‘Getting old is no fun’: Game of Thrones author George RR Martin speaks out about depression amid further book delays
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- George RR Martin revealed he has "battled sadness and depression" during a "stressful" and "overwhelming" year, in his first personal blog post in almost six months.
- Martin, who turns 78 in September, wrote "getting old is no fun" but said the year had also contained "amazing times" and "dreams coming true."
- Martin disclosed that posts on his website since February had been written by his assistants because he continued to fall behind despite their help.
- The Winds of Winter has been in progress since A Dance with Dragons was published in 2011, with no publication date announced; Martin told The Hollywood Reporter in January he had completed about 1,100 manuscript pages.
- Martin previously called the book "the curse of my life" and in a May 2025 blog post sarcastically listed reader accusations, including that he had "lost all interest" in A Song of Ice and Fire and was "going to die soon anyway."
- A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, HBO's Game of Thrones prequel based on Martin's Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas, received nine Emmy nominations including outstanding drama series.
- Martin told The Hollywood Reporter in January that leaving the series unfinished would feel like "a total failure," while saying he could finish Winds "pretty soon" if other commitments were cleared.
Why it matters: With HBO's Game of Thrones having already overtaken the source material and concluded in 2019, Martin's personal disclosure reframes a 14-year publishing delay as a question of whether Westeros gets a canonical literary ending at all — and his January confession that an unfinished book would feel like "a total failure" puts the burden squarely on him at 78.
