'Game of Thrones' Creator George RR Martin Says He's Been "Struggling" With 'The Winds of Winter'

Game of Thrones fans have been pretty vocal about the long wait for The Winds of Winter, George RR Martin's sixth and penultimate novel in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, but the years haven't been any easier for Martin himself.

This month, Martin will release Fire & Blood, a book set in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire that tells the history of House Targaryen, the dragon-riding conquerors from whom Daenerys Stormborn is descended. Some fans are a little riled that Martin would write an entirely separate book in the years between installments of the core A Song of Ice and Fire series, but Martin says writing Fire & Blood was relatively simple compared to the struggle of completing The Winds of Winter.

"I've been struggling with it for a few years," Martin told The Guardian. "The Winds of Winter is not so much a novel as a dozen novels, each with a different protagonist, each having a different cast of supporting players and antagonists and allies and lovers around them, and all of these weaving together in an extremely complex fashion. So it's very, very challenging. Fire & Blood, by contrast, was very simple. Not that it's easy, it still took me years to put together, but it is easier."

Martin also revealed a bit about how he keeps track of his enormous cast of characters, saying it involves "lots of pieces of paper with scribbling all over them", as well as "Elio and Linda off in Sweden if I forget what color anyone's eyes are". He even at times consults the Wikia pages dedicated to his work, saying "there are days when I sit down in the morning with my cup of coffee, I fall through the page and I wake up and it's dark outside and my coffee is still next to me, it's ice cold and I've just spent the day in Westeros."

While The Winds of Winter may still a be a ways off, fans can watch one version of how Martin's story ends in Game of Thrones. The series has already passed where Martin left off in his last novel in the series, A Dance with Dragons, and is headed into its final season in 2019.

What do you think of the long wait for The Winds of Winter? Let us know in the comments!

Fire & Blood releases on November 20th.

The final season of Game of Thrones will air in the first half of 2019.