George RR Martin has issued a definitive "fuck you" to fans wondering if he will finish his lengthy fantasy series before he dies.

Asked by Swiss daily newspaper Tages-Anzeiger about readers' worries that A Song of Ice and Fire might not be completed by the author, Martin responded: "I find that question pretty offensive, frankly, when people start speculating about my death and my health, so fuck you to those people". In case the message wasn't entirely clear, he then gave "those people" the finger.

This is not the first time Martin has been forced to respond to angry fans desperate for the next book in his series. In 2009, before A Song of Ice and Fire was made into the hit HBO television show that has brought hordes of new readers to the books, his fans were clamouring for A Dance With Dragons. "Some of you are angry that I watch football during the fall … some of you hate my other projects … some of you don't want me attending conventions, teaching workshops, touring and doing promo, or visiting places like Spain and Portugal (last year) or Finland (this year). More wasting time, when I should be home working on A Dance with Dragons," wrote Martin. "After all, as some of you like to point out in your emails, I am 60 years old and fat, and you don't want me to 'pull a Robert Jordan' on you and deny you your book."

Jordan is the author of the lengthy Wheel of Time series, which was incomplete when he died. The series has since been finished by another fantasy author, Brandon Sanderson.

Martin's comments at the time were backed up by Neil Gaiman, who told one clamouring fan: "George RR Martin is not your bitch. This is a useful thing to know, perhaps a useful thing to point out when you find yourself thinking that possibly George is, indeed, your bitch, and should be out there typing what you want to read right now. People are not machines. Writers and artists aren't machines."

Martin has since completed, and published, A Dance With Dragons. He is now writing The Winds of Winter, the sixth book in the series, and has no release date yet scheduled for the title.