Pat's Fantasy Hotlist is doing one of their famous contests, for two Advanced Reading Copies of SUICIDE KINGS signed by all of the contributors.

For details as to how to enter, go to

http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/2009/12/win-autographed-advance-reading-copy-of.html

Good luck to all.

RIP Dan O'Bannon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5Og_YsaXt4&feature=related

He'll be best remembered for ALIEN, but DARK STAR has a fond place in my heart as well. I hope somewhere he's surfing down like a meteor as "Benson, Arizona" plays on the cosmic soundtrack.

Threads of Doom

Sometimes you can tell where a thread is going just by reading the title of it, i.e. "Climategate Gives Lie to Global Warming", or "Amazon Publishes List of Year's Best Books."

For less divisive subjects it can take two or three posts before a rhythm appears, often involving people arguing over semantics, talking past each other in a circle that goes round and round and round for pages and pages until I cry for my mommy.

But don't worry, these days, as soon as a thread locks itself into this inevitable death spiral, I'm long gone. Do any of you find yourselves staying in to the bitter end? If so, why?



Bulgarian Joy

By sheer coincidence, only a few weeks after finally tracking down a cover image of the Bulgarian translation of The Inferior, I have signed a contract for the translation rights of The Deserter into the same language. Hurray! The publishers know they have a bit to wait for the final version, but a few sample chapters were enough to convince them to sign up for part two.

Has anybody noticed how closely the shape of the Black Sea resembles Australia? And how Cyprus looks like the lower 48 states of the USA? What other proof is needed before people will wake up to the fact that we are living in a giant computer program run by an unimaginative nerd?

And why does nobody ever listen to me? I know things...

I'm 2/3s of the way into Tom Holland's excellent Persian-centric take on the invasion of Greece, Persian Fire. There's a lot of great little world-building detail in here that any budding fantasy writer should grab with both hands and take to extremes... well, actually, extremes aren't really necessary -- the reality was far more entertaining.

One of my favourite ideas -- and one that should probably be implemented in all modern states -- was that once a year, the Babylonian King had to present himself at the temple of the god, Marduk. There, the priests would slap the King's face and pull his ears. No doubt the King was given a wedgie too, but this has yet to be proven. If the priests managed to wring tears from their sovereign, then good luck was sure to follow for the city. Brilliant!

But what really struck me, reading the book, was just how dynamic these ancient cultures were. There were no 1,000 year empires where technology stood still and social innovations were absent. The Persians themselves went from being a tribe of savage horsemen to masters of one of the largest states in the history of the world during the rule of a single King (Cyrus).

Even Egypt, for all it seemed static, was constantly undergoing invasions, foreign rule, religious upheavals and so on. Seriously people, as the man said, "Give me history, or give me another book!"

It was a good day to be wearing green in the NFL.

The Jets won their morning game convincingly, even with Mark Sanchez nursing his knees back in New York City and Kellen Clemens playing abysmally in his stead. Hardly mattered. Gang Green's running game was hitting, and the defense played lights out. Of course, they were in Tampa Bay playing this year's Bucs, so it hardly counted. Josh Freeman, the heralded Bucs rookie QB, looked just awful, but maybe some of that was Rex Ryan's D. Still, these Bucs are so bad they ought to make them go back and wear the creamsicle uniforms until they start playing better.

The Jets are still in the playoff hunt, but just barely. They pretty much have to win out, and with the Colts and the Bengals on their schedule, I think that's unlikely. And next week they have to beat Atlanta, who have a bad record but gave the Saints all they could handle today.

Green Bay won as well. Another "green" team.

