George RR Martin has opened up about experiencing depression during a “stressful” and “overwhelming” year, as readers continue to await the long-delayed sixth instalment of his A Song of Ice and Fire series.
The 77-year-old American author, whose fantasy novels shaped and inspired the hit HBO television series Game of Thrones, wrote candidly about his recent difficulties in his first personal blog post for almost six months.
“This year has been … stressful, to say the least,” he wrote in a post titled Better Late Than Never. “So much has been happening, it’s been overwhelming. Some great things, exciting things. Dreams coming true. But there have been nightmares too. I have lost friends. Battled sadness and depression. The worst may be yet to come.”
He explained that posts published on his website since February had been written by his assistants because he had continued to fall behind despite their help.
Martin, who turns 78 in September, also reflected on ageing; “getting old is no fun”, he wrote, although he added that the year had contained “amazing times” alongside its difficulties.
“I suppose that’s just life. Of course, I knew that. If you’ve read my stories, you know that.”
Among the year’s highlights, Martin noted that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel based on his Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas, had received nine Emmy nominations, including for outstanding drama series.
His comments come amid continued speculation about The Winds of Winter, the planned sixth and penultimate novel in A Song of Ice and Fire. The book has been in progress since the publication of the fifth instalment, A Dance with Dragons, in 2011, and has become one of the most eagerly awaited novels in modern publishing. No publication date has been announced.
Martin has faced sustained criticism from some readers over the delay, and has previously referred to the book as “the curse of my life”. The Game of Thrones TV show eventually overtook its source material, with its later seasons following a separate narrative that received a mixed response from critics and viewers, especially after its final season in 2019.
In a blog post in May 2025, Martin directly addressed those who believed he had abandoned the series, sarcastically listing the accusations levelled against him: “I will never finish Winds. If I do, I will never finish A Dream of Spring. If I do, it won’t be any good.”
Continuing the charges, he wrote: “I am going to die soon anyway, because I am so old. I lost all interest in A Song of Ice and Fire decades ago. I don’t give a shit about writing any longer, I just sit around and spend my money.”
But Martin insisted that he remained invested in Westeros and its characters. “I care about them all,” he wrote. “More than you can ever imagine.”
In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter in January, Martin said he had completed about 1,100 manuscript pages of The Winds of Winter. He said leaving the series unfinished would feel like “a total failure”, adding: “I do think if I can just get some of these other things off my back, I could finish The Winds of Winter pretty soon … It’s been made clear to me that Winds is the priority, but … I don’t know. Sometimes I’m not in the mood for that.”
