George R.R. Martin offers further update on THE WINDS OF WINTER, estimates the book is over 75% complete

George R.R. Martin has offered another update on his progress on The Winds of Winter, the sixth and penultimate volume in his A Song of Ice and Fire series (better known these days as "the Game of Thrones books,"), only four months after the last one.

Martin reiterates that the book is going to be significantly longer than the previous two longest novels in the series, A Storm of Swords and A Dance with Dragons. In his previous update, he indicated the book will around 300 manuscript pages longer than either of those volumes, and maybe longer. He also reiterates that at such a size, it may be necessary for the novel to be split into two volumes. However, he wants to finish the book in full before it is split, so the two volumes can be released together or just a few months apart (unlike the split of A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, which led to a six-year gap between the two volumes).

Martin also suggests that the book is 75% complete, immediately before saying his estimates are notoriously unreliable. So the book may be significantly more than three-quarters done, although hopefully not less. If we assume that tracks linearly, that means the book might still be two to three years away.

George R.R. Martin offers first WINDS OF WINTER update for a while, but no release date; book may be "300 pages" longer than any previous novel

Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin is plugging away at the sixth and hoped-to-still-be-penultimate novel in the series, The Winds of Winter. On Tuesday it will be eleven years to the day since the previous book came out, and fans are understandably keen for any info on the next volume. Martin has now provided an interesting update.

Although not being drawn on how many pages or chapters he had completed (although he had previously noted the book will likely be longer than A Storm of Swords and A Dance with Dragons, the longest previous books in the series at around a thousand pages in hardcover apiece), Martin did note that as the story has developed, it has moved further and further away from events depicted at the end of the television adaptation, Game of Thrones.

Martin notes that some things that happen in the later seasons of the show will still happen in The Winds of Winter (and its as-yet unbegun successor, A Dream of Spring), but "not quite in the same ways." But also, "much of the rest will be quite different." He sees this as a natural result of how the TV show pared down plotlines from the books, not even bothering to introduce characters like Lady Stoneheart, Young Griff, the Tattered Prince, Darkstar or Jeyne Westerling, whilst other characters had very different portrayals (most notably Euron Greyjoy, and George specifically notes that).

Martin also notes that not all the characters who survived Game of Thrones will survive A Song of Ice and Fire, and not all of the characters who died on Game of Thrones will did in A Song of Ice and Fire. For the ultimate ending, "some things will be the same. A lot will not."

A key revelation is that The Winds of Winter will not feature any new POV characters (presumably aside from the Prologue and any Epilogue if present, which always use one-off POVs), for the first time in the series to date. Assuming some POV characters die, The Winds of Winter will likely be the first book to shrink the cast of main characters rather than expand it.

No release date is hinted at, although no doubt every word will thoroughly examined by the Internet to discern clues. In the meantime, HBO is launching its Game of Thrones prequel TV series, House of the Dragon, on 21 August. An illustrated history of the Targaryen family, The Rise of the Dragon, is due in October.

UPDATE: GRRM has appeared on the Game of Owns podcast to discuss the history of the series, his work on the television series and progress on The Winds of Winter. Martin notes that he has almost completed multiple character arcs for the book (including Tyrion) and the book will be considerably longer than A Storm of Swords or A Dance with Dragons, more like "300 pages" longer (to the point that the book being split in two is possible).

The Grand WINDS OF WINTER Update Post

It's been a long time since we last did this, since hard data has been scarce these last few years, but given recent movement it seemed a viable time to do a general update on the state of The Winds of Winter.

People keep posting this cover but it's worth reiterating that it isn't the official cover for the book. It was created in 2012 by fan FeroxDeoVacuusVinco, and is so good that it even convinced GRRM into thinking it was real cover concept from his publishers. 

Overview 

The Winds of Winter is the sixth volume of A Song of Ice and Fire. It is currently planned to be the penultimate volume of the series, to be followed by a concluding volume called A Dream of Spring. Some commentators have speculated that, due to the large array of storylines and character arcs that need resolving, an expansion to eight or nine books (either directly or by one or both of these volumes being split in two) is possible.

According to Martin, he expects The Winds of Winter to come in at around the same length as A Storm of Swords and A Dance with Dragons, at around 1,520 manuscript pages, 420,000 words and between 70 and 90 chapters. Based on previous volumes, the book cannot be much longer, as at that point the book would need to be split in half for publication due to limitations in printing. However, the dramatic increase in popularity of the books, due to the Game of Thrones TV series, has resulted in over 80 million additional sales and a substantial increase in profit since 2011. The publishers would likely stretch this limitation considerably for The Winds of Winter, maybe up to over 500,000 words. Another possibility is that whilst Martin is writing material for The Winds of Winter, he has disregarded the page limitation and if that means the book will have to be published in two volumes even in hardcover, so be it. Ebooks are not subject to the same limitation, of course, but with the ebook share of the market falling to 17-18% in recent years, clearly the physical limitation concerns will still be paramount.


Completed Material

(note that I have been covering this on Westeros.org here, and am grateful for the coverage and research provided by Brynden "Hypeslayer" BFish at r/asoiaf)

It appears that Martin has either completed or almost completed a minimum of 39 chapters based solely on his public utterances; the true number is certainly significantly higher. These comprise:

• Prologue: POV character unknown, although Ser Forley Prester seems to be the leading candidate, since GRRM has confirmed that Jeyne Westerling (Robb Stark's widow) appears in this chapter but is not necessarily the viewpoint character.
• Arya Stark: 4 chapters
• Tyrion Lannister: 3 chapters
• Barristan Selmy: 3 chapters
• Arianne Martell: 3 chapters
• Melisandre: 2 chapters
• Theon Greyjoy: 2 chapters
• Aeron Greyjoy: 2 chapters
• Areo Hotah: 2 chapters
• Cersei Lannister: 2 chapters
• Asha Greyjoy: 2 chapters
• Jon Connington: 2 chapters
• Sansa Stark: 1 chapter
• Victarion Greyjoy: 1 chapter
• Bran Stark: 1 chapter
• Daenerys Targaryen: 1 chapter
• Davos Seaworth: 1 chapter
• 6 additional chapters completed in June and July 2020

POV Characters

It should be noted that the above list comprises all of the surviving POV characters from A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons with four exceptions: Jon Snow, Jaime Lannister, Brienne of Tarth and Samwell Tarly. Given Jon, Jaime and Brienne's cliffhanger fates in the previous book, it is unlikely that Martin will confirm new chapters from their POVs (although I suspect Jaime and Brienne will have POVs; Jon not having POVs after his presumably inevitable resurrection would be an interesting stylistic choice if GRRM should choose to pursue it). Sam is an interesting one as from a narrative perspective, it is possible to likely that he will have a fairly major story arc in The Winds of Winter. Martin not mentioning any additional Sam material at all is probably happenstance.

