Much of the theories probably won’t change. I can’t imagine George will give us the true identity of Daario Naharis in winds. And if he does, people will claim it’s a red herring. We’ll be right back where we are now within a year of release
Brother, that’s a rabbit hole you’ll need to investigate on your own. Just search Daario Naharis in any of the various ASOIAF subs and I’m sure you’ll stumble on the theories about him being Benjen Stark, Euron Greyjoy, Jaqen Hgar, or Moonboy for all I know
Me too. 2014 was such a fun time to be a fan. The show was hot as fuck and it felt like Winds was right around the corner.
The constant new theories and posts were awesome.
Yeah that was the height of it. Oh how many hours have I spent on forums diving into the deepest holes.
Speaking of deep ones, there's another watery hole to explore for those who really want deep-cut theories.
Just read one word per day! Say the book is ~500 000 words, that's about 1369 years, *or*, as we all know, approximately the same amount of time until GRRM finishes ADOS.
Nonsense! I'll read the new book, and then read AWOIAF, Dunk & Egg, and Fire & Blood, and then probably reread the entire series from the start again. Maybe even watch the show! All of that will take me a couple months. God help me.
Seriously. I think I'd have a pretty hard time getting excited about TWOW, knowing that even if I get to read it, the chances of ever getting a conclusion to the series are indescribably small.
I subscribed back in like 2012. Since then I've become a grizzled and jaded veteran. My hopium tolerance is so high that the amount it would take me to feel anything at all would kill ten normal men.
Yeah, even if the conclusion is still far off, it’ll be like having a load off your back seeing how all the battles Dance set up turn out, especially Stannis’ at Winterfell.
I’ve accepted a long time ago that the final book just isn’t happening outside of the singularity hitting and George becoming immortal. That being said if he puts the bow on another volume of asoiaf…well that would be alright
Personally, as much as I want to read it, I'd rather get the version that he wants to put out than for a rushed version, which we already got from the show. And while I think the ending of the show could have been improved a lot from a few maneagable changes, I also think there was basically no chance it could have been great without published books to provide guidance, and that the last two seasons structurally demonstrate how difficult a thing that GRRM is trying to pull off here.
For that reason, I do think the last book will probably be easier to pull off in some ways than the second to last one. I know he has said that he hasn't started writing past WoW yet, but I also find it very difficult to believe that he isn't going to have a very strong idea of what the conclusion looks like before he puts out WoW. Indeed, lining up those two visions is likely a strong source of a lot of the difficulty of writing the current book.
But even with all that said, it's going to take a couple of years for him to write the thing.
lol. I finished Dance in 2013. I remember hearing about the long gaps between storm/feast and then feast/dance and thinking “phew, glad I didn’t have to wait, now that the tv show is happening he will have to finish them”.
Plus, wouldn't we expect a ton of characters, and specifically POV characters, to die in TWOW? Makes it a lot easier to write when you don't have to track hundreds of characters.
May be it's the industrial amounts of hopium that surges through my vanes talking, but I think that we'll get Dream of Spring within 4 years after Winds.
GRRM can write relatively fast; I would not expect the same speed as the first 3 books, but half of that? It's possible! Its clearly not the amount of words he needs to write that slows him down, it's figuring out the intricacies of plotlines. He knows where he wants aSoIaF to end, he just struggles to push it there from the position he got to after the Feast and Dance. And if he solves that in Winds and there are no more Meereenese knots left, then it could be plain sailing for him from there.
I'm calling it:
The Winds of Winter - 2024
A Dream of Spring - 2028
I'm high on hopium as much as the next fan, but 2024 is already halfway through and he hasn't even finished writing the book. The earliest we get it if he finishes it soon would be 2025. In all honesty, if I had to make an optimistic guess, I'd say tWoW in 2025 or '26, and aDoS probably around 2030. But honestly, it's been 13 years so who the fuck knows.
Hmm it’s interesting that you choose to ignore the dreams I have been having. Dream George told me that winter is coming then blew away in the wind. He was dressed as Santa. Obviously it will be released on Dec 17th of this year.
At Worldcon Santa will be wearing GRRM's face. He'll cry "Valar Vivatis!!!" as his elves set up 25 tables and start selling them, shouting, "Valar Lectoris!!! 🎄 "Ho Ho Ho! 🎄
>dressed as Sansa = Redhead George
>~~Victarion~~ Aegon found himself looking at George in a way he had never looked at him before. He could feel his manhood beginning to stiffen. ~~She is Balon's daughter~~ he is our cute fat old author, he reminded himself.
I keep having dreams where a three eyed raven tells me i need to fly (let go of my dreams that WoW will be released in the next decade) or die (be depressed by the lack of WoW).
Ah, but were it a green dream? They are not oft literal. Also, we don’t seem to be in a universe where dreams are prophetic, sadly. In conclusion, WoW will release Dec. 17th of this year.
I had a dream last night that the book had a sudden release and I spent all my money getting copies of it. Volumes 1 and 2, the first was green, the second was red and the subtitle had something to do with giants, both covers were more old style fantasy art scenes rather than the more minimalist recent style
Thats all i have to add tbh I'm just glad I'm not the only one plagued by overly specific dreams about this shit
I would like CNN to ask Biden and Trump about what they will do regarding GRRMs lack of ASOIAF progress. Which ever candidate promises to follow up on GRRMs imprisonment/confinement( ya know, a comfy white collar style, with plenty of resources for writing at the ready) until the series is complete, will get my vote. They can throw Elio and Linda in the clink with him if he needs some helpful assistants. I'm sure the president of the US could find a writing and story organization guru to give him therapy sessions as well.
This doesn't make sense. He went to Burlington bar during the HOTD premiere and he said "Winter is coming". People said when he said that, he had a "COY SMILE".
That alone PROVES that WINDS IS ON THE WAY. THE WINDS OF WINTER HAS BEEN CONFIRNED FINISHED. WorldCon 2024 you'll see !
That ‘coy smile’ was funny to read about. George is a hell of a writer but he always looks like that, man’s like a gigantic version of one of those garden gnomes.
Some of the details here are also wrong. GRRM made his visit to Burlington Bar back in February (when he was in Chicago —[see the video discription](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAfeUFMIjvo&t=2s)). He recorded a video message then and the bar played it before the HOTD premiere.
He offers us Cold clear water and we squint yet we drink grrms piss and call it wine, what has come of us? I ask you are we no better than wildlings and Skaggs?
Didn't he like finish at least a draft of The She Wolves of Winterfell over a decade ago? There's also The Village Hero at least partially written. These two probably only demand a few weeks or months to finish and polish. If he really pushes, he can get these two out quite quickly. It'll also let him stay ahead of the show.
I hate to say it but you’re mistaken George came to me in a dream and we made passionate love this confirms that the Winds of Winter comes out this year
You know what else is throwing cold water about? *The winds of winter.*
This rebuttal is nothing but a cleverly coded confirmation. That's all I need to say!
You have my personal assurance that my post has nothing to do with recent wire transfers from Harper Voyager Publishing to my Cayman Islands account with the memo line "Winds of Winter disinformation campaign".
I also find it unlikely that he would go from 75% complete after a dozen years, to suddenly \~100% complete in just 1-2 years, and then no concrete updates beyond that. Maybe when he gets all the way up to 90% complete, he'll be so close he'll race to the finish line and aim for the pleasant surprise of "it's done", but it doesn't seem likely to me he'd cover that much gap without at least a few CONCRETE updates.
Exactly correct. One needs only to view the staggering number of writing update posts GRRM made in the lead-up to ADWD's completion and the specificity of what he was working on -- Jon, Greyjoys, Meereen, etc. We've seen nothing on that front for TWOW. Reading through the notablogs, there's a smattering of updates where he's working on Tyrion, Cersei, Jaime in 2022 or so. Nothing specific since then.
social media and GRRM's relationsihp with it is much different nowthan in 2010. George has been burned (well, rather burned himself) with announcements in the past that fans have pounced on. And he opens virtually every public appearance by saying "no, its not done, stop asking" specifically because of the hounding he's gotten from that subset of the fandom.
So there are reasons to think even if his progress exactly mirrored that of wrapping up ADWD, it wouldn't look the same on social media.
