George R.R. Martin will never meet a deadline. I hope everyone accepts that by now. As we discussed in January 2016, the Game of Thrones author has been pushing back the publication of The Winds of Winter, the latest book in the Game of Thrones series. Winds of Winter was supposed to be published YEARS ago. The last book in the series was A Dance with Dragons in 2011. Before that, A Feast of Crows was published in 2005. Book readers had to wait six years for A Dance with Dragons, and now they’re going to have to wait seven years – or more – for Winds of Winter. It was widely believed that HBO pushed back the past two seasons, Season 6 and 7, just to give Martin a little more time to finish the book before they ruined all of the storylines for the book-readers. He still didn’t finish. In 2016, he pushed back the publication and WoW was supposed to come out this year. Now Martin says it will probably be 2018. From his website:
And, yes, I know you all want to know about THE WINDS OF WINTER too. I’ve seen some truly weird reports about WOW on the internet of late, by ‘journalists’ who make their stories up out of whole cloth. I don’t know which story is more absurd, the one that says the book is finished and I’ve been sitting on it for some nefarious reason, or the one that says I have no pages. Both ‘reports’ are equally false and equally moronic. I am still working on it, I am still months away (how many? good question), I still have good days and bad days, and that’s all I care to say. Whether WINDS or the first volume of FIRE AND BLOOD will be the first to hit the bookstores is hard to say at this juncture, but I do think you will have a Westeros book from me in 2018… and who knows, maybe two. A boy can dream…
The Fire and Blood book he’s referencing is a “history” of the Targaryen kings, basically a secondary material to the main series. He notes in the same post that he has a ton of material for that, because of course he does:
Speaking of fake history… regulars here may recall our plan to assemble an entire book of my fake histories of the Targaryen kings, a volume we called (in jest) the GRRMarillion or (more seriously) FIRE AND BLOOD. We have so much material that it’s been decided to publish the book in two volumes. The first of those will cover the history of Westeros from Aegon’s Conquest up to and through the regency of the boy king Aegon III (the Dragonbane). That one is largely written, and will include (for the first time) a complete detailed history of the Targaryen civil war, the Dance of the Dragons. My stories in DANGEROUS WOMEN (“The Princess and the Queen”) and ROGUES (“The Rogue Prince”) were abridged versions of the same histories.
No publication date has been set yet, but it’s likely that we will get the first volume of FIRE AND BLOOD out in late 2018 or early 2019. The second volume, which will carry the history from Aegon III up to Robert’s Rebellion, is largely unwritten, so that one will be a few more years in coming.
Here’s the thing… I understand that he’s literally created this entire universe, which includes centuries of fake history, out of whole cloth. It’s amazing to think about, honestly. His level of imagination and world-building is incredible. I would completely understand if he wanted to write all of those secondary fake-history books… AFTER he finished the main series. But he’s doing all of it concurrently and I feel sorry for the book-readers who really wanted to know how the story ends by the man who created the story. Like, who gives a sh-t about the history of Targaryen kings when people still want to know what happens to the characters that Martin introduced, nurtured and made us care about? Anyway, I think the book readers should just resign themselves to the fact that the HBO series is going to spoil everything, and that the HBO series will likely end before Winds of Winter ever gets published.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
Be well Mr Martin! I will come put your CPAP on at night if you like! Gotta keep you healthy!
What’s a CPAP?
A machine to help with sleep apnea.
It’s basically a night time oxygen mask that helps with sleep apnea.
Oh, thanks!
I believe Trump more than George talking about A Song of Ice and Fire release dates.
LMAO!
Still reading the last book, it’s such slow going, so was book 4.
The last 2 books went off at such a tangent I’m not surprised the TV writers changed the character plot lines.
Been caught up for years and have to say…kinda lost interest in the books… don’t plan on buying anymore and will have to be satisfied with how the show ends, because the extensions on the book released all these years just got to me-tag me out of the wait. Martin over estimated his power in stringing people along.
I have accepted that the show will finish before the books and I am fine with that. It will save me hours of reading about characters who are going to get killed off.
According to a friend of mine who’s been reading his books, his last book was proof that he needed a tougher editor. She made a comparison to a ship caught in the doldrums.
