With the concluding volume of her The Rain Wilds Chronicles kinda-duology finally out in all regions (several weeks passed between the UK release and this week’s North American release), it was only a matter of time before we started hearing about her next project.
From Robin Hobb’s LiveJournal:
The Rain Wilds Chronicles was written as a single manuscript, and then divided into two volumes for publication. Dragon Keeper and Dragon Haven are those two books.
My next published book will be a collection of stories featuring shorter works by both Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm.
The untitled book I am working on now picks up the tale of the Tarman expedition in search of Kelsingra. It’s my work in progress and threatens to be a long book!
If Hobb’s already referring to it as a long book, it’s not a stretch to imagine that it may be split into two volumes, like Dragon Keeper and Dragon Haven. It should also be noted that Hobb’s next book scheduled for release is a collection of short fiction written under both ‘Robin Hobb’ and ‘Megan Lindholm’ (her real name), so we likely won’t see this untitled Rain Wilds novel for a while yet.
I think it’s worth remembering that since the RWC was one book split in two after completion, that means that DRAGON HAVEN was completed and turned in some months before DRAGON KEEPER was published. In fact, it was probably completed some time in 2008, so Hobb has already had a lot of time to work on her next book (assuming the story collection is made up of pre-existing material and not new stuff).
On that basis, we could see the next novel in 2011 and the collection sometime before then. Unless of course Robin Hobb took advantage of the time management to take a break or something ;-)