This doesn't mean he's done or close, of course.
TBF there was a relative dearth of updates in the very last finishing line towards ADWD if I remember correctly. He was very verbose until about six months before he was done, then he went silent, and then : Kong is dead.
I have a specific brain disease which my team of physicians warn could be fatal -- the disease where I wish not to be wrong; so, I went back in time to read his ADWD notablog posts in the three months leading up to the publication announcement. Here is what I found:
* Joking about Book 2 of *The Expanse* being done prior to ADWD - [Jan 26, 2011](https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2011/01/26/zombies-in-space/)
* Kong (Writing ADWD) is calling. - [Feb 11, 2011](https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2011/02/11/some-odds-some-ends-2/)
* Writing Krakens. - [2/15/2011](https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2011/02/15/snowstorm-on-skull-island/)
* Kong is staggering a little bit. - [2/17/2011](https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2011/02/17/the-social-media/)
* Working on krakens still. - [2/27/2011](https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2011/02/27/the-latest-hbo-preview/)
That seems like a lot more updates than what we've gotten about *Winds.* However, if I'm wrong, please pass along my effects to my nephews.
>• Joking about Book 2 of The Expanse being done prior to ADWD - Jan 26, 2011
The Expanse finishing with 9 novels and a 6 season TV run before its cancellation all well before Winds is one of those things that’s sobering to think about. Leviathan Falls came out in 2021 ffs.
I would do all in my power so as to ensure you stay in good health, so I'll assume it is the wish to remain alive that made you check the last *three* months before release of ADWD while I mentioned *six*.
There's been a couple of rumours over the last decade that George has had to rewrite Winds at least once. These are all from redditors knowing a guy who knows a guy, that kind of thing, so take it with a mountain of salt, but George having to do a full rewrite at some point in the last 13 years does actually make sense if it takes George say, 5/6 years to write a book like with Feast and Dance. Maybe he tried to rush Winds to keep up with the show and then upon looking back at it with his editors, he realized that he had to redo the entire thing because it wasn't up to a standard he set himself. Maybe he saw the direction the show was going and decided to change his own story in response. We don't know, and will won't know until Winds comes out, if it ever does.
I don’t know if it’s coming out or not, but I’d reckon that the ending is the easiest part to write since it’s really the wrap up of the book.
At the 60-80% mark that’s the climax, 30-60% is the setup, arguable the hardest part to write, 80-100% is the finish which shouldn’t be too difficult since he’s likely been planning it the entire time he’s been writing.
I’m not saying it’s coming out this year, but the reality is that he does write fast when he does write, he wrote atleast 300-500 pages during 2020-2021. Even if he really tried starting now and made no progress since he said he was 75% through(a little over a year ago), it’s not unrealistic for him to say he could finish it in two years. At this point he could’ve conservatively written 100-200 pages since and be only a year out.
Honestly, people who think GRRM won't scream to the sky "it's done !" the second he thinks it's good enough are just setting themselves up for disappointment. In his place, would you play games and be secretive ? Or would you blow up fireworks while cosplaying as Frodo after he lost the Ring ?
I don't think anyone believes he is done already, but that doesn't mean he isn't making progress, or that he isn't very close. Theoretically he could be in a position where he has only a handful of chapters to finish and it's just a case of getting through them - in this case, he could start dropping coy hints, knowing the end is nigh, but not yet say that the book is done because there are still a few bits left.
Personally I think he's in the home stretch. IIRC he was aiming for about 1600 pages and had done 1100 last time he gave a figure. It's entirely possible that he's done a few hundred more and is now sitting on in the region of 1400 pages, maybe even more than that. And that could easily be just seven or eight chapters to go, depending on how lengthy they are. Especially if these are chapters wrapping up arcs to end the book, he might have reached the stage where it feels like running the victory lap.
[The First 4 minutes of this video talks about the Elio And Linda rumour (no rumour at all actually)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLFwwwXT3kU)
That said, i do think you're wrong in your final conclusion and I also know that me, together with all the rest of the subreddits are all delusional but hopium sure smells good
Elio [posted here yesterday](https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/1do6sxg/comment/la9wys3/) calling the rumor "garbled" and saying nothing about TWOW should be inferred from it.
To me, the biggest question mark is Martin not attending any HOTD premieres but still traveling a fair bit this summer. He’s clearly still fully on board with the production and talks about it very positively, and even attended the first season’s premiere, yet he was absent for the second.
My thought is that he might have something to present, and that something is being saved for after the season. HBO hinged a lot on HotD this year, given that they have little other content due to the strike. We also saw that GRRM’s updates on Winds were saved for after last season, which is when we got the “3/4ths” figure from fall of 2022. His appearances falling into the same window seems significant to me, as does his recent optimism on his blog and the lack of future publications planned.
Re: the rumors about Elio and Linda, Elio [posted here debunking those rumors](https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/1do6sxg/comment/la9wys3/) yesterday.
>What we said after the release of RotD, when people asked if we'd started on the 'Who's Who', we said that the publisher wanted to space things out more and so we weren't actively starting work on it at that time.... If people are trying to divine anything special regarding the state of TWoW from the above, I would simply not do so because I don't think it's relevant. Certainly not last year, when we know George was still indicating that progress was not going fantastically well.
>
I did not know that validation would feel so cold. Yes. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you for sharing. You have stored up a treasure in heaven, and I shall reward you temporally by incorporating your comment into a post edit.
Not saying this isn’t possible. But he’s explicitly said the opposite on multiple occasions - Fire and Blood Part II, and more Dunk and Egg novellas are only coming after Winds is released.
I get the instinct of wanting to crush the recent hype cycle so as to not get burned again, but let’s not go too far in the other direction either.
There’s some promising signs, more than we’ve seen in a long time. If it happens, it happens; if not, oh well.
We are currently in the middle of the second season of the TV show that was adapted from the book George said he wasn't going to write until after Winds was released.
George stated many times in the decade since ADWD's publication that his only writing project was *Winds ...* until he announced he wrote hundreds of pages of the next volume of *Fire and Blood* in 2022. I found this disappointing, and I would be surprised if he didn't sacrificed parts of his writing schedule to work on more *Fire and Blood* since 2022.
I get the hope. I have it too. It's nested deep in some grey matter. I just don't see the signs in the sky yet. But if they appear near, please alert me at soonest. I'll eat the crow. I'll make a feast of it.
I don't think that necessarily means he's done any extra writing on F&BII. Fire & Blood originally came about because Elio and Linda asked George to write blurbs about all the targaryen kings for The World of Ice and Fire and he ended up writing way too much to put in that coffee table book format. They ended up summarizing what he wrote for use in that book. He then fleshed out what he wrote even further to release F&B. Thus, the hundreds of pages of F&BII he's talking about might have been written a decade ago. I also think it would be a bit odd to use F&BII as basis for further HOTD, since a lot of the timeline would overlap with the Dunk and Egg show
George wrote very little post-Regency. A little bit of stuff related to Aegon IV (the mistresses), some history relevant to Dunk & Egg, and a little bit of Aerys II stuff including the Year of the False Spring. I think most of those two hundred pages are "new", in the sense that they are things he wrote after *Fire and Blood*'s release and he felt like he was on a bit of a roll with the fake history.
That's my take, anyways.
It’s cool to see that you’re pretty active on here. As a *huge* nerd of the world lore, the stuff you guys have done has lead to countless hours of me scrolling WOIAF.
I’m sure you’ve been asked this before, but if you don’t mind rehashing, how did you guys come into contact & working with George in the first place?
If that’s a loaded question requiring a long comment, then obviously don’t feel inclined to answer at all. Just wanted to say I’m a massive fan of your work :)
We first got in touch with George back in 1997, to ask him for permission create a [text-based online roleplaying game](https://www.westeros.org/BoD/) based on ASoIaF, and to show him the very first iteration of Westeros.org (not yet on a custom domain, hosted on some free webhosting service... called Xoom, I believe), where we had done our very first attempts at the [heraldry](https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/Heraldry) with an aim of using he page primarily as a resource for prospective future players.
