Westeros

Thanks to multiple reports around the web from George R.R. Martin’s reading and Q&A at Town Hall Seattle, we now know that Martin confirmed what we’ve speculated : Morocco will serve as the location for Daenerys Targaryen’s storyline in the new season, the region of Essos known as Slaver’s Bay.

Some have rather hopefully thought it would mean we’d see Dorne in season 3… and while Morocco may doubtless serve as the location for scenes set in Dorne in some future season, it certainly seems that that’s not the plan this year. So Dorne fans will just have to wait.

After a long, long delay—almost a year—Linda and I have finally put up the promised second part of our discussing prophecies in A Song of Ice and Fire in light of A Dance with Dragons...

... only to realize, after we posted it, that our promised second part was supposed to discuss an entirely different prophecy from the one we covered! So, you’ve got part three to look forward to. This, and many other videos about A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones can be found over at our Youtube channel.

In a sequel to their very popular first Game of Thrones 16-bit RPG video game parody, College Humor now takes a look at season 2. Some of it feels a bit more obvious… but it’s worth it just for the regular Littlefinger Dance Party breaks (which are, I suppose, NSFW—so beware):

Bigpoint, whose Game of Thrones massive multiplayer online action-roleplay game we’ve previously reported on, has gotten itself a new name (Game of Thrones: Seven Kingdoms) and some beautiful new screenshots.

Moreover, the first ever trailer for the game will first be unveiled at San Diego Comic-Con, at the Dark Horse booth.

Here’s the press release:

Tonight at 7PM, George R.R. Martin will be reading—almost certainly from The Winds of Winter—at Town Hall Seattle, part of the Summer Reading Series hosted by Clarion West, one of the leading SF/F/H writer’s workshops. George will also be available for a Q&A.

Tickets are already sold out through the official outlet, but according to Brown Paper Tickets:

So, worth a shot.

Thanks to Ben Bella, our essay in Beyond the Wall: Exploring George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (Order: US, UK), “The Palace of Love, The Palace of Sorrow: Romanticism in A Song of Ice and Fire”, is now available in full via the Smart Pop Books site. It’s available for just one week, after which it’ll revert to an excerpt.

And as we posted yesterday, Linda and I discussed the essay with Sean T. Collins and Stefan Stasse for the latest Boiled Leather Audio Hour podcast. You can find direct and iTunes links to it here.

Thanks to Boiled Leather Audio Hour hosts Sean T. Collins and Stefan Stasse, Linda and I spend some time discussing our essay in Beyond the Wall: Exploring George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (Order: US, UK) which officially hit shelves on the 26th of June.

With filming to begin in little more than a week, the fact that actors have already been cast in a number of roles should not be a surprise. The fact that names are starting to spill, one after the other, is probably not too surprising. We’ve been sent quite a few details about a number of additional actors who’ve landed roles, some of whom will probably be familiar to anyone who watches film or television with any regularity…

Despite the fact that the production seems very shy of revealing casting news just yet, it’s not as if there hasn’t been some casting decisions made. In one case, we’ve waited several weeks in hopes that HBO would let up and provide confirmation… but as they won’t—and more power to them!—we’ll just go ahead and reveal what we know (or think we know) to date regarding one particular trio of castings on which we have details.

The San Diego Comic-con has been releasing its program details, and fairly full details regarding the Game of Thrones panel are now available:

So, now we have a list of “some” o the cast who’ll be appearing. Why “some”? I suspect some more may be added as they clarify schedules… and, given the extreme silence from HBO on casting to date, I think it’s safe to say that a “surprise” or two in terms of casting news will be revealed at the con.

HBO adds a follow-up indicating that executive producers Benioff and Weiss will not be in attendance as the season will already be filming at the time of the convention.

HBO’s press release confirming Morocco as a fourth shooting location (pretty sure that’s unprecedented for a regular hour-long series, though I suppose there may be some European television series or mini-series that have managed something similar) and no changes to the writing staff from last season also included the full list of directors involved in this new season, and there’s a mix of returning and new names that’s worth taking a closer look at.

Straight from HBO, we’ve details on the writers and directors for the next season of Game of Thrones, with filming due to begin the second week of July. It confirms our earlier reports on Morocco becoming a fourth(!) filming location.

Here’s the press release:

So, D&D will be directing an episode (or two?)... and Alik Sakharov is returning, which is excellent. Plus a female director, Michelle MacLaren, joins the mix. More details on the directors shortly!

Over at “Not a Blog”, George has posted a lengthy update on various projects, from those that are done (The Lands of Ice and Fire poster map collection [Preorder: Amazon US, Amazon UK]) to those in-progress (such as The Winds of Winter, Dangerous Women and the fourth Dunk & Egg novella, the latest Wild Cards novel Lowball, and Old Mars), and on to those just in the planning stages (Old Venus).

One in particular might be of special interest to followers of Westeros.org, since it’s The World of Ice and Fire, the world book that we’re are co-authoring with George. Here’s what George has to say:

Speaking of that last stuff… yeah, there’s some really neat details in there, and perhaps a new mystery or two for fans to ponder. Some fans have long wondered just how Aegon’s Conquest was carried out, how the Vale of Arryn fell under their control, the status of Dorne in that time, even the order in which the Targaryens conquered each region… well, they’ll be wondering no more, on those topics, and quite a few others!

Over at George R.R. Martin’s Not a Blog, GRRM notes that he’s supporting a charity drive to support the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary—a non-profit organization that takes in and shelters abused or abandoned captive-bred wolves. To assist the sanctuary in its fund-raising efforts, Martin has donated 40 first edition hardcovers of A Dance with Dragons, which will come autographed and personally inscribed for the first 40 people to donate $100 or more to the charity. As he notes, the swelling attendance of his signing events has made personal inscriptions much less common than they once were.

Besides that, there’s also a chapbook available for those who donate $10, which he’ll sign (but not inscribe).

As George says, it’s all in a good cause, so please consider donating!

Over at Corona Coming Attractions, a multi-part round-table is being published concerning Game of Thrones in its second season. It’s quite lengthy (in part because, well, I’m one of those who are part of the round-table and you all know how verbose I am!), but I think there’s some good points raised by quite a few people.

Other participants include Maureen Ryan of the Huffington Post, Amin Javadi from the Podcast of Ice and Fire, James Poniewozik from TIME, writer and Wired contributor David Barr Kirtley, author and editor Doug Cohen, and of course the host of the roundtable, writer Marc N. Kleinhenz.