Dude, you old and not so healthy. Focus on the important things, like producing work for me to enjoy, okay?
And don’t you screw me over like Robert Jordan did.
At least he could do like Robert Jordan did and designate someone to finish the series. I think that’s part of what annoys me the most-I resigned myself to the fact that the show would pass the books back in 2011 because I’ve been reading the books since 99 and I know how slowly he writes, but it drives me nuts that he says no one will ever write in his world yet he won’t discipline himself to get the main books finished before writing all these side pieces.
The difference between Sanderson and Jordan’a style was pretty significant, and for the most part I liked how his book wrapped everything up. Both Jordan and GRRM have the same issue – a lack of a good editor.
I think the problem is that he expanded his world and now it’s harder to pull everything together. It was only suppose to be a trilogy.
At this point I have no expectation for another book. Right now, I’m just happy that he created this world and that we can still see how it ends in some form.
Yes agreed. As Kaiser said, his imagination and the world he created are awe-inspiring, but the books are unnecessarily complicated. I think he’s written himself into a corner now.
I’m right there with you, I’ve given up hoping for the next book. I started reading ASoIAF way back in 2002-2003; the first 3 were already out and I was SO eager to see what happened next. Now it looks like I’ll find out via the show instead, which is not ideal, but hey, what can I do? At least we won’t be left completely in the dark.
It’s pretty clear that he’s had a massive case of writer’a block for years, and I’m guessing that it’s because he got rid of most of the characters that he liked writing for. And GRRM needed a good editor like 3 books ago to help him stay on track so these problems didn’t happen in the first place.
Him and Anne Rice need an editor. I got an advanced readers copy of Anne’s latest Mummy book…girl so needs an editor.
So annoying! I wanted to read all the books before watching but gave up waiting and am watching the series now. I hope the books aren’t influenced by what’s happened in the show (I wouldn’t think they would be, seeing as the show deviates a fair bit by series 5) but whyyyyyyy the holdup!
Writers block?
Writers block?
I am STILL holding off watching and eating hope by the bucket…but I reckon the cave in point is approaching…and now with this news, I guess I really need to make peace with watching and not reading the end of this :'(
What is going to be confusing for some is that the producers and writers of Game of Thrones will probably have a-different final story line then from Martin’s final story line. Lots of pressure there. I hope Martin had some say for this final season.
He told Benioff and Weiss how it ends. How they get to the ending might be different, but in broad strokes, I think the ending will be the same. I don’t think B&W will put someone else on the Iron Throne, for instance.
Sigh. Classic George. He has zero motivation at this point. I’m not sure Winds will ever be published, but I’ll be hoping.
Good point. I wonder if now that she show has overtaken his writing, he just figures “well whatever- they’ll finish it for me”
At this point, I think he’s just loving the fame to a gross degree and has zero intention of finishing the books. He likes the attention/power he has over the fans who are just looking for the series’ resolution, but I’m pretty sure readership will drop once the HBO series ends.
His ways of trolling his fans are beginning to make some fuming.
On the Asoaif official site, a forum was created one week ago, as he had a mysterious post on his blog with WOW mention, with people anticipating the release announcement.
He has let the hype increase in epic proportions to crush them yesterday.
Some people think he did that on purpose to put and keep the light on himself during the tv series time to shine.
If this hypothesis is true, it makes him look very petty.
I was surprised for the asoaif site to not moderate very pissed posts, as they seemed virtually inexistent until now.maybe it s becoming too much work to clean his mess.
I think he’s just not into it anymore, the main story at least. Perhaps it was a mistake to have it turned into a TV series before the books were complete, and it took the motivation or ideas out of him, especially now that the series moved past the books. I’m sad to say it, but at this point I honestly don’t think he’ll ever complete it. People will continue to pester him and he’ll publish a defensive blog post once a year or so, but I don’t see things moving on much from where they are.
This is his artistic process and his world. He can take as long as he likes as far as I’m concerned. I’d rather Fire and Blood come out first – minority view! It’s his Silmarillion and I think it will help clarify the deep background of his world.
Benioff is also a writer, but he can’t tie G’s laces
I can already tell the comments are going to be nasty. GRRM doesn’t owe anyone shit. He doesn’t owe the fans another book, he certainly doesn’t owe them another two books. He doesn’t owe anyone putting his work over his health, and he shouldn’t put his work over his health.
