Lockdowns around the US have begun to lift a bit, allowing people to escape from mandated shelter-in-place rules that prompted many to rediscover books, binge those TV shows that they’ve been meaning to get to, or work on projects that they’ve been meaning to get to for a while.
George R.R. Martin was one such person, and he’s provided a handful of updates over the last couple of months about what he’s been up to while in quarantine. In his latest blog post, he explains that work on his long-awaited Song of Ice and Fire novel The Winds of Winter is still progressing, that he’s preparing for this year’s virtual WorldCon, and that he’s still juggling a bunch of TV projects.
While he’s been isolated in a literal cabin in the woods, Martin notes that he’s been “spending long hours everyday on The Winds of Winter, and making steady progress.”
I finished a new chapter yesterday, another one three days ago, another one the previous week. But no, this does not mean that the book will be finished tomorrow or published next week. It’s going to be a huge book, and I still have a long way to go.
Isolation has allowed him to build up a bit of momentum behind the book, and he says that while he’s sad that CoNZealand won’t be an in-person trip this year, the fact that he won’t have to pause his work for an international trip means that he’ll keep chugging along.
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As far as what he’s been writing, he notes that, “Of late I have been visiting with Cersei, Asha, Tyrion, Ser Barristan, and Areo Hotah. I will be dropping back into Braavos next week.”
He also reveals that he has some other projects on his plate. Aside from pre-recording some video for the upcoming Hugo Awards ceremony, he’s been reading (Stephen King’s If It Bleeds and Emily St. John Mandel’s The Glass Hotel particularly impressed him), and working on number of TV projects.
Those include the forthcoming Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, which is tentatively due out in 2022, which he says is “still flying along wonderfully, thanks to Ryan Condal and his writers, and the tireless Ti Mikkel,” and that he’s been working on pushing Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death along. He also notes that he’s working to “relaunch the Wild Cards tv project,” which was originally announced in 2018 as a Hulu series (although given the changes between Hulu, Fox, and Disney since then, it’s possible that the series has since been quietly dropped.) He also notes that he’s been working on a TV series called The Lost Lands, “television shows in development based on works by Roger Zelazny and Tony Hillerman.” Finally, he notes that there are a couple of feature film projects based on his works in development: Sandkings, and The Ice Dragon.
At the end of the day, it seem as though work is progressing, and while The Winds of Winter doesn’t appear that it’ll be in stores in the immediate future, it’s at least moving forward, little by little.
