George R.R. Martin is selling three of his books at a discounted price (which he’s happy to personally inscribe and sign), according to his latest post at “Not a Blog”. The three novels are the Meisha Merlin edition of Tuf Voyaging, Bantam’s edition of Windhaven, and the first of the new Wild Cards series, Inside Straight. All three novels have been reduced to $20 each, or $57 for all three. Shipping would be $5 for single books or $10 for all three together, domestic; people in other countries are directed to contact him via a special e-mail address just for book sales questions.
Barnes & Noble has just released the Nook, a next-generation e-reader that’s causing quite a stir as it takes aim at Amazon’s Kindle. It’s interesting to note that two of the first reviews (right as the embargo lifted at midnight) at major technology websites have mentioned or even highlighted the availability of George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones for the Nook in the course of their review. First up is this review from Endgaget, which prominently features a picture of the Nook with Daenerys’s third chapter from A Game of Thrones displayed; the video shows the cover image of the e-book in the Nook’s color LCD screen as well.
The next review, from Endgaget, has the reviewer mentioning that the e-text of A Game of Thrones was one of the two purchases he made with the device. On the whole, the device sounds interesting but as with all E-ink devices it has issues with refresh rates and UI limitations.
Dark Sword Miniatures have posted no less than five new miniatures in their George R.R. Martin Masterworks collection. Four, stunning work by Tom Meiere, depict Catelyn, Sansa, Sansa building the snow castle, and Arya. There’s a terrific series of photos showing these greens—which in reality are about 1.5 inches tall, and are sculpted by hand—in great detail. Meier, considered the best sculptor in the business by some. is even able to convey differences in facial structure in the Stark daughters. Particularly good are the series of comparison photos depicting the Catelyn and Sansa miniatures together.
The last is a depiction of a full-grown Ghost by noted sculptor Dave Summers. A quote from the text is provided to illustrate the differences in appearance from a direwolf to a normal wolf, and there’s certainly something lean and terrible. Hopefully we’ll have a chance to see Ghost set beside Jon Snow’s miniature soon to get a better idea of the scale. Promising to have even more releases in January, Dark Sword Miniatures continues to create miniatures that capture the setting and doing so in the highest possible quality. The miniatures they’ve put into production so far are available to be purchased from their on-line store.
The Kansas City Star has an interview with David Benioff, co-executive producer and writer of HBO‘s Game of Thrones adaption. Benioff, an A-lister among screenwriters in Hollywood, is also a notable novelist and the interview largely concerns itself with his literary production. However, on the second page Benioff is asked about current projects. He responds: “I just returned from Northern Ireland shooting “Game of Thrones” (an adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire”) for HBO. I’m the writer and the executive producer with Dan Weiss, so we got to do everything, hiring the director, the actors. The shooting of the pilot is done. We’ll find out in March if it will be picked up as a series.”
This is yet another confirmation that March seems to be pretty unequivocally the date at which HBO’s decision will be handed down. Anything earlier or later than that will be pretty unusual, and perhaps significant.
The A Song of Ice and Fire forum now has the option to use Facebook Connect to log in. For those who already have accounts, you can associate your forum account with Facebook via the following steps:
1) Open profile.
2) Click “Edit My Profile”.
3) Click “Manage Facebook Connect”
4) Follow instructions for how to use Facebook Connect to associate.
Once done, you can select to have your Facebook picture be used as your profile picture. Remember to Synchronize and then Save Changes.
Dabel Brothers Productions have had the publication rights to their current titles—including George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards: The Hard Call penned by Daniel Abraham, Jim Bucher’s Dresden Files, and more—acquird by Dynamite Entertainment. Commentary on the press release (below) can be found at
Publishers Weekly‘s The Beat blog and Bleeding Cool.
We’ll be trying to get information on what this means for the as-yet-unpublished final issue of The Hard Call.
It looks like our upgrade to Invision Power Board 3.0 is a success. However, the last maintenance step needed—rebuilding post content—is a very lengthy one, during which time the board will have to remain down. According to my calculations, it may take twelve hours before this process is done. Apologies for the inconvenience.
The forum will look very different for the time being once it’s up again, as we’ll be using the default skin. We’ll slowly develop the look back to something more unique, but this month is a busy one so it may take a good while.
To increase the intergration of the A Song of Ice and Fireforum with the rest of the myriad of Westeros.org sites, we’ve begun to make use of the RSS Import feature. This allows posts from our various blogs to be inserted into the forum as new topics. Presently, the feeds that are being imported are this present feed, Westeros.org Updates, into the Announcements forum; Game of Thrones (TV series site), into the General TV series forum; and Blood of Dragons Announcements, into the Blood of Dragons MUSH forum.
