Not really related, but looking for info on what Steve said about GRRM I found
this article on Sci Fi Wire about which sequels took the longest to come out. Martin ain't even starting to get close.
A couple days ago Amazon delivered C.J. Cherryh's
Regenesis, the sequel to 1988's Hugo-winning
Cyteen, which came out within the last month. The cover says it's also a sequel to her Hugo-winning 1981 book
Downbelow Station. I'm really excited to read it and am glad she's taking some time to right anything other than
Foreigner-series books. (Those are pretty good but I like her Alliance/Union universe best.) She also released
Fortress of Ice in 2006, a sequel to 2000's
Fortress of Dragons. Though that's kind of the start of a next-generation series, so I really hope she gets back to writing more of that. Of course, ultimately, what I really want is more Chanur books. That's part of the Alliance/Union universe, so eventually there's got to be more interaction! (Unfortunately, the region of space that the Chanur books takes place in is on the opposite side of the Sol system, galaxy-wise, from the Alliance and Union, making the interaction a bit more difficult.)
(By the way, Brandon lent me the ARC of
The Warded Man by Peter V. Brett, already out overseas as
The Painted Man. You may have seen glowing reviews of this elsewhere, but I was really not impressed with it. I liked a lot of things about it, but the author just made so many bad narrative/plot choices, and it's got nothing original. There's a huge deus ex machina in the middle which really bugged me, and something horrible happens to one of the characters near the end which totally broke promises the author made to the reader [in a preached-against-in-Writing-Excuses way] and which led to completely unbelievable reactions on the part of that character. So no recommendation for The Warded Man from me.)