Westeros

Over at his website, John Picacio provides an exclusive sneak peek of the 2012 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar from Bantam. The award-winning artist has completed his work on the project, and slowly, slowly indeed Bantam is beginning to lift the veil when it comes to his work. The image featured in his post is a cropped version of the January image, featuring Bran.

In the post, he also allows readers to put forward which character they’d most like to see a sneak peek of next, giving three options: Arya, Melisandre, and the Hound. We know from Twitter comments that there’s also a Tyrion and, we believe, a Jon, on top of whch we know there’s a Ned Stark image which also features on the cover of the calendar.

It looks like HBO Connect has now gone live. This is a really interesting initative from HBO, a way for fans to easily follow and take part in conversations about the show through Twitter. The site design is slick, and it promises to have some unique content down the road…

Like the Conversations section, which will apparently include a fan-driven conversation with Jane Espenson, co-writer of Episode 6. And perhaps more Game of Thrones crew or cast members down the line?

As promised, our interview with actor Harry Lloyd is now available!

We asked the actors about a number of topics, from his audition for Viserys Targaryen, his experience filming in Morocco for the pilot, all the way through to his final scenes, along with some book-based discussion (including the question he’d most like to ask George about the series)

So, that was a pretty good episode, wasn’t it? HBO has gone and posted an inside-look at the latest Game of Thrones episode with director Daniel Minahan and executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, as well as posted an interview with actor Harry Lloyd, who certainly had a memorable turn as Viserys. Keep an eyes open for our own interview with Lloyd, later this evening!

On top of that, there’s a preview for episode 7, “You Win or You Die”, which includes our introduction to the Lord of Casterly Rock, Tywin Lannister!

Looks like Froggy the Gremlin is back to his old tricks at George R.R. Martin’s “Not a Blog”. For those who are newer fans of the show, Froggy was a character on a children’s variety program from GRRM’s day, a mischevious gremlin who has now become GRRM’s persona when he’s preparing to start hinting at casting through dastardly riddles and hints.

In the comments to the post, he’s asked about Stannis, and reveals he hasn’t seen any of those yet… but he has seen auditions for “Melisandre . . . Ygritte, Asha, Xaro Xhoan Daxos, Davos, Dolorous Edd, Margaery Tyrell, Brienne, and many more.”

With the help of Philo, we’ll be having a chat party for this Sunday’s episode!

Comment on the episode live with others watching it, turning viewing into a social experience! As with Philo’s other chat parties, there’ll be prizes for the best comments—the two best comments, in fact—featuring items from the HBO Store. And just for taking part, you’ll earn the nifty little award you see here, an exclusive for those participating in the event.

There’s a great Dothraki piece from TV Guide, with a lot of cool details… including a few long awaited phrases. Me nem nesa!

The latest feature article from Pearson Moore is now available for your reading pleasure, in which he examines the way different characters choose their priorities through the lens of “The Wolf and the Lion”.

A Dance with Dragons (US, UK) is now completely done, according to George R.R. Martin, with his . The final manuscript is 1,510 pages, just shy of the A Storm of Swords final manuscript—the “sweat” of the book removed about 61 pages from the final tally. He even provides some details regarding new POVs, saying that his original plans had only included one new POV… but in the end, there are four additional ones, with 16 total POV characters (not counting the prologue and the epilogue characters).

Most interestingly of all, he provides a rather detailed summary of the road towards completion, back from when he was hopeful he could finish the novel in a year.

Below, behind spoiler protection, is our run-down of those POVs, extrapolating from what he’s said and filling in some blanks from remarks he’s made in the past:

George R.R. Martin’s official website has had a few updates of late. Most notably, he has provided his mostly-complete US signing tour schedule, though he’s indicated there’s probably one more stop to be decided. He’s also announced his presence at Semana Negra in Gijon, Spain in 2012.

At his “Not a Blog” he’s also made several posts, including a reminder about the forthcoming publication of the latest entry in the Wild Cards, Fort Freak, the signing of a contract for the 22nd entry in the series tentatively titled Lowball that would be a follow-up to Fort Freak, and a recommendation that viewers of the TV show (and fans in general) consider donating to the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary, a rescue organization for wolves and wolf-hybrids.

HBO has released two clips from episode 6, “A Golden Crown”. The first features a convalescing Ned waking up to find Robert and Cersei in his room, while the second features an entirely new scene between Syrio Forel and Arya Stark.

“The things he does for love.”

Our latest interview is now up! Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays Ser Jaime Lannister in Game of Thrones, took the time to answer a few questions from us concerning his role in the production. From Jaime’s reasons for being a Kingsguard to just how Coster-Waldau got pulled into the production to begin with, Nikolaj provides some interesting answers.

Read the interview.

Over at Suvudu, we’ve shared some further thoughts on “The Wolf and the Lion” that may be of interest to readers. Suvudu.com, a website set up by Random House, is an excellent site for SF/F, Comics, and more, with news items and the occasional special features.

On top of that, we’re a bit tardy, but we’ve finally gotten our audio commentary up for the episode, recorded in conjunction with MTV Geek.

Conan Stevens was hinting at some big news in our Conan Stevens. Well, the news—or at least some of it—has broken in an unexpected corner of the web…

... Peter Jackson’s official Facebook page, where he announces several castings, including one Mr. Stevens as an orc by the name of Azog! There’s a terrific picture included in the post, showing the 5’5” Jackson next to the 7’ tall Stevens. Congratulations to Conan—lets just hope this doesn’t interfere with his second season filming!

... is somewhat exaggerated!

Some concern among fans cropped up after the recent Thronecast which stated that Lord Hoster Tully (Catelyn’s father and Lord of Riverrun) was killed at the Trident, whereas he’s alive when the novels start. We’ve checked with the “keeper of the mythos” for the production, Bryan Cogman, who says that in the show canon, Lord Hoster is very much alive (but not well, being very ill) . So, chalk that one up to a small error that cropped into Thronecast’s material at some point!