In an effort to satiate his rabid fans and perhaps buy himself another two years of writing time, George R.R. Martin has published a chapter from the sixth book of the A Song of Fire and Ice series, The Winds of Winter, on his official website. The excerpt is told from the perspective of Theon and is sadly low on dragons, but does feature a mini-sword fight. So it's got that going for it, which is nice.
Martin doesn't offer much in the introduction to this sample other than a copyright notice, the publisher's name, and confirmation that this chapter is, in fact, from The Winds of Winter. Actually scratch what I just wrote: That is literally all he offers. Not super comforting when the release of this book is already up in the air. (Also not comforting? The awful purple web layout scheme that Martin cribbed from a 14-year-old girl's Xanga.) But hey, at least he's got ten out of a thousand pages done, right?
There's also that HBO series adaptation that's doing sorta okay, and we all know when that's coming back — April 2012. You can check out the season two preview below.