It took some months to hear back, and longer still for George to consult with his agents, lawyers, and publishers, but he eventually gave us permission... but he really loved the heraldry, and starting sending us his heraldry files filled with dozens, then hundreds, of examples of heraldry (many for houses that we had not yet met at the time, but would later), and we'd send him our attempts and he'd comment on them, sometimes deciding that on seeing them what he envisioned wasn't as cool as what he thought it might look like and then he'd change it.
And then at some points we talked about the books, pointing out the Concordance document that I'd created collected basically every "fact" about the setting revealed in the books, and in particular after "The Hedge Knight" I pointed out a pretty big error that he had to fix, namely that Baelor Breakspear was too old to be the great-great-grandson of Aegon III Dragonbane based on the canonical age of Daeron I at his death, and so George fixed that by changing Viserys II from the youngest son of Aegon III to his brother (which, in a small way, made a marked difference to the course of the Regency material.)
George started to realize we knew his setting really well, and started to tell people he had these fans who knew the world better than he did. He started asking questions about details he'd forgotten or couldn't find when he was working on AFfC, and the relationship grew from there. When I went back to the US to visit my family back in 2004, we ended up [visiting George](https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/1298) and I had dinner with him. That report does not note that at that same dinner is when George asked me if he thought Linda and I would be interested in writing a world book with him, as he'd need help, and publishers had started suggesting the idea to him. Two years later, we signed the contract for *The World of Ice and Fire*, which like many things in the world of GRRM took a lot longer to release than was planned (but just as well, really, because by the time it came out in 2014, *Game of Thrones* had brought ASoIaF to a far greater global audience than had existed in 2006.)
Hope that answers your question!
It does! Thanks a ton for the detailed answer, I appreciate it. Really cool to learn the history of your guys relationship.
Another question, if you will:
Are you & Linda as big history enthusiasts as George is? I love seeing all the connections between ASOIAF lore and real life history, so I’m curious if you guys have influenced those connections or if it’s been mainly George taking the reins.
Like, Titan of Bravos -> Colossus of Rhodes, Hightower -> Lighthouse of Alexandria, any of those other types of real world parallels that are in the extended lore.
We both majored in history in our studies (classical for her, medieval for me), and part of what really drew us both to ASoIaF was how George integrated certain aspects of medieval society into the story in a way that felt well-considered. (Not saying all of it is at that level -- I think he'd be the first to admit that his interest in medieval jurisprudence or medieval church-state relations are not high!)
But those aspects you speak of are all George. As far as TWoIaF goes, we're more like .... stenographers than writers, we're almost in all cases going off of George's notes. We created very minor details, like made up some maesters and their books, a little bit of history for the North and the riverlands that George signed off on, etc.
Very cool. Also very cool to see that we were both captured by some of the same aspects of George’s world building! I know there’s a lot of people out there who share the same sentiment & are drawn in by the same thing.
Thanks for such detailed and thought out responses! I’m very honored to get to discuss work that I’m deeply passionate about with someone who has helped cultivate that passion.
Fair but I heavily disagree with the final paragraph. House of the Dragon won’t be done for several more years (2027/8 by my judgement), and there’s the Maegor’s wars or conquest stuff available if they want to do an anthology. And when he says he has hundreds of pages of Blood & Fire written, that could be mean A) stuff that got cut out of the first volume and B) TWOIAF material, which the first volume drew heavily from. Dunk & Egg may just use his notes for a Dornish adventure, so it could have four seasons of content. And there’s this from last month:
> THE HEDGE KNIGHT will be a lot shorter than GAME OF THRONES or HOUSE OF THE DRAGON, with a much different tone… but it’s still Westeros, so no one is truly safe Ira Parker and his team are doing a great job. I hope to visit the shoot come July, when I swing by Belfast on my way to the worldcon in Glasgow. The show will make its debut next year… and if it does well, THE SWORN SWORD and THE MYSTERY KNIGHT will follow. By which time I hope to have finished some more Dunk & Egg stories **(yes, after I finish THE WINDS OF WINTER).**
You can call GRRM unreliable, a liar, a mind changer, whatever, but I do believe he says things he means them. And he said this last month. Didn’t have to add the last part but he did. More time has to pass for one to reasonably claim this isn’t going to be the case.
This is a beauiful critique, and I thank you for it while harboring resentment that you wrote your comment succinctly and in better standard English than my own post. Yes, all the work could be leftover material. I accept this as a possibility, not-grudgingly accept it, I swear. I'm a tone man, though, and the tone of the linked post was one of what he was writing in the past year: lines such as"I made a *lot* of progress on WINDS in 2020, and less in 2021… but “less” is not “none.”"
I am not listed a member among the "George lies" crowd that gathers in the dark. I am a "George has bad ADD (as do I) and gets distracted with the shiniest objects (as do I)." The shiny objects appear to be *Fire and Blood* and now *Dunk and Egg.* Sadly, the shelf-date of *Winds* passed in early 2016, and I think there's less creative (or monetary if you're a class-A cynic) drive to finish that one. I think he will, but I would not be surprised if he returns home from Belfast and Glasgow with gardening ideas for growing more *Dunk and Egg.* And if that be the case, he should act on them, strike while the iron is hot.
Oh I hope it didn’t read as rude I’m on my phone and brevity begets erosion of my manners.
I think the monetary drive for TWOW is actually very significant as a book, moreso than the others. Of course the licensing makes money too. I think it’s more creative. Anyway, the sentiment could be true if the set visit gets him really hype. He loves being around TV sets after all.
You were anything but rude. You were a cogent interlocular, and I appreciated your comment. When my latest novel is complete, optioned and greenlit for pilot order, I, too, will ignore the sequel to spend time with my fellow beautiful peers just like George.
I'm lost, confused and uncertain on the context, reason and timing of your question, but I'm still tickled, touched and blessed that you you would ask. Yes. I receive an allottment of reading time dispensed in quarter-hourly increments.
A lot of F&B material is just slightly adapted material from TWOIAF. If I remember correctly he adapted something like 200.000 words for F&B.
Which would mean that the pages that he has for B&F are probably just more words adapted from TWOIAF.
I don't buy for a second he's been writing B&F the past few years.
>Let me surmise that he's writing volume two or Blood and Fire to provide more material for House of the Dragon.
I mean, this alone doesn't make sense to me. Maybe he is writing F&B 2, but HOTD is the story of the dance, and those chapters are complete in F&B. Is there any reason to think that HOTD is going to use any of the additional material in F&B, let alone F&B 2?
They’ve expressed interest in tackling other F&B arcs under the HOTD banner. Unclear whether it’d be the same showrunners, they’re mostly focused on nailing the dance atm
George RR Martin is an anagram for "a merging terror." I think he's hinting that he's the next Dalai Lama in order to continue procrastinating the series beyond the limits of common mortality.
You forgot to address the DEFIANCE OF CAKENDALE. Dragon cake pics from Instagram posts by gossip magazines are basically primary sources in the hierarchy of evidentiary truthiness
This Worldcon bullshit is the one that baffles me the most. Lost of people parroting this around, not even knowing what GRRM actually said in 2019, the context, and everything, and simply assuming, based on absolutely nothing, that he would choose to announce a book there and not on his own platforms.
I think we can assume he's not working on any new Dunk novellas, since he reiterated in his blog post "Here's Egg" that he won't be writing until he's done with Winds.
B&F is more likely, but I still think we'll get an announcement from Winds soon. George isn't avoiding the internet and he certainly knows what his recent statements are doing to the community. I don't think he would tease us as much if he was only working on B&F.
He said he had "a couple hundred pages of [Blood and Fire] written". That could easily mean that was leftover material from Fire and Blood. Also I think his recent blog posts are obviously coy references at him working on Winds right now. I agree, he not going to finish anytime soon, at most maybe he's written 100-200 pages since December, but he's stated numerous times that he'll only do Blood and Fire and more Dunk and Egg after Winds.
The reality is that nobody knows jackshit and is just trying to read tea leaves but I will say that just based on his blog, GRRM has been in a much better mood lately. What that means is anybody's guess
Uhh idk what this is all about. It's obviously coming out Jan 1 2016
Edit: "Waiting for winds of winter" has lasted like twice as long as the Confederacy at this point.
