George R.R. Martin says fuck you to fans who say he’ll die before completing the series

George R.R. Martin continues to crank out words at a feverish pace on why he isn’t cranking out words at a feverish pace, and every time he does, someone floats the same morbid hypothetical: What if he dies before he finishes A Song Of Ice And Fire? And in one of his seemingly daily interviews, this time with Swiss newspaper Tagesanzeiger, Martin has responded. “I find that question pretty offensive, frankly, when people start speculating about my death and my health,” he says. “So fuck you to those people.” Martin punctuates his declaration with a defiant middle finger, in a clip that has already become a GIF you’ll see now see affixed to every discussion of his productivity, his storytelling decisions, and any time a character dies on Game Of Thrones from here on out.

Martin does acknowledge that, at age 65, “lately, I’ve been slowing down,” though he hesitates to ascribe it fully to advancing age. Rather he attributes the increased wait between novels to the many demands placed on him by the series’ success, and all those tangential things he has to attend to now—the TV show, the merchandising, the blogging, the throwing out of first pitches, the giving of constant interviews about how his writing has been slowed by constantly giving interviews, etc. “A writer’s work is not just limited to writing the books… not in this modern age,” Martin concludes, in a lament that’s unlikely to elicit much sympathy from impatient fans. For Martin’s thoughts on that, see above.