There has been a pretty big delay in the release of “Winds of Winter” and the author has been somewhat quiet about his progress on the book, but that’s pretty typical of him. This fact doesn’t really do much to calm down fans who have been waiting for the book for so long now, and it looks like the wait is going to go on for a bit longer too. However, recently we’ve heard some claims by the writer regarding the plot of the upcoming book, and he wanted to reassure his fans about certain points that have been a bit worrying to the community as a whole.
He announced that another one of his works has been picked up by a television company – this time Cinemax – and will be translated to the screen. The book in question is “The Skin Trade”, a story about werewolves with a dark, grim theme and a lot of interesting moments. It’s not that new, which makes it a bit strange that television only noticed it now, but in the end it’s better late than never if the production is going to work out smoothly.
However, not all of his fans were excited to hear that. In fact, most of those who are still waiting for “Winds of Winter” were apparently disappointed by the announcement, as they were afraid that this will add yet another delay to the author’s work on his next book. The author wanted to reassure his fans that nothing of the sort was going to happen however, and that he was hard at work on the book and trying to bring it out as quickly as possible.
He went on to say that he is not going to be directly involved in the production in any way, other than to give some initial pointers for the pilot episode and to then check out how it looks. Other than that, he will continue to focus his work on “Winds of Winter” and put everything else to the side.
Which is good to hear, because the author could definitely use some rearranging in his schedule in order to be able to better deal with the rising attention towards him. It’s obvious that many people want to see him finish his book and even put out more works, but at this pace, we don’t know when he might get around to starting something new.
In any case, he has been consulting the producers of “Game of Thrones” with regards to the new season of the show, as both parties wanted to make sure that there will be no contradictions between the show and the book. However, we don’t know how far this will go – typically, “Game of Thrones” does take some liberties with the plot of the books and it’s possible that we’re going to see something similar in this case as well, but the major plot points are most likely going to be preserved intact.
Some fans have also been worried that if the show manages to bring out its next season before the book is out, this could be a huge spoiler to those who are following both works. Usually fans read the books first and then watch the show, but in this case there might be a bit of a problem. There have been reports that this isn’t going to happen, but there is no way to know for sure, especially with an author like Martin whose schedule tends to be so delicate.