What isn’t obvious to people outside of the writing community is that this book is probably “done”. The work that he’s doing on it is very likely rewrites that have come up, because books take months and sometimes years to get to the point where they’re able to be published. I have doubts that the final book will ever actually make it to print because of this.
Additionally, he probably doesn’t feel the need to finish the book as HBO is going to “finish” his work, so of course he’s dragging his feet on that. It’s probably a huge relief after being tied up in it for long.
I hope he takes some time to focus on himself and whatever he’s passionate about for now.
If I can point out, he put this pressure on himself by working with HBO in the first place. Anyone with eyes could have seen that this was going to happen, but he thought that he was going to be able to buy time by either having a huge gap between seasons or even a Dunk & Egg interlude for a couple of seasons. I have zero sympathy.
He does not write during the NFL season, which runs from September to February
@Faye, While I love you are standing up for an author, I can tell you as a published one (nothing like George, just romance books), that edits and rewrites do not take years.
The goal of the publishing house is to get the book to the masses in the shortest turn around to make money. The longest I’ve ever done on edits and rewrites was 2 months. Now that book was only 65,000 words and George’s are massive, but I can’t see even one of the Big Five keeping editors on hold for years because once you are assigned an editor they are pretty much exclusively yours for that timeframe.
Congratulations on your books! Interesting, most recently in my memory, M. L. Rio spoke about her novel, If We Were Villians, took 2 years from being picked up by a publisher to print. Something like 9 months of rewrites and hers is about 114k. Not out of the realm to think a rewrite of something as big as a GoT novel would take longer.
His publisher would want to get this book out as fast as humanly possible, because they’re the ones with the most to lose. Each week, more unpublished story is unreeled on HBO, and while GRRM likes to say that they’re two different beasts, it’s pretty clear what direction the story is intended to take. Could you imagine investing all of this time into an author only to have him completely sputter out?
And yes, H is correct. Martin takes an unusually long time, because he likes to go back and constantly re-write. Other authors in the genre can be much more prolific. While I don’t expect him to be a Brandon Sanderson, the reality is that GRRM is slow because he’s slow and he spends more of his time hanging out at Cons, guest editing, working on other stories, and of course not writing during football season.
Personally, I have resigned myself to having the TV series tell the rest of the story, and that’s okay.
As a self-published, ‘indie’ author, it took me nowhere near as long to get my own, amazon-fantasy epic series completed, except for the first novel of the four – that one I got the idea for when I was 17 and started writing on it whenever I wasn’t in school from 18 onwards. I got the three sequels written and revised – had to do my own editing because I was broke all the time – in something like a year to a year and a half. And all of those I wrote well before I turned 40. And then I revised them again when I self-published them. If I had had a formal editor, they would have been pleased with my discipline as a writer, I suspect.
One wishes Martin would have taken a cue from Hemingway for a change and employed some tough self-discipline. No side jaunts. Enough with the lovingly described meals. If it truly adds nothing to the plot or if it drags it out unduly, cut it down or chop it out. You have to a little brutal when you’re revising/editing your own work.
If it weren’t for sites like Lulu and Nook/Kindle, I’d have never seen my work in published form. And despite an utter lack of funds for publicity, I have managed to sell quite a few Kindle editions of my Greek mythology related fantasy works – one humorous and one dramatic concerning Hades and Persephone and a Satan-like figure.
What I wouldn’t give to have such corporate publishing power behind me, especially for my neglected amazon epic series. Ah well…Perhaps Martin has indeed lost interest in his characters and his narrative has lost its head of steam, as some have suggested. I can see that happening. Sometimes writing is like pulling your own teeth.
I’ll take what I can get at this point.
I’m just hoping he gets to write an episode this season. The Martin episodes of GoT are always the most bonkers!
He won’t unless anonymously.. 😂
Fans are already angry about his non monogamous commitment to the WOW book. If such a rumor would be know and believed true, he would have to move to the moon to escape the fury.
His publisher must be fuming, because this scenario specifically wasn’t supposed to happen. He was actually not supposed to take on any new commitments once he reached the crisis point a year ago.
