Hard at work
George R.R. Martin making ‘steady progress’ on ‘Winds of Winter’
The enforced isolation has been tough on the world. For George R.R. Martin, it’s helped him to write. The Santa Fe resident posted on social media Wednesday, “I have to confess, after half a year of pandemic, I am showing signs of cabin fever. If nothing else, the enforced isolation has helped me write. I am spending long hours every day on THE WINDS OF WINTER, and making steady progress.”
The highly anticipated “The Winds of Winter” has been a decade in the making and is the next in the “Song of Ice and Fire” series, which the TV show “Game of Thrones” was based on.
Martin says he is writing in an actual cabin in the mountains.
“I finished a new chapter yesterday, another one three days ago, another one the previous week,” he writes on his blog. “But no, this does not mean that the book will be finished tomorrow or published next week. It’s going to be a huge book, and I still have a long way to go. Please do not give any credence to any of the click-bait websites that like to parse every word of my posts as if they were papal encyclicals to divine hidden meanings.”
Martin also wrote about books he’s been reading. He said other things are going on in his life as well. “I bought a railroad … well, I bought a third of a railroad,” he wrote.
In May, Martin, along with Violet Crown Cinema owner Bill Banowsky and arts philanthropist Catherine Oppenheimer, purchased the Santa Fe Southern Railway Inc.
The trio is aiming to restore excursion trips on the 18-mile spur between Santa Fe and Lamy by 2022.
Martin told the Journal that his real motivation for being part of the acquisition group is so he can stand in the engine car and blow the whistle.
“Even though I’m an old guy, I’m a 13-year-old inside,” he said.
Martin wrote about his films in development, including adaptations of “Sandkings,” “The Ice Dragon” and “The Lost Lands.”
There are also films in development based on works by Roger Zelazny and Tony Hillerman.
“There are the secret shorts we’re doing that … well, no, if I spilled that, it wouldn’t be secret,” he wrote. “But up here on the mountain, all of that seems very distant, and much of it has stuttered to a halt in any case, until Covid goes away. Mostly, it’s just me in Westeros, with occasional side trips to other places in the pages of a great book. Now you will have to excuse me. Arya is calling. I think she means to kill someone.”