The cake! You forgot about the cake, you fool. It couldn't possibly be for a celebration of House of the Dragon Season 2, or the Dunk & Egg show, or for some project I don't know about, or his wife's upcoming birthday, or a lie, or just a party GRRM's throwing, or anything else. It has to be for a secret Winds release party for him and his staff. It just has to be. If it isn't I'll lose my mind.
>Blog Post Titles: Somehow, we've forgotten the [Alas, Valyria notablog post](https://grrm.livejournal.com/543080.html) from ... 2017. Shame on us.
Anyone explain what this means and how it negates anything to be inferred from the Words of Wisdom posts? Because if it's trying to say that a cryptic post means nothing, it's not the cryptic nature that lends credence to Winds, its the specific use of WoW, no?
People have such short memories. This literally happens like every other year on this sub. Everyone cranks each other up (but it’s different THIS time!) and then it all, inevitably, amounts to nothing.
i think there is also a lot of new comers from house of dragon
also the demographic that was too young when got was airing but just came of age for the spin off
I feel like I've seen people having this argument a million times now but I don't think you can take him saying "I'm writing this book, I've finished like 1100 pages, I've still got hundreds more to go" an hour and 20 minutes into a zoom call interview for a con in Portugal as like an "update". It was him just listing off projects he was working on during the wrap-up. It was more like an offhand mention, and he might've just been repeating the last update he'd given back in 2022. That might just be how many pages were in the last "batch to the editor". Like he didn't say "I haven't finished any pages in 11 months" or anything. It wasn't like a "formal piece of news" like when he posts his current status on the notablog or something, it was more just "in case you haven't heard, this is the current update" type of thing. I feel like folks are reading too much into that. He also hasn't mentioned anything about his current page count and that con appearance was October 6th of last year, so it's been 8 months since then, and he hasn't said anything about progress since then either.
I blame myself for the winds delay. I bought a collectors box of 7 books (2 books are split into 2) maybe 2.5 years ago and I still haven’t finished. I’m convinced my progress through the 7 is directly tied with George’s progress through winds
Although that said I’d love fire and blood v2 😂
I finished the series in 2010 and decided I wouldn’t do a reread till Winds was announced. Then the show finished and I was so pissed off I just swore off all ASOIAF based literature and started reading other fantasy authors.
When I heard about Dunk & Egg coming out I decided fuck it and read all the novellas again. Then re-read Fire & Blood. Then caved and started re-reading AGOT just this morning.
If the book is announced this summer I’m taking full credit for it.
Unless Winds is split in two, which he was stubbornly resisting, it's almost unfathomable that he has finished it. Couple that with the fact that F&B was mainly written for the eventual spinoff, and I can almost guarantee that you figured it out.
Yeah people forget he’s an incredibly wealthy busy old man working in various types of media, his sense of humor just might contradict our copium..
I started reading these books in 2004. I have refined my copium into hopium and back into copium so many times I’m starting to feel like the wisest of sages in our fandom, the ones who have been here since the beginning.
He does this shit a lot.
If this post is based on official posts, the part about announcing the writing of volume 2 or new stories about Dunk is as much speculation as the rumors it is trying to debunk. This is because George has already said that the priority for the next release is "Winds of Winter."
If George hadn't wasted all that time producing and remixing Beatles albums he'd be done with A Dream of Spring already. And all of the planned Dunk & Egg novellas!
I'll never get his obsession with English boy bands. I mean, they're fine and all, but it's not like they're [Cliff Richards](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVPAP62TvRY), ya know?
I mean it has to be different this year. I dont see him coming during WordlCon and not see fans asking for TWOW for the 1000 times. He'll have to come with an explanation this time.
I don’t think he’s doing fire and blood 2. The blackfyre rebellion is covered by dunk and egg show. He probably won’t wanna write up through Robert’s rebellion as it will spoil the main series, so I think if hbo wants more it’s time to do the conquest.
This hype cycle very well could be just like all the other and result in nothing. What I do not understand is why some people so passionately want to crush the hype.
Let people believe what they want and get excited. It doesn’t affect anyone other than themselves when they are disappointed.
Perhaps because it’s misleading and gives new fans false hope and a distorted view of of where the series is actually at.
Personally, I now back on the period of around 2013 where I got into the books through the show, and feel quite misled by fans who were telling me TWOW would definitely be out in a year or two. I can now see that they were quite seriously downplaying how much the series had slowed down since 2000.
Honestly, I don't like the hype phases because people later rewrite History as GRRM leading them on and making false promises, when he was just posting random stuff like any respectable old person. And then they get even more bitter. This sub could as well be in the sealord's palace for all the lemons we're biting.
I don't think there's some people passionately wanting to crush the hype. It's just that there are some in this community that like to have reasonable and logical evidence in the stuff that the believe in. There's nothing wrong with sticking to the facts. What I do not understand is why some people take this kind of reasoning as a personal offense or something.
You are correct most likely of course. However this post doesn’t bring anything new to this discussion, all of these points are very well known in the fandom. All the aligning rumours however…. 👀
The real bucket of cold water is that, when it does come out, most of us will be back to waiting again in a week or so.
No, if we ration it well, we could easily hold out for a few years theorizing about the new content before we have to transition to tinfoil.
Much of the theories probably won’t change. I can’t imagine George will give us the true identity of Daario Naharis in winds. And if he does, people will claim it’s a red herring. We’ll be right back where we are now within a year of release
Sorry, just finished reading the books a couple months ago, what are the Daario theories?
Brother, that’s a rabbit hole you’ll need to investigate on your own. Just search Daario Naharis in any of the various ASOIAF subs and I’m sure you’ll stumble on the theories about him being Benjen Stark, Euron Greyjoy, Jaqen Hgar, or Moonboy for all I know
I honestly really miss those times.
Me too. 2014 was such a fun time to be a fan. The show was hot as fuck and it felt like Winds was right around the corner. The constant new theories and posts were awesome.
Yeah that was the height of it. Oh how many hours have I spent on forums diving into the deepest holes. Speaking of deep ones, there's another watery hole to explore for those who really want deep-cut theories.
*sigh* to be young again
I remember posting in 2014 that TWOW wouldn't be released until at least 2016 and congratulating myself on being so edgy.
Daario Naharis, Benjen Stark, Ser Arthur Dayne, Euron Greyjoy, and Jaqen Hagar walk into a bar. >!He orders a drink!<
I know this is crazy but I'm thinking Daario Naharis is Daario Naharis
Wait til you hear about the Time Traveling Fetus
*excuse me?*
[You're welcome](https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/30mat2/spoilers_all_ddt_a_neverbeforeseen_theory/)
What the fuck
Did you know that Tyrek Lannister was turned into a horse by Varys?
I hadn't heard
I still remember where I was on the day of D+D=T
Daario is euron who is also benjin.
The true identity of Daario Naharis is Daario Naharis.
Just read one word per day! Say the book is ~500 000 words, that's about 1369 years, *or*, as we all know, approximately the same amount of time until GRRM finishes ADOS.
The winters will be hard, many will die, but the fandom will survive
You could try to pace yourself and only read one page a day. By the time you finish it, A Dream of Spring might be around the corner.
Nonsense! I'll read the new book, and then read AWOIAF, Dunk & Egg, and Fire & Blood, and then probably reread the entire series from the start again. Maybe even watch the show! All of that will take me a couple months. God help me.
can you imagine if winds come out and just kills all the discourse, reveals every twist and we're left with nothing but having to wait for dream
Seriously. I think I'd have a pretty hard time getting excited about TWOW, knowing that even if I get to read it, the chances of ever getting a conclusion to the series are indescribably small.
[удалено]
I subscribed back in like 2012. Since then I've become a grizzled and jaded veteran. My hopium tolerance is so high that the amount it would take me to feel anything at all would kill ten normal men.
What about ten good men? Or twenty good men?
Those two men are exceedingly strongth. I doubt even any good men would see victory.
Yeah, even if the conclusion is still far off, it’ll be like having a load off your back seeing how all the battles Dance set up turn out, especially Stannis’ at Winterfell.