And, sadly, this evening the midnight green Iggles of Philadelphia defeated my Giants in a heartbreaker. All the talking heads are saying what a great game it was. Pfui. It was an EXCITING game, yes. The G-Men came out stumbling and spotted the Iggles to a two touchdown lead, then battled back for the rest of the game. Every time they closed the gap to one score the Eagles would get punch in another one and widen it again. Finally the Giants managed to take a one-point lead at 31-30... only to have the Eagles get a long TD on the very first play after the kickoff. The scoring continued after that, and finally ended 45-38 in favor of Philadelphia. The Giants racked up a ridiculous number of passing yards, and both teams left points on the board. McNabb missed one wide-open receiver who was streaking downfield for what should have been a certain touchdown, receiver Mario Manningham of the G-Men had two endzone receptions disallowed for having one foot out of bounds, and his fellow wideout Hakeem Nicks had a couple of TD passes bounce off his hands. There was also a Giants linebacker who dropped what would have been a certain pick-six served up by McNabb. It too bounced off his hands. (And weirdly, it wasn't a pass after all, but a forward fumble, but after our LB dropped it players on both teams just ignored the live ball lying there on the grass). There were fumbles, a punt return for a TD, an freaky pass broken up by an Eagle that caromed off his thigh into the hands of the Giants tight end... lots of crazy, colorful, thrilling stuff. Both teams played hard.

But a great game? Pfui. For fans like me, who appreciate defense, it was far from that. Neither team brought their defense, from what I saw. The Giants certainly proved themselves unable to stop the Eagles. After ranking as the best defense in the NFL at season's start, our D has fallen apart. Especially the pass rush. McNabb had all day back there. Eli played one of the best games I have ever seen him play -- his stats were off the charts, and would have been obscene if Manningham could have stayed in bounds and Nicks could have caught the balls that were bouncing off him -- despite the fact that he was under pressure every snap. McNabb, on the other hand, could have filled out and filed his tax return in the pocket on a couple of those plays. What the hell happened to the Giants' fearsome pass rush? We have the same players as last year and the year before. With added depth; by rights we should be better. But Bill Sheridan, our new defensive coordinator, does not have them playing the same agressive attacking style that Spags did last year, that has made a world of difference. Sheridan needs to go. I want my Big Blue D back. I like winning games 13-10 much more than losing them 45-38.

Oddly, despite the loss, the Giants may still have a better chance of making the playoffs than the Jets do, provided the Cowboys continue their traditional December collapse. But I am not holding my breath. Next week's game against the Redskins has the look of a classic trap game. After getting up emotionally for the big games against Dallas and Phillie, the Giants are all too likely to suffer a bad letdown against the Skins and get upset, which would effectively end their season. I've seen it happen before. And Washinton is better than its record. And even if they get past the Skins, the Vikings are waiting at season's end. The only silver lining in the clouds over the Meadowlands is the fact that the Giants own the tiebreakers over the Cowboys, so if both teams finish with the same record, New York goes to the playoffs and Dallas stays home. But right now Dallas is a game up.

Life is magical... but full of pain.

Or, why you owe it to yourself to do your job, you lazy, lazy git...

Nothing curses the needy writer worse than impatience -- I should know, I want the rewards of having written a good book, but without all the necessary work. And so, as I head into draft 3 of Eat the Drink, the draft that will go to my agent after Christmas, I have to force myself with cords and nails, to stay in front of the screen and finish the bloody thing properly.

Yes, properly.

And what do I mean by that?

I'm excited by the manuscript. I love the world-building and the two main characters. But as I read through it, there are passages that I know are not quite right. There are plot elements that need fixing, clarifying, polishing. And to fix them will require weeks of work while everybody else is out partying.

That's when the voice starts whispering in my ear: "It's good enough now. Why not send it off? You'll get pleasure when your agent says he loves it. You'll get your answer *instantly*. Eat cake now, my pretty, and sleep."

That voice is a liar. It's even more of a liar than the one telling me to kill my neighbours or the one that warns me I'll fade away if I don't have extra dessert after a feast.

Because my manuscript has a LOT wrong with it. An awful lot, but to see it, I'll need the help of Virgin readers, people who don't know that the butler did it and who can still be caught out by that killer twist if I've done it right. And virgin readers are expensive. You can't take just anybody. You'll need another experienced writer if you can get 'em and they will be cheeky enough to demand that you read their work too.