@Bridget
I have seen theories from fans :they believe fire and blood books allow publishing house to compensate the money lost from the lack of releasing the principal story’s ones, with big fat green little bags to earn for the next two years .
Asoaif should have been already finished, or we should have been waiting for a eighth tome,and some others egg and dunk novels.
There’s no way Fire and Blood would make up for what they’ll lose though in people that just end up choosing not to buy it now that they’ve seen the series, IMO. But his publishing house must be so unhappy with him.
I gave up on him after book 5. He gets lost in subplot hell, and it just got too tedious to read. I find I just don’t care anymore.
It’s like when your TV show goes on summer hiatus. Too often I don’tcare, or remember, what happened last season to go back. Obviously some exceptions (like Elementary!)
But he’s done so often, I don’t care how it ends. I’ll make it up myself.
Bran wins it all. There, done.
“I’ve seen some truly weird reports about WOW on the internet of late, by ‘journalists’ who make their stories up out of whole cloth.”
Well, dude, in the absence of information, people make up their own. Shrug.
JK Rowling created an entire world from nothing, but in a timely manner.
With the exception of book 7, Rowling’s books also took place almost entirely within the confines of Hogwarts and had much clearer time constraints built in from the beginning, plus more clearly cut good and evil sides, etc. Not to run down Rowling’s books at ALL (I love them), but they aren’t as complex as GRRM’s books. I do wonder also if Rowling’s editor (or editors) were firmer with her about not putting in too much excess material–I remember when Book 5 in the Harry Potter series came out, there was some critique that it was too long/slow/plodding, and books 6 and 7 are definitely trimmed down relative to 5. GRRM allowed his storyline to go way too much all over the place and apparently has never had an editor to rein him in. I’m with others who really lost interest around book 4, it just became too many story arcs to keep track of and so little forward movement on many of them. If the series ever finishes, it will be interesting to see how many of the subplots actually “matter” to the final resolution.
The whole business of not writing during NFL season has got to really slow him down too. I don’t write fiction but at one time I worked in scientific research and had to produce papers on a regular basis. The key to producing good output is to write a little bit every day. Some days maybe only a few sentences, other days you write the overarching arc of an entire paper and just have to go back and fill in details. If you leave it for an extended period, you have to spend ages remembering where you were and what you were planning to do next. I’ve read multiple interviews with successful authors and they all say things like you have to write consistently, you have to write daily, etc.
As soon as the TV series got to do the John Snow reveal, you knew that GRRM had tapped out. He’s never been particularly passionate about A Song Of Ice And Fire, but clearly appreciates the opportunities it brings. I’ve always thought that he regretted killing off so many of his “good” characters, because the last couple of books got so bogged down and it’s just turned into bad people doing bad things. The man needs a solid editor to wade through the crap, too. Books 4 and 5 were actually 1 book that got so big they were split in 2, and when you read them there is just so much filler.
At this point, I’m fine with HBO finishing it. They’ve definitely got a lot more narrative momentum than books 3, 4, and 5, and while there have been some valid criticisms they’ve managed to sidestep a lot of the places where GRRM got stuck.
He is not going to publish anything. Not till 2019. He will wait for the tv show to end
At this point the tv show has usurped the narrative and I for one am more invested in how the show ends. He will probably incorporate a chunk of how the story moved in the tv show to his book series.
That is what I think.
That’s an interesting point. Maybe he has some sort of deal with HBO to not publish anything regarding the main storyline until the show ends. I mean, he’s a slow writer for sure, but I can’t imagine they’d be too happy with the book stealing thunder from the show either.
I don’t think so.
Look at the way it was handled for the Harry Potter series.
It was what HBO was hoping for. Books and movies were pushing each others with the merchandising striving. When one was on the spotlight everything around the universe was making profit on it.
With very happy fans who keep good memories of the franchise and adore the able to deliver on time author. (until last film)
Game of thrones tv series is now a success on its own, even with controversies, but as the end is near, G. R. R. Martin looks like a naked king, with resentful or disappointed readers and happy enemies who can make fun of his self complacency with time receipts.
This is not the kind of story telling you want to be part of.
Tv series doesn’t need him anymore (he dislikes it), and now he ‘s destroying his own legacy,already mixed with bitterness.
Nope. HBO desperately wanted him to finish. Who do you think finally put the screws to him 2 years ago?
