My friends at Dark Sword Miniatures in Minnesota have released some terrific new figures in their range of Ice & Fire miniatures.

Here's Strong Belwas, sculpted by the incomparable Tom Meier and painted by the amazing Jen Haley.



And here's his travelling companion, Arstan Whitebeard, who may be more than he seems. Another Tom Meier sculpt, another Jen Haley paintjob.



The latest batch of "GRRM Masterworks" also includes Ser Jorah Mormont, Lady Margaery Tyrell, two new ladies of the court, and a battling brother of the Night's Watch, all by Tom Meier, and Balon Greyjoy of Pyke, sculpted by Jeff Grace. To see them all, and lots of other cool minis besides, visit Dark Sword's own website at http://darkswordminiatures.com/

I was very saddened today to hear of the death of Roger Ebert.

Roger (somehow I think of him as 'Roger,' not 'Ebert,' though I never met him in the flesh, and spoke to him only once, by telephone, in the early 1970s when both of us were young and dinosaurs roamed the earth) has been my favorite film critic since forever. I did not always agree with him, but I always found him insightful and fun to read. He was not just a terrific critic, he was a terrific WRITER. His shows with Gene Siskel, SNEAK PREVIEWS and SISKEL AND EBERT AT THE MOVIES, were must-see TV for me. A hundred other teams have tried to recapture their magic, but none came close.

He was One of Us too. A fan, and an SF fan at that. In his youth, he wrote for fanzines, and he even published a few short SF stories in Ted White's AMAZING and FANTASTIC along about the same time I was publishing in those selfsame magazines. If he had not gone on to be the world's best film critic, he might well have been a successful SF writer.

A brilliant man, a good life. I give him two thumbs up.

For those of you who couldn't make it to Texas for Aggiecon and Deeper Than Swords last month, the good folks at Texas A&M and the Cushing Memorial Library have thoughtfully videotaped my speech and uploaded it to YouTube.

So if you'd like to hear more about how a Jersey boy came to deposit his papers and manuscripts in College Station, you can hear all about my strange connection to Texas here:



Enjoy.

HBO has officially renewed GAME OF THRONES for a fourth season. (And I'm almost finished with the first draft of my script. No, sorry, not going to tell you which one it is).

http://tv.broadwayworld.com/article/HBO-Renews-GAME-OF-THRONES-for-Fourth-Season-20130402

Record ratings for our season three premiere, "Valar Dohaeris."

http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/04/01/game-of-thrones-premiere-ratings-3/

Also (sigh) record levels of piracy.

http://www.thewrap.com/tv/column-post/game-thrones-premiere-breaks-piracy-record-83526

On other topics... no, no, Peter Dinklage is NOT being replaced by Warwick Davis in the role of Tyrion. That was just HBO's little April Fools joke. (I was so busy I forgot to make my own April Fools joke). So calm down, boys and girls. Peter is still with us.

Tonight's the night!

The wait is over.

Season Three is at hand.

Be sure to tune in. Even those of you who "don't have HBO." HBO is doing a big promotion this weekend, so it's free on many cable systems and satellite services right now.

I have seen episode one three times now, at various premieres, and I think it kicks ass. I hope you all agree. Season Three bids fair to be the strongest to date.

For those new to the Not A Blog, let me add my annual disclaimer. I hope you watch the show, and I hope you talk about, all the things you liked and hated... but not here. This is not the place for critiques, discussions, theories, whatever. There are dozens of other places on the internet better suited for that, so post your thoughts on Westeros, Tower of the Hand, Winter Is Coming, Television Without Pity, or any one of the myriad other sites that welcome such.

Time to buy the beer and order that pizza for the premiere.

GAME OF THRONES will be taking on The Doctor this year in the Hugos... and FRINGE as well.

LoneStarCon 3 just announced this year's Hugo nominations. "Blackwater," the ninth episode of the second season, has been nominated in Best Dramatic Presentation - Short Form. That was the episode with the wildfire and the big battle, I am sure you all recall, written by yours truly (with considerable help from showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who added one of the shows's best original scenes) and directed by Neil Marshall. We'll be up against an episode of FRINGE, and no less than three episodes of DOCTOR WHO, which has owned the Short Form category for most of the past decade.



