Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin is fully aware that you're desperate for The Winds of Winter.
It's pretty infamous by now that the next book in the Song of Ice and Fire series has seemingly been in limbo for years, with no release date on the cards.
Still, Martin continues to be a prolific creative, involved in HBO's adaptations of his works (and once calling out changes to the source material in House of the Dragon season 2) and also producing an animated movie about Hercules, an adaptation of Howard Waldrop's A Dozen Tough Jobs.
Any time Martin is revealed to be working on a new project, though, the response is usually the same question: where is The Winds of Winter?
"I know, I know. Some of you will just be pissed off by this, as you are by everything I announce here that is not about Westeros or THE WINDS OF WINTER," Martin wrote on his Not a Blog page about the A Dozen Tough Jobs adaptation. "You have given up on me, or on the book. I will never finish WINDS, If I do, I will never finish A DREAM OF SPRING. If I do, it won’t be any good. I ought to get some other writer to pinch hit [finish it] for me…
"I am going to die soon anyway, because I am so old. I lost all interest in A Song of Ice and Fire decades ago. I don't give a shit about writing any longer, I just sit around and spend my money. I edit the Wild Cards books too, but you hate Wild Cards. You may hate everything else I have ever written, the Hugo-winners and Hugo-losers, "A Song for Lya" and DYING OF THE LIGHT, "Sandkings" and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, "This Tower of Ashes" and "The Stone City," OLD MARS and OLD VENUS and ROGUES and WARRIORS and DANGEROUS WOMEN and all the other anthologies I edited with my friend Gardner Dozois, You don't care about any of those, I know. You don't care about anything but WINDS OF WINTER. You've told me so often enough).
"Thing is, I do care about them," he continued. "And I care about Westeros and WINDS as well. The Starks and Lannisters and Targaryens, Tyrion and Asha, Dany and Daenerys, the dragons and the direwolves, I care about them all. More than you can ever imagine."
Westeros will soon return to our screens with House of the Dragon season 3 and the recently delayed A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
Until then, check out our guide to all the most exciting upcoming shows of the year for everything else that's in store.
