Westeros

Via Not a Blog, George has a brand new casting clue:

Have at it, Game of Thrones fans!

This is quite cool: George R.R. Martin will be visiting Google as part of the Authors@Google series. This means about an hour of Martin speaking about his work (and, doubtless, the TV series based on it), and for the first time ever, this Authors@Google appearance will be live-streamed on July 28th at 12PM PDT via the @Google Talks page.

Best of all, Google’s accepting questions from fans out on the internet, with a nifty use of their Google Moderator system to allow people to vote questions up or down. If you’d like to submit a question, or weigh in on questions that are already there (you’ll even find one from Linda and I, under the user name Balerion300) , you can find the submission and voting page here through the 27th at 12PM PDT.

And now for a musical interlude.

Of course, Ramin Djawadi’s soundtrack (US: CD, MP3; UK: CD) is out there (and it’s quite excellent, too!). His main title theme may have been overlooked at the Emmys, but it’s inspired many, many incredible covers.

But the show itself has inspired musical artists, and music fans in general, to take it all a step further. Below, we present two of the more recent efforts that caught our attention.

The 2012 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar (US, UK) is now shipping!

The award-winning artist John Picacio has unveiled all twelve images, with commentary, on his blog. Not only does he describe the basic process, but he provides explanations about his inspirations, his views on the characters, and more. The detail with which he’s able to render characters is quite amazing.

Some truly amazing work here! Linda and I are especially fond of are his depiction of the Others (or White Walkers, as they’re usually called on HBO’s TV adaptation) and his Melisandre. Ice and fire, indeed. I’m also quite fond of his terrific depiction of the Red Viper taking on the Mountain that Rides.

NPR’s weekend edition of All Things Considered recorded an interview with George R.R. Martin concerning his work which will be broadcast shortly, generally at 5 P.M. (check your local listings). The audio will be added to this article soon, but if you want to listen live, it looks like WAMU streams live and will be carrying the program shortly.

Pearson Moore, featured writer for Westeros.org, is putting together a companion book for the first season of Game of Thrones.

This “Direwolves and Dragons Season One Omnibus” will contain every episode essay from Season One, plus essays on some of the major characters—;Tyrion Lannister, Bran Stark, Daenerys Targaryen, Jon Snow, and Arya Stark, to name a few.  What would you like to see in a companion book?  Vote on the essay you would like to read in “Direwolves and Dragons”.  The top two vote-getters will be included as 3500 to 6000 word essays in Pearson Moore’s Season One companion book, set for release in late August.  Here’s the poll:

At the Union Square signing, George R.R. Martin answered quite a few questions… and was presented with a gift basket of delicious, “A Song of Ice and Fire”-inspired food by a fan of the Inn at the Crossroads, the terrific food blog that’s been looking at the food of the setting. We did an interview with them for Suvudu last month, which you can find here.

Well, the gift gave George the perfect moment to reveal something quite cool: Random House will be publishing A Cookbook of Ice and Fire (possibly a tenative title), written by Inn at the Crossroads founders Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sariann Lehrer! Well-deserved, and one we’ll be looking forward to. You can find editor Anne Groell confirming the news here, and GRRM’s statement in the video embedded below.

We’ve posted a signing report from last night’s Union Square signing, with reports of the crowd having hit about 1,800 fans showing up for the event (more than twice the crowd that showed up for A Feast for Crows).

There’s a number of other entries in the So Spake Martin collection, linking to various interviews and on-line chats that have been published over the last days. Make sure to check them out!

Via HBO, we’ve received statements from executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss, as well as Best Supporting Actor nominee Peter Dinklage, regarding their success and that of Game of Thrones in the 2011 Emmy Nominations:

The 2011 Emmy nominations are out, and Game of Thrones was well-represented with nominations in 13 categories, including getting a hold of the much-coveted Best Drama nomination, plus nominations for executive producers and lead writers David Benioff and Dan Weiss, for director Timothy van Patten, and for actor Peter Dinklage. Congratulations to everyone nominated! You’ll find the full list below.

Another—and, I believe, our last for now—article for Tor.com regarding A Song of Ice and Fire has now gone live! The articles discusses the important, and often rather troubling, role that fathers play in the series. Some examples are discussed, and perhaps some questions raised. There are spoilers through the fourth novel in the series, but nothing from A Dance with Dragons.

Enjoy!

The So Spake Martin collection has been updated with our first signing report in awhile, courtesy of a member of our A Song of Ice and Fire forum. According to the estimate there, some 1,500 people have turned up—not quite as many as the 2,000 in Slovenia, but early days yet!

There’s some interesting details, both about Game of Thrones and the novels, and a hint about what may be in the next novel, The Winds of Winter, so read the report!

Chapters Books in Canada asked for reader-submitted questions for an exclusive interview with George R.R. Martin for the release of A Dance with Dragons, and they have posted the results. Right off the bat, they had some great answers. For example, here’s a new bit of news we’ve not had before, connected to the fourth Dunk & Egg novella Martin recently said would be published in his latest anthology with Gardner Dozois, Dangerous Women:

There’s a lot of good details in there, so give it a read.

There’s a great deal of new coverage for A Dance with Dragons, now that the book has been released world-wide in its English editions. Our own forum has been hopping with discussion, and there’s some great articles and interviews out there. Here’s a sampling:

• EW Interviews GRRM: An excellent interview, although it has some small spoilers for both A Dance with Dragons and the next book, The Winds of Winter.
• Westeros Interviews GRRM: Posted late last night, but here it is again! A fairly vague, mild spoiler in there.
• Review at TIME.com: TV critic and series fan James Poniewozik reviews the book and also discusses the problems it may generate for TV adaptation. All in all, very positive: “All this makes for a thousand-page book that feels half as long, that moves dextrously, answers key questions and gobsmacks you with convincing feints and change-ups.”
• USA Today Cover Feature: With quotes from our friend David MaCaman, founder of the Brotherhood without Banners fan group, and Linda and I. Regarding the TV show, it notes that the average viewership per episode of the series has climbed to 8.9 million according to HBO.
• Green Bay Press Gazette: Reveals that over 650,000 copies of A Dance with Dragons are in print. That’s over twice the initial print run of A Feast for Crows. It also adds that 4 million copies of the previous four novels have been printed to cover demand since January of this year. 4 million. Since January. Simply mind-boggling. This brings the series up to 8.5 million copies in print in the U.S. alone.
• Review at the LA Times: Fantasy author Jeff VanderMeer gives an amazing review of the novel, his erudite knowledge of the field allowing him to place Martin in the context of his influences, particularly Jack Vance. Quite a fan of this one
• Review at Salon.com: Another exceptional review from Andrew Leonard, a staff writer at Salon who also happens to be a genuine fan of the series, but one who was not a great fan of the previous volume.
• Globe and Mail profile: A look at Martin’s relationship both to the novels and the TV series that springs from them.
• Review at NPR: Lev Grossman provides a second review, and reads it on NPR’s All Things Considered program.
• On Point Interview: Great radio interview with the On Point program on WBUR in Boston, ahead of his signing in Burlington today.

As previously promised, our interview with GRRM ahead of the release of A Dance with Dragons is now online at the So Spake Martin collection. There is, I think, one extremely vague spoiler, one that probably isn’t anything but expected for those who know which POVs were in the book and remember where they were headed as of A Storm of Swords.

In any case, we had a good time discussing some of the points of the story with George, looking back at the genesis of the series, how he roughed out the overall story, and some details regarding the infamous Meereenese Knot.