Martin has said previously that, for the first time ever, there will be no new POVs in The Winds of Winter (bar the prologue and epilogue, if applicable) and so far this appears to be the case.

To be fair, if I'd written two million words of complex fantasy on a white-on-black word processor, I'd also want to murder every single character.

Released Material

Martin has publicly released the following material from The Winds of Winter in the form of sample chapters:

• "Mercy" - an Arya Stark chapter
• Arianne I
• Arianne II
• Theon I
• Alayne I - a Sansa Stark chapter
• Barristan I - in the paperback version of A Dance with Dragons
• Tyrion II - in the World of Ice and Fire app

These chapters have been read at conventions and signings:

• Tyrion I
• Barristan II
• "The Forsaken" - an Aeron Greyjoy chapter
• Victarion I

Writing History

Martin delivered A Dance with Dragons, the previous volume in the series, to his publishers in May 2011; it was published in July that year. Several chapters completed for the book were held back for The Winds of Winter in the editing process, totally around 200 manuscript pages. His editor Anne Groell reported receiving an additional 168 manuscript pages in 2013, for a total of ~368 manuscript pages, although George had many more chapters in at least some partial form of completion at this time.

Relatively limited progress was made during this two-year period due to GRRM's commitments elsewhere. This included revising the maps for The Lands of Ice and Fire (2012), which required GRRM to completely re-conceive and redraw his maps of Essos, and also his scriptwriting duties on Game of Thrones, which required approximately one month of work in each year of 2010-13. He also agreed to write 3,000 words of material for The World of Ice and Fire (2014) in 2012, but this ballooned out of control and he ended up writing almost 300,000 words of material in three months. This material was heavily compressed by Elio Garcia and Linda Antonsson for the published book. The unedited material was later recycled and added to with new material to form Fire and Blood (2018). Martin also continued his work on co-editing the Wild Cards series with Melinda Snodgrass (as he had done since 1986) and co-editing four anthologies with Gardner Dozois during this period.

For these reasons, work in earnest on The Winds of Winter did not recommence until 2012, then accelerating through 2013 and 2014. Despite the early setbacks, progress in this period seems to have been reasonable (at least by Martin's standards from A Dance with Dragons), with his publishers reporting having the book on the shelves in 2015 or 2016 was possible, and at least two of Martin's overseas translators being advised by his that they were expecting the book in this time frame. Martin also refocused his work on the book in this time, suspending his co-editing work with Dozois in 2014 and also confirming he would not be writing any more Game of Thrones episodes after the fourth season. This seemed to make completion in 2015 for 2016 publication possible (approximating the time period spent waiting for both A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons).

In a January 2016 update on the book, Martin reinforced this, noting that in 2015 he believed he was close enough to deliver the book for relatively speedy publication. However, he also noted in this update that he was still some months from completion. This period of high optimism seems to have petered out, with Martin noting that he had been trying to stay ahead of the TV show (which passed the events of A Dance with Dragons in 2015 and concluded entirely in 2019) but ultimately this pressure had been counter-productive. He also noted in March 2014 that he had not done anything like his normal rewriting and re-editing on the book, which given the substantial rewrites the last few books in the series have gone through, should have been a red flag.

Thus, although confirmation will have to wait until the book is done and Martin hopefully provides a detailed post-mortem of the process, it sounds like work on the book proceeded well and completion appeared possible in 2014-15, until he started rewriting and editing the book and ran into significant problems that required much more extensive restructuring and rewriting (on the order of, if not greater than, the "Meereenese Knot" was caused a lot of the problems with A Dance with Dragons).

Estimating Completion

The obvious answer to this question is how long is a piece of string? In his updates Martin has ruled out completion this year, but indicates that getting the book on shelves in (presumably late) 2021 may be possible. Although we've been here before and faced disappointment (with the 2016 update), it's also worth noting that GRRM's recent updates have been much more upbeat than at any time since work on The Winds of Winter began. They resemble the "light at the end of the tunnel" updates he began providing on A Dance with Dragons in late 2009, although the book was still twenty months away from hitting shelves. For that reason, granting Martin's usual tendency towards optimism, a publication date of early-to-mid 2022 for The Winds of Winter may be more realistic and likely.

At which point, of course, we get to enjoy another wait all over again.

George R.R. Martin provides surprise updates on THE WINDS OF WINTER

Author George R.R. Martin has provided uncharacteristic updates on the state of The Winds of Winter, the sixth and (currently) penultimate volume in his A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series.

Martin has been largely silent over the writing of the book, having provided very little in the way of concrete updates on the volume since he began work on it in 2012. Martin had previously provided detailed updates, including regular completed page counts, for both A Feast for Crows (2005) and A Dance with Dragons (2011) but later regretted this, particularly with editing issues on Dragons that involved sometimes "uncompleting" chapters to rewrite them in light of major structural changes. As such, he came to believe that providing word counts was counterproductive, leading people to dramatically underestimate how much time it would take to finish the book (even himself). Early in the writing of The Winds of Winter, he expressed a preference for delivering no updates at all and instead just announcing "it's done!" out of nowhere.

That seems to have remained his preference, but from time to time he cracked and gave a general update on the state of the book. It appears that the book was somewhat close to completion in late 2015 and early 2016, but clearly it was not delivered. The reasons for this are unclear, and I suspect we will have to wait for a detailed post-mortem after release (as George provided for A Dance with Dragons) to find out what transpired. The most likely possibility is that George had not done much rewriting or editing of the book by that point in favour of pressing on with new material (which seems to have been more the approach that helped with the relatively fast writing of the first three books in the series) and the subsequent rewrites exposed larger problems in the narrative that required more extensive changes. George also advised last year that he'd been urged to split the book (like A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons) but had refused, suggesting he had enough material to release "a book" at that time but not necessarily the book he wanted. He has also cited at times overwhelming pressure from fans and publishers to get the book out before the conclusion of the Game of Thrones TV show (2011-19), which was counterproductive.

In the two new updates, Martin notes completing six chapters in the last month (not writing six chapters from scratch; it is probable these chapters have been in the planning and writing stages for years) and even noting what characters he has been spending time with: Cersei Lannister, Asha Greyjoy, Tyrion Lannister, Ser Barristan Selmy, Areo Hotah, Arya Stark. Some fans have tried to extrapolate this to mean these characters survive well into The Winds of Winter, but given Martin's nonlinear writing process (sometimes writing chapters from late in the book's timeline before writing those set earlier), this is not necessarily the case. Martin has noted that the book is "huge," and will likely match (if not exceed) A Storm of Swords and A Dance with Dragons in size (both books exceeded 1,500 manuscript pages and 420,000 words, with more than 70 chapters in ADWD and more than 80 in ASoS).

Martin's recent updates are reminiscent of the more upbeat and optimistic posts he started posting in late 2009 as the light at the end of the tunnel for A Dance with Dragons became apparent, but it was still some eighteen months before the book was released. Martin cautions that his optimistic tone should be not be taken as a sign that the book will be finished imminently, but the current progress is the most encouraging news in some time.

