George R. R. Martin has addressed the ongoing complaints around the progress of Winds of Winter, the planned sixth novel in his fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, telling Game of Thrones fans: “you have given up on me.”
Last week, Martin joined the production of an upcoming animated Hercules movie in his latest extracurricular activity that’s not working on the long-awaited Winds of Winter. Martin will serve as producer on the project, which will adapt the classic Greek tale of Hercules’ 12 labors, The Hollywood Reporter stated. Under the title of A Dozen Tough Jobs, the movie will retell events from the perspective of a farmer in 1920s Mississippi.
In a blog post, Martin addressed the response to the news from Game of Thrones fans, which has been universally negative.
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 shit about writing any longer, I just sit around and spend my money. 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).
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.
I loved “A Dozen Tough Jobs” the first time I read it, ages ago. I loved Howard too. It saddens me that he did not live long enough to see the film; I hope we do him justice. How can we not? Hercules, Howard, Joe, Lion Forge… I wish you all could share my excitement at the prospect of this movie.
Martin then pointed to the A Dozen Tough Jobs news “for those who do.”
Winds of Winter, the next book in Martin’s long-running A Song of Ice and Fire series, still lacks a release date. Indeed, it’s now been almost 14 years since A Dance with Dragons arrived in July 2011.
The 76-year-old writer still plans for the long-awaited next entry to be followed by another, A Dream of Spring, to round off the series — something the Game of Thrones’ TV adaptation did not wait around for, albeit with mixed results.
But while readers wait, Martin has been keeping busy. The writer has been involved, to a greater and lesser degree, in several other Game of Thrones TV spin-offs, including the successful House of the Dragon, and fictional historical novels about the franchise’s world.
And, of course, Martin has dabbled with the world of video games, too — writing backstory for Elden Ring.
In September 2024, Martin admitted via his blog that “television projects ate up most of the first half” of last year, stopping him from writing more. So, when will Winds of Winter arrive? Not any time soon, Martin wrote as recently as last month.
In a post dated April 7, 2025, Martin complained he was “so tired of having to issue denials every time some offhand comment of mine, most having nothing to do with WINDS, somehow convinces half the internet that the book is imminent. It’s not. No.”
Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
