9 really worked on in the last 2 years much at all and I am not Geneva. Don’t leave your questions here for her, she will not see them, haha.
Situation is CRITICAL. this be so fucked. So either AK lied. Or like 0.5% chance we will get a 400k word book 9. He literally wrote like book3 in 3 months.
Yeah, I’m puzzled by it all. Why promise the book when you haven’t written any of it? And I sort of wish I was a writer so I’d understand how he couldn’t during covid. I sort of get it but he was already a full time stay at home and write dude, right?
The pandemic should have been the golden age of books. Authors wouldn't have any excuses to not write since they were all stuck at home and everything is closed, yet somehow AK produced nothing in two years. If he was still practicing medicine I'd totally understand, but he put in his Amazon profile video that he was a full time writer BEFORE book 8 came out. He probably thought that being less than upfront about failing to work on the book would gain him more residual praise. The fanatics on Facebook still give excuses for him despite giving no evidence that he's done anything on book 9, god's eye, or the third project. This is why he need a publisher to pester him to write. If he JUST did a page a day we'd get a 700+ page book by now.
I get being unproductive (I was for a lot of 2020-2021) but not if you’re already a writer. Sure, it’s more likely that a bunch of friends can video chat in the middle of the day and such but, uh, why couldn’t you write more/the same amount? Kinda crazy.
With this update its all but confirmed that a 2022 release will not happen, imo. It sounds exactly like the phrases that GRRM used about writing the next asoif book.
Its actually really hard with the creative sciences when the ideas just aren't flowing. I've been in that place a few times programming, where we just couldn't crack the right idea. Sure you have ideas, just not ones that can be put into a coherent whole. Same with my writing, I struggle to get into the right headspace to write something that makes sense. I imagine the corona situation had Aleron worried because he diden't really know how bad covid was going to get. I know we diden't get into the really bad scenarios, but for a while there when Italy was begging the rest of the Europe for help and Italians were dying like flies, looking at 6-8% death rate, yeah that was kinda attention grabbing - not to mention nightmare inducing. The current ukraine-russia war and Russias war crimes probably aren't as attention grabbing for a doctor.
First off, AFAIK dude already has piles of money; second, he can go back to working as a doctor. Especially during a pandemic. Third, you’re definitely right that head space can be a thing but check out my replies directly addressing that. Basically no writing for two years? Not even a new series besides gods eye? And AFAIK the Italy thing was a couple of months and solely the very elderly. Surely a doctor can see only the elderly dying and put two and two together with his medical colleagues and arrive at it not being a danger to him. Just saying.
Oh i'm not justifying the lies or the nonsense coming out. Honesty is a much better tool in the long run. It wasn't just the elderly dying in Italy, a lot of people in their thirties, forties and fifties died as well. Its not a question of it being a life threathening danger to Aleron himself, a disease that kills a tenth or a twentieth of those infected is a massive, massive issue for society. Yes it predominantly killed the vulnerable, this is expected and the fact people keeps bringing it up like its news is kinda scary. Its basic logic, of course the people with the weakest immune systems have a higher chance of dying. Its true for any disease, but we don't say that plague or ebola isn't dangerous because they have a higher chance of killing vulnerable people than they do healthy people in their prime. Its a logically flawed and frankly boils down to an inherently selfish argument by people who put more value on their own convenience than the lives of others. When people need weeks of critical care while lying unconscious in a ventilator, that is a dangerous disease. When deaths are counted by the hundreds of thousands and hundreds of thousands of others have had to fight for their lives in intensive care, that should be cause for concern and action.
At the beginning I would agree that there might have been cause for concern, but those that died and got put into critical condition had 3 or 4 comorbitities. Thus they would have died of something sooner rather than later. I can't see someone using the pandemic as an excuse to not write for 2 years.
That is just not true for all or even the majority of cases. We had young people in their twenties with no prior health issues of significance who died from this. They weren't all on their death beds, many if not most had decades of life left in them. Their lives had value as has the lives of the oldest, and most sickly. Its not just in the US either, the same has been observed across the european union and much of the world. I know rightwing politicians have been claiming it isn't dangerous, but that's because they know restrictions are unpopular and they are amoral enough to claim anything if they think it will win them even one extra vote. Most of their claims have no grounding in statistics nor are they supported by a significant portion of actual health professionals.
