Gather round, Game of Thrones fans: it’s time to brace yourselves for yet another update—or lack thereof—on George R.R. Martin’s progress with his long-delayed book, The Winds of Winter.
In a recent interview with Time, Martin was, once again, pressed on the status of his “new” book, The Winds of Winter. New is the operative word because the long-awaited Game of Thrones book has been in a perpetual limbo state for a decade and some change.
Not missing a beat, Time editor Jeffrey Kluger segued into his question about the status of Winds of Winter by reading aloud a post from “some wags” online, who pointed out “We got real dire wolves before Winds of Winter.” While we’re way past the point of exhaustion entertaining updates on the book’s status, Martin did share some insight into his current efforts while empathizing with readers’ frustration over their endless wait.
“That’s the curse of my life here. There’s no doubt Winds of Winter is 13 years late. I’m still working on it,” Martin said. “I have periods where I make progress and then other things divert my attention.”
As he noted in his last update on The Winds of Winter, one thing diverting his attention from the book is deadlines with “one of the HBO shows.” Martin also got ahead of other online fan critiques of his varying side quests, like opening up a bookstore and a theater, as reasons for his apparent procrastination. In short, Martin said fans overestimate how much time he’s putting into things, saying he’s not behind the register ringing people up at his bookstore or running the projector at his theater.
On a related note, Martin mentioned that his recent photo op with science’s latest affront to Darwinism, which resulted in an adorable snapshot of him holding a quasi-dire wolf, didn’t take up too much of his time from writing The Winds of Winter, either.
“You’ve heard exactly what role I played in the dire wolf thing. I’m sitting at home. I might’ve been working on Winds of Winter or a screenplay, and suddenly, Peter Jackson is on the line. I heard about this, and I traveled out to see it. The trip was probably like four days. I flew down to Dallas, we took the tour, and then we ate some barbecue,” Martin said. “It did not seriously impinge on the writing of Winds of Winter. But people make it seem—my more fanatic fans—as if it’s one or the other, and it’s not.”
For Game of Thrones news with firmer timelines, House of the Dragon season three is expected to release sometime next year. Before that, the Dunk and Egg series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is coming this summer. With any luck, Martin will have had a more substantial update on The Winds of Winter by the time these upcoming series have completed their runs.
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