George RR Martin, author for the extremely popular Game of Thrones series of novels, has missed the last deadline which would have allowed his next novel to be published ahead of the next season for the series.

This essentially means that the sixth season of HBO’s Game of Thrones will be hitting the screen before the source material. Oops. Martin has been working very closely with HBO to ensure that the series mirrors the books but his next book The Winds of Winter is far from complete.

He says that a lot of it has already been done however, but missing the deadline doesn’t make him any happier:

“Nor is it likely to be finished tomorrow, or next week. Yes, there’s a lot written. Hundreds of pages. Dozens of chapters. But there’s also a lot still left to write. I am months away still … and that’s if the writing goes well. (Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t.)

“Chapters still to write, of course … but also rewriting. I always do a lot of rewriting, sometimes just polishing, sometimes pretty major restructures.”

“I blew the Halloween deadline, and I’ve now blown the end of the year deadline. And that almost certainly means that no, The Winds of Winter will not be published before the sixth season of Game of Thrones premieres in April.”

While fans of the TV series probably won’t be phased by this, the fans of the books will probably have to stay off the tube now to avoid spoilers. Hopefully the publishing of the book isn’t too far off.