George R. R. Martin's latest blog entry addresses the delay of The Winds of Winter

The Winds of Winter, the sixth installment in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series of novels, doesn't yet have a release date. The fifth book, A Dance with Dragons, was published in 2011, the same year when the first season of HBO's Game of Thrones (GoT) was released. Since then, HBO has completed the show to middling results, but Martin hasn't completed the sixth book yet, to the chagrin of the fans.

Now, the author of the A Song of Ice and Fire books has addressed the 14-year delay between A Dance with Dragons and The Winds of Winter. On his blog, NOT A BLOG, Martin spoke about the decade-long wait between the fifth and sixth books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series while talking about his involvement in the animated adaptation of A Dozen Tough Jobs, written by the late Howard Waldrop.

What did George R. R. Martin say about The Winds of Winter?

As mentioned before, George R.R. Martin revealed his involvement in the animated adaptation of his late friend Howard Waldrop's A Dozen Tough Jobs. However, in the same post, Martin spoke in detail about why The Winds of Winter hasn't seen light of the day yet, despite the previous book releasing back in 2011. First, Martin began with a tone indicating anger:

"I know, I know. Some of you will just be pissed off by this, as you are by everything I announce here that is not about Westeros or THE WINDS OF WINTER. You have given up on me, or on the book. I will never finish WINDS. If I do, I will never finish A DREAM OF SPRING. If I do, it won’t be any good. I ought to get some other writer to pinch hit for me… I am going to die soon anyway, because I am so old. I lost all interest in A Song of Ice and Fire decades ago. I don’t give a s**t about writing any longer, I just sit around and spend my money."

He continued:

"I edit the Wild Cards books too, but you hate Wild Cards. You may hate everything else I have ever written, the Hugo-winners and Hugo-losers, “A Song for Lya” and DYING OF THE LIGHT, “Sandkings” and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, “This Tower of Ashes” and “The Stone City,” OLD MARS and OLD VENUS and ROGUES and WARRIORS and DANGEROUS WOMEN and all the other anthologies I edited with my friend Gardner Dozois. You don’t care about any of those, I know. You don’t care about anything but WINDS OF WINTER. You’ve told me so often enough."

Then, The Winds of Winter author's tone softened:

"Thing is, I do care about them. And I care about Westeros and WINDS as well. The Starks and Lannisters and Targaryens, Tyrion and Asha, Dany and Daenerys, the dragons and the direwolves, I care about them all. More than you can ever imagine."

Based on these comments, we can ascertain that Martin does care about this universe even now. It is important to note that A Game of Thrones, the first novel in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, was published back in 1996. While it received widespread acclaim, and three more novels were published before the first season, it became a pop-cultural phenomenon after the HBO show.

Thus, Martin is under a lot of pressure to satisfy the fans, something that was not the case for the previous five novels of the series.

Plus, the final two seasons of Game of Thrones only made things more difficult for The Winds of Winter

Things only became more challenging for Martin after the lukewarm reception for Game of Thrones Seasons 7 and 8. The eighth season severely damaged the brand as a lot of fans remain unconvinced about Dany's sudden dark turn in the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones Season 8.

Therefore, if Dany were to do something similar in the seventh and final book, A Dream of Spring, Martin would need to plant convincing seeds of the arc in the second-to-last book, The Winds of Winter. Adding to the delay are the countless non-Game of Thrones things Martin is involved in. Martin alluded to this in a 2023 WGN Radio interview:

"The success of the show and the success of other things has injected a lot of other aspects into my life. So sometimes I lay in bed at night and I’m not thinking about…Westeros. I’m thinking about some other problem I’m having, one of the other shows I’m involved with, or a deadline on an anthology I’m editing, or something that’s happening with the non-profit organization that I started. All of these other things are filling my head and that is one of the thing’s that’s delayed me."

Now, his involvement in the A Dozen Tough Jobs animated feature will only further delay the sixth book.

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As of today, The Winds of Winter does not have a release date. However, that does not mean that we don't have anything from that universe. We have House of the Dragon Season 3, which is currently filming. Then, there is A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, a series consisting of six episodes, expected to be released in early 2026.

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