My understanding is that Bantam have more or less decided to withold publication until 2011 even if the book is handed in tomorrow due to the time and money needed to put in place a massive marketing campaign for it. We might get more information on that soon as Bantam did have a presence at Comic-Con and I know people were asking about it.

However, Voyager's position (in the UK) remains that they will try to get the book out as fast as humanly possible after turn-in and, as of last week, were still prepared to go to considerable expense and trouble to get the book out in 2010 assuming completion soon.

So the question becomes can GRRM finish in 2010? In terms of page-count, there would appear to be no reason why not. GRRM's last couple of blog posts claim that he is on 'a roll' with the book, he has completed the epilogue and is now focusing on back-chapters. He has more than 1400 MS pages completed (and that means finalised and edited, not just roughly done) and a limit of around 1500 before the book gets split. He also claimed that moving several chapters to Book 6 has meant that the novel will now come in at notably less than 1500 pages.

Given that he finalised and finished 200 MS pages in a month earlier this year, and another 100 in about two months, certainly on a time basis completion appears fully doable. The only question is whether there are any creative problems to overcome, such as the remnants of the Meereenese Knot. If there isn't, completion in 2010 goes from probable to inevitable. If there is, who knows?

One thing is now sure: we are now entering the most frustrating part of the entire five-year process to date, since he could announce finishing next week or four months down the road or any time inbetween.