A Song of HBO and Publishing

So, for those of you out there who don't know yet, I am a huge fan of George R R Martin's fantasy series "A Song of Ice and Fire". It is incredibly well-written chock-full of skillfully crafted characters and rife with heart-pounding adventure, nail-biting suspense, and brain-twisting intrigue. I read a lot, but I have never picked up a book that lead to nearly five thousand pages without me getting bored. And still I salivate for the next installment. George is a master of his craft, that is certain, yet his last two books of the series have been slow to birth. The wait has become infamous among his fans, (some of whom have even gone so far as to make a "hurry-the-F-up-blog") taking nearly five years for each of them. Yet for me, the pins and needles persist.

I remember the day I first laid my hands on GRRM's masterwork. I was working the night shift at a convenience store of the interstate in Valdosta, GA. My supervisor was the owner's son, Joe. He had read the first three books already and was still waiting on the fourth, A Feast for Crows, to hit the shelves. I still remember his warning: "Don't read 'em too fast, man. You'll want to. You won't be able to stop, but you have to pace yourself. I read them all as soon as they came out, and now I am still waiting on the next one. It has been years since the last one came out. Pace yourself!" I laughed. He didn't. I was sure just by looking at these stout paperbacks, that it would take me months to read them, maybe a full year or more. I was wrong, so wrong. I worked every night and in the hour-long lulls through my graveyard shift I read voraciously. I couldn't get enough of the hyper-realistic POV's in the pseudo-historic settings and the gentle trickle of mystery and magic(?) as the story progressed.





It only took me a couple of months to be chomping at the bit for the Feast I needed to quench my Martin fix. As soon as AFFC came out, I was on it in a heartbeat! I bought the hardback copy just so I could start reading a week or so earlier. Again, I ignored Joe's initial warning and poured through the pages with fervent zeal and finished in record time. I reread it and waited for the next volume. That was in 2005. I'm still waiting. We are all still waiting, some of us less patiently than others, but wait we must.

However, there are new updates and reasons to be excited. For example, HBO has decided to begin work on a pilot for a Song of Ice and Fire live action series. As of the typing of this blog post, seven roles have been cast! GRRM talks more about this on his LiveJournal "Not A Blog". He has given us hints and anti-hints but refuses to tell all unntil they give him the go-ahead. Another great resource for ASoIaF discussions and speculation is the Tower of the Hand forum. The self-described Encyclopedia of Ice and Fire is my favorite place to flesh out my own theories and relate to other GRRM freaks.


(I love this image of GRRM as a lord from Westeros, found here, at the cimmerian.)

Well, that is enough ASoIaF chatter for now, I will come back atchya with more soon!
peace all