I am falling way behind on these posts, alas. The past few months have been very busy.
But I couldn’t allow Josh Gad’s visit to the Land of Enchantment go unmentioned. Josh dropped by Santa Fe on September 18, while on tour to promote his new children’s book, PICTUREFACE LIZZY. He signed a stack of copies for us at Beastly Books, so if you’re looking for a fun Xmas gift for the kids in your family, nothing beats an autographed book.
You can order your copy direct from Beastly. Just follow the link:
And since Josh was in town, there was no way we were going to let him get away without sitting down for an interview, so we adjourned next door to the Jean Cocteau and talked… and talked… and talked. That was a lot of fun. We had a full house, but if you didn’t happen to be in Santa Fe that night, well, we got the whole thing on video. Check it out.
The podcasters Alt Shift X and Glidus have been wandering about the globe these past few months, and they sat down while passing through the Land of Enhantment to talk with Raya Golden about VOYAGING, her graphic novel adaptation of my novella “The Plague Star.”
It was a fun interview. I thought you folks might like a look.
VOYAGING is for sale at your favorite local bookstore, comic book shop, or online retailer. And Beastly Books, here in scenic Santa Fe, has autographed copies signed by both Raya and myself. Beastly also has copies of the source material on hand, featuring the further adventures of Haviland Tuf (and cats). We hope to have Raya adapt and illustrate some of those as well.
And maybe one day we’ll have a television series as well. Anything is possible. Indeed.
When I’m not writing, you can often find me reading. I’ve been a voracious reader since grade school… and I love talking about books almost as much as I love reading them. So when a British fellow named Reginald asked me to come on his podcast to discuss one of my favorite books, I was pleased to agree. The hard part was picking a book. I have a lot of favorite books, and favorite authors. Tolkien, Heinlein, Lovecraft, Waldrop, Fitzgerald, Dickens, Bernard Cornwell, Stephen King, Jack Vance… the list goes on and on and on.
We could only do one, however. So I finally settled on Roger Zelazny.
Ah, but WHICH Zelazny, though? Roger wrote so many great ones. LORD OF LIGHT, EYE OF CAT, CREATURES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS, DREAM MASTER, DOORWAYS IN THE SAND… and the short stories, he was great at shorter lengths as well… as his shelf of Hugo and Nebula Awards bears witness.
Hard choice. In the end I went with NINE PRINCES IN AMBER… and the Amber series in general. (Soon to be a TV series, we hope).
We filmed the segment at Beastly Books in Santa Fe.
Reginald did not turn up. I gather he does that a lot. Fortunately, his friend Dominick Noble was on hand to fill in, as he does often. (Dom has a great YouTube channel of his own, LOST IN ADAPTATION, where he compares films made from books with their source material).
We had a lot of fun. You can watch the discussion here:
After you’ve had a listen, go out and read NINE PRINCES IN AMBER… or any of Roger’s books, really. They’re all great.
My appearance with Stephen Colbert was another highlight of my trip back east.
You may have seen the episode as aired, but that one was cut for time. The full version appeared only on line.
This was the second time I’ve appeared on the Colbert show. It is always a lot of fun. Stephen is a big a fanboy (did someone say nerd?) as I am, a fan of science fiction, fantasy, comic books, and all the other stuff I love. He knows Niven, he knows Zelazny, he knows Arthur C. Clarke…
… and don’t ever try to out-Tolkien him. After the show wrapped, we hung out in the green room for a couple of hours, talking TV shows and movies and books and Roger Z (a dear friend and mentor to me, and one of Stephen’s favorites), and in the course of time the subject of Gil-Galad came up (as it will). I immediately said…
Gil-Galad was an elven king
of him the harpers sadly sing
the last whose realm was fair and free
between the mountains and the sea
Which is, alas, the only part I have memorized
Stephen stepped in at once, and recited the rest of the poem.
I am back in the Land of Enchantment, as of the day before yesterday. I’ve been away for three weeks or thereabouts, in New York City, New Jersey, and finally Chicago. I don’t lug a laptop around with me when I travel; on the road, I am only reachable by phone or text. Which helps keep me sane, but it did mean that I had 2,000 emails waiting for me when I got home. I am still digging out.
The trip… three weeks, I said, but at times it felt more like three months. My latest book, the illustrated Targaryen history RISE OF THE DRAGON, was released on October 25, so I had a lot of promotion to do. My sisters and their children and grandchildren and spouses still live in New Jersey, so I needed to see them too. The last time I got back east was in 2019, before the pandemic started. I had meetings with my publishers and agents and editors, and some meals with old friends.
I am not one for writing long trip reports… and this one would need to be VERY long. It was that kind of trip. Joy and sadness, tragedy, love, a lot of work. Highs and lows, and so much to do, it really took it out of me. I will tell you about much of that, but not right now, and not all at once. I think I will make a series of small blog posts, rather than doing one enormous one. The things that happened… well, it would not feel right to mush them all together.
