'The Winds of Winter' release date: George R.R. Martin still not finished with book; co-writer needed?

George RR Martin[Photo credit: George RR Martin | Twitter]

After George R.R. Martin announced to fans of his bestselling "A Song of Ice and Fire" book saga and viewers of its HBO adaptation "Game of Thrones" that the sixth book, "The Winds of Winter," is not yet ready for release, some suggested that the author could need a little help so he can finally release the novel.

An opinion piece on Mashable mentioned that Martin might have written a cry for help when he wrote a very lengthy post on his LiveJournal page on Jan. 2 to apologize to all those who are waiting for the sixth installment of "A Song of Ice and Fire" series.

In Martin's post, he confessed that he is still months away from finally releasing the novel, which is something that made himself disappointed.

"Believe me, it gave me no pleasure to type those words. You're disappointed, and you're not alone. My editors and publishers are disappointed, HBO is disappointed, my agents and foreign publishers and translators are disappointed... but no one could possibly be more disappointed than me," the 67-year-old author revealed.

According to the piece on Mashable, there is nothing wrong when a writer seeks help from another writer if the task has become too hard to handle, particularly when writing an epic series like "A Song of Ice and Fire." The piece also mentioned that Martin already got the support of a "super fan" named Elio Garcia to help him run the Westeros.org website and keep track of the continuity of all the characters in the series. 

Though he admitted that he has already written hundreds of pages and dozens of chapters for the sixth book in the bestselling epic fantasy novel, he mentioned that it will still take a while before he can actually deliver the manuscript of the book to his publisher.

The novelist-screenwriter also confessed that his writing process did not go according to his original plan.

"You can blame my travels or my blog posts or the distractions of other projects and the Cocteau and whatever, but maybe all that had an impact... you can blame my age, and maybe that had an impact too...but if truth be told, sometimes the writing goes well and sometimes it doesn't, and that was true for me even when I was in my 20s," the writer explained.

While fans wait for "The Winds of Winter," HBO will release "Game of Thrones" season 6 on April 24, 2016.