I was at Emerald City Comic Con this weekend. In his panel, Mr. Butcher stated he still had another six weeks of work, before he turned the manuscript over to his editors.
If I recall, he's had a bad time in the past when he had a deadline and couldn't make it, so he swore off giving a deadline. . .Right(I seem to remember him saying he'd never take an advance again. . .)?
All of which is to say, there is no release date.
That is still very, very encouraging. Six weeks of work left on an editable draft isn't all that bad. Considering Jim's past descriptions of the way he writes—late at night, while everyone is asleep, from around midnight-dawn—that's actually quite good. (In my experience, word count quotas force faster work than time allocation when you write full time.) And according to the calendar on Jim-Butcher.com, his next event isn't till the end of April, seven weeks from now, so maybe he'll turn in a draft before he heads out to the writing conference. Looks to me like it's shaping up for a solid late summer/early autumn release.
