We were having breakfast in San Francisco before HBO’s premiere event for Game of Thrones season five. Martin had been professionally writing sci-fi and fantasy fiction since his acclaimed debut novel, 1977’s Dying of the Light, and had attempted a stint as a staff writer on TV shows in Los Angeles in the 1980s before launching his bestselling A Song of Ice and Fire novels, which served as the basis for Thrones. His books took high fantasy tropes and combined them with a tale inspired by the brutal, R-rated history of politics and warfare in medieval Europe.

Along the way, Martin had become a celebrity figure with a distinctive look, with his bushy white beard, fisherman’s cap, glasses and suspenders — like some 1920s steampunk Santa. Between bites of eggs Benedict, Martin said he couldn’t believe he was being parodied on South Park and Saturday Night Live. In just a few short years, Martin had become the country’s most recognizable author aside from Stephen King. It was an extraordinary accomplishment for the son of a New Jersey longshoreman who got his start by selling monster stories to schoolmates for a dime apiece.

Martin told me his first concern was that HBO might never make another series based on the world of Thrones. He had “material for 100 other shows,” he said, but HBO executives weren’t yet interested in doing spinoffs. Martin didn’t want to be a one-hit wonder in Hollywood. He hoped his fantasy creation would evolve into a franchise that kept it alive for generations.

Martin’s second worry was one he’d had since 2011, when Thrones premiered and his last Ice and Fire novel, A Dance With Dragons, was published. He still needed to write two more books, The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring, to finish his saga, and the clock was ticking. The HBO show’s storylines were about to surpass the narrative in his books.

“I have to finish the next book,” Martin fretted. “The actual writing [is getting] harder. I’m rewriting. I’m struggling. Maybe I’m overoptimistic about how quickly I can write these things. I’m trying to cut back on anything that I can to clear my decks and get this done …”

◗10 YEARS LATER …

Martin takes a seat in his bar in Santa Fe. The tavern is called Milk of the Poppy, a nod to the opiate tonic in Thrones, yet it’s not officially based on the show. “I sold Westeros to Warner Bros. in 2007,” he points out.

The bar is located next to his Beastly Books bookstore, which is next to his Jean Cocteau Cinema movie theater, which is a stone’s throw away from a train painted to look like a dragon offering day-trip adventures. Locals regularly stop Martin and thank him for all that he’s done for the city (the author is estimated to be worth around $120 million, though he lives a rather humble lifestyle).

In many ways, Martin looks the same as ever. He’s sharp and engaging. His voice is vibrant. Yet his beard has thinned and he has a tougher time walking. He’s also lost weight, but contrary to morbid online speculation, this isn’t due to any health issues.

“I never thought I’d live to be 77,” Martin says. “I’m old, so I have some old-people stuff. My lower back hurts sometimes. I don’t like to stand around. But I feel OK. Maybe you should make that your headline: ‘George R.R. Martin Is Not Dying.’”

Martin’s concern about the survival of his Westeros kingdom has proved groundless. The first Thrones spinoff — the prequel House of the Dragon, based on Martin’s bookFire & Blood — has been a hit for HBO and will debut its third season this year. Another prequel about to premiere, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, is based on Martin’s Dunk and Egg novellas. There are multiple other Westeros-based tales in development at HBO, while a London West End stage play, The Iron Throne, will soon dramatize the story of King Robert’s Rebellion.

Martin’s also launched popular ventures beyond his best-known franchise. He’s an executive producer on AMC’s acclaimed Navajo Tribal Police drama Dark Winds and collaborated on the hit fantasy game Elden Ring. He’s a founding investor in Meow Wolf, the innovative immersive art experience that launched in Santa Fe in 2016 and has since expanded to four other cities.

Martin wanted to build an empire — and did. Yet “productive” is the last word any Thrones fan would use to describe him. The author’s worry that he wouldn’t be able to finish Winter has borne out to a staggering degree. His tortured inability to “finish the book, George!” — as online hordes regularly chide — is almost as impressive, in its way, as his success at doing everything else.

