The author – whose works inspired the Game of Thrones TV series – is still working on the sixth of seven planned books in the collection; The Winds of Winter.

And in an interview with Russian publication ?????book, helpfully translated by Reddit user kaldtdyrr, he admitted that he will stick to things like short stories once the sixth and seventh books are out in the open.

Asked if he’d create something even bigger, he’s quoted as saying (roughly translated back from Russian): “Oh no, this thing nearly killed me and it’s probably the most massive work that I’m capable of doing.

“I hope to continue writing standalone novels, novellas and short stories, but nothing on this scale.”

At the Emmy Awards recently, George RR Martin had confirmed once again that The Winds of Winter is on its way – now seven years after its predecessor.

“Going to set [of the TV show] is a lot of fun but there’s nothing for me to do there, so I thought I better stay home and not go to Croatia; or Spain; or Belfast, [Northern] Ireland. I still have two books to write,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.

“I’m working on [The Winds of Winter], and I wish I’d been done four years ago.

“But I’m slow and the book is very complex, although there are a lot of great distractions out there.”

Speaking to ?????book about the inspiration behind the whole thing, he said: “The Wars of the Roses, The Hundred Years’ War, the Great Interregnum in Holy Roman Empire, the Crusades, and the history of Scotland in general, for it was extremely bloody.

“I don’t just borrow events from history and rename them, I think it would be fraud. Instead I like to take some real events, subvert them, twist them, interweave with other events, season them with fantasy elements and thus create something of my own.”

Before The Winds of Winter, companion book Fire and Blood Vol 1 is due on shelves this November.

Speaking to Publishers Weekly, he said: “I’ve cited as my inspiration Thomas B. Costain’s four-volume history of the Plantagenets — do you have to know anything about the Plantagenets to pick that up and read it? I don’t think so.

“Obviously if you do know something about them it probably makes it a somewhat easier experience, but there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end, and you can follow it easily enough, and that’s what I’ve tried to do with my own book.”

He added: “It would help to have some familiarity with reading histories, and in particular reading popular histories. And there’s an authorial voice there that I had fun trying to create, the Archmaester Gyldayn, who is an opinionated guy and has his views of these people, that definitely leak into it.

“In some places, he has prejudices and gripes and his own cavils, and you have to realise that you’re reading the voice of a character, even as you’re reading about other characters who existed hundreds of years before him.

“But that was some of the fun of it. And I think that will be some of the fun for the readers who enjoy that sort of thing.”

Game of Thrones, meanwhile, is back on TV next year for its final season.