GRRM’s official site has been updated with news regarding the forthcoming publication of the third in the newest Wild Cards trilogy, Suicide Kings, on December 22 by Tor. The cover art gallery has been updated with Michael Komarck’s beautifully cover for the novel.
Fans of GRRM or superheroes, mark your calendars: Busted Flush will be published in paperback come December 1st, while the final novel in the trilogy Suicide Kings is set for a December 22nd hardcover release.
Busted Flush is the second installment in George R.R. Martin’s and the Wild Card Consortium’s newest Wild Cards trilogy, which started with Inside Straight, and continues introducing readers to a new generation of aces gifted with superpowers by the 60-odd year old Wild Cards virus. The Wild Cards series is the most successful and longest-running shared world around, an amazing feat when so many other shared worlds (which were a fad in the 80’s) fell by the wayside. They’re excellent fun, and jumping on board with this trilogy is a great way to start.
The publisher, TOR, seems quite pleased with the popularity of the series: they’ve purchased a fourth, standalone novel which GRRM announced in May. Titled Fort Freak, the novel will feature one of the enduring creations of the setting, Jokertown, and introduces some great new talents to the setting such as John W. Campbell Award-winner David Anthony Durham
Via their twitter page, HarperVoyager—George R.R. Martin’s publishers in the U.K.—have tweeted that they’ll be interviewing GRRM. They solicited twitters directed @_TheVoyager_ with questions for Martin; one will be selected, and the selected person will win a copy of his latest book, Songs of the Dying Earth.
Something that George R.R. Martin mentioned in September seems to have come to fruition: the rights to “Skin Trade”, his award-winning novella that mixes horror (werewolves, specifically) and detective fiction, has been optioned. The deal was finalized recently, according to the press release from Mike the Pike Productions. The release details possible lines of development for the property, such as a miniseries, a television film, or a feature film.
After his signing in Belfast, George R.R. Martin and a number of fans gathered together at a nearby pub to while away the hours into the evening. We’ve links to the reports that followed over at the Game of Thrones site, but there’s a couple of pieces of information of interest to fans more interested in the literary side of things.
First, Starcrossed Lovers is going to be a straightforward anthology of fantasy stories with a romantic bent, unlike Warriors (US, UK), which features a mix of genres; Martin has written a third Dunk & Egg story, titled “The Mystery Knight”, for the latter anthology. Because of this genre mixture, it seems British publishers are more hesitant to sign on to publishing the book, but GRRM is confident something will be worked out for UK publication.
Second, in regards to A Dance with Dragons (US, UK, George reports he’s happy with his progress these last months, and reiterates he has 1100 manuscript pages written but will need some more before he’s done. He also confirms that in part the “Meereenese Knot” has to do with getting various characters where they need to be in a way that fits what we know from the previous novels.
George R.R. Martin will be signing books at the Eason’s booksotre at 20 Donegall Place in Belfast. The signing starts at 1 PM on November 3rd. More information about the event, including a post-signing meetup, can be found at the A Song of Ice and Fire forum. The meetup will include GRRM and his partner Parris, and possibly some members of the cast and crew of HBO’s Game of Thrones production.
One additional detail is that there will be a book raffle at the post-signing moot, in support of the Children’s Literacy Charity Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Prizes are listed at the link above, and it’s probable more prizes will be added by the day of the event.
Songs of the Dying Earth, a tribute to Jack Vance edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, featuring stories from twenty-one top-flight fantasy and science fiction authors (not only GRRM, but Neil Gaiman, Dan Simmons, Tad Williams, Tanith Lee, Robert Silverberg, and many more), is now being published in the U.K. by HarperCollins. The limited run Subterranean Press edition being quite sold out, this is a great chance to read these wonderful, colorful stories and the afterwords in which each author shares their appreciation for Vance and his work.
George R.R. Martin’s sale on hardcover copies of the first of the new “Wild Cards” series, Inside Straight (US, UK), signed by almost all the contributors is in its last day. It’s a fun read, multiple authors (including GRRM) writing stories within one particular narrative, something which the Wild Cards Consortium have mastered when many other shared-world series have fallen by the wayside.
George R.R. Martin has shared the table of contents of the cross-genre anthology, Warriors, which he and Gardner Dozois are co-editing and contributing stories to. Martin and Dozois join Robert Silverberg, Tad Williams, Robin Hobb, Joe Haldeman, Naomi Novik, Diana Gabaldon, and many more stories centered around the eponymous character type. Publication is set for March 2010. Martin’s own contribution is “The Mystery Knight”, which he states is the third and longest of the Dunk & Egg stories set in the past of the Seven Kingdoms.
George R. R. Martin shares a number of updates on several different topics at his “Not a Blog” journal, ranging from current progress on the book (his attempt to defeat the problem he’s termed “the Meereeneese Knot” hasn’t succeeded and it’s back to the drawing board) to comics (“Skin Trade” and “In The House of the Worm” to be published by Avatar Press, while Wild Cards: The Hard Call has its final issue still undrawn and with no set completion date) and anthologies (Songs of the Dying Earth has sold out, Warrior is due for a March publication, Star-Cross Lovers is progressing, and a new cross-genre anthology called Down These Strange Streets—mixing private eye mystery with fantasy and SF—has been contracted to Penguin/Ace.)
There is also a brief update on the progress of the pilot, with one more role cast, another role being offered to an actor, and a third role (and its selected actor) having to be written out of the pilot.
At “Not a Blog”, George R. R. Martin breaks the news that there will be no 2010 A Song of Ice and Fire calendar to follow the 2009 edition published by Dabel Brothers Productions with art by Michael Komarck. That calendar ran into significant delays, shipping, and customer relations issues, and the planned 2010 calendar with Michael Kaluta set to provide the art was cancelled due to this and other issues. According to GRRM, there is too little time to produce and market a 2010 calendar, but he hopes to strike a new publishing deal for a 2011 calendar. No artist has been named, but in comments Martin makes it plain that his intention was that there would be a new artist featured each year, so Michael Komarck is unlikely to return; however, Komarck will continue to provide covers for the new Wild Cards novels.
George R. R. Martin is offering a special sale copies of Inside Straight, the first in the latestWild Cards shared-world series. At $25 (with domestic media shipping included), buyers will get the Tor hardcover signed by six of the contributors, including himself.
At the Avatar Press panel at San Diego’s Comic-Con, Avatar announced that an adaption of George R.R. Martin’s award-winning werewolf horror story, “Skin Trade”, would be published in 2010. The script is a fairly faithful adaption from the original novella, and was carried out by Daniel Abraham, who discusses it in a little more detail here. As mentioned in that thread, Avatar Press had previously announced an adaption of GRRM’s vampire novel Fevre Dream, but apparently issues with the art have prevented anything more than a preview to be published.
Art duties will be performed by Marek Oleksicki, who has recently illustrated Warren Ellis’s Frankenstein’s Womb for Avatar; a preview of that comic featuring Oleksicki’s powerful inked art, can be found at Bleeding Cool.
As part of an official site update, it is noted by George R.R. Martin in the “News” section that Warriors—a cross-genre anthology edited by GRRM and Gardner Dozois—will be published by Tor on March, 2010. The update includes a full list of contributors and the titles of their contributions, including Martin’s own “The Mystery Knight”, the third Dunk and Egg novella.
On his official site, George R.R. Martin has posted a new excerpt from Wild Cards XX: Suicide Kings. Featuring the Ace known as Rustbelt, the excerpt is set in Africa. Also featured on the excerpt page is the prospective cover art by Michael Komarck.