These imported blog posts can be responded to in threads, hopefully facilitating discussion and increasing awareness on the various topics Westeros.org keeps track of.
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.
GRRM provides some photos from the former Kingdom of Heaven Jerusalem set near Ouarzazarte in Morocco, in his latest “Not a Blog” post. The pictures are quite excellent, and show some freestanding large-scale props such as battering rams, siege towers, and trebuchets that are still in good shape. George notes that while he offers a picture of one of the courtyards in the set, he couldn’t show the redressed courtyard used for Ilyrio’s manse during the filming.
In a follow-up post, he shares pictures from the Game of Thrones wrap party. Picture #2 shows director Tom McCarthy, and #4 and the final picture (where he’s jamming on a guitar) shows actor Jason Momoa of Stargate: Atlantis fame.
Several commentators, including myself, asked George to identify the group of women surrounding him in one of the photos. He has replied, indicating that, “The gorgeous young ladies in the pictures with me were the dancers at Dany’s wedding to Khal Drogo, whose wild, erotic celebrations lead to wanton coupling and arakh fights. Not Moroccan, no. They actually all came from London, and flew down with the cast and crew.” He thinks the dancing and swordfighting sequence in that scene should be quite amazing.
Jamie Bamber (of BSG fame) auditioned for the role of Jaime Lannister in HBO’s pilot for Game of Thrones, a part that ultimately went to Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. This was revealed by him to Jackie, who reported it at the A Song of Ice and Fire Forum, at the Cylon Attack convention this past weekend in London.
Bamber would have been interesting in the role, although Jackie speculates that perhaps his average height ultimately weighed against him when the character of Jaime is supposed to be tall. That said, we know from remarks from GRRM and from at least one actor that has auditioned that the audition process leads them to keeping in mind actors for future roles. If the series goes forward, we may well see Bamber in a secondary role later on.
In a comment on George R.R. Martin’s Livejournal, his partner Parris says that what they’ve heard is that “HBO will make a decision sometime in the spring - perhaps by the end of March.” End of March is certainly a longer time period than many expected, and the possibility of the decision not coming until April or even May is sobering. A January 2011 premiere if there’s a greenlight seems almost impossible if there’s no decision until the latter part of spring.
Phillip Lowes (Ser Mountain Goat on the A Song of Ice and Fire forum) has provided an incredibly detailed report from his time attending the signings and moots in Belfast and Dublin. That report, and others, can be found here. He’s also proposing that plans begin to be made for a Game of Thrones event next year.
Among the interesting bits that seem new is his report of his discussion with Paul Hardwyck, who advised the production on medieval weaponry and played a role in choreographing the training fight of Bran Stark and Tommen Baratheon. Hardwyck, also a member of the forum as Knight of Redemption, notes that initially the producers wanted to differentiate the Lannisters from the Starks by giving them curving swords. He also feels that the weapons are “too showy” for his tastes, though his perspective is that of someone deeply immersed in the study of historical swordsmanship.
A brief but excellent interview (in Danish) with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, the Danish actor who’s been building an international reputation, about HBO’s pilot for Game of Thrones which recently completed filming. Playing the role of the knight Jaime Lannister, a good part of the interview is devoted to questions about the filming. The most notable pieces to come out of it? Lena Headey is pregnant, not so far along that one can tell when she’s dressed, but which required her to have a stand-in for a nude scene; as far as we can tell, this is the first time this particular news has been made public. Coster-Waldau is also taking part in a Danish TV series after New Year.
It does seem rather probable that pre-production on the series can likely start right after HBO gives its approval, but it seems increasingly unlikely that filming will be able to take place as quickly, given that other actors (such as Jennifer Ehle) are known to have work commitments through March or April.
Below you’ll find our translation of the relevant parts of the article:
Jason Momoa, the actor cast as Khal Drogo who recently completed his filming in Morocco for HBO’s pilot of A Game of Thrones, will be in the U.K. for two events in coming days. First, he’ll appear at Nostalgia Comics in Birmingham on November 30th from 4 to 6 PM. Then, on December 3rd, he’ll be at the Forbidden Planet store in Belfast, Northern Ireland, from 6 to8 PM. There will be a charge for autographs.
It sounds like an excellent opportunity to ask the actor how he felt filming in Morocco went. Poster images with more information can be found at Forbidden Planet’s website. Hat-tip to AndyBelfast, a member of the A Song of Ice and Fire forum, for pointing this news out.