Another highlight of my time in Morocco was the wrap party.

For those not familiar with the term, it's a Hollywood tradition to throw a big party when you finish shooting -- or "wrap" -- on a movie or television project. I attended quite a few great wrap parties during my ten years in LA, but the GAME OF THRONES wrap party blew them all away. We held it in the Ouarzazate Museum of Cinema, a pretty amazing place itself, complete with local musicians, belly dancers, acres of Moroccan delicicacies, and lots of spirits to lubricate the exhausted cast and crew. And when the museum threw us out, we just adjourned back to the Berbere Palace, where the party continued.

These few poor snapsnots don't capture a tenth of what went on. But hey, what happens in Morocco stays in Morocco, right?












A great time was had by all... except, of course, for the cast members who shot their scenes in Ireland and Scotland, and the Irish and UK crew who did not get to make the trip to Morocco. The drawback of shooting in so many different places... everyone couldn't be there together to celebrate the end of the shoot.

I know that you all want to see pictures from the pilot shoot for A GAME OF THRONES, but alas, I can't show you the sets, the actors in costume, or any of that good stuff.

Which is not to say that I can't show you a few other things from my recent trip.

Jerusalem in Morocco, f'rinstance.

Here are some shots of the huge city walls and siege machinery that Ridley Scott built for KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, outside the city of Ouarzazate in Morocco. We did shoot some scenes here... but inside, in a court redressed for our purposes.





That's my assistant Ty perched on the battering ram, which was full sized, made of real wood, and appeared to be fully functional. Ditto the siege towers and trebuchets Ridley left.

The interior courtyards were equally impressive (alas, I can't show you the one we redressed and actually used).





I worked in Hollywood for a decade back in my checkered past, and these are the most impressive sets I've ever seen. Hell, Scott's fake castle beats about eighty per cent of the real castles I've seen, and I've visited a LOT of castles.

I'm obviously going to have to put a city under siege sometime soon, so we can go back to Morocco and play with all these cool toys one of these days.

Life is... well, not magical, but tolerable today.

Jake Delhomme threw more interceptions than Mark Sanchez today, so the Jets beat the Panthers and still have a pulse. A very faint one, to be sure, but still a pulse.

Revis was amazing, completely shutting down Steve Smith.

Obviously my teams can only play well when I am here watching. I can never leave home again.

Life is meaningless and full of pain.

Suddenly it seems a thousand years ago when the G-Men were 5-0 and dominating. What the hell happened? Clearly I can't leave the country during football season. My teams just seem to fall apart without me.

Feeling much better this morning, and off in a few minutes to celebrate Thanksgiving with friends and family.

(I am once again relying on TIVO to record the Giants - Broncos contest tonight, so no commentary about it here, please. I probably won't watch it until tomorrow).

I have a lot to be thankful for. My readers, my friends, and most of all Parris.

I hope all you reading this are similarly blessed.

Happy Thanksgiving.

I am about halfway through watching the football games that were TIVO'd for me while I was overseas.

I came back from my trip sick to my stomach, as I reported last post. These games are only making me sicker.

Life is meaningless and has no joy but the Raiders.

I got home a little past midnight on Sunday night, after a long and gruelling trip from Casablanca. Three flights, changes in NYC/ JFK and Minneapolis/St. Paul, close to twenty-four hours in transit since the wake-up call came through in my Casablance hotel. I was pretty much a zombie by the time I stumbled off the last flight into Parris's loving arms, and a rotting zombie at that. After being oh-so-careful in Morocco -- not drinking the water, brushing the teeth with bottle water, avoiding uncooked food, etc -- I made the grievous error of eating at the McDonald's in the Minneapolis airport during our layover there, and came down with an nice all-American case of food poisoning. By the time I boarded my last flight my stomach felt as if I'd swallowed a lead bowling ball. It was the first time I'd eaten at a Mickey D's in a decade, and I hope that it's the last.

Anyway, the last day and a half I've spent mostly in bed or in the john, but I'm feeling a little better now. This is the first time I've felt strong enough to boot up my computer... where, of course, I found five hundred emails waiting.

The trip was great, and I hope to write more about it later, when I'm feeling stronger.