But first, we discuss the new show, which has a scrappy, low-key vibe compared to GoT or Dragon. The action is almost entirely set at a jousting tournament in a rural backwater of Westeros and follows the penniless knight Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey) and his diminutive 10-year-old squire (Dexter Sol Ansell) as they enter the tourney to improve their fortunes. Across six episodes, the likable duo tangle with an array of powerful rival lords. “Dunk and Egg both face great Shakespearean jeopardy in Westeros, but there’s a lot of humor and heart along the way, too,” says HBO drama programming head Francesca Orsi.

“The show is meant to be a very different type,” says Martin, who serves as co-creator and exec producer. “It turned out very well, and I’m very happy with season one. The casting was a home run. [Showrunner Ira Parker] is terrific and seems to have the same priorities I do — he’s trying to do something that’s very true to the characters.”

The show came about, Martin says, because HBO was looking for a project “where we could get the budget a little under control.” (Dragon costs about $20 million an episode, and the network previously shortened Dragon‘s second season to push an expensive battle sequence into season three.)

“This doesn’t have any dragons or big battles,” says Martin. “It has a field and a lot of tents and some horses.”

When the project was announced two years ago, HBO’s press release suggested the series would serve as Martin’s return to screenwriting. But he still hasn’t written an episode of TV since season four of Thrones. “There has always been the possibility of me writing on the show,” he says. “But then things happen and suddenly I have other priorities.”

Martin is nonetheless highly creatively involved. On Knight and Dragon, Martin initially convened a writing summit in Santa Fe to help figure out the series. “I bring the showrunner together with four or five writers that I know — some are TV writers, some are fantasy novelists — who really know the world and we assemble for a week,” he says. Parker called the summit “one of the most fun, creative weeks I’ve ever had in my whole career” and notes that while writing episodes, “George was there every step of the way. He’s been lovely. I think of him as a friend now.”

With a production and scope that’s quite modest compared to Thrones and Dragon, Parker admits to worrying about whether fans will embrace it (earlyreviews, at least, are quite positive, with our critic calling the show “smaller, smarter, funnier” than its predecessors.).

“At the end of the day, we are Game of Thrones without all the stuff,” Parker says. “We have one of the ingredients — two unusual characters like Arya and the Hound, or Brienne and Podrick — who are paired together and having conversions. I hope that’s what [made Thrones work]. It’s a big part of what it was for me.” 

Season one is faithful to Martin’s debut Dunk and Egg tale, The Hedge Knight, and season two, which already has been greenlit, will be based on his novella The Sworn Sword.

There is, however, one potential problem for the show’s future. “The big issue is that I have only written three novellas, and I have a lot more stories about Dunk and Egg in my fucking head,” Martin says, looking a bit shamefaced. “I’ve got to get them down on paper. I began writing two at various points in the past year. One is set in Winterfell and one set in the Riverlands …”

Oh, George, I say. Not again …

◗ THE EXPANDING KINGDOM

All of Martin’s books, shows, events and businesses come with their own set of distractions, which get added to a pile and compete for his attention. Some involve working with writers on not-yet-announced potential Thrones projects.

One previously reported idea is based on Dragon‘s seafaring character the Sea Snake. This development has quietly shifted from a live-action project to animated to keep costs down. Another is based on King Aegon Targaryen’s conquest of Westeros and is being developed by HBO as a possible drama series and by the Warner Bros. film team as a mammoth Dune-sized feature film.

But one idea is an offspring of the most intriguing of all the post-Thrones pitches — the scrapped Jon Snow sequel. Martin long has resisted sequels to Thrones because the ending of his Ice and Fire books is not going to align with the show and he wants to avoid further canonizing Thrones‘ controversial ending — even though he hasn’t written his own yet. “[The book’s ending is] going to be significantly different,” Martin says. “Some characters who are alive in my book are going to be dead in the show, and vice versa.”

Martin figured Jon (played by Kit Harington in Thrones) would be the safest character for a sequel since he was exiled to north of the Wall in the series finale, and picking up his story wouldn’t need to include revealing what happened to the other major characters down south.

THR broke the news of the development in 2022 but held back story details to protect against spoilers. Harington, working with two writers from his drama series Gunpowder, was interested in mapping out a tale of Snow living alone as a broken man with PTSD. Having chased off his direwolf Ghost and thrown away his sword Longclaw, Jon spent his time building cabins and burning them back down again. Harington also wanted Jon to die and to avoid being a hero.

