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Forbes
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
George R.R. Martin Is Not Happy With ‘Winds Of Winter' Fans, Not Happy At All
In a recent blog post about a film adaptation of Howard Waldrop's novella A Dozen Tough Jobs, Game Of Thrones author George R.R. Martin takes a diversion to let his feelings about upset fans be known in no uncertain terms. Fans, of course, remain baffled and angry and depressed over the lack of any visible progress on Martin's sixth A Song Of Ice And Fire novel, The Winds Of Winter. It's been fourteen years since the publication of A Dance With Dragons, so being a little upset about the lack of book in hand makes sense. I wrote a post back in 2022 trying to mathematically predict when – if ever – Winds might finally be published. At the time, and assuming Martin would continue writing at about the same pace he'd been writing (just averaging out pages written per year) I came up with somewhere between 3.8 years and 5.18 years. Of course, that was back in December of 2022 and I don't think we've had a single update of substance from Martin since then. If Martin continues to average around 3.625 days per page when he gets around to A Dream Of Spring, I predicted that it would take another 15 years after the 2027 publication date of Winds Of Winter. I'd be 61-years-old by then. Martin would be 95. And frankly, all of these mathematical predictions feel wildly optimistic at this point. Hell, in 2018 – seven years ago! – I wrote a post arguing that it's time we all just accept that Martin will never finish the book, let alone the series. 'Recall the five stages of grief," I wrote at the time, "denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. It's time to finally read the writing (or lack thereof) on the wall and accept that this series may never be finished. Abandon hope and anger and leave your expectations in the dirt. One of the fantasy genre's very best series may also become its most crushing disappointment.' That was seven years ago. It's been fourteen years since the last book came out. All of which is just my way of explaining why fans, who love these stories, might be distraught and might see all the success Martin has had thanks to his unfinished work and the support of his fans, as frustrating. Which brings us back to Martin's blog post. In a lengthy aside, the author writes: This is an awfully bitter and resentful thing to write about the fans who made Martin rich and famous, whose adoration of his work led to several major TV deals with HBO and paved the way for all these other projects. It's a bit of a humble-brag with a dash of self-pity thrown in, listing off all these other achievements and pointing out how Thrones fans don't like them. Of course, Martin follows this by pointing out that fans are also wrong. 'Thing is, I do care about them,' he writes. '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 would argue that most fans absolutely know this and most fans don't hate everything else that Martin has done. The reason so many of us are frustrated by all of Martin's various announcements and projects is because we know they distract him from work on the one thing most of his fans are truly passionate and excited about. If you go to your favorite restaurant expecting a great meal, and the chef comes out and starts showing you pictures of his gardening project and the old truck in his garage he's been working on, and the haikus he's busy penning back in the kitchen, and a bunch of other stuff that's cool, sure, glad you have hobbies, chef – well, after enough of this you might get a little annoyed at having to wait for your meal. It's not that you don't want the chef to have a life outside of cooking, but you've been coming to this restaurant for years and it's a successful business because of the patronage of people like you, and now you're sitting around going through photo albums of the guy's grandkids while your stomach is growling. And now the chef is ranting about how ungrateful you are, how you don't like his grandkids, how you think his food is going to suck once he's done making it, blah blah blah. We're here for the steak, not pressed flowers and your thoughts on the NFL. The restaurant is here because we like the food, not stories about your trip to Istanbul. Forgive the extended metaphor, but this is a toxic dynamic. Fans can absolutely be the biggest pricks in the universe and I certainly have empathy for Martin, who has gone from towering literary figure and beloved author of one of fantasy's most successful series, to The Guy Who Will Never Finish His Book, but frankly that's on Martin, not fans. He's loaded up his itinerary with projects, from editing his Wild Cards books to writing the lore for the video game Elden Ring (great game, obviously, but still) to Dark Winds and dozens of other distractions. One can't help but wonder if he's just completely, impossibly stuck. I'm sure he cares. Maybe some people think he doesn't, but I think he does. He's just not in a position where caring equates to devoting himself fully to the cause. This is one problem with success. A struggling author who relies on his popular series to put bread on the table would have no problem finishing. A successful author who already sold the rights to his series, and has seen it made into a brilliant TV show that ended in disaster, has a lot less fire under his feet. There are no bees in his bonnet. The really sad thing is that if Martin just finished Winds and Dream by now, fans would probably care a lot more about his other projects. We'd be excited to learn all about them, eager for more, hopeful that he'd go on to finish Fire & Blood and write more Dunk & Egg novellas and whatever else he did even outside of Westeros. But how are we actually supposed to care about any of the rest of this stuff when we still recall A Dance With Dragons ending with about a dozen cliffhangers? And it's not just Martin's mortality that we start to take into account in our calculus: We could die before these books are finished, too! And that, dear readers, is my annual Winds Of Winter rant. I think I publish one of these just about every year, usually after an update from Martin. How many pages are finished now, do you suppose? Have we moved beyond 1100 to 1200? Maybe we're closing in on 1300 by now. All I know is that my stomach is still rumbling, though I wish I could make it stop. Hopefully Martin realizes that all of this anger and discontent isn't motivated by hate. 'The haters' are really just lovers. If fans have started to resent him, it's not because we hate GRRM, it's just that we love his books more. I'm not sure if an author owes his fans a complete saga (he sure owed HBO one, when he signed that deal) but shouldn't he want to fulfill this unspoken contract with readers? Shouldn't he want to do right by the people who bought his books, shared them with friends, spread the good word, fell in love with his world and its characters? These stories are as much ours as Martin's now. We're not entitled to anything, fine, but it sure would be great if he proved us all wrong. That sure would show us, wouldn't it? I can't think of a better way to stick it to fans than to finish the series and get the last laugh. P.S. I think it's worth pointing out that it's quite something, quite remarkable and good, that people still care this passionately about books. The publishing industry is always in crisis. Nobody reads as much as they ought to anymore. Kids these days have attention spans crushed under the terrible weight of TikTok and Instgram. We're all distracted endlessly by phones and an onslaught of other media. That people remain passionate about books, even books we may never get to read, is something we should celebrate.
