We leave on Monday for Ireland. Seems like I just got back from Australia. Damn, but I’m tired. And still not caught up on all the stuff that piled up here while I was traveling.

Ah, well. I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.

Got a million things going down, on a number of fronts. Let me touch on a few.

For those of you who like to hear me pontificate, there’s a new podcast with me up on io9 where I talk with John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtly, holding forth on a wide variety of topics, including the HBO show, Wild Cards, fandom, my comic book projects, the anthologies I’ve been editing with Gardner Dozois, and of course A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, even the infamous Meereenese knot. You can give a listen at http://io9.com/5656513/ — though I should mention that the interview was recorded last spring, and parts of it are already outdated.

On other fronts, got some cool news from my editors at Bantam Spectra. The mass market paperback of A GAME OF THRONES has just gone back to press for its 34th printing. Which normally would not be worthy of note — but as it happens, this new print run will push the paperback over the 1,000,000 copy mark. A lovely round number, I think.

Oh, and for Wild Cards fans, I should mention that Pat (wretched Cowboys fan that he is) of Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist is doing one of his famous giveaways for the Tor reissue of the first volume in the series. Check it out at http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/2010/10/win-copy-of-wild-cards-1-edited-by.html This new edition will include some extra added content: three brand new stories, never before published, by Carrie Vaughn, Michael Cassutt, and David D. Levine, plus all the text of the original 1987 edition.

SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH, our Jack Vance tribute anthology, was a finalist for the British Fantasy Award and has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award. If you missed the Subterranean limited edition and the Voyager trade hardcover, and have been waiting for a cheaper edition, wait no longer. Harper has just released SONGS in a trade paperback:

Pick up your copy from Amazon UK, or any other online UK bookshop.

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Last night I received some sad and sudden tidings. My friend and agent Ralph Vicinanza died on Sunday night, quite unexpectedly, from a cerebral aneurysm. He was only 60 years ago, and seemingly in great health — fit, sharp, full of energy. This comes as a total shock.

An obituary is available on the LOCUS website here http://www.locusmag.com/News/2010/09/ralph-vicinanza-dies/ and I sure that many more obituaries and appreciations will follow. In the world of science fiction and fantasy publishing, Ralph Vicinanza was a giant.

Ralph began his agenting career with the venerable Scott Meredith Agency, handling foreign rights for Meredith’s list, but in the late 70s my own agent, Kirby McCauley, lured him away to establish a foreign rights department for Kirby McCauley Ltd. It was in that capacity that I first met Ralph. Up to then, only a handful of my stories had ever been translated (mostly to German), but Ralph changed all that, and all of sudden my books were being published in a dozen different languages throughout the world. It was as a foreign rights man that Ralph first made his name, and no one has ever been better at it. He established a network of affliates and co-agents all around the world, in every country great and small where books were published, and sold translation rights in places where no one had ever sold them before… for Scott Meredith’s clients, for Kirby’s clients, and finally for his own list. Science fiction and fantasy are global genres today, and my own books and stories have been published in close to forty different languages… thanks to Ralph Vicinanza.

In the 1980s, Ralph and Kirby parted ways, and Ralph established his own agency and began to represent clients on the domestic market. He soon became one of the most important literary agents in New York. Myself, I stayed with Kirby and his sister Kay McCauley for my domestic representation, while Ralph continued to handle all of my foreign language and overseas rights. If you’re one of the millions who have read A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE or any of my other works in a language other than English, it was Ralph who helped to bring it to you. There was never a better foreign rights man.

In the 90s, looking for new words to conquer, Ralph established a west coast operation when he founded the management company Created By with partner Vince Gerardis, to develop feature films and television shows based on the works of Ralph’s clients. When I split from ICM late in that decade, I turned to them, and Created By has represented my work in Hollywood ever since. The HBO series that we are all so excited about would not exist without the efforts of Created By; it was Ralph and Vince who brought the books to David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, and spearheaded the complex rounds of negotiation that followed. Ralph was to be co-exec producer on the series. It saddens me to think that he will never get to see it.

He was a man of incredible intelligence, endless energy, and quiet competence. A good guy and a great agent. The world of publishing will not be the same without him. Everyone who ever knew or worked with Ralph is feeling devastated today, myself included.

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Back in Santa Fe. Still sick, but feeling much better than I did. Digging through mail and catching up on football.

Today I watched the Jets loss to the Ravens (pathetic offense, and though the D looked great in spots, they could not seem to get off the field on third down) and the Jets win over the Patriots (terrific). Was that really that same team? Sanchez looked wretched against Baltimore and great against New England. And Tomlinson appears to have some legs left after all.

Next up in the Manning Bowl. We’ll try to squeeze that in tomorrow, before the Sunday games.

The amount of mail and packages that have arrived in my absence is truly terrifying.

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We’re back in the US, overnighting at LAX before flying home tomorrow.

Miserable trip. V-Australia is a great airline and did their best, but (1) I can’t sleep on planes, and (2) I managed to come down with some sort of crud the last day in Australia, so I felt wretched the whole way. At least I did not get food poisoning, as I did on my way home from Morocco last year. And getting sick at the end of a tip beats getting sick during the trip. I’ll recuperate at home, once I get there… there’s never been a cold or flu that could stand up to green chile.

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We have emerged from the depths of the Jenolan Caves and returned to Melbourne again to unwind for a couple of days before flying back to Santa Fe… and the mountain of work that awaits there.

Got back to Melbourne last night just in time for a birthday dinner with friends. Sixty two. Ghods. I am officially a geezer. Oh, well. I’ve been geezing for years, if truth be told. Expect me to continue to wave my cane vigorously at all you young’uns and tell you how much better things were in my day.

(The Jenolan Caves are very cool, by the way. Especially at night, when the coaches leave and the possums and marsupial mice emerge).

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