While the rumor mill is rife with spoilers about the penultimate season of HBO's epic series "Game of Thrones," author George R. R. Martin is still busy writing "The Winds of Winter," the sixth book of the "A Song of Ice and Fire" saga, which the series' sixth season was supposed to be based on.

While the "Game of Thrones" show has overtaken the events of its source material and is set to venture into the events of "A Dream of Spring" — the seventh and final entry in the book saga — fans are left wondering when "The Winds of Winter" will actually hit the shelves.

George R.R. Martin has long given up on giving a projected release and said that the book will arrive as soon as it is completed, but this has not kept eager fans from anticipating its release.

"I do have thousands of pages of fake history of everything that led up to Game of Thrones. So there's a wealth of material there and I'm still writing more. But at the moment, we still have this show to finish, and I still have two books to finish, so that's all speculation," said Martin.

Early reports hint that the release could still be in March 2017 after Amazon France mistakenly published a placeholder date on their site. While the post has been taken down and the publishers have denied its veracity, there are fans that are projecting that this could be an actual timeline for the release, citing the time it will take for proofreading and marketing.

If this date is followed, it would be more or less six years after the release of "A Dance with Dragons," the fifth book in the series.

Meanwhile,  iTechPost reported that the book may be released as early as January 2017 and that the book is already ready for proofreading.

Fans would like to know what happens in the book despite the airing of season 6 of the show early this year to see if there are deviations between the events of the novel and the show "Game of Thrones."