Fire and Blood, part 1 of his 2-part GRRMarillion history of Westeros (heavy focus on the Targaryen dynasty) will be released before Winds of Winter. He posted in the comments section of his blog that it’s his current focus and should be done in a few months. Then he’s back to Winds.
Which probably means 2020 at the earliest for book 6.
It’s like he really doesn’t want to write it.
These monster epic series (Wheel of Time, for instance, as well as this one) seem to take on a life of their own, and often consume their creators it appears. I sort of get it. You start to write this massive fantasy story, it gets wildly successful, and you’re sort of caught between a bunch of pressures. I’m guessing here, but I suspect it’s something along the lines of there’s a part of the author that feels obligated to give fan service to the rabid readers who want MOAR!, regardless of the original narrative intent; there’s a part that really wants to tie the whole thing up to make room for new creative efforts; there’s a part that simply wants to finish the tale the way it was intended, and fanbois be damned; and there’s a part that says, hmm, this is like printing money, why wrap anything up? Keep on truckin’!
Or they just die.
I’m so tired of seeing Song of Ice and Fire headlines in my newsfeed for the past couple of days. They really want me to click it and find out that GRRM said he wishes the TV show hadn’t killed off Lady Stoneheart, since she will play a big role in Winds of Winter. As if that book will ever come out. Pffft.
Oh hey that’s right, there were novelizations of that really cool HBO show weren’t there? I keep forgetting.
I’m glad we have a thread to bump to remind me that neither the TV show nor the book will have anything new anytime soon.
Heh, I had the same thought.
It really surprised me that the showrunners didn’t go with unCat. That was such a shock at the end of book 3, and the storyline with Brienne, Jaime, the Brotherhood, and just the thought of them pulling a Black Wedding off at Riverrun on the Freys. . . . Instead we got. . .what did we get? Oh, yeah, Jaime moping around KL putting up with crazy sis’s bullshit, Brienne moping around having done pretty much nothing except finish off a wounded Stannis, and the Brotherhood’s main characters going off on literally the dumbest f’n quest ever conceived (yeah, showing Cersei will totally make her ignore her base instincts and turn her into a reliable ally and thus unite the realms of man on Westeros against this threat. . .aw, shit, we just lost a dragon and, shock of all shocks, that zebra didn’t change its stripes).
Finally confirmed by George himself.
The Winds of Winter will not come out in 2018.
http://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2018/04/25/fire-blood-on-the-way/
No, winter is not coming… not in 2018, at least. You’re going to have to keep waiting for THE WINDS OF WINTER.
That’s disappointing. Hopefully he’ll get a lot of writing done on it the rest of this year though, now that he’s done with Fire & Blood.
GRRM is fully in 2018-2019 NFL mode now. No writing will be finished until after the Super Bowl I assume, even though the Jets will be eliminated from playoff contention by October. Then he’ll have a brief 1-2 month window to write but will do other things, probably edit a few anthologies, etc. Repeat until death.
Oh, good, I can finally let it all go and give up. Whew, that’s a relief! Bring on the final HBO season, the one true story!
The novels are just fan fiction to the show at this point. He fucked up big time by not keeping ahead of HBO, as now fans will forever remember the show’s final two seasons as the real ending, and whatever he writes will be secondary. Not that he gives a shit, as he is swimming in money and twinkies at this point anyway.
So this new book is the Silmarillion of Westeros? Just what we needed. I do wonder though, did HBO slide extra cash his way to do this project over the past couple of years so that they could mine it for material for their GoT spin-off series?
Can’t say I’m happy with him doing a Silmarillion victory lap before finishing the series (congrats on producing over 900 manuscript pages that don’t belong to Winds of Winter), but calling the novels fan fiction to the absolutely wretched writing in that show is amusing to me. The real ending, when GRRM pulls a Jordan sometime in the next 3-5 years, will be the prevailing fan theories. At least in my mind. I watch the show and then dismiss it, it’s just so much less fulsome and has become increasingly silly (that 7th season was just utter garbage).
Between the show and GRRM’s failure to write book 6, never the less the final book (s), I think the series has pretty much ended. We will never see GRRM finish this, and he says nobody else will be allowed to.
I’m well aware, which is why I said he’s gonna’ pull a Jordan in the next few years.
Paris will have to place her dead husband’s wishes over the lure of 10s of millions of dollars. I don’t know her, obviously, but she inherits his estate and it will be her call as to what to do with an unfinished manuscript.
never mind.
Not really true, some I like better than the source material. But let’s be honest, AGoT is decent at times but the latter seasons have turned out some really shitty writing and lazy plotting.
Eh, I think that the first 4-5 seasons just kept expanding so much and at such a steady pace while the last two are having to tie up far too many things to be as effective at doing so as the first seasons were and building things up. I still don’t quite get the idea of cutting down to fewer episodes these last couple of seasons as I thought HBO made a mint with the series.
I also think the same is to be said of the books. 4 & 5 can’t hold a candle to the first trilogy.