George R. R. Martin Just Body-Slammed <em>The Winds of Winter</em> Hopefuls With Another Cranky Rant

Oh, George. Here we are again. I see you’ve written another rant on your personal blog about how it’s so annoying that fans keep asking you to fulfill your promises. Such woe it is to have written an adored story! Well, what is it this time, pal?

“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,” George R. R. Martin scribbled on his archaic Wordpress this Wednesday. The fantasy writer, whose novels were adapted by HBO into Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, took to his blog to announce that he’s set to produce an animated adaptation of his late friend Howard Waldrop's book, A Dozen Tough Jobs. At the same time, he seemingly anticipated the hundreds of replies asking for the next installment of A Song of Fire and Ice. You know, the book he originally promised fans that he would write over thirteen years ago. It seems as if he’s fed up with the complaints—and he’s been reading your comments.

“You have given up on me, or on the book,” he continued. “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 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.”

Bah humbug! But in all fairness, the Internet is a pretty mean place. I know the feeling—and that’s why I don’t read the comments. However, it seems that the writer’s latest gripe is that we actually don’t appreciate him enough. Even though we’re so tuned in to his work that we’ve documented every single thing the writer has said about The Winds of Winter, fans are simply too focused on just one of his many endeavors, according to Martin—even if it’s the one that brought him unimaginable fame and fortune.

“I edit the Wild Cards books too, but you hate Wild Cards,” Martin wrote. “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, ‘The Tower of Ashes’ and ‘The Stone City,’ OLD MARS and OLDVENUS 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).”

George, ‘A Song for Lya’ and Dying of the Light came out in 1976. ‘Sandkings,’ ‘The Tower of Ashes,’ and ‘The Stone City’? All before 1980. You can't hold me accountable for the fact that when you wrote a mainstream success in my lifetime, you seemingly abandoned it completely.

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“Thing is, I do care about them,” Martin said of his other projects. “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.”

I hear you, George. If the fans are wrong, and you truly do care about finishing The Winds of Winter, I can think of one really good way to prove it.