It’s now been six years since George R.R. Martin published A Dance With Dragons, the fifth (but not final) book in his A Song Of Ice And Fire series. In that time, the TV adaptation has become as popular as the source material, which has just doubled the clamoring for Martin to finish Winds Of Winter. These cries don‘t go unheard, but Martin is also plenty of busy with other projects, both in and out of the Seven Kingdoms. He’s got two new series in development as well as a Thrones-related story set to be published in an anthology this fall. Now Martin’s announced that he’s going to delve further into the “fake history” of his own making, by looking back at the reigns of the Targaryens.
In a new Livejournal entry, Martin writes that he’s moving forward with a collection he and his fans have jokingly referred to as the “GRRMarillion” or Fire And Blood. This two-volume work will “cover the history of Westeros from Aegon’s Conquest up to and through the regency of the boy king Aegon III (the Dragonbane),” including a full history of the Targaryen civil war. You’ll want to take this with a grain of dragonglass, but Martin says the first volume could be published in “late 2018 or early 2019.” The second volume’s publication is years off, which sounds much more in keeping with Martin’s schedule.
Speaking of which, Martin addresses the conflicting reports that he’s either finished Winds Of Winter and is just hanging onto it to screw with fans, or hasn’t written any of it. He says they’re ”absurd”—he’s written some of the book, damn it, but he can’t say when he’ll be done. He goes on: “Whether Winds or the first volume of Fire And Blood will be the first to hit the bookstores is hard to say at this juncture, but I do think you will have a Westeros book from me in 2018… and who knows, maybe two. A boy can dream…”