<P> At Guadalajara International Book Fair 2016, George R.R. Martin gave some clues about the dark nature of The Winds of Winter:..."I've been telling you for 20 years that winter was coming . Winter is the time when things die, and cold and ice and darkness fill the world, so this is not going to be the happy feel - good that people may be hoping for . Some of the characters (are) in very dark places...Things get worse before they get better, so things are getting worse for a lot of people ." </P> <P> Martin believes the last two volumes of the series will be massive works of 1,500 + manuscript pages each . He does not intend to separate characters by geography again, as he was forced to do because of the unpublishable length of A Feast for Crows' original manuscript . But, as Martin stated in a 2011 interview, "Three years from now when I'm sitting on 1,800 pages of manuscript with no end in sight, who the hell knows". In April 2011, shortly before the publication of A Dance with Dragons which took him six years to write, Martin hoped that "the last two books will go a little quicker than this one has" and estimated that it would take "three years to finish the next one at a good pace". By October 2012, 400 pages of the sixth novel had been written, although Martin considered only the first 200 as "really finished", the rest still needing revisions . In April 2013, Martin estimated that he had a quarter of the book . In the past, Martin has angered some of his fan base for repeatedly estimating his publication dates too optimistically; therefore, he has refrained from making hard estimates for The Winds of Winter's final release date . Ultimately the book "will be done when it's done". In 2012, Martin had acknowledged his concerns about the final novel, A Dream of Spring, not being completed by the time Game of Thrones catches up in its story line to the novels . </P> <P> In January 2014, Martin's UK publisher, Jane Johnson, declared on Twitter that the book would "certainly" not be published before 2015 . In September 2014 Johnson stated that the book was "not a 2015 release", a statement she repeated in January 2015 . In April 2015, Martin commented on his blog that The Winds of Winter will not be eligible for the 2016 Hugo Award which is awarded for science fiction or fantasy works of the previous year but he also said he would like to have it published before the sixth season of the HBO series Game of Thrones (which would cover material from the book) aired in 2016 . In Autumn 2015, statements made by the Spanish editor and the Polish translator of the novel indicated that it was expected to be published in 2016 . </P> <P> In early January 2016, Martin confirmed on his Live Journal that he had not met an end - of - year deadline that he had established with his publisher for release of the book before the sixth season of the HBO show . He added that there was "a lot still left to write" and that completion of the book was "months away still...if the writing goes well". Martin also revealed there had been a previous deadline of October 2015 that he had considered achievable in May 2015, and that in September 2015 he had still considered the end - of - year deadline achievable . He further confirmed that some of the plot of the book might be revealed in the upcoming season of Game of Thrones but one of the showrunners, David Benioff, claimed that while certain key elements would be the same, the show would diverge from the book in many respects . In February 2016, Martin stated that he had dropped all his editing projects except for Wild Cards, and that he would not be writing any teleplays, screenplays, short stories, introductions or forewords before delivering The Winds of Winter . </P>

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