It is the pandemic news we have all been needing: George RR Martin is using his hours of confinement to work on his long-awaited Game of Thrones novel, The Winds of Winter.

“For those of you who may be concerned for me personally … yes, I am aware that I am very much in the most vulnerable population [for coronavirus infection], given my age and physical condition. But I feel fine at the moment, and we are taking all sensible precautions,” the 71-year-old author told fans on his website. “Truth be told, I am spending more time in Westeros than in the real world, writing every day. Things are pretty grim in the Seven Kingdoms … but maybe not as grim as they may become here.”

The most recent, fifth novel in Martin’s bestselling fantasy series, A Dance With Dragons, was published in 2011. With fan numbers rapidly swelling as a result of the HBO television adaptation that ran between 2011 and 2019, many have been waiting for the sixth instalment with bated breath for almost a decade.

Martin said he was currently “off by myself in a remote isolated location, attended by one of my staff, and I’m not going into town or seeing anyone”. He has closed his cinema, the Jean Cocteau in Santa Fe, New Mexico, but is keeping his bookshop, Beastly Books, “open for the time being”. All planned signings and readings are cancelled for the store, although its mail order service remains open.

“With quarantines, lockdowns and social isolation on the menu everywhere, and all the usual entertainment venues closing their doors, reading is the best way to pass the empty hours,” urged Martin, adding: “Strange days are upon us. As ancient as I am, I cannot recall ever having lived through anything like the past few weeks.”

Sharing a handwashing infographic spliced with words from Frank Herbert’s novel Dune (“I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little-death”), Martin said that “some days, watching the news, I cannot help feeling as if we are all now living in a science fiction novel”.

“But,” he added, “not, alas, the sort of science fiction novel that I dreamed of living in when I was a kid, the one with the cities on the moon, colonies on Mars, household robots programmed with the Three Laws, and flying cars. I never liked the pandemic stories half so well … Let us hope we all come through this safe and sound. Stay well, my friends. Better to be safe than sorry.”