George R.R. Martin in London

I attended George R.R. Martin's talk in London last night and tweeted about some of the things he said, which, as is Twitter's wont, some people misinterpreted or misunderstood, so I thought it might be useful to clarify and expand on these points here.

The evening started with George being surprised by bigwigs from Nielsen, who gave him two special awards for sales of A Song of Ice and Fire in the UK, confirming that A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings have individually sold over 1 million copies each in the UK since the UK Nielsen Bookscan started in 2001. Given the UK's much smaller market than the US, that's a huge sales achievement.

Most of the interview (with historian Dan Jones) was standard stuff we've heard many times before: George's early career in short stories, working in television (bearing in mind we were in a church, it was surprising that George got so wound up by reminiscing over producers messing with his scripts that he dropped a couple of f-bombs), writing Avalon and getting the inspiration for Bran's first chapter etc.

George did expand on the writing of The Hedge Knight. Robert Silverberg got a ton of money to do Legends, an all-star anthology of the biggest names in fantasy. He'd recruited people like Terry Pratchett, Stephen King and Robert Jordan. Initially GRRM thought that he wasn't established enough in epic fantasy to contribute (as only A Game of Thrones had come out and he was deep in the writing of A Clash of Kings) but the money on offer was large and it was pointed out he'd get a good cross-pollination from other authors' fanbases reading his story and deciding to check out AGoT. George realised he couldn't write anything set during the series so did a prequel. When it was nearly done, George got a message from Silverberg telling him he'd heard that ACoK was going to be late and Legends couldn't be late for the marketing push it had been allocated, so Silverberg was going to drop George's story and had already commissioned a replacement. George ended up delivering his story on deadline, before several of the other authors had delivered theirs. That's why Legends has 11 stories rather than a more logical 10. George credits The Hedge Knight with helping massively boost the popularity of ASoIaF as a whole, as there was a very sharp increase in sales for ACoK compared to AGoT.

George noted that he had identified 12 possible stories/episodes from Dunk & Egg's life that could be expanded into short stories, including the 3 already published, so that's 9 potential further stories for the duo. From previous interviews we know that the next two - The She-Wolves and The Village Hero (both working titles) - are planned in some depth and The She-Wolves is partially or even mostly written, but GRRM wasn't sure what order to publish them in. Both are on hold until The Winds of Winter is done.

The first Game of Thrones spin-off TV show is still officially unnamed: Bloodmoon sounds like a codename (or - my supposition - the name of the pilot episode) and George still wants The Long Night (or, from another interview, The Longest Night). The pilot has finished filming and HBO will mull it over before pulling the trigger (or not) on a season order in a few months.

GRRM also repeated that the inspiration for the Red Wedding was the Black Dinner of Scottish history, in particular the more "colourful" account that the doomed clan leaders were serenaded with a death march song and had a black boar's head (the symbol of death) served to them at dinner before their execution, which most historians now seem to believe was a total fabrication ("But it sounded better"). His Red Wedding was the Black Dinner "turned up to 11" but the TV version was "turned up to 14."

Also a reiteration that Fire and Blood wasn't supposed to exist, it was supposed to be his contribution to The World of Ice and Fire in the form of sidebars that he wrote shortly after finishing A Dance with Dragons, but instead of 3,000 words he ended up submitting over 170,000 words (in earlier interviews he said closer to 300,000, but I wonder if the 170,000 is specifically the information on the Targaryens and the 300,000 includes all the info he contributed on the Empire of the Dawn, Iron Island history, etc, i.e. everything else in the book), as it had just all poured out of him in a few weeks (way back in the day he said it was around 2-3 months). His publishers were horrified, as it made World of Ice and Fire too big to be publishable. His co-writers Elio Garcia and Linda Antonsson compressed almost all of it down and summarised it to fit into the book, leaving George with this big manuscript which he then chopped up to produce the three anthology stories (Princess and the Queen, The Rogue Prince and Sons of the Dragon). The motivation to publish Fire and Blood came when HBO started talking about prequel spin-offs and George realised the manuscript could be a potential source of new stories and information, although ironically the one HBO decided to proceed with had nothing to do with the Fire and Blood material.

Fire and Blood II is planned out - GRRM is relishing the chance to tell the story of Aegon IV and his mistresses - but not yet written, and can't be published until after ASoIaF as a whole is completed.

George did talk about his schedule in terms of the order of things he wants to publish things in. No dates were mentioned and the order sounded aspirational rather than set in stone:

1. The Winds of Winter (natch)
2. Dunk & Egg IV (either The She-Wolves or The Village Hero)
3. A Dream of Spring
4. Dunk & Egg V (either The Village Hero or The She-Wolves)
5. Fire & Blood II

There will also be more Dunk & Egg short stories after the fifth one. As mentioned before he has twelve potential story ideas mapped out which will span their lives. He didn't mention Summerhall or how it would work scheduling the D&E stories versus F&B2, as presumably one of them will spoil Summerhall for the other, as his "constructive vagueness" over the events from World of Ice and Fire presumably won't fly again.

The schedule may sound "ambitious" given the long wait between ASoIaF volumes and indeed D&E stories, but if was suppose The Winds of Winter is closer to being done than not, take on board that The She-Wolves is mostly done and he effectively wrote Fire & Blood I in a few months, then the only question mark is really on ADoS, how fast it can be done and if it's really going to be the last book in the series. None of these questions came up, so I guess time will only tell on those.

George rounded off the interview by saying his favourite dragon in the series is Balerion, the Black Dread, and his favourite sword is Dawn, and dropped a hint that there is something unusual about the sword as it is forged from a meteorite.

German cover art for FIRE AND BLOOD VOL I by George R.R. Martin released

The German cover art for Fire and Blood, Volume I has been unveiled.

This book is the full and unedited text of the material that George R.R. Martin wrote for The World of Ice and Fire quite a few years ago now; GRRM was only supposed to write a few sidebars but ended up writing over 300,000 words of text for the project in the space of just a couple of months (fake history, it turns out, being far easier to write than prose). Elio Garcia, Jr. and Linda Antonsson had to massively edit down and summarise that material in The World of Ice and Fire itself, but Martin has released three excerpts of that massive block of material as stand-alone novellas: The Princess and the Queen (published in Dangerous Women), The Rogue Prince (published in Rogues) and The Songs of the Dragon (published in The Book of Swords).

This book contains all of that material and much more, telling in some 600 pages the story of the Targaryen dynasty from its days in ancient Valyria before the Doom through to the reign of Aegon III, with the bulk of the material believed to focus on the Conquest and the Dance of Dragons.

