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Here's why the Game of Thrones books aren't written yet

From Digital Spy

Perhaps the long-awaited sixth novel in George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series should have been called Godot. Because like the characters in a tragicomic Samuel Beckett play, we're all still waiting for it.

Fans have been so desperate to read The Winds of Winter that they've taken to piecing together their own chapters using excerpts, and the author has even released the odd chapter to keep them happy.

There was a glimmer of hope when it looked like Martin might split the book into two parts and release the first half as a novel, but he is resisting that and has officially announced we won't see Winds of Winter in 2018. Some commentators have gone as far as suggesting he will never finish it, while fans even fear he may die before getting the chance to complete his masterpiece.

No wonder, when he originally said he'd finish it before Halloween of 2015, even though there was a six-year gap between fourth volume A Feast for Crows (2005) and the fifth volume, A Dance with Dragons (2011).

So what's keeping the bearded death merchant from cracking on with his work? Well, he has a number of other things vying for his attention, and like a magpie he always seems to be casting around for the next shiny thing. Here's everything George RR Martin is doing rather than writing the final Game of Thrones books.

He blogs...

You'll find George conversing with his fans on a near-daily basis online, as he pens his thoughts on Not A Blog. He's even recently taken the time to move it from the LiveJournal blogging platform it's always lived on to be a part of his own website.

This blog has created an uneasy relationship between Martin and his fans, as they often harass him to stop writing these daily thoughts and finish his books. In 2010, Martin answered those criticisms by revealing that writing other prose and compiling and editing different book projects have always been part of his working process.

He started a non-profit...

Keen to bring more film and TV production to his home city of Santa Fe, Martin helped set up the Stagecoach Foundation in 2017. "Once upon a time, before airplanes, before railroads, it was stagecoaches that brought people to Santa Fe. Our hope is that Stagecoach will do the same," he said on his blog. "Our dream is to bring more jobs to the people of Santa Fe, and to help train the young people of the city for careers in the entertainment industry, through internships, mentoring, and education."

Photo credit: Bantam Books
Photo credit: Bantam Books

He's been visiting Westeros in different ways...

Think George RR Martin hasn't written a Westeros book in seven years? Not true. He's actually been writing prequel stories, reference book The World of Ice & Fire, fake histories for other anthologies and is about to publish part one of Fire and Blood, which details the complete history of House Targaryen. It seems these days he loves revelling in his characters pasts, rather than their futures.

He edits Wild Card compilations...

Martin was a games master for the roleplaying game Superworld, and as an author he naturally wanted to explore that experience outside of the game itself. To that end, he co-edits a series of anthology novels written by more than 30 authors, who are known as the Wild Cards Trust. There are currently 24 books in the series, with the last (Mississippi Roll) being released in 2017.

He's busy telling HBO what happens...

Having missed delivery deadline after delivery deadline, it became obvious that even though it takes a year to make a television season, HBO's Game of Thrones would soon catch up and pass Martin's Fire and Ice novels. And in 2017 it did. This occurrence is commonplace in Japan, when monthly manga comics are turned into anime shows and the TV production quickly outpaces the written material. In order to make more anime episodes, fans are served up a bunch of filler episodes that are often not canon with the main storyline. Rather than land us with a bunch of knockabout comedy episodes amid the battles and bloodshed while he finishes his books, Martin has instead been spilling the beans to the TV execs so they can carry on the story book readers are still waiting for.

Photo credit: Getty Images
Photo credit: Getty Images

He's developing more TV projects...

Martin is developing new series concepts for a number of television partners. In 2015 Cinemax optioned the rights to The Skin Trade, the offbeat werewolf novella Martin released in 1988. The story centres on collections agent (and werewolf) Willie Flambeaux and private investigator Randi Wade.

He's also executive producer on an HBO adaptation of the novel Who Fears Death (written by Nnedi Okorafor), is involved with the proposed Universal Cable Productions TV series based on the Wild Cards series of novels and is working with Syfy and Netflix to turn his Nightflyers novel into a series.

As the next series of Game of Thrones is also known to be the last, Martin has been working with HBO to develop prequels to tap into the hunger for the franchise. Five screenwriters (Max Borenstein, Bryan Cogman, Jane Goldman, Brian Helgeland and Carly Wray) are each developing a spin-off and Martin is co-writing scripts with them individually.

He's working on an animated movie...

As if he wasn't already busy enough, Martin is now also developing an animated movie with Warner Bros. Based on his fantasy novel The Ice Dragon, which was published in 1980, it follows the story of a young girl who befriends an ice dragon after the death of her mother.


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