Posted in: Books, Movies, Recent Updates, TV | Tagged: game of thrones, george r r martin, the winds of winter

George R. R. Martin Optimistic About New Game Of Thrones Book In 2018

George R. R. Martin, writer of the A Song of Ice and Fire series of novels upon which HBO's hit show Game of Thrones is based, has finally given an update on his progress toward completing The Winds of Winter, the sixth and penultimate book in the series.

The last Game of Thrones book, A Dance with Dragons, was published in 2011. Martin normally avoids discussing his progress in anything more than vague terms so as not to give his fans false hope, but he took to his Soviet blogging platform, LiveJournal, this weekend to give an update on a new book set in the world of Westeros.

Unfortunately, not the one fans really care about.

Speaking of fake history… regulars here may recall our plan to assemble an entire book of my fake histories of the Targaryen kings, a volume we called (in jest) the GRRMarillion or (more seriously) FIRE AND BLOOD. We have so much material that it's been decided to publish the book in two volumes. The first of those will cover the history of Westeros from Aegon's Conquest up to and through the regency of the boy king Aegon III (the Dragonbane). That one is largely written, and will include (for the first time) a complete detailed history of the Targaryen civil war, the Dance of the Dragons. My stories in DANGEROUS WOMEN ("The Princess and the Queen") and ROGUES ("The Rogue Prince") were abridged versions of the same histories.

No publication date has been set yet, but it's likely that we will get the first volume of FIRE AND BLOOD out in late 2018 or early 2019. The second volume, which will carry the history from Aegon III up to Robert's Rebellion, is largely unwritten, so that one will be a few more years in coming.

God dammit.

Still, Martin isn't completely heartless. He did talk about Winds of Winter as well:

And, yes, I know you all want to know about THE WINDS OF WINTER too. I've seen some truly weird reports about WOW on the internet of late, by 'journalists' who make their stories up out of whole cloth. I don't know which story is more absurd, the one that says the book is finished and I've been sitting on it for some nefarious reason, or the one that says I have no pages. Both 'reports' are equally false and equally moronic. I am still working on it, I am still months away (how many? good question), I still have good days and bad days, and that's all I care to say. Whether WINDS or the first volume of FIRE AND BLOOD will be the first to hit the bookstores is hard to say at this juncture, but I do think you will have a Westeros book from me in 2018… and who knows, maybe two. A boy can dream…

So there you have it. The Winds of Winter in 2018 confirmed, and if it isn't out then, we riot.

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