George RR Martin on the next Game of Thrones book: Only 500 pages to go

George R.R. fans are familiar with his work. Martin’s Song of IceAnd Fire books — the novels adapted into the HBO Max series Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon — are used to mildly exhausting updates on his progress on the 11-years-overdue next novel in the series, Winter Winds. A Comedy Central episode Stephen Colbert’s Tooning Out The News has the latest from Martin, who says — sounding fairly sincere about it — that he’s written around 1,100 to 1,200 pages of the book so far, and just has “another 400, 500 pages” to go.

In this exclusive clip from Martin’s episode of the show, scheduled to air after The Daily Show December 7th at 11:30 PM EST Dr. Ike Bloom, an animated host (voiced and narrated by) will be hosting the show. Inspector Ike’s Ikechukwu Ufomadu) takes Martin to task, calling him “a Having trouble writer — let me revise that, It is truly sad — who is having trouble meeting deadlines.” He calls up hyper-prolific crime writer James Patterson, asking him for advice about how Martin can turn his work around faster.

Patterson asks Martin how many days have passed since his deadline. He seems shocked to learn how much time the book was delayed. He suggests that Martin has “writer’s constipation,” and advises him to change up his writing methods, in terms of still using a DOS computer and the WordStar word processor: “Try something else, then, ’cause that’s not working.”

Martin has frequently expressed that he’s exasperated with fans and interviewers constantly nagging him about his slow progress on Winter WindsWhile he is busy with other HBO series and projects, he continues to neglect. He does try to make the entire thing funny, and he even makes some hilarious jokes about roasting. What he doesn’t address is why he doesn’t, as Patterson blithely suggests, separate Winds of winter into releasable sections, given that a 1,700-page book isn’t really a physical possibility. “Problem solved!” Patterson says. “You break down the 1,100 pages into three books… You submit one book per year, they’ll be happy, and suddenly you’ll be ahead of schedule!” Martin just laughs.

Stephen Colbert’s Tooning Out The NewsIt is in its third season. You can watch full episodes on Paramount Plus, Hulu and Comedy Central.