Dude, where are you getting your facts? Millions and millions were infected. The people under 50 with no health factors dying from it are a rounding error, AFAIK. Definitely not something to be worried about. If that was true then all of the fearmongering wouldn’t be needed. The death rate is way under 1% and only higher than that for, like he said, people who would die soon anyways, statistically speaking. There’s zero need to jump to “muh rightwing” because I’m talking strictly the facts from the likes of the CDC and WHO, when they deign to give them. Also, the restrictions have been shown to be statistically not useful to curbing infections. Please don’t act like the facts are on your side. I bet you’ll next say that vaccines stop people from getting covid while also saying “we’ve always said that getting a vaccine doesn’t mean you won’t get the virus”.
Point taken for the rudeness, my apologies. 1) The death rate was not way under 1% in Italy. It was not way under in the first several waves in places where they diden't have enough hospital beds and respirators. Its way under with the latest wave especially when you look at the vaccinated, which is the reason a lot of countries are letting it burn through the population. Deaths are a lot higher amongst the unvaccinated where most deaths are occuring despite them being a fragment of our population. That's terrible. Go look at hard data. There are 28 countries in the european union all reporting more or less the same. 2) Nearly a million americans have died from covid. Some of them were vulnerable, but it was covid that killed them. Hard to tell how many more would have died if hospitals had been overwhelmed and doctors had to choose people that wouldn't be receiving a ventilator or basic care (effectively a death sentence), which was what happened in Italy where they were looking at 6-8% death rates. Don't trust me, i'm just some rando on the internet. Go look at the hard numbers and what doctors were saying at the time. 3) The restrictions worked fine in curbing the spread of Covid. We had multiple outbreaks in my country, including one outbreak that crossed to pelt animals on farms and then back to humans again. It diden't spread because we shut down the farms and people isolated while we tracked any potential infected. We did that at each outbreak, working to break the curve so hospitals weren't overwhelmed with patients. Sweden as an example didn't shut down and as a consequence had a far worse outbreak both absolutely and in terms of population size despite their lower population density and all of their neighbors having shut down their borders. They've since admitted that was a mistake and reversed course when things got too bad. Shutting down works when you have a realistic goal in mind, such as taking the top off the curve and prolonging it so you won't run out of ventilators. Which was the stated goal of my government and which we received even as other countries were still looking at curves headed upwards. That said you are more than welcome to your opinion, please keep questioning and digging for facts. There just arent many facts supporting the interpretation that covid wasn't that dangerous that I am aware off and i've done quite a bit of data digging to satisfy my endless curiosity about, well, everything. 4) Personally I see two options. The first requires me to believe people and governments were genuinely worried and acted accordingly. That to me is the simple explanation. The second requires me to believe in a conspiracy where quite a few countries, including avowed enemies such as China and Russia, were collaborating with the west to pull off a covid scare that diden't really enrich or strengthen the position of anyone as far as I can tell, except of course for opponents of covid restrictions, who are mostly on the political right at the moment, or at least they have been the most outspoken about it, drowning out anti restriction voices on the left. Even as we speak China is actively hurting world trade with covid restrictions, which hurts everyone including China itself. I believe that the simplest explanation is usually the right one and I don't believe conspiracies that big and involving so many people can be pulled off in such a complex situation. 5) Sorry for the way I put the rightwing thing. Looking back it was insensitive and rude. Its just the claims that liberals and moderates are all child groomers coming out of certain 'people' on the right that has me a little bit off balance right now. Well that and the Ukraine war.
And yes, it was reported early on that vaccines did not give full immunity. Not sure how that is controversial, vaccines aren't always 100%, especially not the first couple generations.
Also something that isn't addressed is that these aren't even vaccines after the real definition, because they literally changed the definition to fit the "vaccines". Vaccines are supposed to confer immunity, otherwise they wouldn't be called immunizations. If you can't acknowledge that politics has played a role in this whole vaccine role out I don't know what to tell you.
What's also worth pointing out is that they confer 'effective' immunity by boosting the body's reaction and resistance rather than a 'true' immunity, because a 100% true immunity doesn't really exist. That's true of all vaccines and always has been. It just exposes the body to a weak version so that it's like you've had it before and thus have an advantage due to the antibodies produced by exposure, without having to fight the full effect. It's all a statistics game and once it reaches a certain degree of resistance, they generalise and call it 'immunity'. Even then, there are always exceptions and special cases. Though as you said, this one isn't a traditional vaccine and works through a different means. Also, like all vaccines, there's a question of specificity. The flu vaccine targets a bunch of the most common strains but doesn't cover everything. So the vaccine is less effective against any new strains or mutations. Though, this one not being a traditional vaccine might change that depending on how it works, so i'm not sure if that makes this particular factor different or how.