The full list of nominees can be found at:

http://www.lonestarcon3.org/hugo-awards/index.shtml

The Short Form finalists:
Doctor Who:"The Angels Take Manhattan" Written by Steven Moffat, Directed by Nick Hurran (BBC Wales)
Doctor Who:"Asylum of the Daleks" Written by Steven Moffat; Directed by Nick Hurran (BBC Wales)
Doctor Who:"The Snowmen" Written by Steven Moffat, Directed by Saul Metzstein (BBC Wales)
Fringe:"Letters of Transit" Written by J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, Akiva Goldsman, J.H.Wyman, Jeff Pinkner. Directed by Joe Chappelle (Fox)
Game of Thrones:"Blackwater" Written by George R.R. Martin, Directed by Neil Marshall. Created by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (HBO)

Thanks to all those who sent in nominations, whether you nominated us, or someone else. As I have said time and time again, the nominations are in many ways the most crucial part of the process.

Should be an interesting contest. I haven't seen any of the last season of DR. WHO, so I don't know which of those episodes is the strongest contender... but the Whofans are many and formidable, so I figure we are rather a long shot to upset the Doctor's applecart. I know even less about FRINGE. But hey, you pays your money and you takes your pick, and the Hugos fall where they may.

Congratulations to all the other nominees, and my thanks to David, Dan, Bryan, Neil, and all the rest of the great cast and crew who make HBO's GAME OF THRONES the hit it is.

By popular request... a complete redesign and revamp of my website debuted today.

Same content. New look. More bells, more whistles, more functionality (we hope).

There will be a few bumps as we ease through the transition, but we should have everything smoothed out and running well before too long.

Let us know your thoughts.

Here's another taste of Season 3, courtesy of HBO.

Enjoy.



Me, I am off tomorrow for the Hollywood premiere on Monday night. Should be cool.

Maybe it will help me forget all the stress I have been under of late... too many damn deadlines, all of them urgent... sigh... someday I will have time to stop and smell the roses, kick the severed heads... but not now...

Starting tomorrow it is LA LA LA SF TX TX TX TX and then home... where all the work and all the deadlines will be waiting for me, along with a pile of mail three feet high and maybe a thousand new emails...

Free agency has opened in the NFL, but someone forgot to tell my New York teams.

The Giants have resigned Aaron Ross, a cornerback they drafted a few years back, then lost in last year's free agency. Otherwise they seem to be asleep. They just lost Kenny Phillips, their starting safety. Phillips has been hurt a lot, and last year his replacement Stevie Brown outplayed him, but when he was healthy he was staunch against the run. The G-Men have also have Osi on the free agent market, though so far no one has signed him, so maybe he will be back.

The Jets... don't get me started about the Jets. So far they have lost their starting RB, their best TE, a solid part of the defensive line rotation, both starting safeties. And rumors persist that they are about to trade Darrelle Revis, their best player. The Jets finished 6-10 last year, fired their GM, and brought in a new one. They kept Rex Ryan, which I think was good... Rex has only had one bad season in his four with Gang Green, and has proved himself to be a good coach... but this new GM seems to be setting him up to fail. The Jets were 6-10 last year, but instead of improving, it appears they are aiming for the number one overall draft choice in 2014. You can't win games without players. If the Jets crash and burn next year, Rex will get the blame, but Vince Lombardi could return from the dead and he still wouldn't win a game with the roster the new management is handing Ryan.

Pfui, I say.

Oh, and the Patriots... what a vile thing is Evil Little Bill. The way he treated Wes Welker is disgraceful. Man has absolutely no loyalty to anyone. Watch and see, when Tom Brady's talents start to fade -- and they will, it happens to all of them -- Evil Little Bill will ship him out as well.

I get emails all the time from fans asking me to recommend books for them to read "while I am waiting for your next one."

I can't possibly reply to all my emails, of course. But I do reply to some, when the mood strikes me. And I am always glad to recommend good books. There is so many of them out there that do not get half the attention that they deserve.

For some readers I like to draw attention to the classics of our genre. It never ceases to amaze me to discover that some of my own fans have never heard of all the great fantasists who came before me, without whom A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE could never have been written... without whom, in truth, there might not be a fantasy genre at all. If you have enjoyed my own fantasy novels, you owe it to yourself to read J.R.R. Tolkien (LORD OF THE RINGS), Robert E. Howard (Conan the Cimmerian, Kull of Atlantis, Solomon Kane), C.L. Moore (Jirel of Joiry), Jack Vance (THE DYING EARTH, Lyonesse, Cugel the Clever, and so much more), Fritz Leiber (Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser), Richard Adams (WATERSHIP DOWN, SHARDIK, MAIA), Ursula K. Le Guin (Earthsea, the original trilogy), Mervyn Peake (GORMENGHAST), T.H. White (THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING), Rosemary Sutcliffe, Alan Garner, H.P. Lovecraft (more horror than fantasy, admittedly), Clark Ashton Smith, and... well, the list is long. But those writers should keep you busy for quite a while. You won't like all of them, perhaps... some wrote quite a long time ago, and neither their prose nor their attitudes are tailored for modern attention spans and sensibilities... but they were all important, and each, in his or her own way, was a great storyteller who helped make fantasy what it is today.

