'The Winds of Winter' release date, news: novel might be out this year

Bestselling author George R. R. Martin is still hard at work with his long-awaited novel, "The Winds of Winter," but it looks like the wait could be over soon.

He wrote on his blog in response to a fan query that while the book is not done yet, he has made some progress. He said this with a caveat though. The progress is "not as much as I hoped a year ago, when I thought to be done by now," he stated.

Despite this, he said that "The Winds of Winter" might finally see the light of day soon. "I think it will be out this year," he said, but reminded the fan, "But hey, I thought the same thing last year."

Should "The Winds of Winter" hit the bookstores this year, it will finally allow the 67-year-old novelist to catch up with "Game of Thrones," the HBO juggernaut inspired from his masterpiece.

While he did warn that a release this year might not happen, his confidence that 2017 could be the year "The Winds of Winter" will show up suggests that he has completed a good portion of what fans imagine would be a very thick book.

However, as what happened last year, Martin missed several deadlines for the novel so there is still possibility that "The Winds of Winter" could come later than he hopes.

Either way, his comment did wonders in renewing the excitement of fans about the "Game of Thrones" installment, not that it ever wavered.

It has been five years since "A Dance with Dragons," the novel that precedes "The Winds of Winter" in Martin's mega-popular "A Series of Ice and Fire" book series, was released.

In those years, Martin has teased morsels of details about the book including major deaths and the fact that a character dead in the HBO adaptation is still very much alive in the book.