I have to say, though, I am not sure how many of these overseas trips are left in me. It's great when I get there, but air travel has just become SO exhausting and SO uncomfortable, especially when oceans are involved, that the mere thought of any more just now is daunting.
Where are the rocket planes that I was promised in the SF of my youth?

And here I am in Morocco as the GAME OF THRONES pilot shoot winds down. This is likely to be q strqnge looking post. I am typing it from the business center of the Berbere Palqce in Ourazazate on a French/ Arabic keyboqrd zhere many of the letters qre not where my fingers expect to find them. No Qwert Yuiop here.

Morocco is a fascinating place; though oddly it reminds me of New Mexico in q lot of ways. Architecture especially. The Spanish style of NM showing its Moorish roots.

Marrakesh is amazing qnd I wish we hqd hqd more than q dqy to explore it. From there it was a four hour drive over the high sunk baked passes of the Atlas mountqins to Ouarzazate, the film center of Morocco. This plqce is pretty astonishing as well. The city looks as if it was built yesterday, with wide treeless streets lined by huge pink hotels and apartments and new contstruction everywhere. Outside the desert stretches away to the distant mountains, flat and dry and dusty, dotted with ruins and abandoned cities none of which look even vaguely Moroccan. Egyptian pharoahs stand twenty feet high, crusqder castles loom on the horizon, here's a Chinese fortress, here Sodom (or maybe Gomorrah), here a Roman ampitheater. I have q felling that Tombstone mqy be over thqt next ridge. From afar they look as if they hqve been here for centuries, but then you get up close and you realize they are all abandoned movie sets. The oldest have begun to crumble beneath the sun and sand, but they are still damned impressive;

Most imposing of all are the walls of old Jerusalem that Ridley Scott built for KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, which loom in the distance as you take the mqin road into the Ouuazazate, still surrounded by a ring of huge wooden siege towers and trebuchets, now crewed by lean brown dogs. One small portion of the Jerusalem set, redressed and repainted, became the courtyard of Illyrio's manse where Dany first meets Khal Drogo. Thqt was the scene they were filming zhen Ty and I arrived, and it looked gorgeous.

I'd say more; but this keyboard is driving me batty, and my ti,e is running out in any case;

Tonight the wedding!

Parris will soon be on her way home to take care of the cats, before they start rioting and have wild parties. So I'm pressing on by myself. Arrived in London a few hours ago. Signing at Forbidden Planet on the 11th.

And here we are in Dublin. Ireland has been exciting but exhausting. We had a huge turnout last night for the signing at Eason's, with a queue that seemed to go on forever, but I finally scrawled everyone into submission, and afterwards I signed all the stock as well. If you missed the signing, or happen to live a thousand leagues away, you can still get an autographed copy of the SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH hardcover or any of the Ice & Fire paperbacks by phoning, emailing, or dropping by Eason's on O'Connell Street. They even have a few trade paperbacks of DREAMSONGS.

Afterwards we adjourned to a nearby pub for a lively evening of Guinness and conversation with the local fans. I met the good folk who will be running next year's Octocon, where I'll be GOH, and hoisted a few with the hardy survivors of the Eason's event. Didn't stagger back to the our hotel till after midnight, by which time Temple Bar was roaring. Ah, if only I were twenty years younger...

The Belfast event on Tuesday was also a hoot and a half. The crowd was much bigger at Dublin, but in Belfast some of the cast of the HBO pilot dropped by to sign books and meet the fans as well. My thanks to Ron Donachie, Richard Madden (Best Dressed Man in Scotland), Alfie Allen, Kit Harington, Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner (and their moms) for joining the festivities. And to the lovely Ros, Esme Bianco, who dropped by McHughes afterwards for the moot. Matthew Hughes, one of the authors who contributed to our Vance tribute anthology, also turned up at Eason's to help me sign SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH.

In between signing and mooting, I've been hanging round the shoot, trying not to get underfoot. "How is it going?" everyone wants to know. I think it's going great. Wednesday's location was amazing, so real I could hardly tell where the real castle ended and our fake castle began. I saw Bran and Tommen swatting at each other in the yard, Joffrey taunting Robb, the Hound growling at Ser Rodrik, while Arya displayed her wretched needlework to Jon above, and it all looked wonderful. Saw some of the footage from the crypts too, and that looked amazing as well. Yes, some things are not exactly as they were in the books, that's inevitable with any adaptation... but these are my characters and this is my story, and it's thrilling to see 'em come to life.