The story echoed, in some respects, Harington’s personal struggles — entering rehab following an intense shooting experience on Thrones. (“I went through some mental health difficulties,” the actor has said. “I think it was directly due to the nature of the show.”)

HBO found the “broken Jon Snow” idea too much of a bummer and eventually pushed it aside. Yet in recent days, sources say a new writer (Quoc Dang Tran from Drops of God) has come aboard to revive the sequel idea. While the story is still being fleshed out, one possibility is shifting the drama to the Mediterranean-like land of Essos and adding another hugely popular legacy character — Arya Stark (who was played by Maisie Williams in Thrones).

This is very early development, however, and HBO is naturally being quite cautious about handling this one. “We are very interested and excited by the prospect of a sequel but also keenly aware of how high the bar of execution needs to be,” one insider says. No actors are yet on board, and signing Harington, in particular, would likely prove quite difficult. Just recently, the actor declared he doesn’t “want to go anywhere near” Jon Snow again.

Martin says he cannot confirm or comment on projects in development. None of the titles is as sensitive, however, as Martin discussing a show that everybody already knows about: House of the Dragon.

◗ PALACE INTRIGUE

“I have an ego,” Martin once said.

Having interviewed Martin nearly a dozen times over the years, this quote always stuck with me because nearly all creatives have an ego — often massive ones — but they’re rarely so forthright about it. Whereas Martin always comes across bluntly honest and unafraid to be vulnerable. He can also get a very frustrated at perceived rudeness or slights. Warner Bros. may legally own Westeros, but the world is still Martin’s creation, and he understandably wants to feel respected and involved.

Martin has made something else consistently clear: He believes book adaptations — not just his own — should be as faithful as possible. Martin is childless and has said he considers his characters to be his children. If another writer wants to make a major change to one of his brood — or remove one from a story altogether — he wants to know why, and the reason should make sense.

Knight showrunner Parker says he suspects Martin leaning on HBO and showrunners to respect his vision is one reason “why these shows have done so well” and that the author has “been nothing but a benefit.”

“In my very first meeting with George, before I officially had the job, I promised I wouldn’t put anything in that he didn’t want — but it’s never come to that,” Parker says. “He’s pushed back on a lot of things. I just explain the reason why I want to do something and then he would explain his reasons why I’m an idiot.”

It’s always been a bit unclear precisely how much authority Martin has over his HBO projects (sometimes it seems fuzzy to Martin, as well). When HBO’s Orsi is asked about Martin’s level of control, she replies, “We always value his input in terms of the writers we’re hiring, the arenas we’re tackling for new spinoffs and the development of each project across the GoT universe. But building, producing, and running a series is a massive undertaking. We while we care deeply about George’s and our showrunners’ perspectives, we ultimately make decisions that make the best show.”

I ask Martin carefully: I know you can’t say much about this, but I was wondering how your relationship with Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal got so rocky?

“It’s worse than rocky,” Martin says, looking miserable. “It’s abysmal.”

Without getting into spoilers, Martin’s gripes about Dragon stem from disputes over changes to his book’s characters that impact key plot points.

“I hired Ryan,” Martin says. “I thought Ryan and I were partners. And we were all through the first season. I would read early drafts of the scripts. I would give notes. He would change some things. It was working really well — I thought.”

When Ryan came to loggerheads with original Dragon co-showrunner Miguel Sapochnik, Ryan asked for Martin’s support in their dispute, and got it (Sapochnik left the show after season one).

“Then we got into season two, and he basically stopped listening to me,” Martin says. “I would give notes, and nothing would happen. Sometimes he would explain why he wasn’t doing it. Other times, he would tell me, ‘Oh, OK, yeah, I’ll think about that.’ It got worse and worse, and I began to get more and more annoyed. Finally, it got to a point where I was told by HBO that I should submit all my notes to them and they would give Ryan our combined notes.”

One night in 2024, while the second season was airing, Martin wrote a blog post, “Beware the Butterflies,” which publicly revealed some of his gripes. When he woke the next morning, it was as if Martin had unleashed his own Red Wedding. An upset HBO exec had called Martin’s manager, who phoned Martin’s assistant, who took down the post — but not before entertainment sites (including THR) picked up Martin’s comments. “I would’ve put it back up, but then I would’ve looked like an idiot,” he says. “And 80 percent of it was praise, but that’s not what people focused on.”

