George R. R. Martin

A Dance with Dragons

/ Shane / 1 Comment

After a long, long hiatus, the latest book in the greatest series of books ever written, the Song of Fire and Ice, was finally published. (Note: no spoilers!)

I read it about as fast as I could, but 1,000 pages takes a minute or two. Now that I’ve had a chance to sit back and think on it for a second, all I can say is, “Wow.”

I’m on record with my appreciation for George R. R. Martin, but the quality of his writing is simply amazing. I’m not exaggerating when I say this series is the best series of books I have ever read, by far. Better than Harry Potter, better than Twilight, better than Lord of the Rings, better than Dune, better than the Sword of Truth, and about a million times better than the Wheel of Time (don’t get me started on that one). The world building is amazing. The characters are a study in character development. The plot twists are unprecedented in their twistiness. Do you get the impression I like the books?

The only knock on the books whatsoever is the *looooong* wait in between installments. I think it was something like 6 years between this book and the last one. That’s a pretty long time, and it puts you in a compromising position, since you can’t always remember what happened in the previous books, but you don’t have the time to re-read the monsters. And by the way, that’s 6 years of anticipation for the next book, which you would think would almost doom it to fail, since it couldn’t live up to the hype.

Well, it did. It’s as good as any of the books in the series, and probably better than the last book.

I’ve always maintained that Mr. Martin can take as long as he wants to write them, as long as the quality is good. I don’t know what kind of writing process he has, but it’s obviously working, so I’d rather have him stick with it. However, as time wore on, and promises about deadlines began to pile up, I began to worry that perhaps success had gotten to him and he was knuckling under all the pressure, unable to finish or even proceed for fear of letting everybody down. Imagine my relief at finding out I was worrying for nothing.

Furthermore, writer John Scalzi makes some very good points I hadn’t considered concerning my expectations about how long it *aught* to take to write a book the size of a Dance with Dragons:

Add all those up, and I’ve written roughly 440,000 words worth of novels since 2005. A Dance With Dragons, so I am told, clocks in at 416,000 words. So, in terms of total novel words written for publication since 2005 (and omitting excised material), there’s a 5.5% difference between the amount that I have written for novels and what Martin has. If we’re talking about the actual words published, written since 2005, there’s a 13.5% difference — in Martin’s favor, because my 2012 novel won’t be published until, well, 2012.

In other words, maybe it just takes 6 years to write 416,000 publishable words.

I promised no spoilers, and I won’t include them since I know several people who are dying to read the book but haven’t yet. But let me just say that there is a cliff-hanger at the end of the book that is going to kill you. Especially since it is entirely likely it will be 6 years before we get to find out what happens!

I am also aware that HBO has turned the series into a tv show, Game of Thrones, and it’s killing me not to watch. From what I’ve seen online in terms of clips and reviews, it seems like it does as good of a job at living up to the books as could be done. Thanks, in no small part I’m sure, to HBO’s history of making some fantastic television, and Mr. Martin’s heavy involvement in the project (and he knows a thing or two about writing for a television series). Alas, I am waiting for the DVDs, since we don’t have HBO.

Get the book. Pick up the series. You might not like it as much as me, but if you like high fantasy even a little bit, I can’t imagine you wouldn’t like it.

GRRM is the man

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Somewhere roughly around 10 years ago, my friend Rody introduced me to a book named A Game of Thrones. I had never heard of the author George R.R. Martin, but I immediately fell in love with the book. Luckily for me, it was the first book in a series known as A Song of Ice and Fire (which is still on going by the way).

This series flat out blew my mind. It the the best fantasy epic I have ever read and I have recommended it to many people since then. It is hard to explain what makes it good exactly, but I will say this: do not become attached to any character, no matter how main they may seem. The world and characters (and there are many, many characters) are so completely fleshed out that you get a sense that things are happening to other characters and other parts of the world while your attention is regrettably focused on just one thing. The books are simply amazing.

After enjoying these books so much, I naturally sought out other works by the same author. This led me to discover that George R. R. Martin was the editor of the long running series Wild Cards. I had indeed read a few Wild Cards books years ago and positively loved them. Score another for Mr. Martin!