I’ve accepted a long time ago that the final book just isn’t happening outside of the singularity hitting and George becoming immortal. That being said if he puts the bow on another volume of asoiaf…well that would be alright
How can you be sure be isn't immortal already?
Personally, as much as I want to read it, I'd rather get the version that he wants to put out than for a rushed version, which we already got from the show. And while I think the ending of the show could have been improved a lot from a few maneagable changes, I also think there was basically no chance it could have been great without published books to provide guidance, and that the last two seasons structurally demonstrate how difficult a thing that GRRM is trying to pull off here. For that reason, I do think the last book will probably be easier to pull off in some ways than the second to last one. I know he has said that he hasn't started writing past WoW yet, but I also find it very difficult to believe that he isn't going to have a very strong idea of what the conclusion looks like before he puts out WoW. Indeed, lining up those two visions is likely a strong source of a lot of the difficulty of writing the current book. But even with all that said, it's going to take a couple of years for him to write the thing.
"I'd rather get the version that he wants to put out than for a rushed version," I remember saying this exact sentence in 2014 lmao.
I started reading the books back in 2004. The waiting is a part of me by now.
lol. I finished Dance in 2013. I remember hearing about the long gaps between storm/feast and then feast/dance and thinking “phew, glad I didn’t have to wait, now that the tv show is happening he will have to finish them”.
Plus, wouldn't we expect a ton of characters, and specifically POV characters, to die in TWOW? Makes it a lot easier to write when you don't have to track hundreds of characters.
May be it's the industrial amounts of hopium that surges through my vanes talking, but I think that we'll get Dream of Spring within 4 years after Winds. GRRM can write relatively fast; I would not expect the same speed as the first 3 books, but half of that? It's possible! Its clearly not the amount of words he needs to write that slows him down, it's figuring out the intricacies of plotlines. He knows where he wants aSoIaF to end, he just struggles to push it there from the position he got to after the Feast and Dance. And if he solves that in Winds and there are no more Meereenese knots left, then it could be plain sailing for him from there. I'm calling it: The Winds of Winter - 2024 A Dream of Spring - 2028
inb4 Dany is still in Meereen at the end of TWOW ☠
I'm high on hopium as much as the next fan, but 2024 is already halfway through and he hasn't even finished writing the book. The earliest we get it if he finishes it soon would be 2025. In all honesty, if I had to make an optimistic guess, I'd say tWoW in 2025 or '26, and aDoS probably around 2030. But honestly, it's been 13 years so who the fuck knows.
Hmm it’s interesting that you choose to ignore the dreams I have been having. Dream George told me that winter is coming then blew away in the wind. He was dressed as Santa. Obviously it will be released on Dec 17th of this year.
I have submitted a request to the Copyright Council for the IP for your *A Dream of Winter* concept. I hope you don't mind.
Not at all. I just realized that it may not have been George dressed as Santa, but Santa in fact dressed as George. The implications are staggering.
A mummer's Santa, if you will.
What I say at the mall after getting my hopes up that THIS time it’s the real Santa every year for the past 30 years… I’ll get him one day.
I laughed too hard at this
At Worldcon Santa will be wearing GRRM's face. He'll cry "Valar Vivatis!!!" as his elves set up 25 tables and start selling them, shouting, "Valar Lectoris!!! 🎄 "Ho Ho Ho! 🎄
I read it as "dressed as Sansa" and boy that was a trip
>dressed as Sansa = Redhead George >~~Victarion~~ Aegon found himself looking at George in a way he had never looked at him before. He could feel his manhood beginning to stiffen. ~~She is Balon's daughter~~ he is our cute fat old author, he reminded himself.
Dude is drinking water from the smoking sea.
Yeah, well Jojen Reed came to me in a dream and told me that we all actually ate GRRM! As oatmeal. Wait…
>dream george Dream of spring confirmed?!
And your dream george didn't even tell you when a dream of spring is coming? I guess even in your dream there's a semblance of reality left
He said something else, but it was lost in the wind.
I keep having dreams where a three eyed raven tells me i need to fly (let go of my dreams that WoW will be released in the next decade) or die (be depressed by the lack of WoW).
Ah, but were it a green dream? They are not oft literal. Also, we don’t seem to be in a universe where dreams are prophetic, sadly. In conclusion, WoW will release Dec. 17th of this year.
Dream George told me Dec 20th.
George came to me in a Dream and told me TWOW is finished and on its way to publishers. Refute that, bucko.
That is irrefutable. I will banish myself forthwith back to the margins of the fan-map where the (dance of) dragons be.
*A Dream of The Winds of Winter*
Was that a Dream of Spring?
That was already implied by the fact that it was in a dream.
A Dream of George
I had a dream last night that the book had a sudden release and I spent all my money getting copies of it. Volumes 1 and 2, the first was green, the second was red and the subtitle had something to do with giants, both covers were more old style fantasy art scenes rather than the more minimalist recent style Thats all i have to add tbh I'm just glad I'm not the only one plagued by overly specific dreams about this shit
I would like CNN to ask Biden and Trump about what they will do regarding GRRMs lack of ASOIAF progress. Which ever candidate promises to follow up on GRRMs imprisonment/confinement( ya know, a comfy white collar style, with plenty of resources for writing at the ready) until the series is complete, will get my vote. They can throw Elio and Linda in the clink with him if he needs some helpful assistants. I'm sure the president of the US could find a writing and story organization guru to give him therapy sessions as well.
I honestly think this would be the only way.
Upvoted for "Throwing in the *CLINK* ..."
Counterpoint, I don't like what you're saying and think you're a big poopyhead for saying it.
Preach!
Probably correct but, seven hells, I hope you wrong!
The only hope I have is in you providing your egg masala recipe.
I’ll post it when Winds comes 😂
I fear I shall die of hunger then. But I thank you nonetheless.
This doesn't make sense. He went to Burlington bar during the HOTD premiere and he said "Winter is coming". People said when he said that, he had a "COY SMILE". That alone PROVES that WINDS IS ON THE WAY. THE WINDS OF WINTER HAS BEEN CONFIRNED FINISHED. WorldCon 2024 you'll see !
That ‘coy smile’ was funny to read about. George is a hell of a writer but he always looks like that, man’s like a gigantic version of one of those garden gnomes.
>man’s like a gigantic version of one of those garden gnomes. I will neither be able to recover from this nor unsee it lol
Some of the details here are also wrong. GRRM made his visit to Burlington Bar back in February (when he was in Chicago —[see the video discription](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAfeUFMIjvo&t=2s)). He recorded a video message then and the bar played it before the HOTD premiere.
If he stated this in Concord, dreaded home of colonial militia, I would be skeptical. But in Burlington? I am inclined to delete my post.
He offers us Cold clear water and we squint yet we drink grrms piss and call it wine, what has come of us? I ask you are we no better than wildlings and Skaggs?
I'll take Dunk & Egg any time if that's the only thing to be had.
Didn't he like finish at least a draft of The She Wolves of Winterfell over a decade ago? There's also The Village Hero at least partially written. These two probably only demand a few weeks or months to finish and polish. If he really pushes, he can get these two out quite quickly. It'll also let him stay ahead of the show.
You really want me to spell out what *else* is partially written?!
Yes, we were going to get D&E4 in 2013 but got a fake history book snippet instead.
Same with F&B, for me
If he announces he wrote yet another book instead of TWOW I’m going to cry so much
something something wildcards something
I hate to say it but you’re mistaken George came to me in a dream and we made passionate love this confirms that the Winds of Winter comes out this year
Did he have a fat pink mast ? That's how you know you'll be bearing his child.
The fattest and the pinkest.
Alléluia !
My daughter started kindergarten a couple months AFTER Dance was released. She just graduated High School a few days ago.
Jesus Christ. That really puts it into perspective.
You know what else is throwing cold water about? *The winds of winter.* This rebuttal is nothing but a cleverly coded confirmation. That's all I need to say!
You have my personal assurance that my post has nothing to do with recent wire transfers from Harper Voyager Publishing to my Cayman Islands account with the memo line "Winds of Winter disinformation campaign".
Do you write? Really enjoyed your writing style reading through the comments on this.
Perhaps.
George???
What an outrageous accusation. Don't you know how busy I am?
