An article published on Sept. 21 by Christian Times claimed that George R.R. Martin's "The Winds of Winter" was already finished and that it will be released in 2015 at the end of "Game of Thrones" Season 5. Martin's U.K. publisher Jane Johnson, however, took to Twitter to clarify that this is not the case.

The link to the Christian Times article no longer shows the original story published.

Below is a portion of the original story, according to David Harris of Lightly Buzzed.

Game of Thrones fans can finally breathe a sigh of relief. In a statement, George R.R. Martin, author, said, "I'm happy to announce that Winds of Winter will be released at the conclusion of this season of Game of Thrones."

He added, "I actually finished the book three years ago, around the same time as A Dance with Dragons, but my publisher wanted to see if Game of Thrones the TV show really took off in popularity before releasing it so we could really capitalize on that."

Christian Times' report even included an apparent fabricated statement from Johnson:

As for the release date, Jane Johnson, the publisher of Martin's book, announced in her social media account that the book will not be published until the year 2015.

When a Twitter user brought the controversial report to Johnson's attention, Johnson simply replied: "@foster_bt 'Not a 2015 release.' No change there as far as I'm aware."

The writer of the Christian Times article, Raianne Fe Hamor Aguhar, posted a comment on Harris' report, apologizing for her story.

"I apologize for any confusion my article has caused. For the record, 'The Winds of Winter' is not yet out for release, nor it is ready for publication," wrote Aguhar. "Also, it was an honest mistake and I had no intentions of misleading our readers. I have asked my editor for my article to be taken down."

"I admit that the story was misleading and the news story in general was not properly pieced together," she added. "My source was apparently an article from April Fools, which I overlooked. Again, I apologize."

As for when readers can actually expect "The Winds of Winter," the 65-year-old author himself cannot really tell.

"I've given up making any predictions on that," Martin candidly told Digital Spy at a reader's event sponsored by Tesco's eBook service, blinkbox Books, last month. I'm just writing it and when it's done, it'll be done."

Also back in July, Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger boldly asked Martin for comments about those people who thinks he will pass away before he finishes the last two installments of his novel series. And the author bluntly replied, "I find it pretty offensive when people start to speculate about my death and my health, so 'f-k you' to those people."