Last night in Belfast I got to meet two more of the cast, quite unexpectedly. Some of the Moroccan players were in Ireland for costume fittings. I ran into Ian McNeice for a brief moment outside the hotel, as we were waiting for our rides, and the night before we bumped into Dany -- the amazing Tamzin Merchant, who is even more beautiful in person than she is on screen -- into the dining room. What a terrific cast Nina Gold has assembled.

Also toured the Paint Hall, though we didn't do any shooting there while I was in Belfast. Some of our sets are going up, and look great. And in another part of the building the huge castle sets from the big budget (compared to us, anyway) feature YOUR HIGHNESS are still standing. Their great hall is pretty eye-popping and they built an impressive castle yard as well.

Tomorrow I'm off to London . Signing at Forbidden Planet on the 11th, Then it's off to Marrakech.

Life is magical and full of joy (but no, I have not been seeking out football scores, so don't tell me. TIVO is getting all my games).

Late, wet, and bedraggled, but I'm here.

Tomorrow heads will roll. Well, one head, at least.

The Scottish filming is done, and cast and crew are packing up today for the big move to Belfast and its Paint Hall, where the shoot will resume. So far, so good.

Parris and I are moving on as well. She'll be headed over to Ireland tomorrow to spend Samhaim with friends, while I linger here in Scotland a few more days to visit with Lisa Tuttle. We converge again in Belfast in November. Today we swung by the HarperCollins warehouse outside Glasgow, where I signed five hundred hardcovers of SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH. Ask for one at your favorite UK bookstore, they will be going all over the country.

Things are shaping up for the signing at Eason's in Belfast. Last night after the filming wrapped we stayed up late drinking with the cast, and I think we convinced a number of them to join us at Eason's. Should be a hoot and a half, assuming they don't come to their senses in the cold grey light of morning. I told them my readers were essentially harmless. Hah.

The cast is sensational, by the way.

I've met Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner (and their charming moms). They're terrific, bright and beautiful and bursting with enthusiasm, excited to be a part of this.

And now I'm having pangs of guilt about all the horrors that they're going to have to go through in the months and years to come, thanks to me.

I'm going to have to rewrite the books so only nice things happen to Arya and Sansa. Might change the story some.

Also ran into Ron Donachie, Jennfier Ehle, and Kit Harington, and all of them were great The rest of the cast is around here somewhere too, but we haven't bumped into them yet. But I expect we'll meet them all today on set.

We're here in Edinburgh, safe and sound but jetlagged. A grueling trip, three flights, Albuquerque to Houston, Houston to Newark, Newark to Edinburgh. I can't sleep on airplanes, so as usual I arrived exhausted, and collapsed as soon as we hit the hotel. Sleep until midnight, then woke, ate a room service meal, and will soon go back to sleep in hopes to waking tomorrow and getting into sync with the time here.

Glad to see so much enthusiasm about the cast.

Gnight again.

... (but certainly not the least) was our intrepid horselord, Khal Drogo of the Dothraki.

The search for the right khal was exhaustive, and included auditions on four separate continents (maybe five, not sure if those Brazilian readings ever took place). As with several other parts, there were a lot of great readings, and the producers had several interesting choices.

The final nod went to Jason Momoa, who is best known to American television viewers for his role on STARGATE: ATLANTIS.




I blush to confess that I have never seen any STARGATE but the movie... but Jason's auditions were terrific, displaying all the fierceness that our khal requires, but showing warmth and tenderness in the softer scenes as well. And yes, his haka was terrific.

Khal Drogo was the last of the speaking roles to be filled, so the cast is now complete... until and unless the show gets picked up to series, when we'll start the process all over again to find Littlefinger, Varys, Ser Barristan, Renly, Loras, Hodor, Lord Tywin, and all the rest of our merry company.

But I'll worry about that later. Tomorrow we're off to the UK.

See ya.

