Many years ago, A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin promised fans could imprison him if the sixth book in the series, The Winds of Winter, hadn't arrived by a certain deadline – and that deadline is now six years in the past.
"As for finishing my book… I fear that New Zealand would distract me entirely too much. Best leave me here in Westeros for the nonce," Martin wrote on his Not a Blog page in May 2019. "But I tell you this – if I don't have THE WINDS OF WINTER in hand when I arrive in New Zealand for worldcon, you have here my formal written permission to imprison me in a small cabin on White Island, overlooking that lake of sulfuric acid, until I'm done. Just so long as the acrid fumes do not screw up my old DOS word processor, I'll be fine."
