Fans are worried about George R.R. Martin ever completing The Winds of Winter, the sixth book of his epic novel narrative A Song of Fire and Ice–the basis for HBO’s immensely popular Game of Thrones. The paranoia that Martin won’t finish the book and will leave rabid fans hanging is so prevalent that fans are comforting themselves with conspiracy theories. Martin told New Mexico in Focus, “There are even some strange conspiracy theorists out there who are convinced that I finished the whole thing years ago but I’m just hiding the books in my cellar and releasing them in order to maximize something or other,” he says. But Martin–or GRRM as he is affectionately known–hasn’t done that. The books aren’t finished and the pressure, he admits, is getting to him.
“I certainly feel a desire to finish the book,” he says. (Here, here–says his hungry fan base!) “There’s a lot of craziness that goes on, but it’s pressure, and the obligation is to the work itself. I’m telling a story, however many books you divide it into, three books, four books, seven books, which is what I’m presently going for. It’s one story, as much as Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is one story. It has a beginning; it has a lot of middle; and eventually, it will have an end.”