I would like to get my hands on the entire set (and it is vast, about 20 books, many of them out of print) but I have been holding off on it because I don’t have the time to read them all at the moment.

At some point I picked up A Song for Lya and it didn’t disappoint. Every story in the bunch was good, and the titular story was especially awsome. It only spurred me on all the more.

So next, I mentioned in passing that managed to get my hands on the audio book format of Dreamsongs volumnes I and II, a retrospective on Martin’s career.

I cannot gush about these books enough. If nothing else cemented R.R. Martin as a master of his craft, this certainly puts him over the top. I don’t even know which was better, the many stories contained within or the fascinating pieces about his writing career. Now, keep in mind these are some HEFTY books, something like a total of 1,500 pages or, to put it another way, about 4.6 pounds. Even the audio books are large, somewhere around 32 hours. And I haven’t even gotten to Dreamsongs volume 3 yet! They are roughly chronological, so volume I covers his very early career including things from when he was a kid or while he was in college, mostly shorter stories and sci-fi. Volume II is later and includes some of the longer works and things like a couple of excerpts from Tuf Voyaging (which was originally individual short stories anyway). All genres of his career are represented from sci-fi to fantasy to horror. Absolutely get ahold of this book(s), you will not be disappointed.

In particular, I will call your attention to a story named Sandkings, which is one of the collected stories in the book. What a story, my goodness.  Soooo good! But I knew right away that I had heard it before, or in this case seen it. There was a revival of the show Outer Limits that I used to enjoy and it was kicked off with a special double episode which was so good that I have never forgotten it. Guess what, the episode was entitled “The Sandkings” and it was a retelling of this very story. So score #3 for Mr. Martin, yet another thing I thoroughly enjoyed and did not know was by him! I found the story better than the T.V. version, but I can completely understand where they were coming from with the edits. They actually did a really good job with the adaptation. I highly recommend finding this story in particular. I have seen it on the web, but I won’t link to it here because I’m not sure it is authorized.

If I have any knocks on G.R.R. it was that I didn’t really enjoy The Armageddon Rag. Apparently, I was not the only one. To be fair I wasn’t really the target audience, since it is about the music culture of the ’60s and what had happened to it by the ’80s. Not really my generation. Another common complaint is that the Song of Ice and Fire books have been taking longer and longer to come out, sometimes years after the original release date. George has addressed this quite thoroughly on his blog and he makes some good points. I agree it is annoying, because I can’t really remember what happened in some of the older books anymore, but as far as I am concerned as long as they are of the quality of the earlier books, nobody has any right to complain.

One note on his blog, the title is “Not a Blog” and he more or less means that. It is mostly talk about merchandising and occasionally about the Giants. Don’t expect what he had for dinner posts.

So, in summary, George R.R. Martin? Awesome. Two thumbs up. I endorse any of his writing and I highly recommend any fan of speculative fiction give him a try. Maybe, like me, you already have and enjoyed it, though you didn’t know it at the time!

Attempting to Live the Dream

/ Shane / 2 Comments

If you asked me if there was anything I wanted to accomplish before I died, I have only ever had one answer: to publish a book.

Despite this being my one long term goal, I have never made any progress toward it in any way. It always seemed like something there would be plenty of time for later on. Well guess what, the older you get the less time you have for such things! And time and tide, as they say, wait for no man. Not that I believe I need to take any creative writing classes or anything (I somehow managed to avoid taking any of them through college, though I don’t know why) but I certainly haven’t been working on a manuscript or writing anything at all, other than this blog of course.

I have plugged the heck out of Dreamsongs by George R.R. Martin on this blog, so I won’t go into it too much here. (EDIT: Because of the way things happened, this post ended up being published *before* the main GRRM post which kept getting pushed back due to more topical posts) But as I was going through the book and listening to Mr. Martin (who has probably vaulted Stephen King as my favorite author) speak about his early career, I had an awakening. In any job, your first position isn’t C.E.O.; you have to start at an entry level position and work your way up. I should say that another non-trivial event happening at around the same time was the necessity of making up hundreds of stories at mealtime for Evie to get her to eat. They are not the sort of thing you would ever write down, but they did flex the old creative muscles a bit and I found they liked the exercise.

