Last week, A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin openly criticized HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel show House of the Dragon, calling it out for cutting an important character from his book Fire & Blood and teasing that there were “larger and more toxic” changes in the works. Considering how vastly different season 2 of House of the Dragon was from the book, that’s not hard to believe. But Martin took down the caustic blog post soon after it went up. Did he think twice about criticizing the show so openly? Did HBO, which released a statement responding to the post, ask him to remove it? We don’t know.

But whatever the reason he removed it, Martin is still willing to throw shade at House of the Dragon, even if by omission. In a new blog post, he writes about some of the stressors he’s been under recently, talking about how he’s spent a lot of the first half of 2024 working on various TV shows. “My various television projects ate up most of those months. Some of that was pleasant (DARK WINDS, and THE HEDGE KNIGHT), most of it was not.”

We are left to assume that House of the Dragon falls into the “not” category. That’s not the only thing stressing out Martin these days — he also mentions having trouble dealing with the death of his friend Howard Waldrop, a science fiction author who died in January. It’s all built up for Martin. “The stress kept mounting, the news went from bad to worse to worst, my mood seemed to swing between fury and despair, and at night I tossed and turned when I should have been sleeping,” he wrote. “When I did sleep, well, my dreams were none too pleasant either.”

He’s not painting a pretty picture of his mental health. One bright spot in Martin’s year was his trip to Europe in July and August; we actually got to interview him during his stop at the World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow! And it sounds like he enjoyed his visit to the set of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which he calls The Hedge Knight. That show, which is coming to HBO next year, is based on Martin’s Dunk and Egg novellas. Hopefully it will be less stressful for Martin than House of the Dragon.

George R.R. Martin has written pages of The Winds of Winter this year, but “writing came hard”

Martin also mentions his ongoing work on both The Winds of Winter, the long-in-coming sixth book in his Song of Ice and Fire series; and Blood & Fire, the sequel to his Targaryen history book Fire & Blood. “Writing came hard, and though I did produce some new pages on both THE WINDS OF WINTER (yes) and BLOOD & FIRE (the sequel to FIRE & BLOOD, the second part of my Targaryen history), I would have liked to turn out a lot more,” he wrote.

At this point, fans have been waiting for The Winds of Winter for over a decade; the last book in the series, A Dance With Dragons, came out in 2011. So I can’t say I’m shocked that progress has been slow.

I don’t envy Martin’s situation; he has a ton of irons in the fire and feels committed to keep hold of them. I don’t have the answer, but I hope he finds a way to rid himself of some of the stressors, even if that means letting go of some control.

Next: George R.R. Martin wants Guillermo del Toro to adapt his vampire…