George R.R. Martin (sort of) announces new deadline for Winds of Winter

He has broken our hearts before, maybe he will again. But for now, the Ice and Fire fandom can hope a little. George R.R. Martin has yet again set a new deadline within which – he says – Winds of Winter should be done. It’s not a date per se – but Martin sure sounds like he thinks he will be done and dusted with the sixth book in A Song of Ice and Fire series by July 2020.

Martin made this assertion in his blog, in response to Air New Zealand’s cheeky new advert which invites him to visit the gloriously beautiful Kiwi country in case he needs even more inspiration to finish the books. Here’s the advert:

Martin thanked them but politely declined the offer, asserting that he finds NZ too fascinating to really find time to write – he’d probably be off exploring all the time. But he also let drop that he is, in fact, visiting NZ anyway, during the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) due in July 2020.

Now here’s where things get interesting. Martin writes: “I tell you this — if I don’t have THE WINDS OF WINTER in hand when I arrive in New Zealand for Worldcon, you have here my formal written permission to imprison me in a small cabin on White Island, overlooking that lake of sulfuric acid, until I’m done. Just so long as the acrid fumes do not screw up my old DOS word processor, I’ll be fine.”

That…is not exactly a full commitment to a deadline, but it is something. Given that Martin himself had stopped setting out deadlines of any kinds after he repeatedly failed to keep them, this is what we have closest to an actual announcement in many months.

Of course, all of this may come to nought and Martin may fail the date yet again (And I have this nagging suspicion that Martin will actually quite enjoy that acid lake experience). But he has seemed quite serious about getting Winds of Winter done lately, going so far as to decline a cameo in Game of Thrones Season 8. So this time, maybe this time, Martin actually keeps his word?