And remember, you can only use them once. It's not that they can't be useful in further drafts down the road, but now that they know it was the butler, you'll never have the opportunity to catch them out again.

It's easy to waste their precious eyeballs, especially if you let pass all those things you should have known how to fix by yourself. Every shoddy scene adds more noise to the signal and takes them out of the plot and makes it that bit harder for them to find the mistakes that you would never be able to find yourself.

So, don't be a lazy sod like me and do it right. Or my voices will tell me where you live...

The end of the year is almost upon us, and the holidays are bearing down like a freight train, so it must be time for a Christmas sale.

From now until the end of the year, I'm offering special discounts on three of the hardcover books offered on the Signed Books page of my website.

The Meisha Merlin trade hardcover of TUF VOYAGING, with a cover by Michael Komarck and interior illustrations by Janet Aulisio, normally sells for $29.


The Bantam Spectra hardcover reissue of WINDHAVEN, my collaboration with Lisa Tuttle, sells for $26 on the website.


And INSIDE STRAIGHT, first volume in Tor's new Wild Cards triad, goes for $27.


You can also get all three of these books for $69.

But those are the normal prices. From now through the end of the year, as a Christmas special, I'm offering each of the hardcovers for $20, or all three for $57.

Those prices include Book Rate (Media Mail) shipping within the United States. If you would prefer Priority Mail, please add $5 for a single book, or $10 for more than one. Overseas and out-of-country shipping is more; please inquire.

And of course I'm always willing to sign and inscribe the books.

((Oh, and while the supply lasts, the copies of INSIDE STRAIGHT I'll be sending out are signed by Daniel Abraham and Melinda Snodgrass as well. But I have less than 20 of those, so once they're gone, it will be just my own autograph)).

Happy holidays, and good reading.

Note from the Assistant's desk:

Please email grrmbooks@gmail.com with questions regarding ordering or international shipping rates.

As always, you can find our ordering page here: http://www.georgerrmartin.com/books-ordering.html

Just wanted to share some more of the wonderful Ice & Fire miniatures from Dark Sword.

First, some lovely painted versions of Prince Oberyn Martell, the Red Viper of Dorne, and Ser Gregor Clegane, the Mountain That Rides, dueling for the life of Tyrion Lannister. Tom Meier did the sculpts, and Matt Verzani painted these for the Dark Sword studio collection.

Prince Oberyn:


The Mountain:


The Duel:


Tom is always so exacting about scale and size with his sculpts; I love how this pairing brings home Ser Gregor's monstrous size in such a vivid and visceral way. And of course Matt has done a wonderful job with the paint, as always.

And while Matt's been busy with his brush, Tom has been sculpting up a storm in his studio, and we have some great new greens to add to the range. These aren't in production yet, but look for them soon.

Here's Arya:


And Sansa:



Lady Catelyn:


And a personal favorite, Sansa building her snow castle at the Eyrie:


For more information and pictures, visit the Dark Sword website at http://darkswordminiatures.com/ And remember, miniatures make wonderful stocking stuffers for all the Ice & Fire fans in the family.

I'm well overdue to write another food intolerance diary, but I have noticed these last few days a very depressing trend in myself -- and millions of others across the intratubes: a ridiculous propensity for spending entire days researching my health complaints.

This would be fine if the wub were full of useful, accurate and objective information. Instead, however, it is crammed to the gills with people whose desperation and contact with each other, has turned them into dreary monomaniacs. This morning's epiphany is that I am now one of them. When you spend hours a day reading dodgy health websites there is no other conclusion to draw.

Have my symptoms grown worse? Is that why I'm doing this?

The answer to that is 'no'. My digestion -- when I stay away from the naughties -- is almost as normal as anybody's now. I don't run out of the room after a meal looking for a toilet. Sometimes I can go for days with no indigestion at all and for the first time in years, my stomach rumbles when I am hungry.

