If you're still holding your breath for George R.R. Martin to release The Winds of Winter, the sixth book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series (upon which Game of Thrones is based) first of all, why? That thing is years late already. And second of all, you'll especially want to exhale now that the author has admitted that it's definitely not being released in 2018.
Instead, Martin wrote on his blog that he's working on the first volume of Fire & Blood, a two-volume encyclopedia he's creating for for A Song of Ice and Fire that chronicles the history of the Targaryen family.
“The first volume should be completed soon,” he wrote. “The second is hardly begun. Most of Fire & Blood consists of the ‘sidebars’ I originally wrote for The World of Ice and Fire. Abridged versions of some of those pieces appeared as ‘The Princess and the Queen,’ ‘The Rogue Prince,’ and ‘The Sons of the Dragon,’ but these are the full versions, together with some chapters that have never appeared anywhere.”
The first volume of Fire & Blood will be released before The Winds of Winter, and the second will be released after. But, at the pace Martin has been writing, it's unclear whether that means Fire & Blood will hit shelves in 2018, or in 2019 when Game of Thrones' final season debuts.