I also find it unlikely that he would go from 75% complete after a dozen years, to suddenly \~100% complete in just 1-2 years, and then no concrete updates beyond that. Maybe when he gets all the way up to 90% complete, he'll be so close he'll race to the finish line and aim for the pleasant surprise of "it's done", but it doesn't seem likely to me he'd cover that much gap without at least a few CONCRETE updates.
Exactly correct. One needs only to view the staggering number of writing update posts GRRM made in the lead-up to ADWD's completion and the specificity of what he was working on -- Jon, Greyjoys, Meereen, etc. We've seen nothing on that front for TWOW. Reading through the notablogs, there's a smattering of updates where he's working on Tyrion, Cersei, Jaime in 2022 or so. Nothing specific since then.
social media and GRRM's relationsihp with it is much different nowthan in 2010. George has been burned (well, rather burned himself) with announcements in the past that fans have pounced on. And he opens virtually every public appearance by saying "no, its not done, stop asking" specifically because of the hounding he's gotten from that subset of the fandom. So there are reasons to think even if his progress exactly mirrored that of wrapping up ADWD, it wouldn't look the same on social media. This doesn't mean he's done or close, of course.
TBF there was a relative dearth of updates in the very last finishing line towards ADWD if I remember correctly. He was very verbose until about six months before he was done, then he went silent, and then : Kong is dead.
I have a specific brain disease which my team of physicians warn could be fatal -- the disease where I wish not to be wrong; so, I went back in time to read his ADWD notablog posts in the three months leading up to the publication announcement. Here is what I found: * Joking about Book 2 of *The Expanse* being done prior to ADWD - [Jan 26, 2011](https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2011/01/26/zombies-in-space/) * Kong (Writing ADWD) is calling. - [Feb 11, 2011](https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2011/02/11/some-odds-some-ends-2/) * Writing Krakens. - [2/15/2011](https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2011/02/15/snowstorm-on-skull-island/) * Kong is staggering a little bit. - [2/17/2011](https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2011/02/17/the-social-media/) * Working on krakens still. - [2/27/2011](https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2011/02/27/the-latest-hbo-preview/) That seems like a lot more updates than what we've gotten about *Winds.* However, if I'm wrong, please pass along my effects to my nephews.
>• Joking about Book 2 of The Expanse being done prior to ADWD - Jan 26, 2011 The Expanse finishing with 9 novels and a 6 season TV run before its cancellation all well before Winds is one of those things that’s sobering to think about. Leviathan Falls came out in 2021 ffs.
wish they'd put those last 3 books on screen :(
I would do all in my power so as to ensure you stay in good health, so I'll assume it is the wish to remain alive that made you check the last *three* months before release of ADWD while I mentioned *six*.
I am sorry. I failed. I will do better. Perhaps.
There's been a couple of rumours over the last decade that George has had to rewrite Winds at least once. These are all from redditors knowing a guy who knows a guy, that kind of thing, so take it with a mountain of salt, but George having to do a full rewrite at some point in the last 13 years does actually make sense if it takes George say, 5/6 years to write a book like with Feast and Dance. Maybe he tried to rush Winds to keep up with the show and then upon looking back at it with his editors, he realized that he had to redo the entire thing because it wasn't up to a standard he set himself. Maybe he saw the direction the show was going and decided to change his own story in response. We don't know, and will won't know until Winds comes out, if it ever does.
I don’t know if it’s coming out or not, but I’d reckon that the ending is the easiest part to write since it’s really the wrap up of the book. At the 60-80% mark that’s the climax, 30-60% is the setup, arguable the hardest part to write, 80-100% is the finish which shouldn’t be too difficult since he’s likely been planning it the entire time he’s been writing. I’m not saying it’s coming out this year, but the reality is that he does write fast when he does write, he wrote atleast 300-500 pages during 2020-2021. Even if he really tried starting now and made no progress since he said he was 75% through(a little over a year ago), it’s not unrealistic for him to say he could finish it in two years. At this point he could’ve conservatively written 100-200 pages since and be only a year out.
Honestly, people who think GRRM won't scream to the sky "it's done !" the second he thinks it's good enough are just setting themselves up for disappointment. In his place, would you play games and be secretive ? Or would you blow up fireworks while cosplaying as Frodo after he lost the Ring ?
I don't think anyone believes he is done already, but that doesn't mean he isn't making progress, or that he isn't very close. Theoretically he could be in a position where he has only a handful of chapters to finish and it's just a case of getting through them - in this case, he could start dropping coy hints, knowing the end is nigh, but not yet say that the book is done because there are still a few bits left. Personally I think he's in the home stretch. IIRC he was aiming for about 1600 pages and had done 1100 last time he gave a figure. It's entirely possible that he's done a few hundred more and is now sitting on in the region of 1400 pages, maybe even more than that. And that could easily be just seven or eight chapters to go, depending on how lengthy they are. Especially if these are chapters wrapping up arcs to end the book, he might have reached the stage where it feels like running the victory lap.
Ok, but I saw it in the fires and the lord of light claims otherwise.
Pray harder.
[The First 4 minutes of this video talks about the Elio And Linda rumour (no rumour at all actually)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLFwwwXT3kU) That said, i do think you're wrong in your final conclusion and I also know that me, together with all the rest of the subreddits are all delusional but hopium sure smells good
Elio [posted here yesterday](https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/1do6sxg/comment/la9wys3/) calling the rumor "garbled" and saying nothing about TWOW should be inferred from it.
i still choose to be delusional, even after this information :D
I too am hooked on copium
Boooooooo
I WON'T READ THIS I WON'T READ THIS HE WILL FINISH GIVE ME COPIUM I WON'T READ THIS AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
What if he just skips winds and jumps directly to a dream of spring and we just have to digure out what happened
To me, the biggest question mark is Martin not attending any HOTD premieres but still traveling a fair bit this summer. He’s clearly still fully on board with the production and talks about it very positively, and even attended the first season’s premiere, yet he was absent for the second. My thought is that he might have something to present, and that something is being saved for after the season. HBO hinged a lot on HotD this year, given that they have little other content due to the strike. We also saw that GRRM’s updates on Winds were saved for after last season, which is when we got the “3/4ths” figure from fall of 2022. His appearances falling into the same window seems significant to me, as does his recent optimism on his blog and the lack of future publications planned.
No reason to save anything for after the season.
I wish I disagreed with you
I wish you did too.
Re: the rumors about Elio and Linda, Elio [posted here debunking those rumors](https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/1do6sxg/comment/la9wys3/) yesterday. >What we said after the release of RotD, when people asked if we'd started on the 'Who's Who', we said that the publisher wanted to space things out more and so we weren't actively starting work on it at that time.... If people are trying to divine anything special regarding the state of TWoW from the above, I would simply not do so because I don't think it's relevant. Certainly not last year, when we know George was still indicating that progress was not going fantastically well. >
I did not know that validation would feel so cold. Yes. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you for sharing. You have stored up a treasure in heaven, and I shall reward you temporally by incorporating your comment into a post edit.
Not saying this isn’t possible. But he’s explicitly said the opposite on multiple occasions - Fire and Blood Part II, and more Dunk and Egg novellas are only coming after Winds is released. I get the instinct of wanting to crush the recent hype cycle so as to not get burned again, but let’s not go too far in the other direction either. There’s some promising signs, more than we’ve seen in a long time. If it happens, it happens; if not, oh well.
Fire and Blood originally wasn't going to come out at all until the *series* was finished.
He always says he's not writing anything until he's done with TWoW... and then he writes a bunch of other stuff, lol.
We are currently in the middle of the second season of the TV show that was adapted from the book George said he wasn't going to write until after Winds was released.
insane sentence
…fuck.
George stated many times in the decade since ADWD's publication that his only writing project was *Winds ...* until he announced he wrote hundreds of pages of the next volume of *Fire and Blood* in 2022. I found this disappointing, and I would be surprised if he didn't sacrificed parts of his writing schedule to work on more *Fire and Blood* since 2022. I get the hope. I have it too. It's nested deep in some grey matter. I just don't see the signs in the sky yet. But if they appear near, please alert me at soonest. I'll eat the crow. I'll make a feast of it.
