Despite canceling many commitments, George RR Martin could not complete the sixth book before the HBO series takes over.
- Jan 3, 2016
AceShowbiz - George RR Martin is going to miss his latest book deadline. The author admitted on his live journal that the sixth book, titled "The Winds of Winter", of his popular fantasy series, will not be released before sixth season of "Game of Thrones" hits the small screen.
The book was supposed to be completed on Halloween and then on December 31 after he missed the first deadline. "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," Martin wrote on his blog on Saturday, January 2.
Martin purchased and fixed a single-screen Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe, N.M, where he lives. But the 67-year-old author said he had always had deadline problems. "...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," he wrote.
The sixth season of "Game of Thrones" is expected to premiere in early April. Problem is, the storylines on the HBO series have now surpassed the narrative in Martin's books. "My editors and publishers are disappointed, HBO is disappointed, my agents and foreign publishers and translators are disappointed ...but no one could possibly be more disappointed than me," Martin wrote.
In that case, "When you ask me, 'will the show spoil the books,' all I can do is say, 'yes and no,' and mumble once again about the butterfly effect. Those pretty little butterflies have grown into mighty dragons. Some of the 'spoilers' you may encounter in season six may not be spoilers at all... because the show and the books have diverged, and will continue to do so."
All that said, Martin didn't know when the book would be finished. "I am not going to set another deadline for myself to trip over," he wrote. "The deadlines just stress me out. I am going back to my stance from last March, before all this. It will be done when it's done. And it will be as good as I can possibly make it."
But he was good on progress. "Yes, there's a lot written. Hundreds of pages. Dozens of chapters ...But there's also a lot still left to write. I am months away still... and that's if the writing goes well," he quipped.
