Fans yearning to find out about Jon Snow’s fate will have to rely on the airing of Game of Thrones Season 6 for it appears that the Winds of Winter release date won’t take place in four months. As to why the Winds of Winter release date is taking too long, author George R.R. Martin previously revealed the reason at the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival.

“Writer’s block isn’t to blame here, it’s distraction. In recent years, all of the work I’ve been doing creates problems because it creates distraction. Because the books and the show are so popular I have interviews to do constantly. I have travel plans constantly. It’s like suddenly I get invited to travel to South Africa or Dubai, and who’s passing up a free trip to Dubai?”

The 67-year-old writer also claimed that some of his assistants were already tasked to ward off possible disturbances.

“I don’t write when I travel. I don’t write in hotel rooms. I don’t write on airplanes. I really have to be in my own house undisturbed to write. Through most of my life nobody did bother me, but now everyone bothers me every day. I have assistants and minions whose main job is to make sure people don’t bother me so I can actually get writing done.”

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Last April, GRRM told Entertainment Tonight that he turned down several commitments because he wanted the Winds of Winter release date to happen before the airing of the show’s sixth season.

“Having ‘The Winds of Winter’ published before season 6 of ‘Thrones’ airs next spring has been important to me all along. I wish it was out now. Maybe I’m being overly optimistic about how quickly I can finish, but I canceled two convention appearances, I’m turning down a lot more interviews-anything I can do to clear my decks and get this done.”

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Martin previously talked about his writing routine to BBC Radio, as reported by Wet Paint. He said he’s able to come up with five or six pages during great days but “those days don’t come very often” and that “a lot of days, it’s kind of struggling.”

“I don’t do it that rigidly. I go over in the morning and sit down, I usually reread what I’ve done the day before to try to build up a little momentum. Sometimes if what I wrote the day before is not very good I spend the whole day rewriting what I did the day before. But hopefully I just rewrite a little and I’m sort of in the groove and then I go on and I write another scene or two.”

Reports have previously surfaced about the possibility of the latest book coming out before the premiere of Game of Thrones Season 6. Showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss reportedly want GRRM to give the show a final touch because the Game of Thrones television series will be finished before the saga itself. One more book, A Dream of Spring, will come out after Winds of Winter.

Nonetheless, iDigitalTimes reports that Winds of Winter is likely to come out in 2016. One of the reasons is that a fan allegedly saw Game of Thrones crew members holding a manuscript of GRRM’s latest novel. The source claimed that the directors were already given access to the book for them to have an idea of how to film the latest season.

Martin is aware of the mounting pressure coming from fans. Writer Walt Hickey even came up with the term “Martinology” to describe the “pseudoscientific process by which fans attempt to predict the release date for the forthcoming The Winds of Winter.” While Martin remains hush about the Winds of Winter release date, he claimed that the books would have a “bittersweet ending.”

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