Winds of Winter: George RR Martin drops a clue about his progress on long-awaited sixth A Song of Ice and Fire book

The Winds of Winter will be the sixth book in the Song of Ice and Fire series, on which the television show Game of Thrones is based.

However, while Game of Thrones has now finished, The Winds of Winter and the projected final volume of the seven, A Dream of Spring, are nowhere yet to be seen. The most recent book in the series, A Dance with Dragons, came out in 2011 and readers who are entranced by the lands of Westeros and Essos, are eagerly awaiting the next instalments.

Martin, however, has not been idling, and indeed he has previously confirmed that he has written more than 1,000 pages of manuscript for the book - and that was several years ago. He has also been involved in television adaptations of his other books, and recently has published a huge blog post about his involvement in and obsession with the recent announcement of the return of the direwolf, which has been extinct for more than 10,000 years.

The direwolf has been recreated / de-extincted by Colossal Biosciences, a Dallas firm. The fruits of its work, two wolves called Romulus and Remus, became cover stars of Time magazine last week. The firm managed to extract DNA from a fossil in order to bring the wolves to life.

As Colossal put it in their press release: “The dire wolf, largely assumed to be a legendary creature made famous from the HBO hit series Game of Thrones, was an American canid that had previously been extinct for over 12,500 years.

“The successful birth of three dire wolves is a revolutionary milestone of scientific progress that illustrates another leap forward in Colossal’s de-extinction technologies and is a critical step on the pathway to the de-extinction of other target species.”

Martin has said he is fascinated by direwolves, and has been since he was a child: “Direwolves are special to me. Why? Damned if I know. As a kid, I was not even allowed to have a dog, let alone a wolf. But I visited the La Brea Tar Pits in LA a few decades back, and when I saw their direwolf exhibit, four hundred skull arrayed on a wall, something stirred inside me.

“Most of my readers will have heard the story of how I was writing a science fiction novel in the summer of 1991 when a scene came to me, the first chapter of Game of Thrones where they find the direwolf pups in the summer snows.

“Where did THAT come from? Why did it seize me so powerfully? I have no idea. But it grabbed hold of me so hard that I put the other novel aside and began to write A Song of Ice and Fire. The direwolves were a huge part of it. Without them, Westeros might not exist.

“Maybe I was remembering a past life, when I ran with a pack in the Ice Age. Whatever the reason, I have to say the rebirth of the direwolf has stirred me as no scientific news has since Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. And Colossal is just beginning. Still to come, the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, and… yes, Howard… the dodo. I can’t wait.”

But for readers waiting for the next part of the Westeros saga, the news was not quite as promising.

As Martin said, while revealing the day before that an exciting announcement was coming: “Something else is going to be happening as well. No, I am not announcing the completion of The Winds of Winter, the sixth volume of A Song of Ice and Fire.

“Please don’t start any rumors to that effect. I am so tired of having to issue denials every time some offhand comment of mine, most having nothing to do with Winds, somehow convinces half the internet that the book is imminent. It’s not. No. (Maybe I need to stop making offhand comments).”