On The Winds of Winter release date: George R.R. Martin says, the book "will be done when it's done"

"The Winds of Winter," the much anticipated sixth installment in George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Fire and Ice" seven-book fantasy epic still has no definite release date. However, some expect the book may be ready by 2017, assuming of course that the 65-year-old author can continue on with his current pace of about 250 word per day. The author himself admitted he doesn't know when he will finish the much anticipated sixth installment in his "A Song of Ice and Fire" seven-book fantasy epic. "I don't know," George R.R. Martin told Digital Spy. "I have days where I make lots of progress, I have days where I make next to no progress, I have days where I think I'm going backwards because I don't like what I wrote yesterday. So I've given up making any predictions on that. I'm just writing it and when it's done, it'll be done."

Martin who has been contributing one "Game of Thrones" script per season for the last four seasons has even decided he won't write one for Season 5. Neither will he make any set visits this year. He will finish writing "The Winds of Winter" book first. "I'm not writing a script for season 5, but I'm still a co-executive producer, so I'm still involved on that level, he said to Digital Spy. "It takes me about three weeks to a month to write a script, and with all the pressure to finish and deliver The Winds of Winter, I decided my time was better spent finishing the book than taking off three weeks to a month to get a script done."

Clearly, the author is now under pressure from fans of his work. But "the more readers you have, the harder it is to keep up, and then you can't get any writing done," Martin has said in an interview with the New Yorker. As Martin puts it: "People are analyzing every goddam line in these books, and if I make a mistake they're going to nail me on it." And he has already made some: "My fans point them out to me. I have a horse that changes sex between books. He was a mare in one book and a stallion in the next, or something like that."

Back in September last year, Jane Johnson, Martin's UK publisher, said "The Winds of Winter" will not be released in 2015. On January 6, she confirmed this with a tweet that reads "it's not in our 2015 publishing schedule as it stands - I know no more than that at the moment."