George R.R. Martin - Tulen ja jään laulu: Kirjauutisia

This special edition of A Storm of Swords features twenty-five original color illustrations by Gary Gianni, the acclaimed illustrator of George R. R. Martin’s A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. This beautifully packaged book continues the series of anniversary releases of the iconic A Song of Ice and Fire novels that began with A Game of Thrones: The Illustrated Edition.

FreyjaNyt on taas huhut The Winds of Winterin ilmestymisajasta liikkeellä. @BryndenBFish vihjailee Twitterissä kuulleensa sisäpiiritietona, että kirjalle olisi pohdinnan alla pari sopivaa julkaisupäivää. Brittien keltaisen lehdistön Daily Express ehti jo julkaista spekulaatiosta jutunkin. En ole jaksanut penkoa, josko spekulaatiota käydään jossain muuallakin.

For those of you who may be concerned for me personally… yes, I am aware that I am very much in the most vulnerable population, given my age and physical condition. But I feel fine at the moment, and we are taking all sensible precautions. I am off by myself in a remote isolated location, attended by one of my staff, and I’m not going in to town or seeing anyone. Truth be told, I am spending more time in Westeros than in the real world, writing every day. Things are pretty grim in the Seven Kingdoms… but maybe not as grim as they may become here.

JussiSarjan kirjojen julkaisu kuvitettuina kovakantisina 20-vuotisjuhlalaitoksina jatkuu. Marraskuun alussa on luvassa A Storm of Swords. Kuvittajana toimii tällä kertaa Gary Gianni.

If there is a silver lining in these clouds, this will give me more time to finish WINDS OF WINTER. I continue to write every day, up here in my mountain fastness.

I am still up in the mountains, doing the social distancing rag, and writing WINDS OF WINTER. I have good days and bad days, but I am making progress.

The only thing I am writing myself is THE WINDS OF WINTER, as I have said many times… but with my producer’s hat on, I am still involved in a number of exciting new shows for HBO, and a few film projects as well.

There’s more, of course. There’s always more. But this post has grown long enough, and Westeros is calling.

was edited by Melinda M. Snodgrass (yours truly assisting)

Jussi

Huomioni kiinnittyi siihen, mitä GRRM sanoi seuraavasta Wild Cards -kirjasta Three Kings:

was edited by Melinda M. Snodgrass (yours truly assisting)

Olin luullut, että Martin on varsinainen editori, ja että Snodgrass avustaa häntä antologioiden toimittamisessa. Mutta tilanne onkin päinvastoin.

If nothing else, the enforced isolation has helped me write. I am spending long hours every day on THE WINDS OF WINTER, and making steady progress. I finished a new chapter yesterday, another one three days ago, another one the previous week. But no, this does not mean that the book will be finished tomorrow or published next week. It’s going to be a huge book, and I still have a long way to go. Please do not give any credence to any of the click-bait websites that like to parse every word of my posts as if they were papal encyclicals to divine hidden meanings.

I was heartbroken when CoNZealand was forced to go virtual due to the pandemic and I had to cancel my plans (exciting plans) for a long trip down to Wellington with Parris and my minions… but there is definitely a silver lining in that cloud. The last thing I need right now is a long interruption that might cost me all the momentum I have built up. I can always visit Wellington next year, when I hope that both Covid-19 and THE WINDS OF WINTER will be done.

I still plan to host the Hugo Awards and fulfill all the rest of my toastmasterly duties for worldcon, and have started pre-recording some bits for the ceremony (a wise precaution, since I am hopeless with Zoom and Skype and like things), but that is a lot less time-consuming and distracting than flying to the other end of the world. In between tapings, I return to Westeros. Of late I have been visiting with Cersei, Asha, Tyrion, Ser Barristan, and Areo Hotah. I will be dropping back into Braavos next week. I have bad days, which get me down, and good days, which lift me up, but all in all I am pleased with the way things are doing.

I do wish they would go faster, of course. Way way back in 1999, when I was deep in the writing of A STORM OF SWORDS, I was averaging about 150 pages of manuscript a month. I fear I shall never recapture that pace again. Looking back, I am not sure how I did it then.

Now you will have to excuse me. Arya is calling. I think she means to kill someone.

This writing stuff is hard. Even so, it has been going well of late. Three more chapters completed this past week. And good progress on several more.

Still a long long way to go, though. Do not get too excited.

I am back in my fortress of solitude again, my isolated mountain cabin. I’d returned to Santa Fe for a short visit, to spend some time with Parris, deal with some local business that had piled up during my months away, and of course fulfill my duties to CoNZealand, the virtual worldcon. But all that is behind me now, and I am back on the mountain again… which means I am back in Westeros again, once more moving ahead with WINDS OF WINTER.

Before Covid, I would usually get out once a week or so to eat at a restaurant or go to the movies. That all ended in March. Since then, weeks and months go by when I never leave the cabin, or see another human being except whoever is on duty that week. I lose track of what day it is, what week it is, what month it is. The time seems to by very fast. It is now August, and I don’t know what happened to July.

But it is good for the writing.

For the nonce, it is what it is. My life is at home, on hold, and I am spending the days in Westeros with my pals Mel and Sam and Vic and Ty. And that girl with no name, over there in Braavos.

JussiVideoita on tulossa lisää, ja niissä esitellään mantereen eri osia.

GEORGE R. R. MARTIN: The biggest thing was Dan and David called me up and had the idea of eliminating Rickon, the youngest of the Stark children, because he didn’t do much in the first book. I said I had important plans for him, so they kept him.

Sometimes I do get the feeling that most of you reading my posts here care more about what is happening in Westeros than what is happening in the United States.

So let me assure you that, when not sweating out election returns or brooding over other real world problems, I have continued to work on THE WINDS OF WINTER.

No, sorry, still not done, but I do inch closer. It is a big big book. I try not to dwell on that too much. I write a chapter at a time, a page at a time, a sentence at a time, a word at a time. It is the only way. And sometimes I rewrite.

Of late I have been spending a lot of time with the Lannisters. Cersei and Tyrion in particular. I’ve also paid a visit to Dorne, and dropped in to Oldtown a time or three. In addition to turning out new chapters, I’ve been revising some old ones (some very old)… including, yes, some stuff I read at cons ages ago, or even posted online as samples. I tweak stuff constantly, and sometimes go beyond tweaking, moving things around, combining chapters, breaking chapters in two, reordering stuff.

None of this is even remotely new. It is how the first five books were written.

I was really on a roll back in June and July. Progress has continued since then, but more slowly… I suffered a gut punch in early August that really had me down for a time, and another, for different reasons, in early September. But I slogged on, and of late I am picking up steam again.

Acclaimed artist Arantza Sestayo gives us her vision of George R. R. Martin’s epic series, the inspiration for HBO’s Game of Thrones, in a calendar featuring twelve never-before-seen views of Westeros and beyond, plus a bonus fold-out poster.

With her lush, post-Raphaelite style, Arantza Sestayo takes us into Westeros, beyond the Wall in the frozen North, across the narrow sea, and deep into history – to places where shadows and light abound. Nobles and commoners, the living and the undead, tableaus both intimate and grand, here are all the complexities of Martin’s masterwork given luminous new life.