While best-selling author George R.R. Martin still refuses to reveal the final release date of "The Winds of Winter," the sixth installment in his "A Song of Ice and Fire" novels, he recently revealed where he gets his inspiration when writing his books.
In a post on the New York Jets website, Martin told D'Brickashaw Ferguson that his love for historical stories inspires him to write the popular novels.
"I love to read history, popular history, the stories of the wars and the betrayals and the kings and the murders and the poisonings — it's great material," the 66-year-old author-screenwriter-TV producer shared. "And I love to read historical fiction, and the Wars of the Roses I think are an area that was particularly fascinating for me, ever since I saw the Shakespeare play Richard III, which takes place in that same era."
The author also shared that his idea of featuring all sorts of characters in his stories, including those with physical challenges life the dwarf Tyrion Lannister, stems from his desire to cover all types of personalities whether they are powerful or not.
"I've always been drawn to the underdogs, to the characters who had some particular problem. Jon Snow who is a bastard or Arya who is a little tomboy girl who doesn't fit what a girl was suppose to be or Brienne who is big and ugly and is a woman warrior at a time when women weren't suppose to be warriors. That kind of thing always attracts me."
At the moment, Martin already released five novels out of the seven-part book series. His last published "ASOIF" book is "A Dance with Dragons" which came out on July 12, 2011. Fans of both the books and its TV adaptation "Game of Thrones" from HBO are now eager to find out the next part of the story since the book and TV series have a lot of loose ends.
Martin is expected to release "The Winds of Winter" before the sixth season of "Game of Thrones" airs in 2016.
