Author George RR Martin has hinted he will finish The Winds of Winter, the sixth novel in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, by the middle of 2020.
Fans of the book have eagerly been waiting for the sixth installment of seven books The Winds of Winter since 2012.
His fifth novel, A Dance With Dragons, was published in July 2011, a few weeks after the end of the first season.
According to Martin, the author seems to have set himself a deadline.
Responding to a video from Air New Zealand offering him a free trip to that country so he can finish the book at long last. “Point is, George, you’ve been saying, ‘Winter is coming’ for ages now,” the video teases. “We’re saying it’s already here, and it’s pretty inspiring.”
“As for finishing my book…I fear that New Zealand would distract me entirely too much,” Martin wrote. “Best leave me here in Westeros for the nonce. But I tell you this — if I don’t have THE WINDS OF WINTER in hand when I arrive in New Zealand for Worldcon, you have here my formal written permission to imprison me in a small cabin on White Island, overlooking that lake of sulfuric acid, until I’m done. Just so long as the acrid fumes do not screw up my old DOS word processor, I’ll be fine.”
Martin will be appearing at the World Science Fiction Convention in Wellington, which runs from July 29, 2020, to August 2, 2020.
Earlier, this week, Martin said that the two remaining books in the series will not end in exactly the same way as the TV show did, though there will be some similarities.
“Winter is coming, I told you, long ago… and so it is,” Martin wrote. “THE WINDS OF WINTER is very late, I know, I know, but it will be done. I won’t say when, I’ve tried that before, only to burn you all and jinx myself… but I will finish it, and then will come A DREAM OF SPRING.”
“How will it all end? I hear people asking. The same ending as the show? Different? Well… yes. And no. And yes. And no. And yes. And no. And yes.”
He goes on to say that books, especially his lengthy 500-plus-page tomes, are a very different medium than TV, and there are plenty of characters between his pages that never made it on to screen.
“[I]f nothing else, the readers will learn what happened to Jeyne Poole, Lady Stoneheart, Penny and her pig, Skahaz Shavepate, Arianne Martell, Darkstar, Victarion Greyjoy, Ser Garlan the Gallant, Aegon VI, and a myriad of other characters both great and small that viewers of the show never had the chance to meet,” Martin added.
