A few of you were curious why I declared George RR Martin's most recent article off-limits for #AskWatson.
It seems the pervasive “thirst” for industry drama has seeped into the Legion, and all I can say is, shame on you all! However, instead of ruing this reality and dousing each and every one of you in Holy Water, I’m going to do what any sensible author with a marketing mind would do:
INDULGE IT. 😈
So, let us.
For those not in the know, George recently published an article on his blog talking about a project he’s working on that isn’t WoW (surprise, surprise) before he veered into what I can only describe as a meltdown.
Here’s the excerpt in question:
(I know, I know. Some of you will just be pissed off by this, as you are by everything I announce here that is not about Westeros or THE WINDS OF WINTER. You have given up on me, or on the book. 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. I ought to get some other writer to pinch hit for me… 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. I edit the Wild Cards books too, but you hate Wild Cards. You may hate everything else I have ever written, the Hugo-winners and Hugo-losers, “A Song for Lya” and DYING OF THE LIGHT, “Sandkings” and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, “This Tower of Ashes” and “The Stone City,” OLD MARS and OLD VENUS and ROGUES and WARRIORS and DANGEROUS WOMEN and all the other anthologies I edited with my friend Gardner Dozois, You don’t care about any of those, I know. You don’t care about anything but WINDS OF WINTER. You’ve told me so often enough).
Thing is, I do care about them.
And I care about Westeros and WINDS as well. The Starks and Lannisters and Targaryens, Tyrion and Asha, Dany and Daenerys, the dragons and the direwolves, I care about them all. More than you can ever imagine.
If that doesn’t sound like a man who has thrown in the towel, I don’t know what does.
Obviously, as a fan, I was furious to hear what I had suspected for some time… that he has all but abandoned the series. I think it's distasteful and a slap to the face of all the folks who have enabled him to “just sit around and spend my money” as he so elegantly puts it.
Especially when, you know…
HE CHOSE TO WALK THIS PATH.
Call me a conspiracy nut, but I don’t think anyone pointed a gun to his temple and forced him to sign a multi-million-dollar deal with HBO.
No, he did that all himself like the big boy he is.
He also knew full well that the spotlight would be larger than it had ever been after the fact.
For this, I have ZERO sympathy for the guy.
Now, where I do have a shred of compassion is that I believe he was genuinely blindsided by just how well A Game of Thrones performed. I imagine he didn’t anticipate it garnering the hearts of millions of fans across the globe, and I doubly believe the fallout following Season #8 left him quite literally…
SOILING HIS PANTS.
Why?
Because all that pissed-off energy had to go somewhere once the dust settled.
And that’s exactly what happened.
Every snarling, gnashing fan looked to him to rectify the mess HBO left behind, which — let’s be honest — wasn’t exactly their fault. They were just as much the victims of Martin’s laziness as anyone else, except they had all the pressure of delivering a satisfying end to a series that had NO ending.
Imagine that.
Unbelievable.
Some people interpreted this article as a defiant stand by Martin, but all I saw were the words of a man haunted by his success who had finally had enough and taken his stick to the fans who simply wanted an end to what had been a marvellous adventure up until that point.
Anyway, if you want to read the full article yourself, you can do so here:
https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2025/05/28/howard-meets-hercules/
DJJW