Let me start with the original reason for the trip: the release of RISE OF THE DRAGON.
Rather than a traditional book tour, which could have taken months I did not have, we launched RISE with a virtual event at the Random House offices in New York City. I was thrilled to have David Anthony Durham interviewing me. David is one of my Wild Cards writers, and much much more. He’s written epic fantasy, historical fiction, westerns, YA books, and he has beenpart of the team on every one of prequels we have been developing for HBO for the last year and a half. Good guy, terrific writer.
If you missed our talk, no problem — it is online now.
I am pleased to report that RISE OF THE DRAGON is doing very very well, hitting numerous bestseller lists here and abroad.
(I will post more about my events in New York and New Jersey and Chicago in the days to come, once I’ve caught up on some of those damned emails).
I can’t deny it. I got the bug when I was still a kid. The collecting bug. Books, comic books, magazines, trading cards, toys… all sorts of weird stuff. And y’know, it piles up over the years… and I have seen a LOT of years now.
Thankfully, I am not the only one with this odd affliction. Ryan Condal, the showrunner on HOUSE OF THE DRAGON, collects movie and television props, and he and his friend David Mandel of VEEP and CURB YOUR ENTHUSIAM fame have a wonderful podcast called THE STUFF THAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF, about their shared passion. They’ve just launched the second season of the podcast, and invited me to be their guest on the premiere episode.
I don’t actually collect props myself, though I have picked up a few over the years from the shows I have worked on. I do collect miniature heraldic knights, and of course I still have a zillion books, and… well, it was huge huge fun to talk about collections.
You can check out our conversation on Spotify and Apple, if you’re a collector yourself:
If you’re NOT a collector, though, you might want to tread carefully and wear a mask. The bug can be contagious.
(Comments permitted — but ONLY about collecting. Books, comics, movie props, toys, miniatures — what do you collect? How did you start? Tell us about it. But off topic comments and questions will be deleted).
There’s a lot of strange stuff on YouTube. I never know what I’m going to stumble on.
Sometimes I stumble on myself. As in this interview from 1991 (or so it says), where I pontificate about science fiction and fandom.
(In those days, five years before A GAME OF THRONES was published, science fiction was what they asked about when they interviewed me. When they bothered to interview me at all).
I have absolutely no memory of this interview. Where I was, who was intervieweing me, why… none of that.
I remember those glasses, though.
I don’t remember that hair. My hair was dark brown when I was young. When I got older, it went to gray and then white. Judging from this clip, I guess 1991 was when it changed, but I don’t ever recall it being half-and-half like that, or having a dark beard with white hair. But I guess I did.
Was that a lifetime ago, or last week? Sometimes I am not sure.
For me, it was a pretty good year. I had my first job in television, writing for the CBS revival of THE TWILIGHT ZONE. I had gone through a very rough time financially the preceding couple of years, but now things were turning around. In the NFL, the Giants were looking damn good and winning a lot of games. And in baseball… in baseball, we had the Mets. After teasing us in 1984 and 1985, the Mets caught fire early in 1986, took charge of the National League from pillar to post, and made it to the World Series against the Boston Red Sox.
In a couple of weeks, ESPN will be bringing back those halcyon days with a four-part two-night documentary about that amazing season.
It should be a cool couple of nights. And you know the best part? I’m in the show. Can’t say how much or how often, but they came up to my cabin a few months back and interviewed me for an hour or so (and never asked once about THE WINDS OF WINTER or the new GAME OF THRONES successor shows I am developing for HBO). Maybe a couple of minutes of that will make it into the film, but hey, that’s cool… they have a lot of other exciting interviews in there as well.
But why should they interview a fantasy writer at all about the 1986 World Series???
Well, because… Parris and I were at Game Six.
And THAT experience I will remember till my dying day.
Happy Mets fans at the end of game 6. Find me and Parris (not the best pic of either of us, but we are there).
Somewhere around here I have my Mets cap and a baseball signed by Lenny Dykstra. Need to find those before showtime…
When Ryan Condal, the showrunner on HOUSE OF THE DRAGON, is not hunkered down in King’s Landing… er, London… casting roles and writing scripts, he likes to collect movie memorabilia.
And now he’s started a podcast about it, with his friend David Mandel of VEEP and SEINFELD fame.
Take a look at this interview with the two of them for a taste. (Ryan talks a bit about HOTD as well). Then check out their podcast.
Myself, I collect toy soldiers and miniature heraldic knights, as long time readers of this Not A Blog will know. Books too, though only by happenstance. I am more a reader than a collector; I never seek out rarities or firsts myself, though I admire those who do. So I understand the collecting passion, and movie (and television) props and costumes are a cool thing to collect. Actually I have a few old TV props myself… though more from BEAUTY AND THE BEAST than from GAME OF THRONES. A pity I never got that severed head… maybe on HOUSE, who knows…
bouncy
pleased
cheerful
tired
geeky
amused
