… of New York City.
The worldbook will be here next month!
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Comicon Coolness, Part the First
August 2, 2014 at 9:17 pm
Lots of cool stuff went down in San Diego at Comicon… parties, panels, parties, signings, parties, meals with friends, and much much more.
Too much to relate here, at least. But I can mention a few highlights.
For me, one of the highlights was the appearance of a couple of copies of THE WORLD OF ICE & FIRE.
The worldbook won't be released until October, so it wasn't for sale at San Diego, but Bantam had a couple of advance copies hot off the presses at the Random House booth, for lucky fans to open, peruse, and drool over. Not mock-ups, either. This is the real book.
Alas, the crowds at Comicon make it impossible for me to walk the floor anymore without a cordon of security, so I never made it to the Random House booth… but I was able to snag one of the samples and take it home with me.
It's everything I hoped for! A bloody gorgeous book. Wait till you see it.
Years back, when my editors at Bantam first approached me about doing a concordance for Westeros and its history, I was initially reluctant. I had seen a number of these 'worldbooks,' and, well, some were pretty good, but others were awful, cheaply made collections of previously published material with lots of bad art. If we do one of these, I declared, I want it to be the best one ever published. A coffee table book, big and beautiful, with lots of original content, histories and tales never previously published anywhere, plus maps and heraldry and family trees, all of it lavishly illustrated by some of the best fantasy artists in the world.
That's what we got. It took WAY longer than we thought it would, and required much more time and effort from everyone concerned, but I think the end result is worth it, and hope you all will agree. Hey, even Robby the Robot loves the book.
Will THE WORLD OF ICE & FIRE answer every question you ever had about Westeros and its history? Hell, no… I need to save SOMETHING for the novels and the Dunk & Egg stories. But it will answer a lot of questions, including some you never knew you had, and there are long meaty histories of all the major regions and great houses of the Seven Kingdoms, plus the Lands Beyond — the Nine Free Cities, the Summer Isles, the grasslands of Essos, even the Further East, beyond the Bones.
And the art… the art will knock you on your ass… Justin Sweet, Magali Villenueve, Marc Simonetti, Michael Komarck, Jae Drummond, Chase Stone, Ted Nasmith, and many many more.
My thanks go out to all the great folks at Bantam, in particular my editor Anne Lesley Groell and production manager Erich Schoenweiss, who labored long and hard to bring the worldbook to fruition. Also, a lot of credit goes to art director Dave Stevenson, and to Delia Greve and Rosebud Eustace at Becker & Mayer… and of course to my collaborators and partners in crime, Elio Garcia and Linda Antonsson, without whose efforts THE WORLD OF ICE & FIRE could never ever have happened.
I wanted to give my fans the best fantasy concordance ever published. I think we did.
If you want to see for yourself, Amazon is offering it at a considerable presale discount right now
http://www.amazon.com/World-Ice-Fire-History-Westeros/dp/0553805444/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407035564&sr=1-1
and, of course, it is also available for preorder at many other online booksellers, and your favorite local bookstore.
I'm very proud of this one. Maybe you can tell…
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A Brave New World… Cover
May 7, 2014 at 4:53 pm
Bantam has changed the cover for our forthcoming concordance, THE WORLD OF ICE & FIRE, several times.
You've seen a couple of the earlier mockups here and on my website.
Now here's the latest and… I am told… final cover.
How do you like it?
WORLD OF ICE & FIRE will be out in the fall. It is going to be a gorgeous book, a big coffee table volume with lots and lots of stunning artwork, and tons of fake history. We were supposed to provide 50,000 words of text, but… ah… I got carried away.
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I Broke the Internet
March 27, 2014 at 3:20 pm
Sorry about that.
The upload of the new sample chapter from THE WINDS OF WINTER created so much traffic to my website and blog that the servers crashed. This is the first time I've been able to get up myself all day.
Anyway, it seems to be easing off some. And we are looking at ways to increase capacity.
The "reviews" of the chapter have been amazingly enthusiastic as well. Thanks. I am pleased that so many of you — thousands and maybe tens of thousands, it would seem — enjoyed "Mercy" so much.
I mentioned that this chapter had quite a history. It's true. The first draft was written more than a decade ago. Originally, it was intended to be the opening Arya chapter after the infamous "five year gap," her first appearance in A DANCE WITH DRAGONS as initially conceived. Then it was supposed to be a part of A FEAST FOR CROWS, after I abandoned the five year gap and split the books. Then it was going to be the concluding Arya chapter in A DANCE WITH DRAGONS. But it seemed more like an opening chapter than a closing one, so shortly before ADWD was published my editor and I agreed to remove it from DANCE and shift it over into WINDS. Of course, it has been revised, tightened, polished, and tweaked at every step of the way, so the version on my website has some significant differences from the "five year gap" version.
Some of you who enjoyed meeting Mercy may not have found the other sample we've put out there of late, a new Tyrion chapter. That one is live and available with the ICE & FIRE app, and can be found at
iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/george-r.-r.-martins-world/id570015223?mt=8
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.randomhouse.woiaf
Enjoy the read.
