Busy days.

The reaction to the teaser that HBO ran before TRUE BLOOD has been amazing. Of course, it’s turned up all over the internet, and people are analyzing it frame by frame. Makes me wonder what it would have been like in those dark days before Tivo and YouTube, when those fifteen seconds would have flashed by once, with no way to rerun ’em, let alone freeze frame.

Casting continues apace. Mycah, Janos Slynt, Gendry, Tobho Mott, Old Nan, Shagga, Syrio, Marillion, Doreah, Alliser Thorne, Grenn, Pyp, Rast, Osha… oh, why oh why did I invent so many blasted characters??? Didn’t I know what it would cost? Oh, wait… in a book, a cast of thousands and a cast of two costs the same. For some roles, hard choices between lots of very qualified, talented actors. For other roles, hard searches, where no one seems to be quite right. Nina Gold is finding some great people, though. And the search goes on.

Another monkey may soon be off my back. All but two of the stories are in on DOWN THESE STRANGE STREETS, the latest crossgenre anthology I’m editing with Gardner Dozois. We hope to be able to deliver that one by month’s end. A great lineup once again.

Meanwhile, I’ve been wrestling with Kong. For more than a week I’ve been pounding on the epilogue, but still can’t get it to gel. This morning I put that aside for a bit and went back to rewrite a Tyrion chapter, and that’s going much better. (Don’t get too excited over me mentioning the epilogue, please. I don’t always write these chapters in the order you read them. The epilogue will close the book, but it won’t be the last chapter written. For instance, the last chapter written on A STORM OF SWORDS was the Red Wedding).

Come July, I’m off to San Diego to teach a week at Clarion. There will be a signing at Mysterious Galaxy as well, I believe.

But, alas, the San Diego Comicon is looking less and less likely, so that will probably be the only visit I make to San Diego this year. On the other hand, there’s now a good chance I’ll be at the NYC Comicon in October. We shall see.

I need more hours in the day, more days in the week, more weeks in the month.

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