“I’ve been struggling with it for a few years,” he told the Guardian. “The Winds of Winter is not so much a novel as a dozen novels, each with a different protagonist, each having a different cast of supporting players, antagonists, allies and lovers around them, and all of these weaving together against the march of time in an extremely complex fashion. So it’s very, very challenging. Fire and Blood by contrast was very simple. Not that it’s easy – it still took me years to put together – but it is easier.”
He confirmed that the sixth instalment was his next priority: “The Winds of Winter is next, then I’ll decide what comes after that – whether it’s to go on to A Dream of Spring, the last one, or whether I switch back into Fire and Blood II, do another Dunk and Egg story or two. But I’ll worry about that one thing at a time – that’s too far ahead.”
In the last year, five potential Game of Thrones spin-off shows with HBO have been announced, with only one having been greenlit so far: The Long Night, which will be set 5,000 years before Game of Thrones and written by Jane Goldman. Martin confirmed they were all prequels, but said he did not expect all of them would be made and that he was not writing any of them. “None of them are traditional spin-offs,” he said. “You won’t be seeing the further adventures of Arya, Sansa or Jon Snow, you’ll be going back in time. The other four are all over the map and at least two of them are solidly based on material in Fire and Blood. Those haven’t been greenlit yet.”