I feel like if he publishes the books post series, the hype will have died. People wanted the book because they want to know how it ends. If the series is done, people will already know how it ends and will be less inclined to read his version. I think if it gets published, it will be a massive hit but I do think sales wont be as huge because people will have moved on.
Releasing it between last season and this season would’ve been his best move. *sigh* what does he even do with his days?
He is never going to finish.
I am more invested in the books!!!
Shit will hit the fan much more epically in the books.
Let’s just say Daenarys’ situation is way more precarious in the books…
I really can’t be excited about a Targaryen book though. The Targaryens are bickering narcissistic genocidal and generally shit leaders.
A whole book about them sounds awful.
I didn’t even know it was on the cards.
My brother in law wont watch the shows until the books are finished.
He’ll be a while so….
He can work on whichever writing he wants in whatever order he wants at whatever pace he wants. Thanks for the many, many, MANY hours of reading and watching. Thanks for working with other writers and collaborators. Thanks for giving us a world and awesome characters. You do you, George.
I’m glad I waited on starting the books because I truly don’t think he’ll ever finish the series. He’s 68 and even an optimistic forecast would put him in his late 70s for ‘A dream of spring’ and that is IF he’ll have any interest to write it. So…I really hope HBO’s ending will be satisfying for readers and viewers alike, because that’s probably all we’ll get.
I have this theory that George R R Martin secretly does not like some of the show runners’ decisions, so he’s re writing the series based on what he’s seen play out on the show. I don’t have anything concrete really, but it would explain the longer than usual delay (especially since he’s claimed parts of The Winds of Winter were already written for the previous book and just cut out)
HBO can’t spoil anything because literally the show and books are so far removed from each other that it really doesn’t matter anymore.
If you read the books you’d realize this.
I ended up sitting around the fire, drinking beer with George at a Halloween party last year. He’s pretty delightful, a sweet (but pernickety) old guy who enjoys telling stories. What I’ve observed is that he’s really not that interesting in writing and more interested in enjoying hanging out with his literary friends (like Neil Gaiman and Ernie Cline) who come visit and do signings and events at the movie theater he owns in Santa Fe. I only met him once but we share mutual friend and he has a reputation around Santa Fe for being super involved with everything EXCEPT writing.
I’m not a fan of his writing style so I do have a horse in the finishing ASOIAF race but yeah, it’s not going to happen anytime soon. He really is a big grumpy sweetie though.
He’s been like that for a long time – he never misses a chance to guest edit, he loves Cons – basically he loves everything his writing brings to him. My guess has been that he lost interest in the story a while back. He cleared out too many characters, got bogged down in the details and wasn’t sure how to get everything back on track.
Book readers who are criticizing books 4 and 5, I highly recommend you Google search a blog called The Meereenese Blot. Completely changed how I think of both AFFC and ADWD. while there are still problems with both, I can’t fault his mastery of plot and character development as there’s a lot more going on in those books that meets the eye.
I don’t believe we’ll ever get A Dream of Spring. It’s just never going to happen and it sucks because the show is such a poor substitute for the books.
It doesn’t surprise me to hear.
To be honest, like many have already said above, I’m happy with the show telling the story for me.
The last book or two were a slog to get through. They took forever to read, compared to the ones before that I devoured.
I don’t think the new one is coming anytime soon and, as his writing hasn’t been great, I’m not interested in reading them unless they diverge considerably from the show.
He’s actually lost the agency to finish his own story at this stage. I will read the remaining books, if he ever finishes them but I consider the show the canon now.
Sad thing is I think the show has suffered because of a lack of books. The first four season were bloody amazing due to B & W’s much needed editing and condensing of Martins incredibly rich story lines and personalities, they truly were some of the absolute best TV. However season 5 was meandering and starting to lose it’s way and starting to feel like filler while season 6 was most definitely filler, and it was obvious they were trying to give Martin time to finish the next book.
I’m really not enjoying this season so far, I don’t understand Euron’s inclusion given how little we’ve seen of him so far and the fact we only have about 10 episodes left. I don’t want or need expansion at this point, I want to see all the current players on the board being moved into the end game, otherwise I’m afraid the finale is going to be very rushed and disappointing.