It seems strange to me now that I had never considered writing short stories since A) they are shorter and thus easier to write, and B) I always prefer books of short stories to full length novels. But, believe it or not, it had never occurred to me until Dreamsongs. Immediately I began researching with my usual excitement, tenacity and attention to detail, leaving no stone unturned. I have read most everything I can find about professional publishing in the Science Fiction / Fantasy / Horror markets, my preferred genres. I have amassed a decent collection of links and references on such things.  I’m not sure if I want to put them up here, since it seems almost rude for a person who has no publishing credits to his name whatsoever to be putting advice and things on the Internet as if I have anything to teach anybody. 

So I researched and learned as much as I possibly could about what makes a saleable story, which is to say, not necessarily the greatest story of all time as judged by high school English class standards, but one that had commercial appeal. This included reading all the lists I could possibly find about what sorts of stories are clichéd, researching what markets were out there and what sorts of stories they accepted, reading other published stories, learning how you properly format your manuscript, etc. Now, armed with this knowledge, all I had to do was write a story.

After about 3 weeks, the 4th revision of my first story should be finished tonight and then I will ship it off for my first submission. It is a decent story, but I have already begun my second story which I think will be much better. It comes as no surprise that my first attempt might fall short of spectacular or, to put it another way, I don’t think anybody would disagree that you need to have practice to succeed.

I feel very confident because I have time on my side. I am not a starving writer who needs to sell a story to pay his rent. If I never sell a story, then I really don’t mind and at least I tried. In the meantime, it is definitely a more worthwhile hobby then surfing the net or watching T.V. And I really, honestly, truly enjoy the inventing and telling of stories. In fact, I keep thinking of good ideas much faster than I can write them. So, though it may take dozens of stories and years of time, I feel confident that sooner or later I will succeed.

The only question that remains to be seen is if, having published a story in a magazine, I can cross publishing off my list or if this will be a stepping stone to a full fledged novel. Or will it be a stone of another kind, sinking my ambition to the bottom of the sea.

I have chosen to keep this story writing (and thus this entry) private until such time that I feel this whole idea is not foolish. Or, until I decide that it is completely foolish and we can all have a good laugh about it.

What I’m Doing

/ Shane / 4 Comments

What I’m listening to:

Such Great Heights by The Postal Service

You can also go check out Ben Fold’s version of the same song. Legend has it that he forgot he was supposed to show up on the program. Such Great Heights was the first song on his iPod, so he grabbed a couple of drummers and they used anything they could find in the studio including forks, a wine glass and even one guy playing a box covered in a towel with a wooden spoon (you can see him in the video). I like it almost as much as the original!

What I’m reading:

I’m about halfway through Just After Sunset by Stephen King.

It is a nice change a pace, not too Stephen King-y actually. This is more the kind of straightforward stuff he usually writes under Richard Bachman. The stories are simple and short. Sometimes I think Stephen King can out-King himself, for example, Rose Madder which I thought worked better when it was just about spousal abuse before it got weird. Huh, apparently Stephen King agreed with me on that one, calling it “overwritten” and “working too hard”.

I’ve been listening to lots of Neil Gaiman and loving it, including Coraline (now a major motion picture!) and Anansi Boys. I have not managed to get my hands on American Gods yet, but I’m dying to.

I’ve enjoyed all of them, but I listened to 2 books of short stories that I particularly liked, Fragile Things and M is for Magic. Who am I kidding, I always like books of short stories. They are so varied and if you don’t like one, there is always another coming up. Each story has the sense of promise that you get when you start a new book. Plus, I think the concise nature forces them to be better, not get bogged down. As far as Coraline, I liked it and as I was listening I always envisioned it as anime, so I’m glad to see that it is animated in a sort of creepy style.

I just started Dream Songs Volume I by my other favorite author, George R. R. Martin. The first part is sort of his life story as far as his writing is concerned and it is surprisingly compelling and inspiring. It makes me want to start writing!

What I’m watching:

I was a little disappointed with Wall-E actually. It was a pretty well put together movie, and the stuff they did with with expression, etc. before there was any talking was pretty amazing. I sort of wished the whole movie was sans talking. That being said, I kept hearing how great it was and I don’t know ::shrug:: it’s probably not in my top 20 of animated movies.