It’s the photograph George RR Martin fans have been waiting for: an image of the author brandishing a new novel in his A Song of Ice and Fire series. But readers – like me – desperate for a hint about the release of the sixth novel in the sequence adapted for television as A Game of Thrones, The Winds of Winter, will be disappointed to find the images are only a bit of a tease.
According to Entertainment Weekly, Martin is due to give a cameo in the zombie television series Z Nation as an undead writer. He appears signing copies of a book called A Promise of Spring – a reference to the seventh book in Martin’s fantasy sequence, A Dream of Spring. “I just want to prove to my fans that even in the Zombie Apocalypse, the Song of Ice and Fire books will still come out!” he told EW.
The news follows vast excitement yesterday when an editor from Martin’s Spanish publisher Ediciones Gigamesh told an interviewer that The Winds of Winter was due out next year, “for sure ... unless a meteorite falls”. Industry sources have poured scorn on the reliability of this assurance, but Martin has said for a while now that getting book six out before the television series airs next spring “has been important to me all along”, and I reckon he’ll do it.
Fingers crossed – I’ve just emerged from one of my best reading experiences all year, Robin Hobb’s latest in her epic Fitz and the Fool fantasy sequence, Fool’s Quest, and I could do with something to keep me going until her next one ...
