Patrick Rothfuss’ editor has “never seen a word” of The Doors of Stone

For fans of Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicle hoping that The Doors of Stone may drop soon, this doesn’t sound great.

Patrick Rothfuss, the widely renowned writer of the hugely popular epic fantasy series The Kingkiller Chronicle, has had to endure nearly a decade of relentless questions from fans as to when we’ll see The Doors of Stone, the elusive third book in the trilogy.

And we’re not the only ones still waiting for news. Rothfuss’ editor Betsy Wollheim recently revealed in a Facebook post that she has yet to see one word of Doors.

Wollheim was writing about an article on Book Riot: “Authors don’t owe you books,” which cited fans calling for the release of The Doors of Stone as an example of entitlement. Wollheim agrees that authors do not, indeed, owe readers books. She’s less certain about publishers, though. “Book publishing is not as lucrative as many other professions, and publishers rely on their strongest sellers to keep their companies (especially small companies like DAW [Books]) afloat,” she writes. “When authors don’t produce, it basically f***s their publishers.”

"And I don’t get the “blame the editor” part at all. Don’t you think we editors want to publish the books we buy? That is just nuts. When I delayed the publication of book two, Pat was very open with his fans–they knew what was happening. I’ve never seen a word of book three."

Rothfuss kicked off his Kingkiller Chronicle with The Name of the Wind back in 2007 and returned with its sequel The Wise Man’s Fear in 2011. Since then, it’s been silent save interesting side projects like The Slow Regard of Silent Things, a novella about Auri, one of the series’ most enigmatic characters. We’ve also had short stories such as The Lightning Tree and How Old Holly Came to Be.

Aside from published works, Rothfuss has many other things going on. He regularly talks at events and has his own Twitch channel where he plays various games and interacts with fans. Add to that his fantastic charity work with Worldbuilders, and you have one very busy author.

If Wollheim hasn’t even gotten a look at the book yet, that all but rules out a surprise release this year. “If I get a draft of book three by surprise some time, I will be extraordinarily happy…joyous, actually, and will read it immediately with gusto,” she wrote in a reply to comments on the post. “I love Pat’s writing. I will instantly feel forgiving and lucky. Lucky to be his editor and publisher.”

At the same time, she doesn’t sound too hopeful. “I don’t think he’s written anything for six years,” she said in another reply. Yikes.

Incidentally, it was seven years ago that Rothfuss showed off the manuscript for The Doors of Stone. It certainly looks pretty robust; what’s happened since?

"The beautiful manuscript of Doors of Stone (from r/fantasy) from KingkillerChronicle"

Nonetheless, it definitely will be joyous when The Doors of Stone finally gets published. Let’s hope there’s more done than we know.

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