[Note: This is compiled from a series of Reddit posts by nickrl in this thread.]
I went. There was not some huge ASOIAF update. He said he was still working on Winds and that he was really stressed about it and worrying/thinking about his legacy a lot. He was actually really vulnerable and heartfelt about his struggles.
He hinted that there have been disagreements between him and the HOTD showrunners.
Otherwise he just talked about his life and his recent trip to Europe. It was really enjoyable and interesting, but nothing else as far as ASOIAF news.
...
I felt the same before listening to the talk (that he should not bother finishing the series if that's what would make him happy). But now I think that finishing the books IS what would make him the most happy. He talked about visiting Tolkien's grave and being struck by all the memorials left behind by fans. He said he dreamed of leaving such a legacy but worried that he wouldn't if he didn't finish. He also said he thinks of his characters as his children (like all authors do) and that he really wanted them to outlive him.
He didn't seem bored or fed up with ASOIAF, he seemed like he still loved it and had so many ideas he still wanted to bring to life.
...
There were no questions or interviewer, he basically just sat down alone and said "alright I'm just going to talk about what's been going on with me lately.'
He said "House of the Dragon season 1 was great. Season 2... err... I'm going to write a blog post about that."
Later he said he was starting to wonder whether he was a fool for caring about whether the show was good/faithful. He said lots of writers just sell the TV rights and never think about it again and are probably happier. He said he was torn between continuing to fight for a faithful TV adaption and just giving up and letting them do whatever they want while he focuses on the books.
[Note: This is a report from George R.R. Martin's keynote speech to the 7th anniverary banquet of the New Mexico Press Women organization.]
[Note: Artist Sam Hogg, who illustrated the 2021 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar, responds to a query about Vhagar's and Arrax's colors as depicted in said calendar.]
I realised while researching that there wasn't any official mention of the colours, so I asked his team :) bronze with greenish blue highlights and bright green eyes.
— Sam Hogg (@Zephyri) January 16, 2021
Arrax was described as pearlescent white with yellow flame, golden eyes and a golden chest :)
— Sam Hogg (@Zephyri) January 16, 2021
La Garde de Nuit at Worldcon, and sat down for an interview with them. But they managed to have a contingent at the London Waterstones event, and arranged a brief sit down with George afterward. Not only is their event report the most detailed they've seen, they also had some fun moments with George afterwards.]
https://www.lagardedenuit.com/an-evening-with-george-r-r-martin-in-london/
When George was here during the promotion tour for A Dance with Dragons I got to ask him a question as well. Knowing that he is not going to reveal any great spoilers and not wanting my answer to be "KEEP READING," I chose a rather obscure topic that interests me. I wanted to know something about Ser Barristan the Bold. Selmy is a walking contradiction. He is portrayed as a man of impeccable honor and tremendous courage. Yet he admits he may deserve a "traitor's death." When he accepts Robert's offer to join his Kingsguard, he abandons his duty to Viserys, then a child in need of his protection and knowledge. This choice has always fascinated me. In particular, I wanted to know if Ser Barristan makes his decision before or after he finds out that Hightower, Dayne, and Whent are dead. Does he do so knowing he is the only loyal Kingsguard alive - Jaime having quite spectacularly killed the King he was sworn to protect. I'm not sure knowing he is alone makes his decision to go over to Robert better or worse, but it helps me in understanding the man's thinking. Anyway, that's the question I asked him many years ago and George's answer was not "keep reading" but an equally frustrating "that's interesting. I'd have to think on that." An answer that is no answer.
So while waiting in line, I thought what should I ask this time? After considering a question about the timing of different views of the comet (Maester Luwin's and Daenerys's which I have long thought take place at the same time) I decided to ask my original question on Ser Barristan again. After all, George has had a few years to think on it. Well he did answer it. Kinda. Sorta. When I asked if Selmy knew of the deaths of the Kingsguard Trio when he decided to go over to Robert, his response was "Yes, .... quite probably. He was hurt and recovering so there is enough time for him to know." Not quite the clear answer I was looking for, but a great improvement over the "I have to think on that" response. Given the glacial pace in which I have been asking this question, I'm quite sure that I will get my definitive, clear answer at Worldcon 2022.