The remainder of the Targaryen reign will be covered in Fire and Blood, Volume II, which is as yet unwritten. According to Martin it will not be published until A Song of Ice and Fire itself is completed, presumably because the second volume would have to fully cover both the events surrounding the Dunk and Egg stories and how they end (particularly the Great Fire of Summerhall) and Robert's Rebellion, important revelation about which remain to be made in the novels to come. Of course, it would also be an incomplete history without knowing the ultimate fate of the last scions of the Targaryen dynasty, such as Daenerys.

The German edition of Fire and Blood will be published on 12 November 2018; the UK and US editions appear to be scheduled for October, so I'd expect to be seeing the cover art for those shortly.

Martin recently confirmed he is taking a social media break to focus on finishing the projects on his plate, including The Winds of Winter (the sixth and apparently-penultimate Song of Ice and Fire novel); although previous commentary suggested that he didn't envisage Winter being published before Fire and Blood I, he has also said that he could finish the novel within "months" (back in 2015, but still). Based on the turnaround time of the previous novels in the series, The Winds of Winter should be on shelves around three months after it is completed and handed in.

Update on THE WINDS OF WINTER and FIRE AND BLOOD

After a very lengthy spell of silence on the subject, George R.R. Martin has finally provided an update (if a short one) on two A Song of Ice and Fire projects, including The One That Everyone Wants To Know About.

Artwork by Chase Stone, from The World of Ice and Fire.

No, The Winds of Winter is not done, and George confirms that completion is still months away, finally ruling out a 2017 release date. The good news is that George thinks that a 2018 release for the book is therefore more likely, but nothing is set in stone.

Interestingly, George also provides a update on Fire and Blood, the once-mooted "GRRMarillion" which was originally planned to come after the series was completed. This book draws on over 300,000 words of new material that GRRM wrote for The World of Ice and Fire, most of which was dramatically cut down in editing for the final book. With something like 80,000 words on the Dance of Dragons alone (from which the novellas The Princes and the Queen and The Rogue Prince have been drawn), this was always going to be a hefty project and, going through it, George and his publishers realised that it was going to have to be a two-volume project, with the first volume (containing well over 100,000 words, probably closer to 200,000) already effectively complete.

As a result, Fire and Blood: Volume I, being a history of the Targaryens from Aegon the Conqueror to Aegon III the Dragonbane, will be published in late 2018 or early 2019. Fire and Blood: Volume II, which will cover the period from Aegon III to Robert's Rebellion and the death of the Mad King, will follow several years later, presumably after A Dream of Spring is completed. This possibly means that the second half of the history will be a large larger and in more detail than originally envisaged, so for those who've been beginning for a prequel story about the Rebellion, this may be the closest you'll get (I also suspect this will have to follow Spring so George can give the full, "unedited" account of the war without having to worry about any more spoilers).

GRRM concludes his update by saying that we may therefore get two new Westeros books in 2018, if things go well (or maybe none at all, if they do not).

George R.R. Martin explains delay for THE WINDS OF WINTER

Fantasy author George R.R. Martin has finally reveals why work on his signature Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series is taking so long. In an exclusive exclusive, he reveals the truth. Exclusively:

George R.R. RoboCop's first experimentation with cybernetics was only a modest success.

The truth is, I finished The Winds of Winter three months ago. Not only that, but I had the whole last book mapped out and ready to go. I was just about to send the titanic manuscript to my editor when, as so often happens on deadline day, a massive rip in the fabric of the space/time continuum formed in my office.

I heard this voice cry out “STAY THY HAND” and a figure emerged. He was dressed in leather over high-yield body armour, with his left arm replaced by some kind of laser minigun. He also had a magnificent and well-kept beard. With a shock, I realised I was looking at myself, only transformed into a Terminator-style cyborg from some kind of alternate timeline. I had to admit that I looked kind of badass.

“GEORGE!” cried the other me. “I have some come from some kind of alternate timeline where you have become a Terminator-style cyborg.” “Aha!” I said. The other me continued: “You must not publish The Winds of Winter! That is where it all started going wrong.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Many millions of fans are waiting for this book. You would ask me to deny them?”

“Yes!”

The alterno-George went on to explain that for many years the Earth had been scrutinised by a hostile alien race known as the Litmongers. They had planned to invade the Earth and lay waste to human civilisation before summoning their dark god Cthulhu to unleash a millennium of pain and torment upon the survivors.

“Wait, Cthulhu is real?” I said, both horrified and impressed.

“Sort of. The Litmongers are great readers of human literature, particularly speculative fiction, and so created a malevolent entity modelled on the works of Lovecraft, which they use to subdue worlds.”

As RoboMartin continued to explain, at great length - with enjoyable-but-unconcise tangents into the aliens’ complex caste structure, heraldry and dietary preferences - the Litmongers had been poised to invade Earth in the summer of 1996 but one of their number had stumbled across a copy of A Game of Thrones. The cruel aliens had been so gripped by my expertly-crafted narrative of feuding kingdoms and subtly-complex-yet-relatable human characters (“So venomous they could eat the Borgias” – SFX Magazine) that they had stayed their hand, waiting for the series to conclude. Their patience had been worn thin by the wait for later books in the series, their arguments about whether to invade Earth and plunge seven billion souls into horrific torment or wait a bit longer to find out who Jon Snow’s dad was spilling over and manifesting themselves in bitter flame wars on the human internet.

“So I have to keep writing Song of Ice and Fire novels forever to keep humanity safe from utter obliteration?” I asked, feeling both the despair of art being subsumed by commercial requirements but also the financial security that comes from having a reliable income stream. “I’m not sure my fans will buy that. Well, not all of them.”

“Indeed!” said the Other Me. “In my timeline, after publishing The Winds of Winter the Litmonger faction that favoured invasion finally won the argument, after a particularly punishing online debate over the twist that Jon Snow is capable of time travel and is in fact his own father.”

“What?” I cried. “That was a tremendous, well-foreshadowed revelation. I was very disappointed they went in a different direction on the TV show.”

“Anyway,” said the Alternative Bearded One, moving hurriedly on. “The Litmongers invaded in full force, sweeping across the globe in a tidal wave of terror before finally triumphing. Even the mighty forces of the American military under President Sanders were unable to stop them.”

Clearly there were other changes between our timelines. But now the full weight of the horror wrought upon that world struck me. “So there was no hope? No victories to speak of?”

“Well, the Litmongers destroyed the United States from west to east, so technically the Giants won the NFL that year by dint of the other teams all being driven insane before being immolated ahead of them.” Ah, almost worth it. We fistbumped.

“So what can I do?”

“Stall! The Litmongers have a limited time before they must return to their own world through hyperspace, after which it will be millennia before they can regroup and return. After another (indeterminate)  you can publish The Winds of Winter safely, without it resulting in the utter ruination of lifekind as we know it.”

“Very well.” I knew with a heavy heart that this was the way it would have to be.

“Also, that storyline you ditched where Melisandre imbued Stannis with the power of R’hllor and turned him into the Human Torch? Do that, that was awesome.”