All very novel and exciting.

On the other hand (or should that be 'wrist'?), my joint movement has stopped improving and while I have been left with the ability to lead a normal, pain-free life, I can't play sport and that's just not good enough for me. That's what sent me back to my obsessive research with the sad and the crazy. Nowadays, I spend hours wandering around health food shops, hiding the supplements like a teen with a dirty magazine.

But for all that we might mock the non-scientific with their "Angel Cures" and worse, a large part of the fault lies with the mainstream medical community itself. There is no official cure or official cause for autoimmune conditions like mine. They affect so many areas of the body that our fragmented, specialised medical establishment can only treat symptom A, regardless of the effect it might have on Symptoms B, C or D. A classic example of this is the prescription of stomach destroying drugs as a temporary treatment for inflamed joints.

Many sufferers of conditions that can't be easily categorised are told they are imagining their illness. One of the top doctors in the land said as much to somebody close to me who died of Leukemia. "Go see a psychiatrist," he said. Brilliant! And probably mildly embarrassing for him in retrospect.

But they can't all be crazy, can they?

My research has led me to some very interesting theories and treatments. One I'm looking into at the moment is Low Dose Naltrexone. Naltrexone has been around for decades as a treatment for opiate and alcohol addiction, but a few recent trials into Crohn's Disease and Fibromyalgia have come out with positive results for the drug when used in much lower doses (4.5mg). As a bonus, there are no reported side-effects and it's as cheap as chips.

A lot of sufferers of other auto-immune diseases, such as Rheumatoid Arthritis, and Multiple Sclerosis have claimed massive improvements in their conditions and are now campaigning for trials to be held. So, if you come across a petition to ask your government for a trial, please sign it. Either LDN works or it doesn't, but without proper trials we'll never know for sure and thousands will continue to suffer conditions far worse than mine needlessly.

Also, until I get better, I have nothing else to talk about. You wouldn't want that, would you?

Many thanks to all those who suggested books for me to buy. I've just ordered a lump of reading from Amazon, but forgot (due to an excess of stupidity) to add in some of your more interesting suggestions. I also meant to get Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn -- one of those books whose absence from my shelves makes small children point and laugh at me in public. I'll try to put that right early in the New Year.


For now, the following are already in the air somewhere over the Atlantic and getting closer by the second:

The House of Niccolo by Dorothy Dunnett
The Dragons of Babel by Michael Swanwick
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
The Price of Spring by Daniel Abraham
The Tooth Fairy by Graham Joyce

And down go the Dallas Cowboys, for a season sweep.

Only a SuperBowl tastes sweeter than a victory over the hated Cowboys. Once again, as in the playoff game at Dallas two years ago, all the talking heads picked Dallas, and once again all the so-called experts were wrong. If anyone had told me yesterday that Tony Romo would complete 41 passes and Eli Manning would complete 11, I would have figured the game for a Dallas blowout... but if anything, the final score should have been more lopsided in favor of the G-Men. The last Cowboys TD was a gimme in garbage time, and earlier in the game our Steve Smith let a sure TD catch go skipping off his hands. The keys to the victory were a pair of amazing plays, a catch-and-run by Brandon Jacobs, and a punt return for a TD by Domenick Hixon. You'll see them on the highlight reels this evening.

Will the G-Men make the playoffs? Well, they have a chance now... but the road ahead still looks pretty damn rough, with the Iggles next week and the Vikings at season's end. But for this one week, at least, life is magical and full of joy.

Pretty amazing week in the NFL all round. Evil Little Bill and his P-men were upset as well, the Saints had a close call and an amazing win (has Dan Snyder fired that kicker yet?), and the Raiders knocked off the Steelers with Bruce Gradkowski doing his best Kenny Stabler imitation. Things are getting really interesting.

And Dallas faces the Chargers next week. Maybe I won't need to kill Pat after all.

(P.S. Flozell Adams is a thug, and may be the dirtiest player in the NFL).