[Note: This is a report of the Q&A following an interview with John Picacio ahead of Worldcon, provided by @clintw on Twitter.]
A thread by Clint of the Laughing Tree
George says he’s working on it.
Prequel news is that there are still 5 theoretically the works. Long Night is greenlit for a pilot, but they’re going to block out the whole season. Others are based on “chunks of Fire and Blood” and even “a single sentence from WOIAF”. Fire and Blood will have about 75 pages of art. He says his publishers wanted it first bc some of the prequels were based on it. He says he’ll finish Vol II “after he’s done with the main series.”
We have reached the Wild Cards portion of the evening
One other interesting-ish tidbit is that Picacio had a conversation with GRRM before the show started and asked him if it was possible that the show might pass him and George said it was possible back then. George announces(?) that they’re doing a Wild Cards television show
Says he has “no creative control” on Nightflyers
BREAKING: George says “getting more money... is good”.
Tough break for the socialist wing of the ASOIAF fandom. Intermission almost over. Q&A section shortly.
First Q re Oberyn’s 4th child Loraiza Martell. Is that her mom’s name?
A: haven’t given it a lot of thought?
Q: who will replace Roy Dotrice on the TWOW audiobook. What about a full cast dramatized book?
A: he has had conversations about radioplay style books. Says he doesn’t have control over ASOIAF audiobook decisions. Basically defers. He doesn’t have the subsidiary rights over the audiobooks.
Q: if you did have a child what would you name him or her?
A: “I don’t know... probably Not Daenerys”
Q: what was inspiration behind Davos Seaworth?
A: don’t know in particular. Needed Stannis POV. Started with Cressen, but he died. Didn’t want Stannis as POV.
Q from Ashaya of @WesterosHistory did Bloodraven take Dark Sister to the Wall?
A: Yes (!!)
Q: Do you spend more time on worldbuilding, plot, or character development? And how does that perspective shift over time.
A: I’m terrible at the second part of that question. Then forgets his original 3 book titles he was going to sell in the original series.
[Note: This is a summary of an un-televised Q&A George R.R. Martin has conducted in St. Petersburg, offered up by a fan who was present.]
http://masha-russia.tumblr.com/post/164376099099/grrm-questionsanswers
[Note: This is an abridged report of a Q&A with GRRM at TusCon 43, courtesy of the History of Westeros podcast team. Questions not particularly relevant to GRRM's writing have been redacted. Some questions are paraphrased.]
[Question about the original inspiration for the Faceless Men.]
You know, it’s a common trope of fantasy, that you have the guild of assassins. I was hardly the first one to invent the guild of assassins; you know, that’s largely a fantasy trope. There’s not much evidence for that in history. Well….the one evidence is you did actually have a group called the Assassins (Hashshashins) who were in the Middle East and there was a guy called the Old Man of the Mountain who would send forth his assassins to kill people in the Middle East, where they’d been killing people for many many centuries. But they were not like fantasy guilds of assassins, so I decided to put my own spin on it. I actually came up with several different guilds of assassins, not only the Faceless Men, but the Sorrowful Men and all that.
There’s a little bit in there in the philosophy of the Faceless Men; they’re- in some senses they’re a death cult, and it’s a religious basis, which I kind of thought about and extrapolated from that. I’m surprised we don’t have more death cults in the real world, because it just seems to me, if you’re gonna worship something, death is a pretty good thing because you know, like, we have all these religions that promise you life-everlasting. None of them ever deliver on it. Everybody in all the other religions dies anyway, so the death cult is the one that wins. The death cult can really deliver death. ‘Come and worship with us, and you will die.’ Well, yeah, you probably will! So….what the hell. I took with that and ran with it.
