George R.R. Martin tells fans to prepare for a long, harsh winter

If you’re a George R.R. Martin fan hoping for a happy ending in his next installment of the “Song of Ice and Fire” series, don’t hold your breath: The author confirmed that winter is coming, and it’s going to be a long one.

Martin, whose books form the basis for the hit HBO series “Game of Thrones,” told an audience at the Guadalajara International Book Fair in Mexico not to expect sunshine and warmth from the next book, “The Winds of Winter,” Entertainment Weekly reports.

“There are a lot of dark chapters right now in the book that I’m writing,” he said. “It is called ‘The Winds of Winter,’ and I’ve been telling you for 20 years that winter was coming.”

“The Winds of Winter,” the sixth book in his series, is hotly anticipated by the writer’s fans, some of whom have, in the past, urged him to write faster. The most recent installment in the series, “A Dance with Dragons,” was published in 2011.

“Winter is the time when things die, and cold and ice and darkness fill the world, so this is not going to be the happy feel-good [book] that people may be hoping for,” Martin said. “Some of the characters [are] in very dark places.”

In an hourlong video posted from the event, Martin, speaking in English, answered questions from an audience so appreciative of fantasy that naming J.R.R. Tolkien drew cheers.

When asked if it was hard to keep up with the idea that he started writing more than 20 years ago, Martin answered, “Well, the original idea has grown…. Back in 1994, when I first sent in the first hundred pages and a letter about where I was going, I was selling a trilogy, three books. At that time, if you look at my books, I was generally writing one novel a year, so in my innocence — ah, sweet summer child — I thought I’d finish the whole thing in three years…. It’s taken a little longer than that. And here I am still writing it. I had no idea how big it was going to be or how long it was going to take. But you have to follow the story wherever it leads, and it’s led to some pretty interesting places.”

Readers of Martin’s blog won’t be surprised about the dark turn his new book is taking. The author has referred to 2016 as “a bloody awful year,” and was particularly despondent at the results of last month’s U.S. presidential election.

“America has spoken. I really thought we were better than this. Guess not,” he posted the day after the election. “Over the next four years, our problems are going to get much, much worse. Winter is coming. I told you so.”

Martin is still writing “The Winds of Winter,” and there’s no publication date for the novel as yet. He jokingly told the audience in Guadalajara that he sometimes regrets the scope of the series.

“Sometimes I look back and say, ‘Did it really have to be Seven Kingdoms?’” he said. “The Five Kingdoms of Westeros, that would have been good, right?”

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