The Independent
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Game of Thrones author sets fans straight on next book
George RR Martin has addressed fans' concerns about the delayed release of The Winds of Winter, the sixth book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series. Martin announced he is producing an adaptation of Howard Waldrop's novella, A Dozen Tough Jobs, which triggered complaints about his work on projects unrelated to The Winds of Winter. Martin responded to criticisms that he doesn't care about finishing the series, detailing the typical negative comments he receives, including that his writing has deteriorated and he will die soon due to his age. He said he had worked on numerous other projects, but 'you don't care about anything but Winds of Winter. You've told me so often enough'. Martin has been working on The Winds of Winter since 2010, and despite expressing frustration and delays due to other projects, he stated in 2022 that the book was about "three-quarters of the way done".
Geek Tyrant
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
George R.R. Martin Rants About WINDS OF WINTER Pressure: 'You Don't Care About Anything but WINDS" — GeekTyrant
If you've been on the internet any time in the past decade, you've probably seen the familiar chorus: 'Where's The Winds of Winter ?' It's become a meme, a plea, and sometimes a demand hurled at Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin every time he announces… well, anything that's not the next book in A Song of Ice and Fire series. This week, Martin addressed that ever-persistent noise head-on in a characteristically frank and personal post on his Not a Blog, triggered by the announcement of a new project: an animated adaptation of Howard Waldrop's A Dozen Tough Jobs . '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.' From there, the post took a sharp turn into brutal honesty, and maybe a little sarcasm, as Martin rattled off the recurring criticisms he's heard over the years. '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 [finish it] 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.' He didn't stop there. Martin pointed out that many fans seem to resent anything he does outside Westeros, whether it's Wild Cards , his award-winning short stories, or the many anthologies he's edited with the late Gardner Dozois. 'You may hate everything else I have ever written… 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.' But if it sounds like Martin's throwing in the towel, think again. '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.' Martin isn't brushing off Winds of Winter . He's telling fans, in his own slightly grumbly, very George R.R. Martin way: I'm still in this. I still love these characters. I'm just not going to sacrifice every other part of my creative life to satisfy one demand. Fair enough, but it's taking so damn long! Martin hasn't abandoned Westeros. He's just trying to live a full creative life outside of Westeros. Fans have been waiting so long for the book, though, that there's not much more patience.
Gizmodo
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
George R.R. Martin Is Really Starting to Get Sick of Your ‘Winds of Winter' Complaining
The longer it's taken the 'Song of Ice and Fire' author to finish its latest chapter, the more it feels like addressing it is like warning a child not to touch a hot stove. George R.R. Martin has been writing The Winds of Winter for a very long time, and in that process, he's also happened to do a lot of things that are not 'write The Winds of Winter.' Most of Game of Thrones' production, the birth and death of multiple of its spinoffs, movies, TV shows, book anthologies, video games, updates on his blog about how he is indeed writing The Winds of Winter, begging us to not ask him about updates on Winds of Winter, giving us the updates on Winds of Winter anyway: the man's been doing stuff. But that is still not enough for some who have made the wait for Winds of Winter become as excruciating for the writer as it is for them. And Martin is letting it be known through his medium of choice, his Not a Blog blog, that it's really starting to annoy him. As part of an update announcing his involvement in producing an animated feature adaptation of Howard Waldrop's novella A Dozen Tough Jobs—a mythic riff on the story of Hercules and the Greek gods, reimagined in 1920s Mississippi—with Lion Forge, Martin took a moment to pop off at anyone priming to make a joke about him adding yet another side quest to his list of projects. '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,' Martin wrote. :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,' Martin added. The point Martin, continues, is that he does care about Winds and the world it inhabits, it's just more than who he is as a writer—and in this case, a producer acting on the behalf of a late friend to bring their work to life. 'Thing is, I do care about them. And I care about Westeros and Winds as well,' Martin continued. '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.' It's the sort of frankness that Martin has, for better or worse, become known for on his personal blog–where has has, of course, done everything from rail on his Winds of Winter progress detractors to engage in a bit of backroom drama with HBO over changes to House of the Dragon. Martin has also used the blog to announce that he's no longer giving the world updates on Winds of Winter, before promptly giving them anyway. It's clear that, for as long as it is taking to finish the novel, Martin does have the passion for it that people sometimes, jokingly otherwise, accuse him of lacking. Otherwise he just wouldn't keep telling us about it anyway, even as he rails against people's response to those updates in turn. People are still going to complain over how long it's taken him, but woe betide anyone who accuses the author of not caring about it. Whenever Winds of Winter finally comes our way, there's probably going to be plenty more Martin-affiliated projects that get announced or come along before it regardless. No one's going to stop him from doing them±just as Martin himself insists that no one will stop him from finishing Winds on his own terms.