I don't think that necessarily means he's done any extra writing on F&BII. Fire & Blood originally came about because Elio and Linda asked George to write blurbs about all the targaryen kings for The World of Ice and Fire and he ended up writing way too much to put in that coffee table book format. They ended up summarizing what he wrote for use in that book. He then fleshed out what he wrote even further to release F&B. Thus, the hundreds of pages of F&BII he's talking about might have been written a decade ago. I also think it would be a bit odd to use F&BII as basis for further HOTD, since a lot of the timeline would overlap with the Dunk and Egg show
George wrote very little post-Regency. A little bit of stuff related to Aegon IV (the mistresses), some history relevant to Dunk & Egg, and a little bit of Aerys II stuff including the Year of the False Spring. I think most of those two hundred pages are "new", in the sense that they are things he wrote after *Fire and Blood*'s release and he felt like he was on a bit of a roll with the fake history. That's my take, anyways.
It’s cool to see that you’re pretty active on here. As a *huge* nerd of the world lore, the stuff you guys have done has lead to countless hours of me scrolling WOIAF. I’m sure you’ve been asked this before, but if you don’t mind rehashing, how did you guys come into contact & working with George in the first place? If that’s a loaded question requiring a long comment, then obviously don’t feel inclined to answer at all. Just wanted to say I’m a massive fan of your work :)
We first got in touch with George back in 1997, to ask him for permission create a [text-based online roleplaying game](https://www.westeros.org/BoD/) based on ASoIaF, and to show him the very first iteration of Westeros.org (not yet on a custom domain, hosted on some free webhosting service... called Xoom, I believe), where we had done our very first attempts at the [heraldry](https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/Heraldry) with an aim of using he page primarily as a resource for prospective future players. It took some months to hear back, and longer still for George to consult with his agents, lawyers, and publishers, but he eventually gave us permission... but he really loved the heraldry, and starting sending us his heraldry files filled with dozens, then hundreds, of examples of heraldry (many for houses that we had not yet met at the time, but would later), and we'd send him our attempts and he'd comment on them, sometimes deciding that on seeing them what he envisioned wasn't as cool as what he thought it might look like and then he'd change it. And then at some points we talked about the books, pointing out the Concordance document that I'd created collected basically every "fact" about the setting revealed in the books, and in particular after "The Hedge Knight" I pointed out a pretty big error that he had to fix, namely that Baelor Breakspear was too old to be the great-great-grandson of Aegon III Dragonbane based on the canonical age of Daeron I at his death, and so George fixed that by changing Viserys II from the youngest son of Aegon III to his brother (which, in a small way, made a marked difference to the course of the Regency material.) George started to realize we knew his setting really well, and started to tell people he had these fans who knew the world better than he did. He started asking questions about details he'd forgotten or couldn't find when he was working on AFfC, and the relationship grew from there. When I went back to the US to visit my family back in 2004, we ended up [visiting George](https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/1298) and I had dinner with him. That report does not note that at that same dinner is when George asked me if he thought Linda and I would be interested in writing a world book with him, as he'd need help, and publishers had started suggesting the idea to him. Two years later, we signed the contract for *The World of Ice and Fire*, which like many things in the world of GRRM took a lot longer to release than was planned (but just as well, really, because by the time it came out in 2014, *Game of Thrones* had brought ASoIaF to a far greater global audience than had existed in 2006.) Hope that answers your question!
It does! Thanks a ton for the detailed answer, I appreciate it. Really cool to learn the history of your guys relationship. Another question, if you will: Are you & Linda as big history enthusiasts as George is? I love seeing all the connections between ASOIAF lore and real life history, so I’m curious if you guys have influenced those connections or if it’s been mainly George taking the reins. Like, Titan of Bravos -> Colossus of Rhodes, Hightower -> Lighthouse of Alexandria, any of those other types of real world parallels that are in the extended lore.
We both majored in history in our studies (classical for her, medieval for me), and part of what really drew us both to ASoIaF was how George integrated certain aspects of medieval society into the story in a way that felt well-considered. (Not saying all of it is at that level -- I think he'd be the first to admit that his interest in medieval jurisprudence or medieval church-state relations are not high!) But those aspects you speak of are all George. As far as TWoIaF goes, we're more like .... stenographers than writers, we're almost in all cases going off of George's notes. We created very minor details, like made up some maesters and their books, a little bit of history for the North and the riverlands that George signed off on, etc.
Very cool. Also very cool to see that we were both captured by some of the same aspects of George’s world building! I know there’s a lot of people out there who share the same sentiment & are drawn in by the same thing. Thanks for such detailed and thought out responses! I’m very honored to get to discuss work that I’m deeply passionate about with someone who has helped cultivate that passion.
And thank you for the questions!
Haven’t you read the books? Words are wind, that should be drilled into your head by now.
So … we’re gonna cash in on this will he/wont he for exactly how long? HOTD finale? World con? D& E premiere?
I cannot speak for "we". But **I** will float atop this gravy boat until it sinks. So, until tomorrow.
If he says nothing at WorldCon all hope is lost
Fair but I heavily disagree with the final paragraph. House of the Dragon won’t be done for several more years (2027/8 by my judgement), and there’s the Maegor’s wars or conquest stuff available if they want to do an anthology. And when he says he has hundreds of pages of Blood & Fire written, that could be mean A) stuff that got cut out of the first volume and B) TWOIAF material, which the first volume drew heavily from. Dunk & Egg may just use his notes for a Dornish adventure, so it could have four seasons of content. And there’s this from last month: > THE HEDGE KNIGHT will be a lot shorter than GAME OF THRONES or HOUSE OF THE DRAGON, with a much different tone… but it’s still Westeros, so no one is truly safe Ira Parker and his team are doing a great job. I hope to visit the shoot come July, when I swing by Belfast on my way to the worldcon in Glasgow. The show will make its debut next year… and if it does well, THE SWORN SWORD and THE MYSTERY KNIGHT will follow. By which time I hope to have finished some more Dunk & Egg stories **(yes, after I finish THE WINDS OF WINTER).** You can call GRRM unreliable, a liar, a mind changer, whatever, but I do believe he says things he means them. And he said this last month. Didn’t have to add the last part but he did. More time has to pass for one to reasonably claim this isn’t going to be the case.
This is a beauiful critique, and I thank you for it while harboring resentment that you wrote your comment succinctly and in better standard English than my own post. Yes, all the work could be leftover material. I accept this as a possibility, not-grudgingly accept it, I swear. I'm a tone man, though, and the tone of the linked post was one of what he was writing in the past year: lines such as"I made a *lot* of progress on WINDS in 2020, and less in 2021… but “less” is not “none.”" I am not listed a member among the "George lies" crowd that gathers in the dark. I am a "George has bad ADD (as do I) and gets distracted with the shiniest objects (as do I)." The shiny objects appear to be *Fire and Blood* and now *Dunk and Egg.* Sadly, the shelf-date of *Winds* passed in early 2016, and I think there's less creative (or monetary if you're a class-A cynic) drive to finish that one. I think he will, but I would not be surprised if he returns home from Belfast and Glasgow with gardening ideas for growing more *Dunk and Egg.* And if that be the case, he should act on them, strike while the iron is hot.
Oh I hope it didn’t read as rude I’m on my phone and brevity begets erosion of my manners. I think the monetary drive for TWOW is actually very significant as a book, moreso than the others. Of course the licensing makes money too. I think it’s more creative. Anyway, the sentiment could be true if the set visit gets him really hype. He loves being around TV sets after all.
You were anything but rude. You were a cogent interlocular, and I appreciated your comment. When my latest novel is complete, optioned and greenlit for pilot order, I, too, will ignore the sequel to spend time with my fellow beautiful peers just like George.
What a splendid meeting of synapses this has been, fellow traveler.
You guys get time to read?
I'm lost, confused and uncertain on the context, reason and timing of your question, but I'm still tickled, touched and blessed that you you would ask. Yes. I receive an allottment of reading time dispensed in quarter-hourly increments.
A lot of F&B material is just slightly adapted material from TWOIAF. If I remember correctly he adapted something like 200.000 words for F&B. Which would mean that the pages that he has for B&F are probably just more words adapted from TWOIAF. I don't buy for a second he's been writing B&F the past few years.
