Westeros

We’re very happy to report that the Shire Post‘s effort to create real gold dragon coins, using Kickstarter to raise the seed funding to acquire the necessary gold, is now a reality! Today, the Kickstarter crossed its $10,000 goal. Many congratulations to Tom at Shire Post, and to those who’ve contributed towards making this happen.

Last year, George R.R. Martin and Subterranean Press revealed that the new, limited edition of A Clash of Kings was to feature the art of noted artist Richard Hescox. With this year’s Worldcon approaching, Hescox has noted that he’ll be in attendance and will be displaying some of his artwork for the limited edition at the convention…

... but he’s shared a sample of that work, over at his gallery page for the book. The gallery features over a dozen artworks, both in color and black and white, out of the total of sixteen paintings and over sixty black-and-white illustrations that he’s provided for the book.

Pre-orders for the book began in July, with exclusive rights to pre-order to those who’ve purchased A Dance with Dragons previously. As noted by Subterranean, this limited edition release actually precedes the planned A Game of Thrones limited edition, as the artwork for that one has not yet been completed. Pre-orders on remaining, unclaimed volumes of A Clash of Kings will take place in October.

Tom Maringer of the Shire Post Mint, official licensed producers of replica coins based on those described in A Song of Ice and Fire, has been on a roll lately with the coins he’s been making and selling… and he’s now reveal a plan that he’s long been dreaming of: replica gold dragons using genuine 22k gold. But it’s a very costly endeavor, acquiring the gold to produce the coins, so he’s reached out via c to get the initial seed funding to realize the dream.

Via the project, Tom shares:

Support levels for the project range from a thank you from Tom and co., to copies of the brass versions of the dragons (as well as the very popular Faceless Man coin), all the way up to the top level including the three new coins both in brass and gold. The Kickstarter project page has many, many images of the coins to admire. Tom’s shared some great videos and background information in his project updates, so make sure to check them out!

The 2014 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar, illustrated by the incomparable Gary Gianni, was released last month (Order: Amazon US, Amazon UK) to great acclaim… and already, another fantastic artist is hard at work at next year’s calendar.

This time, it’s Donato Giancola, who’s just as legendary an artist as Gianni, Nasmith, and all the other remarkable artists that have tried their hand at depicting George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire setting and world. Giancola has posted an early sketch (note: technically NSFW) for one of the paintings, with some commentary. He seems to find the novels a great source of inspiration, as he laments there being only twelve months in a year.

New York City’s Slattery’s Midtown Pub will be playing host to an official A Song of Ice and Fire trivia contest! On June 25th, five rounds of trivia questions based on the novels (not the TV show)—questions which we here over at Westeros.org have had a look over and some input on— will see the best teams winning some cool rewards, such as signed copies of the novels and more!

Sponsored by series publisher Random House and arranged by Trivia A.D., the full details of the trivia competition and registration for tickets to participate can be found at the event page.

Some rather unclear news came out of a HarperCollins show case, in which it was revealed that George R.R. Martin has licensed to them the publication of a small gift book collecting some of Tyrion Lannister’s more insightful and amusing quotes from the A Song of Ice and Fire series. As some might note, HarperCollins is not the publisher of the series in the US… but as it happens, they are in the UK, and it appears that the idea may have originated there. Now Thanks to HarperCollins UK, we now have the official press release:

Thanks to Bleeding Cool, we’ve learned that Avatar Press executive Jim Kuhoric spoke at a panel at C2E2 about various Avatar Press projects, and in the course of it he discussed some of what’s coming from George R.R. Martin. First and foremost, of course, is the comic book adaptation of GRRM’s World Fantasy Award-winning novella The Skin Trade, to go along with their earlier adaptation of Fevre Dream. Thanks to that, Kuhoric revealed that GRRM will be at San Diego’s Comic-Con (which GRRM has previously announced), where he’ll make an appearance at Avatar’s booth and sign books.

The most intersting item, however, was Kuhoric revealing that there’s a “George R.R. Martin original” in the works, which “may” be superhero related. Kuhoric suggests this is a departure, as previously the works they’ve published have simply been adaptations. They’ll reveal more later, but what I suspect this is is a brand new Wild Cards original comic book story, which will almost certainly be scripted by someone other than GRRM (possibly Daniel Abraham, responsible for the adaptation of Fevre Dream and the Dynamic Entertainment comic Wild Cards: Hard Call?).

