Sigh…George R.R. Martin’s collaborators hint at August announcement (UPDATE: Nope)

First of all, I am sorry if you are exhausted by hints that we may soon get news about The Winds of Winter, the long-awaited sixth book in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. Lord knows there have been enough of those over the past…[checks watch]…eight years, and none of them have come to anything. Haven’t we been hurt enough?

Probably not. And there are tremors rumbling through the internet. If your heart can take it, read on to get the lowdown.

Alright, so starting on Thursday, George R.R. Martin is kicking off a three-week tour of the British Isles, giving talks and signing books all over the place. The main event, or so we think, is Worldcon, a science fiction convention kicking off in Dublin, Ireland on August 15.

Now, Martin has been going to Worldcon for years and years — even when he was cloistering himself off and trying to finish The Winds of Winter, he still made an exception to go to this particular event. So him going to Worldcon isn’t surprising. What is a little different is the extended nature of the trip — he’s not just going to Worldcon, but also to Titancon in Belfast, which starts on August 22. On August 17 he’s hosting a screening of Forbidden Planet for the Irish Film Institute. He’s doing a lot, more than he has since…well, since 2011 when he announced that A Dance With Dragons was finished.

So all this is enough to at least raise our eyebrows. And then…and THEN…Elio M. García Jr. and Linda Antonsson post this:

If you’re unfamiliar, Elio and Linda run Westeros.org, the oldest community dedicated to A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones on the net. Elio and Linda have also worked directly with Martin on The World of Ice & Fire, a companion book that explores the far-off corners of his imagined world. So they’re more tapped in to his comings and goings than most.

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And NOW they’re pretty blatantly hinting that there’s going to be an announcement regarding The Winds of Winter on August 21, in the middle of Martin’s tour. “Something carried on the winds…of winter?” Oh, they know what they’re doing. They KNOW.

Dare we hope to dream? Is an announcement that The Winds of Winter is complete finally upon us? It’s certainly been long enough. But we’ve been here before. Are we setting ourselves up for a fall? WE’VE BEEN HURT TOO MANY TIMES!

Regardless, we’ll be keeping an eye on things. Go gentle on our eyes, George.

UPDATE: Okay, so @westeros.org followed up and confirmed that the original tweet had nothing to do with The Winds of Winter:

Foiled again, another day, another lack of new book. Why, you might be asking, if this announcement had nothing to do with The Winds of Winter, was the tweet phrased the way it was?

So here we are, hopes raised and dashed again. And the wheel keeps on turning.

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