George R.R. Martin is catching flak from “Game of Thrones” fans again, nearly a year and a half after admitting he’s struggling to complete his next novel — “The Winds of Winter” — in his “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, which was adapted into the beloved Max series.
Fans’ frustrations were recently stirred up again after the famed author posted a photo of himself holding a real-life dire wolf, the very same extinct species he made popular in his books, last week.
“I’ve been holding my tongue for months now, sworn to silence yet dying to tell the world,” he wrote on Facebook while showing gratitude to director Peter Jackson for facilitating the moment via Colossal Biosciences.
The Dallas, Texas-based genetic engineering company, which works to revive extinct animals, produced three live dire wolf puppies after resurrecting the species that became extinct around 12,500 years ago.
Despite Martin being visibly thrilled by the interaction with the direwolf, fans couldn’t help but jokingly hold Martin to the fire for lagging on the franchise’s long-anticipated book in the comments section of his Facebook post.
“Busy resurrecting wolves instead of writing,” one person wrote.
Another commented, “They are beautiful. But for the love of all things holy, and I think I speak for almost everyone when I say this…FINISH THE DAMN BOOKS!!!”
“Ask that dog if he knows how the books end,” someone else teased.
In a new interview with TIME, Martin addressed the delay after being asked about his fans’ comments about him getting sidetracked.
“That’s the curse of my life,” he said in the interview. “There’s no doubt Winds of Winter is 13 years late. I’m still working on it. I have periods where I make progress and then other things divert my attention and suddenly … I have a deadline for one of the HBO shows, I have something else to do.”
Martin previously admitted that he was having a rough time writing while appearing on the “Bangcast” podcast in November 2023.
“I’m 12 years late on this damn novel, and I’m struggling with it,” he said of the long-awaited book. “I have like 1,100 pages written, but I still have hundreds more pages to go. It’s a big mother of a book for whatever reason. Maybe I should’ve started writing smaller books when I began this, but it’s tough.”
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The writer added: “That’s the main thing that dominates most of my working life.”
