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George R.R. Martin on Winds of Winter release date: 'I think this year'

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George R.R. Martin gave a rare update on his least-favorite question: So when’s the next book coming out?

Responding to a fan on his blog, the Game of Thrones author said the long-awaited next book in his A Song of Ice and Fire saga, titled The Winds of Winter, should be out this year. But, Martin also noted, he’s thought that before.

“Not done yet, but I’ve made progress,” Martin wrote. “But not as much as I hoped a year ago when I thought to be done by now. I think it will be out this year. (But hey, I thought the same thing last year.)”

Indeed, Martin’s last official update on the matter was last January, when he announced Winds would not be finished by the time Thrones returned for its sixth season.

“Unfortunately, the writing did not go as fast or as well as I would have liked,” he wrote at the time. “You can blame my travels or my blog posts or the distractions of other projects and the Cocteau and whatever, but maybe all that had an impact… you can blame my age, and maybe that had an impact too…but if truth be told, sometimes the writing goes well and sometimes it doesn’t, and that was true for me even when I was in my 20s. And as spring turned to summer, I was having more bad days than good ones. Around about August, I had to face facts: I was not going to be done by Halloween.”

It’s still possible Winds could be out by the time Thrones returns for season 7, which isn’t expected until this summer.

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