To see Kuhoric’s sremarks, watch below beginning at the 2:50 mark:

For those who drop by Georgerrmartin.com—Martin’s official site on the web—will have discovered that it has now gotten something of a facelift. It contains all the great features—the essays, the photos, the miniatures, and more—that make it stand out as uniquely Martin’s personal site, but it’s been given a much more modern design. 

You know, we knew about plans for this for… well, a long while, we won’t mention how long exactly. ;) But glad to see it’s finally come to fruition.

You’ve asked for it, and now it’s here. The A World of Ice and Fire app—a handy, dandy, official and art-filled guide to the novels that Linda and I helped provide the majority of the content of (with oversight from GRRM)—is now available for Android at Google Play (unfortunately, for the time being, it’s US only).

There’s a deal of new content along with this version of the app, content that will be included in the iOs app when it gets its next iTunes update. These include:

Presently, it is US only—that’s the only caveat.
• Profiles for the Men of the Night’s Watch, Brotherhood Without Banners, and the Free Folk
• 30 new illustrations for key places
• The ability to search for characters by alias
• Further improvements to the anti-spoiler and map functionality

Over at “Not a Blog”, George R.R. Martin reveals that the success of the 2013 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar, and the very promising work in Gary Gianni’s 2014 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar (Pre-order) , has led Bantam to contract the amazing Donato Giancola to illustrate a 2015 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar. One of the foremost artists working in SF/F, he has won multiple Chesley and Hugo Awards for his artwork.

We’ve always hoped Donato would illustrate characters and scenes from the novels in a more substantial body of work than he has previously—his Melisandre painting (Melisandre painting for the cover of Dragon Magazine2 #307 has been his lone piece of ASoIaF art for far too long. Finally, that’s being rectified. We’ve been fans of his work since his gorgeous “Joan of Arc” painting was used for the cover of Mary Gentle’s Ash: A Secret History (a fantasy series we very much recommend to fans of ASoIaF, by the way).

For those who may have thought a $50 cover price was a bit steep for The World of Ice and Fire—the book we’ve co-written with George R.R. Martin—it looks like Amazon.com has received some corrected information: it’s now priced at $40, which is presently discounted down to under $28 presently (Preorder).

For that matter, the book appears to have picked up a new subtitle: “The Official History of Westeros and The World of A Game of Thrones”. This is actually news to us, since those are decisions outside of our purview.

By the by, speaking of Amazon, they’re now shipping the Game of Thrones Complete Second Season Bluray and DVD sets (Order: US Bluray, US DVD) , with the Bluray down to $29.99—more than 50% off the retail price! If you’ve missed it, I’ve written up a review discussing some of its features. I even came across a fourth dragon’s egg since that review, featuring a Littlefinger and Varys scene that fans will doubtless enjoy.

We’ve noted this previously, but a new article in Texas A&M’s The Eagle provides some amazing insight into the forthcoming Deeper than Swords exhibition at the Cushing Library, focused entirely on A Song of Ice and Fire and the many things that have been born from it. George R.R. Martin was invited to have his life’s work archived at the library back in 1993, in recognition of his contributions to science fiction and fantasy fiction and television, and has been a “dream donor” ever since.

Among the holdings in their archives:

Concerning the event itself, here’s what The Eagle has to say:

(Many thanks to Olaf Keith for pointing this article out.)

This is pretty cool: George R.R. Martin has signed an overall deal with HBO, according to Deadline’s Neelie Andreeva.

What does that mean? Per the article:

We’ve just received word that Random House’s A Game of Thrones comic book adaptation, written by Daniel Abraham> and drawn by artist Tommy F. Patterson,  is now available through an app at the US iTunes Store. A faithful adaptation of the books, fans of the TV show will find scenes that never made it to the television series, while fans of the novels will get to see the world and characters visualized with George R.R. Martin’s input.

The app costs $3.99, but includes the first issue of the series for free. To learn more, check out our interview with writer (and author) Daniel Abraham shortly after the project was announced.

Over at “Not a Blog”, George R.R. Martin discusses various calendars, including Marc Simonetti’s 2013 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar, 2012 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar artist’s John Picacio’s own calendar, and the Literary Pin-up Calendar featuring literary characters from a number of fantasy novels, including ASoIaF.