00:00I had the idea that I wanted to write a prequel, so I would set it before A Game of Thrones started,
00:06and I wanted to write it about a tournament.
00:09I'm George R. R. Martin, some of you may know from my books and television shows and other things,
00:15and we're coming to you from Milk of the Poppy, which is the bar that I've opened here.
00:20It's a pretty fun bar if you come to Santa Fe, come and have a drink.
00:30Any place is a good place to talk about stories. I love talking about stories.
00:35But bars are a good place to talk about anything.
00:38I don't believe in getting drunk while I write, and I don't find it adds anything.
00:44So if I drink anything while I'm writing, it's a soft drink, or iced tea,
00:49which is like the national drink of the Southwest here where you are.
00:54Oddly enough, when I travel, which I do more, when I was a kid, I didn't travel at all.
00:58I was from New Jersey. We just stayed there.
01:00Maybe that's why I write the kind of books I write, to take you to other planets
01:04and distant ages past and other worlds, because it was my desire to see more of the world
01:10than the five blocks that I lived in when I was a kid living in the projects.
01:17One thing that the field of science fiction and fantasy has is anthologies,
01:22which are collections of unrelated short stories.
01:25I've edited anthologies, the New Voices series, the Wild Cards,
01:30and I've sold stories that appeared. My early work, mostly short stories.
01:34A lot appeared in anthologies.
01:36I got contacted by Robert Silverberg, who is one of the grandmasters of science fiction,
01:42and he'd edited anthologies for years.
01:44New Dimensions, that was very prestigious.
01:47He edited the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.
01:49And he had an idea for a new anthology, which he called Legends.
01:53And Legends would consist of ten of the biggest fantasy writers in the field, major names.
02:01So Silverberg contacted me and said,
02:04hey, we'd like one of your fantasy stories.
02:06I agreed to do a story form.
02:09And the parameters of Silverberg's book, Legends, was it had to be original, never before published,
02:15and it had to take place in the world that you had, whichever world it happened to be.
02:22So for me, that was Westeros.
02:25But I wasn't finished the series.
02:28I was still, I believe, working on a second book at that time.
02:32I had the idea that I wanted to write a prequel.
02:35So I would set it before A Game of Thrones started.
02:40And I wanted to write it about a tournament.
02:44You know, I've always loved knights and chivalry and all of that stuff and the jousting thing.
02:50And I'd had a tournament in some of the early books, but just sort of in passing.
02:54And now I'll set this entire one around a tournament.
02:56One thing or another, Duncan Egg came from somewhere.
02:59I had to figure out who starred in this.
03:01Well, the Game of Thrones people weren't born yet.
03:03So at least for me, there are stories that write themselves almost.
03:08They come alive and you think of them every day and you dream about them at night.
03:13I mean, this story and the characters Duncan Egg really came alive on me.
03:26The earliest stories I wrote were for comic book fanzines, which are amateur.
03:31And it was a thriving fandom growing up around comics and particularly Marvel comics.
03:37So I wrote, you know, little amateur stories for that.
03:40Not involving the DC or Marvel heroes.
03:44Those belong to other people.
03:45But I created my own characters, Garazan, the Mechanical Warrior, and Manta Ray, and the White Raider, and all of these things, which were pretty popular.
03:56And I think the fact that the other comic fans, who admittedly were mostly high school or junior high school kids like me, liked them and said good things, that I look back and I think, you know, that was probably a huge change in my life.
04:12Because they liked them and the fanzine editors would want more, et cetera, et cetera.
04:19And I did when I finally, I went to journalism school at Northwestern in Chicago.
04:25And when I got out, of course, I applied to many newspapers and magazines for an entry-level job.
04:35But I also applied to Marvel Comics.
04:37They did not hire me.
04:38Sad to see.
04:38As I get older, and I am a little older now than I was then, I do find myself looking back at my life and seeing the things that could have gone differently.
04:50What if I had turned left instead of right?
04:53What if I had taken this newspaper job in Arizona or something like that?
04:58What if Marvel had hired me?
05:01How would my life have come out?
05:08How would I get my life have come out?
05:11What if I had I met?
05:12What if that would have come out?
05:17What if I had done that was fine?
05:22How would I do that?
05:23What if I had released this newspaper job in Arizona or something like that?
05:27What if I had undertaken sinceWow.
05:28When woman drove up, she was once morefir�드 from Brazil.
05:31What if she wanted her to walk around?
05:32What if she could have gone on?
05:33What if she could have gone on?
05:35How would I do that to come out?
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