Waiting for the winter that never comes: George R. R. Martin, the long delay, and the afterlife of Game of Thrones

It’s been nearly fifteen years since A Dance with Dragons was published. That was 2011, the same year Game of Thrones first aired on HBO, when Twitter was still young, and we had no inkling of the juggernaut the series would become. 

Back then, The Winds of Winter seemed just over the horizon. George R. R. Martin had already begun writing it. Some readers expected it within a few years. Many still believed that the books would finish before the show caught up.

That never happened. HBO's Game of Thrones finished almost six years ago, and Martin has now been working on The Winds of Winter for well over a decade.