Alterno-GRRM again tore open a hole between realities, ready to return to the hellscape that had been his homeworld. “Wait!” I cried. “You do not have to live your life in that terrible place, you can stay here and survive in peace.”

“A tempting offer. Tell me, are there any other changes between our realities?”

After explaining our changed political situation, MechaMartin considered a moment, whilst the tormented shrieks of uncounted legions lost beyond all hope seeped through the gate behind him.

“Well, sometimes the devil you know, eh?” he finally concluded, before stepping through the portal and shutting it behind him.

So there you have it, loyal readers. The Winds of Winter can only be published when doing so would not result in the extinction of humanity, and that time will be goto 50%%%%*$$$&…

New SONG OF ICE AND FIRE short story to be released in October

It's been confirmed that George R.R. Martin will be releasing at least one new Song of Ice and Fire story in 2017, with it being confirmed that a short story will be released in Gardner Dozois's anthology Book of Swords, due out in October.

Maegor the Cruel, by Michael Komarck

Martin will be joining authors such as K.J. Parker, Matt Hughes, Ken Liu, Ellen Kushner, Scott Lynch, Robin Hobb, Daniel Abraham, Garth Nix, C.J. Cherryh, Elizabeth Bear and Cecilia Holland. It's certainly an impressive line-up.

Speculation is rife over Martin's story. By far the most likely prospect is The Sons of the Dragon. This is part of Martin's colossal (novel-sized) history of the Targaryen Dynasty, Fire and Blood, which was supposed to be his contribution to The World of Ice and Fire but grew out of control. This would be the third such extract from this material, following The Princess and the Queen (published in Dangerous Women) and The Rogue Prince (published in Rogues).

The Sons of the Dragon is the detailed story of the two sons of Aegon the Conqueror, Aenys and Maegor, half-brothers who were both fated to become kings. This narrative was completed several years ago and Martin has already read extracts from it at conventions, making it a shoo-in for the role. The story also revolves a lot around the Targaryen Valyrian steel sword, Blackfyre, which fits the title of the novella.

However, Westeros.org has also postulated that a new Dunk and Egg novella could be a possibility. This is surprising. George started writing the fourth Dunk and Egg novella, under the working title The She-Wolves, back in 2009 before The Mystery Knight was even published but put it on hold until The Winds of Winter was completed. Martin also seems to have decided to reconsider the project at some point, suggesting that another story called The Village Hero might come first, but again not until The Winds of Winter was completed.

Some may take this as a possibility that The Winds of Winter is nearing completion and Martin has finished one of these two stories as his time frees up, but that may be optimistic. Of course, Martin could have changed his mind (especially if he had a burst of inspiration for the story), but I think The Sons of the Dragon or another Fire and Blood extract is much more likely.

We should have more information soon.

GRRM on THE WINDS OF WINTER

George R.R. Martin has broken his year-long radio silence on The Winds of Winter to confirm that he hopes to release the book in 2017.

Martin cautions that he had hoped to release the book in 2016, prior to Season 6 of Game of Thrones debuting in April and clearly failed to hit that deadline, and makes no guarantees that the book will be out this year. However, it is his current aspiration.

The previous book in the series, A Dance with Dragons, was released in July 2011, itself five years and nine months after the previous volume, A Feast for Crows. The Winds of Winter will break this record if it is not released by April, which does not seem likely at this stage. Publication before Game of Thrones begins its seventh and penultimate season in late June 2017 also seems a little ambitious (but not completely impossible).

The turn-around from hand-in to publication for the novel will be around three months. To get the book out before 2017 ends, Martin will have to turn the manuscript in around August of this year.

Martin declined to provide a page count update for the novel. However, in January 2016 he confirmed that he had completed hundreds of manuscript pages and dozens of chapters. The Winds of Winter is expected to approach the size of A Dance with Dragons and A Storm of Swords, which both had over 70 chapters and 1,500 manuscript pages.

A Song of Ice and Frustration: Fictitious Release Dates & Non-linear Writing for THE WINDS OF WINTER

Amazon France have caused consternation by giving their pre-order page for The Winds of Winter a new release date: 9 March 2017. As is predictable, the fans have gone wild and George R.R. Martin's publishers have issued a statement shooting down the date as fictitious.

This isn't the first time this has happened. When A Feast for Crows was published in 2005 and Martin (highly erroneously) announced that A Dance with Dragons would follow a year later, Amazon.com put a placeholder date for the latter book as 2008. The idea was that the publisher would unveil the real date and they'd bring the date up to the correct one. They weren't expecting the book to be that late and forgot to change it, resulting in confusion and then anger in less net-savvy fans when 2008 came and went without the book being released. Responding to fan anger and complaints from the publishers Amazon changed the release date...to 2032, suggesting either a great sense of humour or perhaps going overboard on contingency planning (the book was eventually released in 2011).

These issues could be avoided if Amazon could have simply put a "TBC" release date on books, but for some reason back then they couldn't. Learning their lesson, neither Amazon US nor UK has a page for The Winds of Winter at all. Obviously Amazon France hasn't learned from their example.

At this point it may be of value to look into why it takes such an immense amount of time for Martin to write these novels.

What the manuscript of A Dance with Dragons looked like in its raw form, all 1,520 A4 pages of it.

These are big books

The average novel, when we consider all genres, is between 80,000 and 100,000 words in length (which translates to roughly 300-350 pages in paperback, depending on formatting) and takes about a year to write. Science fiction and fantasy novels are usually longer, with 200,000 words (600-700 pages in paperback) taking two to three years not being unusual. The shortest novel in A Song of Ice and Fire is 300,000 words long with the longest - A Storm of Swords and A Dance with Dragons - both being around 420,000 words each. Those novels come in at well north of 1,200 pages in paperback.

Obviously some writers can churn out big books very quickly: Brandon Sanderson writes his Stormlight Archive novels (which clock in at around 400,000 words exactly) in three to three and a half years each, Peter F. Hamilton produced the 450,000-word The Naked God in two years and Steven Erikson produced 3,116,000 words of The Malazan Book of the Fallen (not including the first novel, which he wrote many years earlier) in just over eleven years, averaging 283,000 words a year during that time. On the flipside some authors are considerably slower: Suzanna Clarke took ten years to write the 308,931 words of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell and J.R.R. Tolkien took ten years to write the 455,125 words of The Lord of the Rings (and, arguably, sixty years to produce the 130,000 words of The Silmarillion, although that was only a summary of the much greater amount of work he produced in that time).

Writing without an outline can result in marvellously naturalistic and unforced character arcs and plot turns. On the other hand, it can also result in...less serendipitous writing events.