Maybe you've read all the fantasy classics, however. I have lots of readers for whom that is true as well. Those I like to point at some of my contemporaries. As great as Tolkien, Leiber, Vance, REH, and those others were, THIS is the golden age of epic fantasy. There have never been as many terrific writers working in the genre as there are right now. Actually, there has never been so much epic fantasy published than right now, which means a lot of mediocre and downright terrible books as well, since Sturgeon's Law still applies. But I prefer to talk about the good stuff, and there's a lot of that. Just for starts, check out Daniel Abraham (THE LONG PRICE QUARTET, THE DAGGER AND THE COIN, Scott Lynch (the Locke Lamora series), Patrick Rothfuss, Joe Abercrombie (especially BEST SERVED COLD and THE HEROES)... they will keep you turning pages for a good long while, I promise...

Fantasies are not the only books I recommend to my readers, however. It has always been my belief that epic fantasy and historical fiction are sisters under the skin, as I have said in many an interview. A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE draws as much on the traditions of historical fiction as it does on those of fantasy, and there are many great historical novelists, past and present, whose work helped inspire my own. Sir Walter Scott is hard going for many modern readers, I realize, but there's still great stuff to be found in IVANHOE and his other novels, as there is in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's WHITE COMPANY (he write more than just Sherlock Holmes). Thomas B. Costain (THE BLACK ROSE, THE SILVER CHALICE) is another writer worth checking out, along with Howard Pyle, Frank Yerby, Rosemary Hawley Jarman. Nigel Tranter lived well into his 90s, writing all the while, and turning out an astonishing number of novels about Scottish medieval history (his Bruce and Wallace novels are the best, maybe because they are the only ones where his heroes actually win, but I found the lesser known lords and kings equally fascinating). Thanks to George McDonald Fraser, that cad and bounder Harry Flashman swashed and buckled in every major and minor war of the Victorian era. Sharon Kay Penman, Steven Pressfield, Cecelia Holland, David Anthony Durham, David Ball, and the incomparable Bernard Cornwell are writing and publishing firstrate historical fiction right now, novels that I think any fan of A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE would find easy to enjoy.

And then there is Maurice Druon. Which is actually why I called you all here today, boys and girls.

Look, if you love A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, and want "something like it" to read while you are waiting (and waiting, and waiting) for me to finish THE WINDS OF WINTER, you really need to check out Maurice Druon and THE ACCURSED KINGS.

I never met Druon, alas (he died only a few years ago, and I regret that I never had the chance to shake his hand), but from all reports he was an extraordinary man. He was French, highly distinguished, a resistance fighter against the Nazis, a historian, a member of the French Academy... well, you can read about his life on Wikipedia, and it makes quite a story in itself. He wrote short stories, contemporary novels, a history of Paris... and an amazing seven-volume series about King Philip IV of France, his sons and daughters, the curse of the Templars, the fall of the Capetian dynasty, the roots of the Hundred Years War. The books were a huge success in France. So huge than they have twice formed the basis for television shows (neither version is available dubbed or subtitled in English, to my annoyance), series that one sometimes hears referred to as "the French I, CLAUDIUS." The English translations... well, the seventh volume has never been translated into English at all, and the first six are long out of print, available only in dusty hardcovers and tattered paperbacks from rare book dealers found on ABE.

But that's about to change, thanks to my own British publisher, HarperCollins, who are bringing THE ACCURSED KINGS back into print at long last in a series of handsome new hardbacks. The first volume, THE IRON KING, has just been published... with a brand new introduction by some guy named George R.R. Martin.



At the moment, alas, there's no plan for American editions, but readers in the US (and around the world) can order the Druon novels from their favorite online bookseller through the wonders of the internet.

The best news... at least for me... is the HarperCollins not only intends to release new English editions of the first six novels of THE ACCURSED KINGS, but also... finally!!!... translate the seventh and concluding volume. (Talk about waiting a long time for a book).

Anyway... whether you want something else to occupy your time while waiting for THE WINDS OF WINTER, or you're just looking for a good read... you won't go wrong with Maurice Druon, France's best historical novelist since Dumas Pere.