Still, the post was meant to be just part one of six detailing the author’s issues with Dragon.

Martin says he can’t say anything beyond this. But sources say Martin and Condal’s relationship deteriorated further and came to a head during a Zoom call with the show’s producers and some HBO executives. The purpose of the call was for Condal to present his vision for season three. After Condal spoke, Martin detailed his many objections and allegedly declared, “This is not my story any longer.”

Condal didn’t comment for this profile but pointed to a statement he gave to EW last year: “I made every effort to include George in the adaptation process. I really did. … But at some point, he just became unwilling to acknowledge the practical issues at hand in a reasonable way .. I just have to keep marching forward for the sake of the crew, the cast, and for HBO, because that’s my job … I can only hope that George and I can rediscover that harmony someday.”

After their contentious Zoom call, HBO asked Martin to step back from Dragon altogether. A few months later, the author was brought back aboard. “I can’t talk about it,” Martin says.

“George and Ryan had a disagreement on the direction of season three,” an HBO insider says. “At that point, it was clear that the process and communication with them was broken and needed a reset. So there was naturally a period where everyone took a step back for a while until we could figure out a new way forward.”

◗ IS ‘WINTER’ COMING?

In August, Martin was on an author panel at WorldCon when a fan asked a stunningly rude question. Martin typically enjoys such events. He likes communing with fellow creatives and meeting fans. He’ll do book signings for hours, autographing a thousand copies. Martin notes fans are always exceedingly nice when he meets them in person.

The WorldCon panel was taking audience questions when somebody asked Martin if he would let another writer finish The Winds of Winter because “you’re not going to be around for much longer.”

The audience booed. Martin felt like he’d been slapped. When he looked online to see the reaction, he was dismayed to find some fans saying he deserved it. “They say, ‘He lied to us, he is going to die soon, look how old he is,’ ” Martin says. Even now, months later, the author looks rattled. “I really didn’t need that shit,” he says. “Nobody needs that shit.”

Martin recently has endured losing a wave of fellow novelists whom he counted as close friends. “Howard Waldrop, Gardner Dozois, Victor Milán, John J. Miller, Edward Bryant …” Martin lists. “They’re all gone, one after another.”

Last year, Martin sat down with one of his idols, Robert Redford, who was a fellow executive producer on Dark Winds. Redford came out of acting retirement to film a brief cameo in the show with Martin. In the scene, the two are sitting at a chessboard, and Redford ad-libbed a line: “George, the whole world is waiting, make a move.” It was a meta joke about how long it’s taken Martin to finish Winter. Then Redford died, too. His chess scene with Martin — like something out of The Seventh Seal — was his final performance. “Which just seems so fucking weird,” Martin says.

Martin’s masterpiece is arguably A Storm of Swords. The book, published in 2000, was adapted into seasons three and four of Thrones. It’s a brilliant, twisty novel, spanning more than 1,000 pages and reads like Martin was channeling a river of fire. Somehow, Martin wrote Swords in a single year. Winter has taken him 14 and counting. “I look back at that book too,” Martin admits. “And I don’t know how I did it.”

Martin says he has around 1,100 manuscript pages finished. He’s also said the number for a while. He long has blamed the endless distractions that have come from shifting from a full-time author to a producer and celebrity. The success of Thrones was both the best thing that could have happened to Martin and the worst thing that could have happened to the greatest story he ever wrote.

The roots of Ice and Fire extend back to Martin’s childhood. As a kid, he kept pet turtles. When they mysteriously began dying off, he invented stories about how the turtles were feudal rivals who were secretly killing one another in sinister plots. Then when he worked on shows like Beauty and the Beast and a revival of The Twilight Zone, Martin chafed against the censorious, low-budget nature of ’80s TV, decrying “bullshit changes, sheer cowardice, [producers] afraid of anything that was too strong [and] anything that anyone might be ‘offended’ by.” He deliberately wrote Ice and Fire to be so sprawling and epic that it would be “unfilmable.” The result has sold more than 100 million copies.

Today, Martin works on Winter at his old house, which serves as his office (he recently moved his primary residence to another Santa Fe property), typing away on a DOS computer that’s not connected to the internet.

