George R.R. Martin “put The Winds of Winter aside” to write Fire & Blood

George R.R. Martin is a famously slow writer. For proof, just look at The Winds of Winter, the long-in-coming sixth volume of his Song of Ice and Fire series. He’s been writing this thing for 12 years and counting at this point, and still has a ways to go. During a discussion with writer David Anthony Durham last October, he said that he was “about 3/4 of the way done,” and that he expected it to be the longest book in the series yet.

Why does Martin write so slowly? Part of it is that he’s a perfectionist who has no compunction about rewriting earlier stuff if it doesn’t live up to his expectations. “I was working on it the day before I flew back here for three or four days. I was rereading some chapters that I’d written earlier, and I didn’t like them well enough. So I kind of ripped them apart and rewrote them,” he said during the same discussion.

But he can also get sidetracked by other commitments. For instance, in 2018, while we were waiting for The Winds of Winter, he published Fire & Blood, a history of the Targaryen dynasty. That book went on to form the basis of House of the Dragon, HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel show about the Targaryen civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons.

George R.R. Martin wrote Fire & Blood in part because he and his publisher “wanted a book to go along” with new Game of Thrones spinoff show

Or was it the other way around? As it ends up, Martin already knew HBO was making a show about the Dance of the Dragons before Fire & Blood came out. In fact, he stopped working on The Winds of Winter for a bit so he could focus on Fire & Blood, which allowed publisher Penguin Random House to publish the book well in time for the new series.

“When it became clear [in 2016 or 17] that we were going to do the Dance of the Dragons show, we wanted a book to go with that,” Martin told Durham. “And I already had the seeds of the book from material that was in The World of Ice and Fire. And from the novellas I’d written for my friend Gardner Dozois, Princess and the Queen and the Rogue Prince and so forth.”

"So I actually asked – we’re in the Random House offices here, and I’m about to get them in terrible trouble – but I asked them, do you want me to just ignore the new show that’s coming down the pike, or should I finish that book so you can get it out and then go back to [The Winds of Winter]. And they said, yeah, give us the new book that’s closer to being done instead of two more books (The Winds of Winter and the purported final Song of Ice and Fire book A Dream of Spring). So I put [The] Winds of Winter aside for a while, and I concentrated on finishing Fire and Blood."

This strategy worked — I’m sure Fire & Blood got a healthy sales boost after House of the Dragon premiered on HBO in 2022 — but it’s unlikely to mollify fans who have been waiting with bated breath to read The Winds of Winter since 2011. And the distractions aren’t likely to end; we’ve heard that Martin will be writing on the new Game of Thrones show A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, as well.

Of course, it’s not like it’s a secret that Martin is working on many projects at once; he’s always been honest about that. But it still raises an eyebrow to hear him plainly state that he “put The Winds of Winter aside for a while” to work on something else.

At this rate, we expect to be reading The Winds of Winter sometime in 2030. As for House of the Dragon season 2, it’s due out on HBO and Max in 2024.

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