After the very long wait, novelist George R.R. Martin finally shed some light about the plot of the next installment in the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. The author of the bestselling epic saga shared one chapter from the upcoming book "The Winds of Winter" in his official website, with Sansa Stark as the central character in the excerpt.
Martin earned a lot of flak over the years for the slow development of the novels. The TV adaptation of the books was slowly catching up with the published novels, and HBO will soon run out of source materials after "Game of Thrones" season 5. But Martin became more open about the details of his upcoming book during his recent interview with the Entertainment Weekly.
According to the author, he would like to see the sixth book on store shelves soon.
"I wish it was out now. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic about how quickly I can finish. But I canceled two convention appearances, I'm turning down a lot more interviews -- anything I can do to clear my decks and get this done," Martin said.
Now that a new excerpt is out, it could mean that the author is already working his way to finishing the book.
Aside from the newly released chapter, Martin also revealed his plans about the development of the major characters in the book, particularly a major twist that he did not originally plan when he was first starting to write the novels.
"I'm still weighing whether to go that direction or not. It's a great twist. It's easy to do things that are shocking or unexpected, but they have to grow out of characters. They have to grow out of situations. Otherwise, it's just being shocking for being shocking. But this is something that seems very organic and natural, and I could see how it would happen," he said.
Martin also shared that he is planning to come up with a long anecdote on Targaryen history compared to the featured Westerlands history that is posted on his website.
