George R.R. Martin Calls Completing 'Winds Of Winter' "The Curse Of My Life" In Rant Attempting To Deflect Criticism
Game of Thrones novelist George R.R. Martin recently shared a new update on where he was with the next book in his Song of Ice and Fire, The Winds of Winter, and described completing it “the curse of my life.”
Speaking with Time, Martin was asked for an update on the novel after he did press for Colossal Biosciences and its genetic altering of DNA to create what they are calling dire wolves. He answered, “That’s the curse of my life here. There’s no doubt that Winds of Winter is 13 years late. I’m still working on it. I have periods where I make progress and then other things divert my attention and suddenly I’m working for-. I have a deadline for one of the HBO shows. I have something else to do.”
“But, you know, the two things are not connected. I swear,” he continued. “I open a book store and people say, ‘Why is George R.R. Martin opening a book store? He could be writing Winds of Winter.’ And now we’re getting this. I don’t actually work in the book store. I own it. I hired people to do it. If you go into the book store, yes, a lot of my books are there, which I’ve signed, a lot of books by other people. I’m not going to ring up your register. I’m not going to order what books are coming in.”
He made similar comments about his theater, “I have a theater. I’m not the projectionist. They seem to overestimate how much time I’m putting in these things. I own stocks and bonds too. I don’t attend the shareholder meetings. I’m not on the Board of Directors I’ve invested in something and sometimes stock goes up and I make money and sometimes it’s like now and suddenly I lose a lot of money. It’s not me running it.”
“You’ve heard exactly what role I play in the dire wolf thing. I’m sitting at home. I might have been working on Winds of Winter or one of the screenplay[s] and suddenly Peter Jackson’s on the line. And I hear about this and I travel out to see it. … And it did not seriously impinge on The Winds of Winter. But people make it seem, my more fanatic fans, as if it’s one or the other. And it’s not.”
Martin previously promised he would have the book finished by the World Science Fiction Convention in the summer of 2020.
He said nearly a half decade ago, “But I tell you this — if I don’t have THE WINDS OF WINTER in hand when I arrive in New Zealand for worldcon, you have here my formal written permission to imprison me in a small cabin on White Island, overlooking that lake of sulfuric acid, until I’m done. Just so long as the acrid fumes do not screw up my old DOS word processor, I’ll be fine.”
The book has obviously never been completed and Martin has moved on to a number of different projects while claiming he’s been working on The Winds of Winter.
Furthermore, Martin joked back in December that he might never finish The Winds of Winter and his Song of Ice and Fire. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Martin said, “Unfortunately, I am 13 years late. Every time I say that, I’m [like], ‘How could I be 13 years late?’ I don’t know, it happens a day at a time.”
“But that’s still a priority,” he added. “A lot of people are already writing obituaries for me. [They’re saying] ‘Oh, he’ll never be finished.’ Maybe they’re right. I don’t know. I’m alive right now! I seem pretty vital!”
What do you make of George R.R. Martin rant?
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Like David Gerrold and his War Against the Chtorr series, he clearly started this mess with NO clew about the endgame. And like with Gerrold, we AIN'T gonna see it.
Martin himself is a curse on fantasy writing with his boring cynicism.