George R.R. Martin is not a fan of deadlines at the best of times. For the past 24 years he has been working on the Game of Thrones series, making slow but steady progress, and helping to create a hit HBO show in the process.
The sixth book in the series, “The Winds of Winter”, is long overdue, both for fans and for Martin’s publisher. Yet in his blog post yesterday, Martin noted that the new “enforced isolation” of pandemic life, had allowed him to make “steady progress” on the manuscript.
However, readers need not get their hopes up. While Martin wrote: “I finished a new chapter yesterday, another one three days ago, another one the previous week”, he continued that: “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.”
Martin’s representative at Random House, David Moench said that: “George Martin is not available for an interview, as he is indeed focused on writing THE WINDS OF WINTER,” he continued that: “Random House will publish that book once it is finished, whenever that may be.”
For fans, the announcement is something of a non-starter. One said that Martin’s “announcement” “hardly even qualifies as news.”
With a delivery date of 2021 suggested, Martin’s series would have taken three decades to unfold. One only wonders how long we will have to wait for the final instalment of the series.
