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I remember when Game of Thrones fans first started joking about how long it was taking George R. R. Martin to write The Winds of Winter. In 2016, there was an entire segment on Conan O'Brian's late night show poking fun at Martin's "procrastinating" habits, though the jokes had begun years before. Nine years later, The Winds of Winter still hasn't come out yet, and Martin wants you to stop complaining about it. 

Writing on his blog (or should we say Not A Blog), Martin announced that there will be an animated feature film adaptation of Howard Waldrop's novella, A Dozen Tough Jobs. The film was written by Joe Lansdale, who wrote the novella Bubba Ho-Tep later adapted into a riotously funny Bruce Campbell movie. But that's not all that Martin had to say. 

The writer addressed the elephant in the room, all formatting and style choices his own: "(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)."

Martin then set the record straight: he cares enormously about the world of Westeros and all of its characters - "more than you can ever imagine." He's just got a lot going on! So let's agree to do one thing, my fellow Game of Thrones fans. Let's leave the guy alone.

That said, if you're looking to fill the Game of Thrones-shaped void in your life, why not read Kentaro Miura's Berserk manga? Even though Miura passed away a few years ago, his friends and assistants are working hurriedly to finish the story their friend and colleague set out to tell. 

Just like yourself, the Popverse staff spends a whole lot of time with our respective noses in respective books. It's why we've come up with stuff like:

• The hottest upcoming fiction
• Queer romance to add to your reading list
• A reading guide to Cassandar Clare's Shadowhunter Chronicles

...and a whole lot more. Join our metaphorical library, won't you? There are no late fees and you can be as loud as you want, so long as the people you live with are OK with it.