George RR Martin has written openly about experiencing depression during what he called a "stressful" and "overwhelming" year, in his first personal blog post in almost six months.

The author published the post, titled "Better Late Than Never," on his website on 3 August 2026. He told readers that posts appearing on his blog since February had been written by his assistants, because he had continued to fall behind despite their help. "This year has been … stressful, to say the least," he wrote, describing the year as "overwhelming" The Guardian.

Martin, who turns 78 in September, wrote that he had lost friends and battled sadness and depression. "The worst may be yet to come," he added — a line also reported by USA Today on 4 August. He reflected on ageing, writing simply: "getting old is no fun."

The post is notable for its candour. Martin has touched on dark moods before — a January 2024 entry titled "Dark Days" began "It is all so sad," and a March 2021 post mentioned friends who struggle with depression — but the latest entry is the most direct he has been about his own experience.

It arrives as readers continue to wait for The Winds of Winter, the planned sixth and penultimate novel in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, the epic fantasy sequence adapted into HBO's Game of Thrones. The book has been in progress since A Dance with Dragons was published in 2011. No publication date has been announced. Martin has previously called the novel "the curse of my life" The Guardian.

In a January 2026 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Martin said he had completed roughly 1,100 manuscript pages of The Winds of Winter. He also said that leaving the series unfinished would feel like "a total failure." The seventh and final novel, A Dream of Spring, has not been started.

Martin's blog post was not only about hardship. He noted that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms — HBO's Game of Thrones prequel, adapted from his Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas — received nine Emmy nominations, including one for outstanding drama series. He had spent part of late 2025 travelling to conventions in Seattle, Albuquerque and New York, and two weeks in the United Kingdom, where the show's second season was being filmed in Belfast. He said he prefers not to bring a computer when he travels, which contributed to the gap in personal posts.

For fans, the blog post offers no timeline for the next book and no promise of one. What it does offer is something rarer from an author of Martin's stature: a plain account of a difficult year, written in his own words.