I said that the big man could tell you the latest casting news. That's because the big guy is Ian McNeice, a veteran British character actor most recently seen on HBO as the newsreader in ROME. He's done a million other parts as well, of course. In A GAME OF THRONES, he'll be playing Illyrio Mopatis, Magister of the Free City of Pentos, merchant prince, and arch- conspirator.





There is one character with a speaking part in the HBO pilot who did not appear in my novel. In the early drafts of the script she was known only as Red-Headed Whore, but she has since been christened "Ros." Playing Ros will be the lovely Esme Bianco, an actress, model, and burlesque performer whose website can be found at http://www.esmeforever.com/



Her previous credits include CHEMICAL WEDDING, BURLESQUE FAIRYTALES, and DEAD MAN RUNNING, which is where those clues about chemicals, fairies, and dead men came from. Tyrion will be very pleased to make her acquaintance.

I'm off tomorrow for the UK and the pilot shoot, so it stands to reason that I won't be at MileHiCon in Denver this weekend. I haven't yet figured out how to be in two places at one time.

However, there will be some cool news announced for the first time at MileHiCon, so if you should happen to be in Denver, keep your ears peeled, and you can be one of the first to know.

One of the hardest parts to cast was Bran. When the story opens he's a cute kid, off to see a man beheaded for the first time. But after that... think of all the challenges that await the boy in this role. We think we've found a young actor capable of handling them, however. His name is Isaac Hempstead-Wright.



My clues for this one are pretty self-explanatory. Hempstead is a town in Nassau, and Isaac was the Biblical sacrifice (not really, of course, Yahweh was just joking around). All the same, I was astonished when some of you managed to puzzle them out. Isaac is a bright young talent and he gave a great reading, but I figured he was google-proof. Not so. I'm looking forward to seeing him bring Bran to life.

Also cast, as his uncle and Lord Eddard's younger brother Benjen, a ranger of the Night's Watch, is Joseph Mawle.





Another fast-rising British actor, Mawle has portrayed both Jesus and Judas, starred in a film called FREEFALL, and began his acting career at the Tobacco Factory Theater. Check out his showreel at http://www.josephmawle.com/main.html for a sample of his talents.

Can't make the signings in Belfast on November 3 or Dublin on November 5?

Maybe the third time will be the charm. I'm coming to London as well.

I'll be appearing at Forbidden Planet's megastore on Wednesday, November 11, to sign copies of the new Harper Collins trade hardcover of SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH, the Jack Vance tribute anthology, and any of my other books as well.



Forbidden Planet
179 Shaftesbury Avenue
London
WC2H 8JR

If you can't make the signing, but would like to order a signed book mailorder, phone the store at 0207 420 3666 and I am sure they will be happy to oblige you. You can also order a copy over the internet. Just click here:

http://forbiddenplanet.com/events/2009/11/11/george-r-r-martin-songs-dying-earth/

The signing will begin at 5:30 pm. Or 17:30 for you folks over there.

See you there!

A GAME OF THRONES opens in the haunted forest north of the Wall, with three brothers of the Night's Watch on a ranging.

The viewpoint character is Will, sent to the Wall for poaching. In the pilot, he will portrayed by Bronson Webb.




He has been in projects with Tamzin Merchant, Nicholaj Coster-Waldau, and Iain Glen. One of his first roles was "boy on a bicycle." Peter Parker is Spider-Man and Bronson is a Webb, so they have spiders in common. And he has a home page, a Facebook page, and a My Space page.

Will's commander on the ranging is the young knight Ser Waymar Royce, a son of Bronze Yohn Royce, new to the Wall, clad in sable cloak. Playing Ser Waymar will be Jamie Campbell Bower.




JCB has an important role in the forthcoming HARRY POTTER movie, as a wizard from Dumbledore's past, and can also be seen the new TWILIGHT film. And of course it is the twilight zone that lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. He'll also be in the PRISONER remake, but as a number, not a free man. He was in SWEENEY TODD too, though I didn't include that in the clues. Didn't want to make it too easy.

The grizzled veteran Gared is the third member of the prologue's intrepid trio. His part will be played by Richard Ridings.



Ridings' previous credits include roles in RED DWARF, FAT FRIENDS, HIGHLANDER, and WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? and turns as characters named Roach and Daddy Pig.