They are not written in a linear fashion

Martin's writing process is non-linear and unplanned. He writes several chapters in a row from one character, switches to another, writes several chapters from them, switches to a third and so on. At certain points he'll switch back to a previously-written character, but will then realise that new story points he has created elsewhere will now require a thorough rewriting of previously-drafted chapters to reflect these changes. As the novel continues and gets larger, this butterfly effect can be considerable: a late plot decision executed in what ends up as Chapter 48 may entail the complete page-one rewrite of Chapters 3, 6 and 12, the partial rewriting of Chapters 18, 23 and 32, and the re-ordering of several other chapters.

The writing process for A Song of Ice and Fire bears more than a passing similarity to chaos theory. However, it is not unprecedented. J.R.R. Tolkien executed The Lord of the Rings in a similar fashion, describing it as "waves coming up the beach...each time the waves reach a little higher" after rewriting the opening four or five chapters of the novel at least four times to accommodate tonal changes (from something closer to The Hobbit to something darker) and character shifts (from using Bilbo's son "Bingo" as the protagonist to junking him and bringing in a new character called "Frodo").

Martin's non-linear writing style has been criticised and it has been suggested that he employ an outline. However, Martin has famously said that he distrusts outlines, feeling that they sap the narrative energy from writing. Stephen King, Tolkien and Robert Jordan have also disdained outlines and produced, between them, several of the biggest-selling, popular and enduring works of fantasy ever written, so he may be onto something.

That said, Robert Jordan did produce an outline whilst planning the final Wheel of Time novel to help focus him on bringing the story to a conclusion (which proved tragically beneficial when he was later diagnosed with a fatal blood disease), indicating that other fantasy authors have seen some value in changing up even their long-standing writing habits to increase writing efficiency and speed as their series reaches the wrapping-up phase.

In addition, Stephen King once experimented with using an outline in response to fan criticism that his improvised writing style often resulted in subpar endings. The result was The Dead Zone, a reasonably well-regarded book which has been adapted for the screen twice. However, King said he hated the experience and has never used an outline again.

George writing on The Machine.

Martin's computer is steam-powered

Okay, it isn't. But it is pretty old. George R.R. Martin writes his novels on WordStar 4.0, a word processing programme released in 1987. The PC he uses is of similar vintage. WordStar is a non-WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) programme, like Microsoft Word, and requires the author to move around the cursor using the keyboard and enter lines of code to enact formatting such as bold or italics.

Martin has used this stuff to write all of his short stories and novels on since the late 1980s and is at this point institutionalised to its use. Still, although it's perhaps a little more labour-intensive to use such a system it's not that much slower. It's still a way of getting words on the screen. What might be a bit more work is outputting the chapters in a format that can be emailed so George's editor can read them on her more up-to-date computer in New York City. And of course there's what happens when a 30+ year old computer stops working, as happened during the writing of A Feast for Crows: a legacy PC engineer named Stephen Boucher saved the day and the novel was dedicated to him.

Update: At some point in the recent past, Martin stopped using his old 1980s vintage machine and switched to a modern PC running WordStar 4.0 in a DOS emulator.

Writing white-on-black is something that would drive me crazy, making me want to murder every single character I was writing...wait a sec.

To summarise, Martin's writing style does not permit easy estimations of when he will be finished, especially given the heavy overlap where chapters are moved from the end of one book into the start of the next. Given the numerous missed dates on A Dance with Dragons and the resulting insane levels of vitriol, Martin has decided not to issue any predictions for Winter at all. He's also, unlike during his work on Dragons, not issued any page or word counts, perhaps feeling that this could also be misleading and people would be reaching all sorts of wrong conclusions.

The Winds of Winter is not done as of today. Martin and his publishers will confirm when it is, and when the book will be published. Based on precedent, this will be between 3 and 5 months after its completion is confirmed.

New WINDS OF WINTER chapter unveiled at Balticon

Further to George R.R. Martin's earlier confirmation of a fan theory at BaltiCon, he rounded off the day by reading a new Winds of Winter chapter for the very first time. This chapter is called "The Forsaken" and revolves around Aeron "Damphair" Greyjoy. A summary after the jump.

SPOILER WARNING, of course.

New trailer for GAME OF THRONES Season 6

HBO have released a second trailer for the upcoming sixth season of Game of Thrones. This trailer has a lot of new images and footage that hints at the future direction of the season.

After the images I look at some possible directions the season may take. Beware MASSIVE SPOILERS AFTER THE CUT.

George R.R. Martin provides update on THE WINDS OF WINTER

George R.R. Martin has provided an update on progress on The Winds of Winter, the sixth and (so far) penultimate novel in the Song of Ice and Fire series. This is the first substantive update on the book in almost three years, since Martin confirmed in April 2013 that the novel was more than a quarter done.

Still not the actual cover.

The bad news is that the novel is not complete right now and will not be published before Season 6 of Game of Thrones starts airing in mid-April. Martin cautioned that the showrunners will be using his notes and outlines to bring the show (currently expected to end with the eighth season in 2018) to an ending, so some aspects of Season 6 may spoil the final two books in the series. Martin was understandably very disappointed by this, although philosophically it would have only delayed the problem by another year at best: getting A Dream of Spring done before the seventh season next year I think, it will be safe to say, is next to impossible. So the ultimate ending of the story and the ultimate fate of the characters will certainly now be revealed on screen before in the books. That seems likely at this point.

On the positive side of things, Martin believed it was plausible to bring The Winds of Winter to a conclusion with several months of work last year. If that holds true, completion of Winds for publication in late 2016 or early 2017 certainly seems possible.  Martin was cautious not to emphasise this point, however, given how badly his estimates have been off so far. He also confirmed that both his British and American publishers can get the book on the shelves within three months of completion, as with the previous three books in the series.

On the other hand, all being well, we will 100% definitely be getting Scott Bakker's new novel The Great Ordeal this year, Scott Lynch's fourth novel Thorn of Emberlain is almost done and seems likely for release, and even The Doors of Stone by Pat Rothfuss has not been ruled out for this year. But the Big One remains MIA, for now.

Will THE WINDS OF WINTER come out in 2016?

There's been some speculation that The Winds of Winter will be published in 2016 due to comments made by the Spanish publishers of the Song of Ice and Fire series. So, will it?

There are some positive indications, which are as follows:

• A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons were both published five years after the previous novel in the series. July 2016 will make it five years since the publication of A Dance with Dragons. This isn't exactly logical, but if it's happened twice in a row...
• George R.R. Martin has cancelled a whole load of appointments and appearances for this year to get the book done, indicating that he believes it's close enough that a few days here and there will make a big difference. He's also not written scripts for Seasons 5 or 6 of the TV show to give him more time to write the book.
• Last year, George reported that the rewrites on The Winds of Winter had been nothing like as arduous and difficult as those on Dragons.
• As noted above, the Spanish publishers are apparently expecting the book in 2016.
• George himself has said he thinks it is possible to get the book out before Season 6 is expected to start airing in April 2016.