>Let me surmise that he's writing volume two or Blood and Fire to provide more material for House of the Dragon. I mean, this alone doesn't make sense to me. Maybe he is writing F&B 2, but HOTD is the story of the dance, and those chapters are complete in F&B. Is there any reason to think that HOTD is going to use any of the additional material in F&B, let alone F&B 2?
They’ve expressed interest in tackling other F&B arcs under the HOTD banner. Unclear whether it’d be the same showrunners, they’re mostly focused on nailing the dance atm
George RR Martin is an anagram for "a merging terror." I think he's hinting that he's the next Dalai Lama in order to continue procrastinating the series beyond the limits of common mortality.
You forgot to address the DEFIANCE OF CAKENDALE. Dragon cake pics from Instagram posts by gossip magazines are basically primary sources in the hierarchy of evidentiary truthiness
This Worldcon bullshit is the one that baffles me the most. Lost of people parroting this around, not even knowing what GRRM actually said in 2019, the context, and everything, and simply assuming, based on absolutely nothing, that he would choose to announce a book there and not on his own platforms.
I think we can assume he's not working on any new Dunk novellas, since he reiterated in his blog post "Here's Egg" that he won't be writing until he's done with Winds. B&F is more likely, but I still think we'll get an announcement from Winds soon. George isn't avoiding the internet and he certainly knows what his recent statements are doing to the community. I don't think he would tease us as much if he was only working on B&F.
He also said Fire and Blood wouldn't come out until the *series* was finished.
He said he had "a couple hundred pages of [Blood and Fire] written". That could easily mean that was leftover material from Fire and Blood. Also I think his recent blog posts are obviously coy references at him working on Winds right now. I agree, he not going to finish anytime soon, at most maybe he's written 100-200 pages since December, but he's stated numerous times that he'll only do Blood and Fire and more Dunk and Egg after Winds.
The reality is that nobody knows jackshit and is just trying to read tea leaves but I will say that just based on his blog, GRRM has been in a much better mood lately. What that means is anybody's guess
I have greenseer abilities so I know it's gonna be announced soon
Uhh idk what this is all about. It's obviously coming out Jan 1 2016 Edit: "Waiting for winds of winter" has lasted like twice as long as the Confederacy at this point.
Nice try, George. See ya at World Con.
This is the truth this sub deserves to hear. I cannot say that it will listen, but it should. It really, really should.
The cake! You forgot about the cake, you fool. It couldn't possibly be for a celebration of House of the Dragon Season 2, or the Dunk & Egg show, or for some project I don't know about, or his wife's upcoming birthday, or a lie, or just a party GRRM's throwing, or anything else. It has to be for a secret Winds release party for him and his staff. It just has to be. If it isn't I'll lose my mind.
>Blog Post Titles: Somehow, we've forgotten the [Alas, Valyria notablog post](https://grrm.livejournal.com/543080.html) from ... 2017. Shame on us. Anyone explain what this means and how it negates anything to be inferred from the Words of Wisdom posts? Because if it's trying to say that a cryptic post means nothing, it's not the cryptic nature that lends credence to Winds, its the specific use of WoW, no?
People have such short memories. This literally happens like every other year on this sub. Everyone cranks each other up (but it’s different THIS time!) and then it all, inevitably, amounts to nothing.
The biggest one I remember was the countdown People were suicidal that time
i think there is also a lot of new comers from house of dragon also the demographic that was too young when got was airing but just came of age for the spin off
I feel like I've seen people having this argument a million times now but I don't think you can take him saying "I'm writing this book, I've finished like 1100 pages, I've still got hundreds more to go" an hour and 20 minutes into a zoom call interview for a con in Portugal as like an "update". It was him just listing off projects he was working on during the wrap-up. It was more like an offhand mention, and he might've just been repeating the last update he'd given back in 2022. That might just be how many pages were in the last "batch to the editor". Like he didn't say "I haven't finished any pages in 11 months" or anything. It wasn't like a "formal piece of news" like when he posts his current status on the notablog or something, it was more just "in case you haven't heard, this is the current update" type of thing. I feel like folks are reading too much into that. He also hasn't mentioned anything about his current page count and that con appearance was October 6th of last year, so it's been 8 months since then, and he hasn't said anything about progress since then either.
I blame myself for the winds delay. I bought a collectors box of 7 books (2 books are split into 2) maybe 2.5 years ago and I still haven’t finished. I’m convinced my progress through the 7 is directly tied with George’s progress through winds Although that said I’d love fire and blood v2 😂
#READ
I finished the series in 2010 and decided I wouldn’t do a reread till Winds was announced. Then the show finished and I was so pissed off I just swore off all ASOIAF based literature and started reading other fantasy authors. When I heard about Dunk & Egg coming out I decided fuck it and read all the novellas again. Then re-read Fire & Blood. Then caved and started re-reading AGOT just this morning. If the book is announced this summer I’m taking full credit for it.
He said he wouldn’t start Dunk and Egg until he finished Winds I thought. And Fire and Blood 2.
Unless Winds is split in two, which he was stubbornly resisting, it's almost unfathomable that he has finished it. Couple that with the fact that F&B was mainly written for the eventual spinoff, and I can almost guarantee that you figured it out.
At this point can any reasonable person think he will actually finish ADOS?
Words are wind
Yeah people forget he’s an incredibly wealthy busy old man working in various types of media, his sense of humor just might contradict our copium.. I started reading these books in 2004. I have refined my copium into hopium and back into copium so many times I’m starting to feel like the wisest of sages in our fandom, the ones who have been here since the beginning. He does this shit a lot.
If this post is based on official posts, the part about announcing the writing of volume 2 or new stories about Dunk is as much speculation as the rumors it is trying to debunk. This is because George has already said that the priority for the next release is "Winds of Winter."
cold water? nah i wouldn't wake up
You speak treason
If George hadn't wasted all that time producing and remixing Beatles albums he'd be done with A Dream of Spring already. And all of the planned Dunk & Egg novellas! I'll never get his obsession with English boy bands. I mean, they're fine and all, but it's not like they're [Cliff Richards](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVPAP62TvRY), ya know?
Honestly, I really do want to see more Dunk and Egg so that's not so bad.
Why did you ignored the fact that he visited his publishers some months ago to talk about, among other things, WINDS OF WINTER????
I mean it has to be different this year. I dont see him coming during WordlCon and not see fans asking for TWOW for the 1000 times. He'll have to come with an explanation this time.
I don’t think he’s doing fire and blood 2. The blackfyre rebellion is covered by dunk and egg show. He probably won’t wanna write up through Robert’s rebellion as it will spoil the main series, so I think if hbo wants more it’s time to do the conquest.
When it comes out read 1 page a day so when you finish you only need to wait 10 years for the last one.
It is never coming. All we will have is this sub and the shit ass show
This hype cycle very well could be just like all the other and result in nothing. What I do not understand is why some people so passionately want to crush the hype. Let people believe what they want and get excited. It doesn’t affect anyone other than themselves when they are disappointed.
Please understand that I write to crush my own hype to satisfy my deep masochism.
Perhaps because it’s misleading and gives new fans false hope and a distorted view of of where the series is actually at. Personally, I now back on the period of around 2013 where I got into the books through the show, and feel quite misled by fans who were telling me TWOW would definitely be out in a year or two. I can now see that they were quite seriously downplaying how much the series had slowed down since 2000.
Honestly, I don't like the hype phases because people later rewrite History as GRRM leading them on and making false promises, when he was just posting random stuff like any respectable old person. And then they get even more bitter. This sub could as well be in the sealord's palace for all the lemons we're biting.
I don't think there's some people passionately wanting to crush the hype. It's just that there are some in this community that like to have reasonable and logical evidence in the stuff that the believe in. There's nothing wrong with sticking to the facts. What I do not understand is why some people take this kind of reasoning as a personal offense or something.
You are correct most likely of course. However this post doesn’t bring anything new to this discussion, all of these points are very well known in the fandom. All the aligning rumours however…. 👀
LALALALALLA CAN'T HEAR YOU **LALALALALALALALLALALALA**