Winds of Winter: George RR Martin gives update - and shares frustrations - on next Song of Ice and Fire Game of Thrones book

Winds of Winter is the sixth - of a planned seven - books in the Song of Ice and Fire series. The saga was the inspiration for the hit HBO series Game of Thrones but due to the Winds of Winter’s long gestation period the books and the now-concluded television series diverged in course.

It has become a running joke how late Winds of Winter will be, with fans reading the runes and between the lines to see whether any clues are given about its publication date, and Martin inevitably asked about it in all interviews.

Martin has a wide spectrum of interests, which include adapting his other works for television, and he has also been involved in the “de-extinction” of the direwolf. This project has seen three wolves “born” from DNA in fossils in the US, opening the door to the prospect of all sorts of extinct animals returning. Direwolves are dear to Martin as they appear in Game of Thrones.

The author, now 76, has spoken about how he becomes frustrated when the accusation that he is being distracted is levelled at him.

Speaking to Time magazine, he said: “That’s the curse of my life here. There’s no doubt that Winds of Winter is 13 years late. I’m still working on it - I have periods where I make progress and then other things divert my attention and suddenly I have a deadline for one of the HBO shows and I have something else to do.

“But the two things are not connected. I swear, you know, I opened a bookstore and people say ‘Why is George RR Martin opening a bookstore - he could be writing Winds of Winter’. I don’t actually work in the bookstore, you know. I own it, I hired people to do it,. If you go into the bookstore yes a lot of my books are there which I’ve signed, a lot of books by other people. I’m not going to ring up your register and I’m not going to order which books are coming in.

“I have a theatre. I’m not the projectionist. They seem to overestimate how much time I’m putting in to these things. I own stocks and bonds too - I don’t attend the shareholder meetings and I’m not on the board of directors. I’ve invested in something and sometimes its stick goes up and I make money, and sometimes it’s like now and suddenly I lose a lot of money. It’s not me running it.

“You’ve heard exactly what role I played in the direwolf thing. I’m sitting at home, I might have been working on Winds of Winter or one of the screenplays and suddenly Peter Jackson’s on the line and I hear about this and I travel out to see it and probably the trip was like four days and I flew down to Dallas and we took the tour and we ate some barbecue and it did not seriously impinge on the writing of Winds of Winter. But people make it seem, my more fanatic fans, as if it’s one or the other you know, and it’s not.”

But this line of questioning is nothing new. In December he spoke to The Hollywood Reporter and said: “Unfortunately, I am 13 years late,” he says. “Every time I say that, I’m [like], ‘How could I be 13 years late?’ I don’t know, it happens a day at a time.

“But that’s still a priority. A lot of people are already writing obituaries for me. [They’re saying] ‘Oh, he’ll never be finished.’ Maybe they’re right. I don’t know. I’m alive right now! I seem pretty vital!”

Previously Martin has said he has completed 1,000 manuscript pages of Winds of Winter, and two years ago said he was three-quarters of the way through it. There has been no word of what - if any - progress has been made on A Dream of Spring, the final mooted book in the Song of Ice and Fire series.