Before we get too excited, there are some negative indicators as well:

• Compared to the excitement and regular updates we got when A Dance with Dragons was close to finished, there have been no comparable reports or updates for The Winds of Winter. GRRM suggested this might be the case, no updates until the book is delivered, but it's not a positive indication.
• Given that A Dance with Dragons had its cover art out in the wild and being discussed years before the book was done, it's odd that we haven't seen the same for Winter. That cover with the horn everyone's seen is fan art, by the way, not the real deal.
• GRRM recently retreated a little from his determination to get the last two books out before the TV show ends (probably in 2018), taking a more philosophical line that if the TV show overtakes, it overtakes.
• If the book is to come out in April 2016, it really needs to be finished before the end of this year, which is starting to loom large.
• For previous novels, George sent large chunks of the books to his editors a while before completion, allowing early editing of the novel whilst it was still being written. As of a few months ago, that hadn't happened (apart from some 360-odd manuscript pages, most of them held over from Dragons). This may mean a longer editing cycle for Winter will be required.

Conclusion: the book may well come out in 2016. But it's not a done deal by any means: the fact that the Spanish publishers are expecting it means that a lot of people, including George, see 2016 as achievable. Whether that makes it likely or not remains to be seen.

The Wars and Politics of Ice and Fire blog has an excellent "What we know" page about The Winds of Winter which is being updated with the latest information, which I recommend periodically checking.

A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE hits 58 million sales

Sales of George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series have passed 58 million, according to The Guardian.

In an article on how the commercial and critical success of the series has impacted the global fantasy market, The Guardian talks to George's publishers and some of his colleagues and friends, including Joe Abercrombie and sometimes-collaborator Lisa Tuttle.

Before 2011, when the TV series Game of Thrones began, sales of ASoIaF were estimated at roughly 5 million copies. In the year 2011-12, the series sold 9 million copies by itself and it would appear that sales have continued to increase at a formidable rate. Martin's total sales have exceeded the likes of Terry Brooks and are closing in on Robert Jordan and Terry Pratchett (authors with many more published novels) very quickly. It's no wonder that Martin's publishers are eager to get their hands on The Winds of Winter, the sixth (and hopefully penultimate) novel in the series.

Given that A Dance with Dragons dominated the bestseller lists in 2011 at a time when sales of the overall series were far lower, it's very likely that Winds will be the biggest-selling novel of the year if it does make it out in 2016 (as Martin recently revealed was his target).

This early outline for A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE is very different

Waterstones have tweeted something rather interesting and special: a letter written by George R.R. Martin to his agent, the late Ralph Vinccinanza, in October 1993 which contains an outline of A Song of Ice and Fire as then-envisioned.

Spoiler Warning: Although this outline deviates massively from the novels-as-published, it is possible there may be glimpses of future story elements here. There is certainly one confirmation which could be construed as major. Please do not read any further if you are really paranoid about spoilers.

A note on chronology here. Martin started writing A Game of Thrones in the summer of 1991, when the scene with Bran attending Gared's execution and then finding the direwolves in the snow popped into the authors' head while he was working on an SF novel, Avalon. That chapter led into the second, with Catelyn greeting Eddard ino the godswood, and things snowballed from there until Martin had written over 100 manuscript pages. Progress was halted when the ABC network commissioned a pilot script Martin had written, entitled Doorways. Much of 1992 was spent rewriting the script and prepping, casting and filming the pilot. ABC decided to drop the project in 1993 and Martin returned home to Santa Fe. Normally, long interruptions in writing a novel meant that the idea would go cold, but Martin had instead spent a lot of his time working on the pilot also rolling over ideas for the fantasy story in his head.

By late 1993, as the letter indicates, two things had happened. The first was that his initial idea for a purely 'historical' series, merely set in a fictional world, had been abandoned. Martin's original idea had focused on the civil war storyline alone with no magic, Others or other supernatural elements (reminiscent of some of K.J. Parker's novels). Martin's friend Phyllis Eisenstein talked him out of this and convinced him to "put the dragons in". The letter firmly has the dragons and Others in place. The second was that the story had expanded from a single novel into a trilogy, consisting of A Game of Thrones (focusing on the war between the Starks and Lannisters), A Dance with Dragons (focusing on Daenerys Targaryen's invasion of Westeros) and The Winds of Winter (focusing on the Others and their assault on the realm).

It's clear why Waterstones felt able to release the outline: it bears very little resemblance to the story we've ended up with. No R'hllor, no Stannis, no Renly, no Melisandre, no ironborn (the Lannisters instead sack Winterfell themselves) or Dornish, no Golden Company or Young Griff and no Slaver's Bay. The focus is overwhelmingly on the major characters from the first novel and remains on them throughout. The outline also seems to posit either the characters all being older at the start, or that the five-year gap is still in play: more likely the former, as GRRM later said that he came up with the five-year gap some way into writing the first three books, and of course abandoned it during the torturous writing of the fourth novel. Of course this is a brief outline, so many details are expected to be missing. It would be interesting to see if those original versions of those chapters are still around, and if characters like Theon are in them.

More interesting is that the Red Wedding is not present at all: Robb Stark dies on the battlefield, whilst Catelyn is killed by the Others beyond the Wall, having escorted Bran beyond. During the period when ASoIaF was a trilogy, Martin had said that he envisioned A Game of Thrones ending with the Red Wedding, but this outline seems to suggest that if was so, it was a passing notion during the brief period between the outline being written and the decision to split Thrones into two books (and later three). It's also clear that Martin massively complicated Daenerys's storyline by having her go to Qarth and Slaver's Bay. The outline shows Daenerys finding the dragon eggs in the wastelands beyond the Dothraki Sea and using them to rapidly conquer the Dothraki so she could lead them in an invasion of Westeros in the second novel. Speculatively, Martin introduced the Qarth and Slaver's Bay episodes to give Daenerys something to do when it became clear that the action in Westeros was vastly more involved, complicated and space-consuming than he'd originally planned. The complications between Jon, the wildlings, the Watch and Stannis would also appear to have served a similar function by giving Jon more story material to deal with during the civil war to the south.

The outline is fascinating and also something of a relief: it's not very good, or at least, not as good as what we've ended up with. Some fans have suggested that writers should create an outline and stick to it without deviation, but in most cases this would be an appalling idea. The ASoIaF outline shows that, along with Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time outline (a very early version of which posited the Dark One as a human warlord from another planet and the Forsaken as half-demons) and J. Michael Strazynski's bonkers original arc for Babylon 5 (which lasted for ten seasons across two different series), refining and deviating from the arc when better ideas present themselves is often essential.

Can the outline be used to guage what happens in the next (final?) two novels? Maybe. Daenerys would seem to be about to meet/conquer the Dothraki with Drogon, so she's gotten back on track through a very circular route. But that was clear from the ending of A Dance with Dragons anyway. The Tyrion, Jaime, Sansa and Arya storylines have all gone in completely different directions as well.

Likely, there isn't much (if anything) left of this arc in the future books. But it's a fascinating look into the creative process and how ideas change over time.