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Something Old, Something New
March 25, 2014 at 4:12 pm
Hiya kids, hiya hiya hiya.
With season 4 of HBO's GAME OF THRONES almost upon us, I thought the time was ripe for me to give my readers another taste of WINDS OF WINTER. So I will shortly be posting a new sample chapter there. (If you have not read the Arianne chapter that has been up there lo these many months, better do so soon, because Arianne will be coming down when the new sample goes up).
The new chapter is actually an old chapter. But no, it's not one I've published or posted before, and I don't even think I've read it at a con (could be wrong there, I've done readings at so many cons, it all tends to blur together). So it's new in that it is material that no one but my editors (well, and Parris, and David and Dan, and a few others) have ever seen before, but it's old in that it was written a long time ago, predating any of the samples that you have seen. The first draft was, at any rate. I've rewritten it a dozen times since then.
Anyway, I've blathered on about it long enough, I will let the text speak for itself.
Chapter title is "Mercy."
(And as with past samples, please don't talk about it here. There are dozens of great places to talk about the books on the web, but this is not one of them. If you want to talk about the chapter after you've read it, check out Westeros or Tower of the Hand or one of the many other great Ice & Fire sites).
Watch my website. Coming soon.
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Winter In Seattle
March 8, 2014 at 7:07 pm
Winter came to Seattle on March 1.
That was the day that the LTD Gallery opened its latest show, featuring artwork inspired by A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE.
I had been hoping to be there in person for the opening, but alas, there's too much work to do and too little time, so I had to stay home and miss it. But don't you guys in Seattle and nearby environs (Vancouver, Portland, Eugene, what have you) make the same mistake. The show will be open until March 23, and it looks as though there's some great stuff there. Check out the piece in WIRED>
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2014/03/game-thrones-gallery-exhibit/
It's great to see a gallery like LTD featuring fantasy art. Those of you lucky enough to see the show, do come back here afterwards and let us know how you enjoyed it, and what your favorite pieces were.
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Last Day for Pearl Auction
November 30, 2013 at 10:33 pm
The auctions for Janis Ian's Pearl Foundation fund-raising drive, including those for the items I donated, have entered their final day.
There's some great stuff here, including items by Neil Gaiman, Pat Conroy, Harlan Ellison, Jane Yolen, Ray Bradbury, Orson Scott Card, and many others, and the Pearl Foundation is a terrific cause… so here's a great chance to add some wonderful books to your collection and do good at the same time.
My own donations are a script from GAME OF THRONES, signed by the entire Stark family:
Also, a presentation copy in slipcase of the Subterreanean Press limited edition of A DANCE WITH DRAGON, illustrated by Marc Fishman and signed by both of us:
And finally, a set of hardcovers for A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, all five volumes published to date, to be autographed and personalized on request:
So go ye forth and bid! Bid often! Bid high!! Come out, come out, you snipers, do your worst, and raise some pearls for Pearl.
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Golden Dragons From the Shire
September 30, 2013 at 9:19 am
At worldcon this year, Tom Maringer and his bawdy band of coinsmiths debuted three new coins, the first "golden" dragons from Shire Post Mint.
They even did a video about it:
<lj-embed id=”369″ />
These dragon coins bear the likenesses of Jaehaerys I Targaryen (the Old King), the pretender Daemon I Blackfyre, and Joffrey I Baratheon.
(No, silly, they're not made of real gold. If they were, they would be considerably more expensive. They look good, though; bright and shiny with a nice heft to them. And if there is enough demand, Shire Post Mint might even do a short run in real gold for collectors willing to pay the price.)
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Paperbacks Are Coming
September 14, 2013 at 5:21 pm
Yes, it's true. Your wait is over. A DANCE WITH DRAGONS will finally be published in paperback, next month.
(Have you guys really been waiting? Really truly?)
The paperback release has been delayed again and again, I know. (Believe me, I've received a lot of emails about it). This was done largely at the request of the bookstores. The hardcover was still selling strongly (still is, actually), so they wanted the paperback delayed.
But no longer. On October 29, Bantam Spectra will release DANCE simultaneously in trade and mass market paperback editions.
And yes, the paperback will include a preview chapter from THE WINDS OF WINTER. (Though at this point it has been so long that I've forgotten which one it is).
October, by the way, looks to be a huge month for me. Besides the DANCE paperbacks, I also have OLD MARS coming out that month, and the MEATHOUSE MAN graphic novel, and a little Xmas book called THE WIT AND WISDOM OF TYRION LANNISTER. But more about that one later.
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The Princess and the Queen
August 31, 2013 at 10:21 am
The final story in DANGEROUS WOMEN will be my own, a 30,000 word novella entitled "The Princess and the Queen," a history (somewhat abridged) of the Dance of the Dragons, as set down by a maester of the Citadel.
Tor.com has uploaded a sample to their site. You can find it here:
http://www.tor.com/stories/2013/07/dangerous-women-george-r-r-martin-excerpt
Enjoy.
(The full 80,000 word account of the Dance will eventually appear in a book, as yet untitled, that we're calling the GRRMarillion).
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