'The Winds of Winter' Release Date, Latest News: Game of Thrones Book Could Be Finished in 2015, George R.R. Martin Hints

"The Winds of Winter" could be finished this year. Author George R.R. Martin made this major hint on Monday in his blog titled "Not a Blog" on Livejournal.

Martin said he was not planning to attend a number of comic conventions including the San Diego Comic-Con which takes place in July to focus on finishing "The Winds of Winter."

Martin also informed his fans and followers on his blog that he was not attending the World Fantasy Convention which will take place in Saratoga, New York, on Nov. 5 to 8 purportedly because he has too much to finish including the "son of Kong." The author of the bestselling book series "A Song of Ice and Fire" often uses the "son of Kong" phrase to refer to his sixth book "The Winds of Winter."

At the end of his blog post, Martin said, "Should I complete and deliver WINDS OF WINTER before these cons roll round, I reserve the right to change my mind."

This was taken by readers and fans to mean that the author is close to finishing the book, which until now many thought would not be done this year. Earlier, even his publisher HarperCollins had stated that it had no plans to publish the book this year.

This could be the clearest sign yet that Martin is close to completing the book. Earlier this month actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays Jaime Lannister in the TV series "Game of Thrones" which is based on the book series, stated in an interview that Martin was just putting the finishing touches on the book.

Even if Martin manages to finish "The Winds of Winter" by the end of the year and publish it, "Game of Thrones," which will premiere its fifth season next month, may eventually be forced to deviate from the books because the writing of the books apparently could not keep up with pace of the production of the TV series. As it is, some of the characters' storylines have already started to differ from those in the books. This indicates that the show runners are already drawing from unpublished materials to flesh out the characters.