George R.R. Martin's Blog, page 227

Alone in London

Parris will soon be on her way home to take care of the cats, before they start rioting and have wild parties. So I'm pressing on by myself. Arrived in London a few hours ago. Signing at Forbidden Planet on the 11th.

Dublin Days

And here we are in Dublin. Ireland has been exciting but exhausting. We had a huge turnout last night for the signing at Eason's, with a queue that seemed to go on forever, but I finally scrawled everyone into submission, and afterwards I signed all the stock as well. If you missed the signing, or happen to live a thousand leagues away, you can still get an autographed copy of the SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH hardcover or any of the Ice & Fire paperbacks by phoning, emailing, or dropping by E...

Belfast At Last

Late, wet, and bedraggled, but I'm here.

Tomorrow heads will roll. Well, one head, at least.

Moving On

The Scottish filming is done, and cast and crew are packing up today for the big move to Belfast and its Paint Hall, where the shoot will resume. So far, so good.

Parris and I are moving on as well. She'll be headed over to Ireland tomorrow to spend Samhaim with friends, while I linger here in Scotland a few more days to visit with Lisa Tuttle. We converge again in Belfast in November. Today we swung by the HarperCollins warehouse outside Glasgow, where I signed five hundred hardcovers of ...

Feeling Guilty

I've met Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner (and their charming moms). They're terrific, bright and beautiful and bursting with enthusiasm, excited to be a part of this.

And now I'm having pangs of guilt about all the horrors that they're going to have to go through in the months and years to come, thanks to me.

I'm going to have to rewrite the books so only nice things happen to Arya and Sansa. Might change the story some.

Also ran into Ron Donachie, Jennfier Ehle, and Kit Harington, and all o...

Jetlagged in Scotland

We're here in Edinburgh, safe and sound but jetlagged. A grueling trip, three flights, Albuquerque to Houston, Houston to Newark, Newark to Edinburgh. I can't sleep on airplanes, so as usual I arrived exhausted, and collapsed as soon as we hit the hotel. Sleep until midnight, then woke, ate a room service meal, and will soon go back to sleep in hopes to waking tomorrow and getting into sync with the time here.

Glad to see so much enthusiasm about the cast.

Gnight again.

The Last Man Cast...

... (but certainly not the least) was our intrepid horselord, Khal Drogo of the Dothraki.

The search for the right khal was exhaustive, and included auditions on four separate continents (maybe five, not sure if those Brazilian readings ever took place). As with several other parts, there were a lot of great readings, and the producers had several interesting choices.

The final nod went to Jason Momoa, who is best known to American television viewers for his role on STARGATE: ATLANTIS.




I blus...

The Big Man and the Redhead

I said that the big man could tell you the latest casting news. That's because the big guy is Ian McNeice, a veteran British character actor most recently seen on HBO as the newsreader in ROME. He's done a million other parts as well, of course. In A GAME OF THRONES, he'll be playing Illyrio Mopatis, Magister of the Free City of Pentos, merchant prince, and arch- conspirator.





There is one character with a speaking part in the HBO pilot who did not appear in my novel. In the early drafts ...

Not Coming to Denver

I'm off tomorrow for the UK and the pilot shoot, so it stands to reason that I won't be at MileHiCon in Denver this weekend. I haven't yet figured out how to be in two places at one time.

However, there will be some cool news announced for the first time at MileHiCon, so if you should happen to be in Denver, keep your ears peeled, and you can be one of the first to know.

A Pair of Starks

One of the hardest parts to cast was Bran. When the story opens he's a cute kid, off to see a man beheaded for the first time. But after that... think of all the challenges that await the boy in this role. We think we've found a young actor capable of handling them, however. His name is Isaac Hempstead-Wright.



My clues for this one are pretty self-explanatory. Hempstead is a town in Nassau, and Isaac was the Biblical sacrifice (not really, of course, Yahweh was just joking around). All t...