Game Of Thrones: George R.R. Martin Updates His The Winds Of Winter Progress

Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin may have just delivered some bad news to fans impatiently awaiting his next novel.

Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels serve as the inspiration for HBO’s hit fantasy drama Game of Thrones, but the epic series is incomplete. Martin has completed just five of the proposed seven books in the saga, with the most recent, A Dance with Dragons, being published in 2011 to coincide with the series premiere of Game of Thrones.

By now, Game of Thrones is further into Martin’s story than Martin himself is, revealing major reveals before the books themselves have a chance to. Some had hoped that Martin’s next installment, The Winds of Winter, would arrive in time to head those spoilers off, but the book did not release in 2016.

Some fans have been crossing their fingers that Martin’s script is actually done and that he’s now just waiting for the right moment to announce and publish, most likely around the time Game of Thornes Season 7 premieres. Turns out that may not be the case.

Martin updated his “Not a Blog” today as he heads out to the Guadalajara International Book Fair. In the post, he confirmed this will be his last public appearance of 2016 and that his 2017 schedule in incredibly limited as he continues hammering out The Winds of Winter.

This is my last scheduled event for 2016. My appearance schedule for 2017 is very limited, and will remain so until WINDS is completed. So if you want to meet me or get a book signed, this will be the last chance for a good few months…

If Martin still has “a good few months” left of work to do on The Winds of Winter, that certainly makes it sound like there’s more than just proofreading and editing left before release. Still, even that rough estimate is something worth taking note of. Usually, Martin sticks to the “it will be done when it’s done” philosophy. His referring to his remaining work on The Winds of Winter in terms of months means that maybe, just maybe, the end is actually in sight.

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Meanwhile, Game of Thrones Season 7 is currently filming and will debut on HBO in 2017.

[H/T] Winter Is Coming