Incest, dragons, gore ... with fans awaiting the next book in his hit series, the novelist talks about fame, expectations – and the new 300-year history of the Targaryens in Westeros
Strict instructions are issued before interviewing George RR Martin: do not ask about The Winds of Winter, the sixth book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, the one fans keep haranguing him about and Martin has been writing since 2011. Focus on Fire and Blood, his imagined history of the Targaryen dynasty, and all will be well. So I prepare for the interview with a certain amount of trepidation. Martin is probably one of the most famous novelists in the world. There are not many writers who find their every pronouncement picked over by the press, who have sold 90m copies of their books, who are instantly recognised in public. We’ve spoken before, back when A Game of Thrones was about to hit television screens; I’m one of those readers who feels slightly smug about loving the books before Ned Stark became Sean Bean, before Emilia Clarke became Daenerys Targaryen. But I know he has a reputation for irascibility, and I also really, really want to ask him about The Winds of Winter. As it turns out, Martin brings up the book himself, and is warm and expansive on topics from fame and fortune to his progress on the long-awaited novel.
We start, though, with Fire and Blood, only the first half of a history that will span 300 years and acres of Aegons and Jaehaeryses. Martin admits he never planned to write it. Fire and Blood stems from a coffee-table book, The World of Ice and Fire, which was being pulled together by two “uber fans”, Elio M Garcia Jr and Linda Antonssen, in 2014. Martin was just going to “polish and expand the history a little, maybe fill in any holes” about various kings and battles. But he was having so much fun that those little additions ended up running to 350,000 words. “We had totally destroyed the entire concept of this book,” says Martin. “So that’s what this book is, or the first half of it: a history of the Targaryen kings.”
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