Update on THE WINDS OF WINTER

Fans of A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones may have suffered whiplash as two different sources offered pessimistic and then optimistic news on the progress of The Winds of Winter, the sixth and (planned-to-be) penultumate novel in the series.

First off, George R.R. Martin's UK editor Jane Johnson tweeted that The Winds of Winter was not on their schedule for 2015. This was taken by some to mean that the book was definitely not coming out next year. Johnson later clarified that the book was merely not scheduled at this time. Given the rapid turn-around on the previous novels (two months for A Storm of Swords, five for A Feast for Crows, three for A Dance with Dragons) this is not quite as bad as it first sounds, as those books weren't on the early schedules for their respective years either.


Then, at the San Diego Comic-Con, Martin himself offered some optimistic news. He confirmed he has not written a script for Season 5 of Game of Thrones and will not be undertaking any new set visits or other travelling obligations beyond those that he has already agreed to. This is all specifically designed to give him the maximum amount of time needed to finish The Winds of Winter. However, Martin would still not give a precise update on how much of the book he has completed at this time.

Whilst this sounds great, we should also recall that Martin skipped the 2007 Worldcon to finish A Dance with Dragons, and the book still took more than three years to come out after that point. It would seem unlikely that Winter is that amount of time away, but it is always best to exercise caution with any of this news.


Previously, on Winterwatch:

Martin completed the fifth book in the series, A Dance with Dragons, in early 2011. Several complete chapters were removed from the novel and added to the start of The Winds of Winter. The amount of material is unclear, but seems to be a minimum of five or six chapters, totalling somewhere between 150 and 200 manuscript pages.

In February 2013 Martin delivered a further 168 manuscript pages to his American publisher. This would rise the completed total to around 318-368 manuscript pages. In April 2013 Martin said he had approximately one-quarter of the novel finished, and expected the novel to come in at around the same size as A Dance with Dragons, which was 1,520 manuscript pages. One quarter of that amount would equal approximately 380 manuscript pages, so this tracks pretty well.

Since April 2013 Martin has not offered any concrete information on his progress, instead preferring to make positive comments that he is writing fast and needs to stay ahead of the TV show. He has confirmed that he is doing far less rewriting on The Winds of Winter than the previous novel in the series, the constant editing and re-editing of which (particularly the knotty events in Meereen) was the principal reason for the delays to that volume. Although a cause for optimism, Martin has cautioned that the book is still incomplete, meaning that further rewrites cannot be ruled out for further down the line.

During the writing of previous novels in the series, Martin had offered more frequent updates on his progress, along with firmer figures on how many pages he had completed. In his parlance, "completed" means the pages in question have been written, re-written to his satisfaction and given at least an initial editing pass by his American editor. With Martin not having sent any further material to his editor since February 2013, he is possibly unwilling to put a hard figure to his progress. It may also be that with Dragons, the constant re-structuring of the novel meant that chapters and pages he declared completed and counted had to be rewritten again and again, meaning that the value of declaring them finished was dubious. For this reason, it may be that we won't start getting more precise figures on Winter's progress until the book is a lot closer to completion.

As for a release date, late 2015 would appear to still be possible but the door is starting to close on it. With Season 6 of Thrones likely to start drawing on Winter storylines and material, he really needs to release the novel before April 2016 to ensure the TV show does not overtake him. However, with the TV series currently projected to only last seven or eight seasons, he would not then have very much time to write the (currently) final novel in the series.

Publisher update on THE WINDS OF WINTER

George R.R. Martin's UK publishers, HarperCollins Voyager, have offered (via a redacted Twitter exchange) a rare comment on the progress of The Winds of Winter, the sixth and planned-to-be penultimate volume of A Song of Ice and Fire. They have confirmed that the novel will definitely not be published in 2014, but that a 2015 release is possible.

A fan mock-up of the potential cover to the book.

To clarify, Martin himself has not offered an update on the book's progress since April 2013 when, on the carpet for a Game of Thrones TV event, he confirmed that about a quarter of the book was complete (very roughly 375 manuscript pages, assuming the book will be as long as A Dance with Dragons) with additional material in drafts and partial chapters also done. Subsequently, he offered upbeat assessments that he was writing fast to stay ahead of the TV show (which will begin introducing plot elements and even characters from Books 4 and 5 in the fourth season, due to air from April to June this year) but not specific page counts.

To focus on The Winds of Winter, Martin eliminated his outstanding side-projects in the first half of 2013, completing editing work on several anthologies (some of them now out) and concluding his contribution to The World of Ice and Fire companion volume. Several other works that were judged to be too time-consuming have either been cancelled completely (a short story for a Poul Anderson tribute anthology) or put on the back-burner until either the completion of The Winds of Winter (most notably the next Dunk 'n' Egg short story) or the completion of the whole series (a second and more in-depth companion volume, tentatively dubbed the 'GRRMarillion'). The result is that Martin has certainly had time to make inroads on The Winds of Winter.

Last month, a website randomly said that Martin had over a thousand manuscript pages completed for the book. Martin later confirmed that he had said no such thing, whilst not offering an update on his estimated page count for the book. It may be that we will get an update on the book during the inevitable press clamour for Season 4, but also possibly not: after providing updates on A Dance with Dragons that didn't seem to help the situation, Martin has indicated that he will be providing far less frequent updates on The Winds of Winter, if any at all.

However, it should be noted that George R.R. Martin has also said he wants to stay ahead of the HBO TV series if at all possible, and this will only remain a realistic goal if The Winds of Winter is released in 2015 with A Dream of Spring to follow, at the absolute latest, in 2018.

As always, believe nothing (not even this post!) until it comes from GRRM directly.

George R.R. Martin update

Jet City Comics, the new comic-publishing imprint of Amazon, have picked up the reprint rights to George R.R. Martin's Dunk and Egg graphic novellas. They will be reprinting The Hedge Knight on 5 November 2013 and The Sworn Sword on 21 January 2014. Random House will also be getting the gang back together to produce a new comic book adaptation of The Mystery Knight, for publication later in 2014.

In addition, HarperCollins Voyager in the UK have announced they will be publishing a British edition of Dangerous Women in December. This book will contain a new Song of Ice and Fire novella, The Princess and the Queen, about the civil war known as the Dance of Dragons. Martin is still hoping to publish The World of Ice and Fire in Spring 2014, though officially its release date remains November 2014.

No news on the Big One, unfortunately. The last word on the book from the start of the year was that it was about a quarter done and Martin had either completed or put aside all other projects (including the fourth Dunk and Egg story) to focus on it, later remarking he was making 'rapid progress' against the threat of HBO bearing down and catching up with him. Recent casting announcements for Season 4 of Game of Thrones seem to confirm that rather more of the Feast for Crows and Dance with Dragons storylines will be featured than first thought, meaning that they will likely reach Winds of Winter material by 2016, if not the end of the 2015 season.