George R.R. Martin just officially admitted his next book won’t be out before the next season of ‘Game of Thrones’
Game of Thrones is unique in that it’s a single property with two very distinct fandoms: Book readers and show watchers (three fandoms if you count the overlap of people who read the books and watch the show as a separate, third group). For years, a kind of war has raged on between these groups, with book readers ahead on what’s happening in the story and show watchers struggling to remain spoiler free between seasons. Now, for the first time in the series’ history, that’s no longer a concern. Why? Because when season 6 premieres in April, the story will be further progressed on the show than it is in the books. While book readers have been clinging to hope that author George R.R. Martin would finish the next installment of the series before the show caught up, it looks like that officially won’t be the case. Martin has officially announced his next book won’t be ready by April.
Martin announced on today on his blog that he officially has missed the latest deadline for The Winds of Winter, the long-awaited sixth novel in his fantasy series A Song of Fire and Ice. This is not the first time that Martin has struggled with meeting deadlines: He missed his first one for The Winds of Winter in October, and took six years to complete the previous book in the series, which was eventually published in 2011.
But while fans grumbled and moaned and jumped up and down and tore their hair out and fell to their knees screaming, “Why George, why?!” (just kidding, most of us probably didn’t do that), fellow writers took to social media to voice their support for Martin. And they brought up some pretty great points, namely that writing a book is not an easy thing to do, and it’s not like a cut-and-dry process. Sometimes creative endeavors take longer than expected, but that’s okay because we’d rather wait than get a rushed, subpar book.
Like, truly, you guys. As Rainbow Rowell said in a follow-up tweet, “Would you prefer to eat batter?” Of course, in an ideal world, we’d have all the cake right now, but we know that’s not necessarily a reasonable wish. We’ll wait for Martin to bake his metaphorical batter, and in the meantime, we’ll just keep waiting for April and the return of Game of Thrones on HBO.
(Image via HBO.)
