The So Spake Martin collection has been updated with two reports from Technicon 25. In it, George R. R. Martin’s progress on A Dance with Dragons and the third “Dunk & Egg” story are discussed.
Also, a spoiler-filled report concerning a chapter from Dance that GRRM read, and ensuing discussion and elaborations, can be found at the “A Song of Ice and Forum”, here.
For no reason currently known to us, the forum is unavailable. Some other services are also down—the IRC chan and nickservs, FTP—which suggest that the server itself may be knocked offline (possibly due to an upstream router issue). More news when we have it.
George R. R. Martin and his partner Parris have placed a number of interesting items up on Ebay in support of the Match it for Pratchett fund, an attempt to match Terry Pratchett’s £500,000 donation towards Alzheimer’s research following his announcement that he had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Among the auctioned items is a limited illustration of Fevre Dream, the A Game of Thrones Deluxe RPG, autographed copies of The Ice Dragon and Wild Cards: Inside Straight, and galley proofs of Pratchett works such as Good Omens (written in collaboration with Neil Gaiman) and Only You Can Save Mankind.
Dreamsongs Volume I has been nominated for an Audie Award for best science fiction audiobook. Featuring unabridged selections from the first half of Dreamsongs, the audiobook has George R.R. Martin reading introductions to each section which touches upon the start of his career and its development to the present day, while a host of readers—including the likes of Roy Dotrice, Claudia Black, and Adrian Paul—read the selected stories.
Dark Sword Miniatures have announced the line up for the second set of figures that Tom Meier will sculpt for their Geore R. R. Martin Masterwork series. Two of the figures were chosen by vote from fans via GRRM’s “Not a Blog”.
The So Spake Martin collection has added a link to his audio interview for World Fantasy Con 2008, as well as a new piece of fan correspondence discussing the use of Valyrian steel and twist endings.
GRRM’s official site has been updated with news in his “Not a Blog” that he has completed a Bran chapter that has been giving him trouble for six years. Normally completion of a chapter would go unremarked, but the Bran chapter was exceptionally difficult for him. In the comments he also discusses his drafting process, his ideal of not publishing the series until all the books were written, and a small hint about whether anyone would find the chapter surprising or not.
Valyrian Resin has updated their blog with pictures of the factory samples they’ve received back for the Sandor Clegane, Eddard Stark, and Daenerys Targaryen resin busts that will be the first releases in their line of A Song of Ice and Fire resins. Also included are photos of variant editions of each resin. The post also notes that they will be reworking the on-line store to make it friendlier, but that process is not quite completed.
The renowned artist Marc Fishman has been signed by Subterranean Press to illustrate their limited edition of A Dance with Dragons, as announced by GRRM in his “Not a Blog”.