The sixth entry in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, which inspired the TV series Game of Thrones, has been in the works for several years now.

In that time, Martin has added several more projects to his plate – and now it seems his famous Not A Blog site on LiveJournal will be going dark for a while as he gets down to business.

He wrote yesterday: “All’s good, boys and girls… lots of exciting things going on. LOTS of exciting things.

“Maybe too many. I am buried in work, so much that it is starting to overwhelm me. Even with my army of loyal minions.”

He added: “So I am going to step back from blogging — okay, from NOT-a-blogging – for a while, till I get a few of these monkeys off my back.

“In the near future, you’ll likely see fewer posts here. And some of those will be by my minions.

“I’ll return eventually. Just don’t know when.”

The author set his Current Mood status at the bottom of the post to “Stressed” as he signed off.

Not only is Winds of Winter in the pipeline, but some other TV projects and the ASOIAF companion volumes Fire and Blood – the first of which is due later this year.

Once The Winds of Winter is done, there’s also still at least one more entry in the ASOIAF series to go.

Game of Thrones, meanwhile, is back on TV next year.