George R.R. Martin has offered an update on the long awaited book “The Winds of Winter” with an idea of when the sequel novel might actually hit bookstores…
George R.R. Martin has been writing feverishly during the quarantine and that’s resulted in multiple new chapters being completed in “The Winds of Winter” — the long awaited sixth novel in his “A Song of Ice and Fire” series.
According to the 71-year-old author, he’s been pounding away at his keyboard, churning out pages at a rapid fire pace, which gives him hope that the novel will be finished relatively soon.
“If nothing else, the enforced isolation has helped me write,” Martin wrote on his personal blog. “I am spending long hours every day on THE WINDS OF WINTER, and making steady progress. I finished a new chapter yesterday, another one three days ago, another one the previous week. But no, this does not mean that the book will be finished tomorrow or published next week. It’s going to be a huge book, and I still have a long way to go.
“I was heartbroken when CoNZealand was forced to go virtual due to the pandemic and I had to cancel my plans (exciting plans) for a long trip down to Wellington with Parris and my minions… but there is definitely a silver lining in that cloud. The last thing I need right now is a long interruption that might cost me all the momentum I have built up. I can always visit Wellington next year, when I hope that both Covid-19 and THE WINDS OF WINTER will be done.”
Martin says he’s been writing at a pace unfamiliar to him in recent years, which has certainly slowed down the eventual release of “The Winds of Winter” but he also offered an update on the characters he’s been working on lately.
“Of late I have been visiting with Cersei, Asha, Tyrion, Ser Barristan, and Areo Hotah,” Martin wrote. “I will be dropping back into Braavos next week. I have bad days, which get me down, and good days, which lift me up, but all in all I am pleased with the way things are doing.
“I do wish they would go faster, of course. Way way back in 1999, when I was deep in the writing of A STORM OF SWORDS, I was averaging about 150 pages of manuscript a month. I fear I shall never recapture that pace again. Looking back, I am not sure how I did it then. A fever indeed.”
Anticipation for “The Winds of Winter” has grown year by year as Martin continued to offer updates but still no word on when the book might actually be finished. The last book “A Dance With Dragons” was released all the way back in 2011.
Since that time, “Game of Thrones” came to an end on HBO and another spinoff series titled “House of the Dragon” — based on a separate novel from Martin — was ordered at the cable network.
While Martin’s update offers some hope that “The Winds of Winter” will be released in 2021, there’s still no guarantees at this point. Following that book’s completion, Martin has said there will be at least one more novel in the series — “A Dream of Spring” — before he brings the story to a close.