I just wanted to ask - I know you have quite a lot of Dunk & Egg books planned - are we ever going to see Tanselle Too-Tall again? Are we going to find out what happened to her?
Well, that would be telling. *laughs* But I think there’s a good chance, yes.
Are there going to be any more Tuf books?
I would like - I have ideas for another twenty Tuf stories. But I’m kind of busy with the Ice and Fire thing right now, so I don’t know when I’ll get around to writing them. At some point, sure. I even at one point had a contract for a second Tuf book. You know, the first was called Tuf Voyaging, and the next one was gonna be called Twice as Tuf. I never wrote the stories, and I got involved in this other stuff and I eventually bought out the contract by paying the publisher back. Someday I’d love to do that. He was a fun character to write, and those stories were kind of fun. They’re a little lighter than most of my stuff. Although not really a romp; there are like entire worlds that are destroyed and stuff like that.
It’s interesting what’s considered light entertainment and what’s not considered light entertainment. I’ve thought about that sometimes. You kill one character that people know and love, and you get this reputation for being bloody. But you wipe out millions of people and no one blinks. It’s like, we look at Schindler’s List as this incredibly dark and gripping film about the Holocaust and you know, we see people die who are killed who are shot and all that. And we consider Star Wars a light romp, but in Star Wars, they blow up the entire planet of Alderaan. ‘Oh I just felt a great disturbance in the force. 50 billion people have just been snuffed out. And what’s the next Act?’ So it’s odd the way, you know, one death is a tragedy and 50 billion deaths are a statistic, I think someone once said. So...there are horrible things that happen in Tuf stories, but they’re in the realm of statistics.
Who are some of your favorite characters in fantasy in particular?
Of course, I’m a huge Tolkien fan, so you know, the characters from there, Frodo, and Sam and Gandalf, and Aragorn, and Boromir. I always like grey characters, so I have a thing for Boromir. Poor, grey Boromir….got arrows in him. I read mysteries, detective fiction as well - big fan of the Travis McGee books by John D. MacDonald. One of my favorite characters is Travis with his wounded birds. Of course, I read mainstream literature. The Great Gatsby is one of my all-time great books ever written and I reread that one every few years.
In science-fiction/fantasy, I mentioned Poul Anderson earlier, you know he had a character called Nicholas van Rijn, that I loved, there were a whole series of books about him. The first one was called The Man Who Counts, although when it was published, it was serialized in Analog - astounding back then, as The Man Who Counts was a novel - and they changed it to War of the Wing-Men, but it’s still a terrific book, and the first one to feature the character who came back many times.
Who else do I like? Oh, I’m sorry, I’m getting away from science-fiction/fantasy. Flashman, George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman books, historical adventures. That’s interesting, because Flashman was originally introduced in Tom Brown’s School Days about a Victorian kid who went to boarding school where he was bullied unmercifully by this cad called Flashman, and that became a classic of Victorian literature, and the basis of several miniseries on PBS and all that, but George MacDonald Fraser said, ‘oooh, what happened to this Flashman guy after he was expelled for drunkenness from the school?’ And he wrote this whole series of marvelous adventures about how Flashman enters the army and he remains a bully, a cad, a letch, a liar, a scoundrel….but a very charming one. He’s involved in every war of the 18th to the 19th centuries, usually ends up running away with his tail between his legs, and yet gets acclaimed a hero and gets another medal and a promotion at the end of it. And the books are just a delight, and also a rich, rich source of historical truth. You learn things about history you never learned before. So….I know we’re out of time. I could go on for another hour, but….I love to read, I love characters.
[NOTE: This interview is actually of George R.R. Martin interviewing Stephen King, rather than vice versa, but there are various personal anecdotes embedded within it that make it seem a proper addition to the collection.]