A huge update from George R.R. Martin about A Dance with Dragons. A few of the most interesting tidbits:

Now that the dust is settling at last, I thought I’d take a deep breath and look back at what a long strange trip this has been. If the process interests you, read on. But beware — past this point, there may be some SPOILERS lurking amidst my discussion. Read on at your own peril.

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At 1510 pages, A DANCE WITH DRAGONS come in just slightly shorter than A STORM OF SWORDS, which was 1521 pages in manuscript, with the same software, settings, and margins.

At one point late in the process DANCE was considerably longer. The page count had gone beyond 1600 and was creeping up toward 1700, to my alarm. (At 1700 pages the book could not have been published in a single volume). Several things happened to bring it back down.

Shorter than A Storm of Swords, in the end. With all the fears of the novel being split up into two volumes, it looks like Marting and his publisher did everything they could to ensure that that didn’t happen. Martin solved this problem several ways. The first was moving some chapters into the next volume:
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