Here’s what happens when he sits down to write: “I will open the last chapter I was working on and I’ll say, ‘Oh fuck, this is not very good.’ And I’ll go in and I’ll rewrite it. Or I’ll decide, ‘This Tyrion chapter is not coming along, let me write a Jon Snow chapter.’ If I’m not interrupted though, what happens — at least in the past — is sooner or later, I do get into it.”

One issue is narrative complexity. The fourth Ice and Fire book, A Feast for Crows, introduced several new characters and major storylines to an already highly intricate tale. Martin was soon switching perspectives between 21 rival viewpoint characters, each with their own dedicated series of chapters. (When Thrones reached the same narrative juncture, showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss decided to largely stick with characters who were already established — yet still famously struggled to pull off a final stretch that fans felt was satisfying).

When the pandemic hit, Martin tried going to a literal cabin in the woods to finish Winter. That was a prolific stretch, he says, resulting in many new chapters. But it took him away from his longtime partner, Parris McBride (they met in the 1970s and tied the knot in 2011), and even Martin’s forced-isolation effort ran into creative troubles. “I wrote a Tyrion chapter I just loved,” he recalls. “Then I looked at it and said: ‘I can’t do this, it will change the whole book. I’ll make this into a series of dreams. No! That doesn’t work either …’”

I ask Martin if he’s ever considered simply giving up on the book. It’s your life, George, I say. You don’t have to spend it working on something if you find it torturous.

“I would hate that,” Martin says. “It would feel like a total failure to me. I want to finish.”

Handing the project to another writer — which some fans have lobbied for him to do — isn’t going to happen, Martin says. There is also no secret contingency plan for somebody else to take over if Martin gets struck by lightning. “If that happens, my work won’t be finished,” he says. “It’ll be like The Mystery of Edwin Drood” — referring to Charles Dickens’ unfinished final novel.

How much further does he have to go? Martin is vague. “If I wound up doing everything in my head, this could be the longest book in the series.”

After asking Martin repeatedly about Winds — seemingly more than he’d like — the author did what he does best. He tells a story.

In 1975, Martin met Dune author Frank Herbert at a book convention and they shared a drink. The meeting was “near the end of Herbert’s life,” Martin says. Herbert had written many acclaimed novels, but all fans seemed to want was more Dune. Herbert’s publisher had just offered him a modest advance for a story he wanted to write, or six times that number for another Dune novel.

“He didn’t like Dune anymore and he didn’t want to write any more Dune books,” Martin says. “But he felt locked in by the success of Dune, so he kept writing them.”

Martin finishes … and waits.

I ask: Do you relate to how Herbert felt?

“I’m not necessarily tired of the world [of Ice and Fire],” he says. “I love the world and the world-building. But, yes, I do.”

◗ NOT TODAY

Martin is waiting in front of his bookstore for a car that will take him home. When you walk into the store, the first several bookcases are full of Martin’s published works — which is more than you probably realize, especially when you add the dozens of anthologies he’s edited (like his popular Wildcards series). The shelf space devoted to the Ice and Fire books is, perhaps unsurprisingly, rather small.

A couple of fans had just presented Martin with a gorgeous custom-made dragon’s head cane. He thanked them and they had a chat. I wonder how he feels about being given a cane but don’t ask.

Martin’s thoughts turn, unprompted, to the end of Ice and Fire. It becomes clear that the details of his story’s conclusion, like so much of the saga, remains uncertain.

“I was going to kill more people,” he muses. “Not the ones they killed [in the show]. They made it more of a happy ending. I don’t see a happy ending for Tyrion. His whole arc has been tragic from the first. I was going to have Sansa die, but she’s been so appealing in the show, maybe I’ll let her live …”

His assistant’s car is coming. I ask what he’s doing for Christmas.

“I don’t know,” Martin says. “I think I’ll stay home. I have to write more Dunk and Egg. There’s supposed to be another Fire and Blood book, too. I do think if I can just get some of these other things off my back, I could finish The Winds of Winter pretty soon. It’s been made clear to me that Winds is the priority, but … I don’t know. Sometimes I’m not in the mood for that.”

He sighs. “I’m so far behind on everything.”

Borys Kit contributed to this report.

This story appeared in the Jan. 15 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.