He Won't Be Appearing On 'Game of Thrones'

If you were hoping to see the genius behind the world of Westros appear on your screen, you're out of luck. George R.R. Martin will not make a cameo appearance on the Game of Thrones television series in the near future after all. Which would be sad if it weren't for the fact that he's elected not to in order to give himself more time to actually work on the next book in the Song of Ice and Fire series. And that, I think we can all agree, is something we will heartily encourage.

“The cameo we had planned would’ve involved me going to Croatia,” Martin says, “and I just couldn’t find the time between all my other trips and my speaking engagements and the work I had to do to take off time to fly to Croatia.” And chief amongst all that work he mention is The Winds of Winter, the sixth book in his famous fantasy series. Not only are fans eagerly — and in some cases kind of rabidly? — awaiting the next installment, but concerns have been raised that the HBO series may catch up to the books before the seventh and final installment is written.

Season four of Game of Thrones premieres on HBO on April 6, and will cover the second half of the third book in the series, A Storm of Swords. And although it would have been awesome if he'd a had a cameo in it – he had a cameo in the unaired pilot as a guest at Daenerys's wedding, but hasn't appeared in any of the officially released episodes – it's good that he's taking time to actually write the next installment. There will hopefully be plenty of time for cameo appearances in later seasons, once the books are all done.

And hey, who knows? Maybe the whole series will end with a George R.R. Martin cameo in which he swoops in and takes the iron throne for himself. He and his series have certainly conquered our world pretty thoroughly.