George R.R. Martin’s most recent blog post, concerning release dates for his various “fake histories” of Westeros, also included an update for The Winds of Winter, the highly anticipated sixth volume in A Song of Ice and Fire. Although he had said in January of this year that he thought the book could be out in 2017, now it looks as if late 2018 will be the earliest that readers might be able to obtain Winds—perhaps even later than that.
First, Martin discussed The Book of Swords, Gardner Dozois’ anthology featuring Martin’s new ASOIAF short story, “The Sons of the Dragon,” about Targaryen princes Aenys I and Maegor the Cruel. That led into an announcement about the first volume of Fire and Blood, a collected history of Westeros through the rule of House Targaryen:
Speaking of fake history… regulars here may recall our plan to assemble an entire book of my fake histories of the Targaryen kings, a volume we called (in jest) the GRRMarillion or (more seriously) FIRE AND BLOOD. We have so much material that it’s been decided to publish the book in two volumes. The first of those will cover the history of Westeros from Aegon’s Conquest up to and through the regency of the boy king Aegon III (the Dragonbane). That one is largely written, and will include (for the first time) a complete detailed history of the Targaryen civil war, the Dance of the Dragons. My stories in DANGEROUS WOMEN (“The Princess and the Queen“) and ROGUES (“The Rogue Prince”) were abridged versions of the same histories.
Here’s where the dates in question come into play. Martin said that the first volume of Fire and Blood is likely to be released “in late 2018 or early 2019.” (The second volume is a few years in the making, as its contents, spanning Aegon III to Robert’s Rebellion, are mostly unwritten.) Then he shared an update that he was still writing Winds—with good days and bad—but that it might have a similar timeframe for release:
And, yes, I know you all want to know about THE WINDS OF WINTER too. I’ve seen some truly weird reports about WOW on the internet of late, by ‘journalists’ who make their stories up out of whole cloth. I don’t know which story is more absurd, the one that says the book is finished and I’ve been sitting on it for some nefarious reason, or the one that says I have no pages. Both ‘reports’ are equally false and equally moronic. I am still working on it, I am still months away (how many? good question), I still have good days and bad days, and that’s all I care to say. Whether WINDS or the first volume of FIRE AND BLOOD will be the first to hit the bookstores is hard to say at this juncture, but I do think you will have a Westeros book from me in 2018… and who knows, maybe two. A boy can dream…
And that’s all we know.
via io9
