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.
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:
As for other series, other things, well, . I just signed a contract with Bantam to do a collection of my Dunk & Egg novellas, which take place in Westeros a hundred years before. We’re going to do a collection of the first four of those (three of which are already written). The fourth one I have yet to write, and that one will appear in the anthology “Dangerous Women,” which I’m editing with Gardner Dozois. And then after “Dangerous Women” it will be reprinted in this collection.
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:
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.
Yesterday, we posted the first part of Linda and I discussing/reviewing A Dance with Dragons (Preorder at Amazon: Hardcover US, Hardcover UK, Kindle US, Kindle UK, Audio US, Audio UK). Today, we’ve got the rest available! It’s rambling, I’m having an allergy attack at the time that leaves me sniffling and watery eyed, audio cuts out in the last seconds of the first video (I switched to avidemux to split the rest, no problems now)—we know, and our apologies for those little problems. Hopefully the content is worth it! We’ve learned some lessons from this experience as we plan to take on into future videos. We’re planning a brief series, probably covering particular POVs, maybe touching on some of the key events, and so on.
Before pressing on, however, some public service announcements.
First, the A Song of Ice and Fire forum in relation to tomorrow’s release of A Dance with Dragons. On the 12th, we will open the ADwD forum. I think we shall also open an ADWD “Still Reading” forum a day or two after, for those who want to read more deliberately, and discuss what they’re reading chapter by chapter without having information from later chapters being brought in. These will be the only places where A Dance with Dragons will be discussed through August 12th. All topics must contain [ADwD Spoiler] in the title (to make it easier for people browsing the ‘Latest Posts’ feature to distinguish them and titles must not be in themselves spoiling anything. We will probably have topic creation as a moderator-approved activity. Those who spoil it for others can be expected to sit out discussion on the forum for a length of time proportional to how deliberate the spoiling appeared to be. We cannot guarantee that there’ll be no spoilers in the forum’s other sections, but past experience suggests it will not be a significant issue.
To prevent spoilers prior to the 12th, new members of the forum have had various things restricted, but those restrictions will largely lift on the 12th, going back to our standard set up.
There is, of course, also the Wiki of Ice and Fire. Our hope is that no ADwD-updates take place earlier than a week after its release, but we allow our editors to sort these things out for themselves, so we’ll see what they do. My suggestion is to tread carefully at the wiki for the time being. Make note if the index of an entry (as in a character entry) has an ADwD notation, and then be careful as you scroll down.
Finally, word is that Amazon.com has started shipping the novels in bulk throughout the country, with many people who had 1-2 days priority shipping set to get them tomorrow. Might be that if you live in the right area, an order placed today will get to you tomorrow (especially if you opt for overnight). Besides that, there will be locations across the country (and in other countries as well) which will stay open until midnight to allow shoppers to get the back at that time. In particular, the expectation is that the kindle edition will be released at 12:01 AM on the 12th, so if you’ve a Kindle-capable device (including Kindle for the PC), that may be a way to go.
Okay, and here, at last, our three part discussion/review:
Something new from Linda and I: a video discussion between us about George R.R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons, covering the experience of reading it early, where we place it in the hierarchy of the novels, and the beginnings of some more detailed discussion. Despite that, it is spoiler-free. It is, also, the first of three parts.
And, just to emphasize, this has been our first try and this, and there are various little problems—the video cuts off audio for the last few seconds (the result of a mistake in splitting it, I think), I need to tweak the microphone volume next time we record one of these, and I also had a bit of an allergy attack going on and so there’s some sniffling and nose-rubbing for which I very much apologize!
So, here’s part 1. The rest of the recording (split into two parts—it’s about 32 minutes long in total) will be ready tomorrow, we expect.
Not only is this a reminder to vote in the Tubey Awards over at Television Without Pity, but an encouragement to join the Game of Thrones fans who’ve supported the show through two rounds of Spoiler TV’s battle for best TV show. After a couple of relatively easy wins, Game of Thrones has come up against a venerable (yes, I went there!) favorite: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Now, Linda and I adore Buffy and Angel and the works of Joss Whedon in general, owning the DVD sets and the comics and all that jazz…
But judging season for season, Game of Thrones certainly tops Buffy’s first season in our book. So why not give it a vote? There’s quite a few other shows being paired up against one another as well, for those interested in playing the field.
George R.R. Martin and several Wild Cards authors—Melinda Snodgrass, Victor Milan, and John Jos. Miller.—will today be signing copies of Fort Freak and other Wild Cards books at Page 1 Books in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The signing will run from 2:30PM through to around 5PM. George notes on his “Not a Blog” that this is very much a Wild Cards event:
NO COPIES OF DANCE WITH DRAGONS WILL BE ON SALE! I may be able to autograph some of your Ice & Fire books, if time permits, but probably not more than one, and only with a purchase of FORT FREAK. And in the talk and the Q&A session, we’ll be talking about Wild Cards, not the new Ice & Fire book or the HBO show. Sorry, but to let GAME OF THRONES take over the session would not be fair to the other writers.
Part 2 of the Speakeasy interview with GRRM has been posted, and in it George discusses A Dance with Dragons a far bit, with some remarks on The Winds of Winter. Another good one. Thanks to the interview, Christopher J. Farley, for pointing out that it was up!
We wrapped an interview with George over today, most of which we’ll publish on Monday. There are some spoilery bits that we’ll hold off for later.
Over at Suvudu, there’s an informative and interesting interview with the U.S. editor of A Dance with Dragons, Anne Groell concerning the novel and the series. The fact that the editors do actively play a role in shaping the novel is something that some people may be unaware of, or may choose to doubt because they have notions that a “big author” doesn’t get edited, and Anne sets that straight. We do wonder what it is that she learned about The Winds of Winter that has her so excited…
On top of that, GRRM recently revealed that A Dance with Dragons has gone into its sixth hardcover printing, and that’s before it’s even released on July 12th—clearly, demand is outstripping supply, and Bantam’s playing catch-up!
Want to add to their problems? Pre-order the book at Amazon.com: US, UK, Audio US, Audio UK
Just as we speculated yesterday, George R.R. Martin has confirmed that actress Gwendoline Christie (lovegwendoline on Twitter) is now Brienne of Tarth! As he says in his confirmation post:
This was another one of those cases where there was hardly any debate. The day the first batch of auditions went up for the role, we looked at a dozen actresses who were reading for Brienne and one actress who WAS Brienne. Gwendoline gave a great reading, and her look was just perfect. No, when she auditioned, she did not look she does in the photo above. She came in looking… well, like Brienne.
Below is a sampling of Youtube videos featuring Christie.