George R. R. Martin is aware that he needs to play catch-up with his "A Song of Ice and Fire" book series. Back when the series began, in 1996, Martin could take as long as he wanted with each ensuing book in the now seven-volume series.

But with HBO's "Game of Thrones" quickly chewing through everything Martin has already written, the author is in a bit of a bind, and no one knows quite when he'll have the next book in the series, "The Winds of WInter," on bookstore shelves.

One person has a guess, though- and it's not George R. R. Martin. Walt Hickey, writing for Nate Silver's political statistics page FiveThirtyEight.com, has used a formula called Martinology- that is, looking at the lengths of time it has previously taken Martin to get out a book, plus the length of those books, plus a little educated guesswork, and figured out a possible release date for "The Winds of Winter?"

That date? February 2017.

At that point, "Game of Thrones" will be dangerously close to its seventh season premiere, and given the pace with which its gone through previous novels, there's an extremely strong chance that "Game of Thrones" will have surpassed Martin long before then.

This kind of thing is not new to Martin. Adored by fans for his work, yet also harangued by them for his inability to produce it at a decent speed, Martin recently had some extremely unkind words for those who think he'll pass away before finishing the book series.

Says Martin, "I find that question pretty offensive, people speculating about my death and my health. So f*** you to those people."

However, for the fans that aren't so spiteful (and thus still on Martin's good side), he promises exciting story elements to come in "The Winds of Winter." "We have more deaths, and we have more betrayals. We have more marriages," says Martin.

Perhaps even at the same time.