skip wrote:

It's a terrific feeling, knowing you have not only a lot of readers or viewers, but that they're so intense, and bringing so much thought and interest to bear. But maybe that's part of what's slowed me down – the knowledge that so many people are looking at every line, and waiting on every turn and scene. We have the untold-history book coming out later this year, where I've written a fake history. I find it amusing, and secretly pleasing, that I have so many fans who are interested in the history. I'm not sure if they would so eagerly study real history, you know? In school perhaps they're bored with all the Henrys in English history, but they'll gladly follow the Targaryen dynasty.

This is pathetic and true.

Those characters mattered – the readers took them seriously, couldn't bear those fates. One letter I got was from a woman, a waitress. She wrote me: "I work hard all day, I'm divorced, I have a couple of children. My life is very hard, and my one pleasure is I come home and I read fantasy, and I escape to other worlds. Then I read your book, and God, it was fucking horrifying. I don't read for this. This is a nightmare. Why would you do this to me?" That letter actually reached me. I wrote her back and basically said, "I'm sorry; I do understand where you're coming from." Some people do read?.?.?.?I don't like to use the word escape, because escapism has such a pejorative aspect, but it takes you to another world. Maybe it is escape.

Martin will write the next book once people stop caring if he does.