Winds of Winter: George R R Martin Says he’s Skipping Game of Thrones Season 5 Work to do His Upcoming Book

George R.R. Martin arrives at the premiere of HBO's 'Game Of Thrones' Season 3 at TCL Chinese Theatre on March 18, 2013 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

“The Winds of Winter,” the forthcoming novel from Game of Thrones creator George R. R. Martin, will be his main focus.

According to an interview with Zap2it, he’s going to focus on finishing the book and won’t work on Season 5 of Game of Thrones.

“I’m not actually writing an episode for Season 5,” Martin told the site. “As you may know, there’s this book that people are kind of getting antsy about delivering. It takes me roughly a month to do an episode, so I decided, given the realities, I'd better skip this one this season and just concentrate on finishing the book.”

 

He also talked about Jeyne Westerling, who Robb Stark marries in the book. She’s still alive, he says, unlike the show counterpart, Talisa.

 

“Let me make this clear here: I didn’t say she was the viewpoint character. I said she was in the prologue. It’s the viewpoint character who always dies,“ he added. ”I like to break rules. Just when I get it established what the rule is, I like to break it. So maybe the viewpoint character will die in the prologue, and maybe they won’t.”

Martin also recently talked about what might happen to Tyrion, a fan favorite.

“I love all my characters, of course, but Tyrion has always been a favorite,” Martin told Hollywood Life. “He is the easiest to write … The only thing that is hard is that it takes me days and sometimes weeks to come up with the one-liners that Tyrion comes up with in, like, a minute. I wish in real life I was nearly as acerbic and funny as Tyrion.”

He added: “They say that you write what you want to read and you create in television what you want to watch. I love shows that are unpredictable. I like shows to be more real. Predicatable shows and books bore me ... I want to be on the edge of my seat. So, the deaths are important and at all times necessary.