Report from Santa Fe; George Martin

The National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future. And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Tau's New Mexico. Hello, I'm Lorraine Males and welcome to report from Santa Fe. Our guest today is author extraordinary George R.R. Martin. Welcome. Glad to be here. Well, we're very happy to have you. You are one of the best-known authors in the world. He wrote the international bestseller, New York Times number one, Everything the Series Game of Thrones. And HBO to further amplify your talents is made of marvelous series for a dramatic series. It is one, Emmys, you've gotten awards for the writing, for the program.

We've won a few Emmys. We haven't won the Emmy for the show yet, but someday we hope to, we've been contending for it about a few years, but it's a lot of good shows on television right now. But HBO does an incredible job with a series. I'm very pleased to see my dreams and, and, uh, fictions translated to the, uh, the small screen that way and, uh, brought into millions of homes. It is beautifully done. I just want to show these books Game of Thrones, which started it all. And then afterwards we have the clash of kings, a storm of swords. This is a, you've got five out of seven, a feast of crows and a dance with dragons, my favorite. And two more to come. The winds of winter, which I'm working on now. And then a dream of spring, which will hopefully, uh, tie up the story. Well, so far have not this series of books, have they not sold 20 million copies, over

20 million copies? Um, I don't, I don't have an exact count, but they've sold a lot of copies. I know that I, uh, and in many, many different countries, uh, they've, they've done very well in the United States and, uh, and in Great Britain, but also, um, in more than 40 other languages now. Uh, and we're adding new ones all the time. I, I just, uh, um, last week I signed a contract for among Goli in addition. Oh, perfect. The first time I've been translated into Mongolian and, uh, today I was unpacking some books and I got the latest book from, uh, my tie edition. So, uh, it's, you know, I've been a writer for a long time and I've had many of my earlier works translated into, uh, French and Italian and Spanish, kind of the major European languages. But to see these going all over the world and to being in, in these countries where I've never, ever been published before and we're very few American, certainly genre writers,

science fiction, fantasy writers are ever published, has been very exciting and very, very gratifying. It's, uh, fun to get these weird colorful editions in the mail. I think you said once 40 years of work to become, of hard work to become an overnight success. Well, yes. Yes, I, I broke in as a writer in, uh, 1971, my publication, my first short story, my first novel, Dying of Light, came out in 1977, um, and, you know, I, I was successful in my own terms as a science fiction writer and all that, but nothing, no bestseller lists or anything like that, uh, I was well regarded, uh, in, in the small circle of science fiction fans and fantasy readers and so forth. But the success of this series has taken it to a whole nother, own other level and then when a TV show came along, it took it to yet another level beyond that. So, um, it's, I'm living a strange new life now, which, uh, I have mixed feelings about

sometimes, but parts of it are very, very exciting and very, very gratifying and parts of it are, I could do without, but. Well, I must tell you, I love Dying of Light. This was written 36 years ago and yet the same themes, the same creation of an amazing world and the same incredible depth of character development and then the issues of honor and loyalty and love and, and your characters are so complex and, and you can see it in this early one, the Dying of the Light, another early one that is much beloved, fever dream I'm, my vampire novel set on Mississippi River, historical horror. Yeah, that's a particular favorite of mine, uh, fever dream, uh, and we hope to get that made as, uh, as a motion picture, uh, I've written a screenplay of fever dream and, uh, my agents have it out there in, uh, in Hollywood and we have a couple directors who are interested so who knows, perhaps you'll get to see that on a big screen that's sometimes soon.

I would look forward to it. You spent 10 years in Hollywood as a screenwriter, a TV producer, you worked on the twilight zone, beauty and the beast. That's right. And, and then basically the mid 80s through the mid 90s. Um, and then what made you leave Hollywood and, and, and come to Santa Fe, you live in Santa Fe? I did and I lived in Santa Fe before that. I, I moved here in 1979, um, having seen it as a tourist and fallen in love with the place and, uh, um, originally born and raised in New Jersey, um, but when I got involved in Hollywood in the, in the mid 80s, I kept my house in Santa Fe and would come back here as often as I can, but, um, I wound up, of course, because of the work issues spending eight months out of every year out there and in a guest house or in rented apartment or something like that, working on one TV show or another. And the TV shows were a lot of fun.

I enjoyed my time on beauty and the beast and twilight zone. But I reached a certain point in my career where I was doing development where, you know, I worked on other people's shows and now I was being given the opportunity to come up with my own show to write a pilot for, would be a series that I would run or, uh, to do feature films. I did a number of those for about five years, but none of them ever got made. And after about five years, I got frustrated with that. I mean, I was making a lot of money. This is a very well paid gig, but I discovered that, uh, at heart, I need an audience. I, I can't, it was just so emotionally unsatisfying, no matter how much money you get paid to spend a year of your life creating a world and creating characters and stories for them and all that. And I think you're going to get a series on the ear and then they said, no, we've decided not to do that, you know, but what else do you have for next season, develop another one for next season?

And at the end of doing that for a few years, I said, no, I'm going to, I'm going to go back to pros. Proces my first love anyway, I'd missed all the time I was out there. I continued to write short stories and, and the occasional novella, but I didn't really have the time to write a, a novel, although I did start Game of Thrones while I was still deep in the middle of all that Hollywood stuff, but it got interrupted because of the Hollywood stuff. And, you know, I finally decided in, like, late 94, 95, you know, I really have to, if I, I want to write novels, I want to write particularly this big fantasy novel that I've been thinking about for a long time. And I can't do that if I just keep taking these, uh, screenplay assignments, these, uh, pilot gigs. So I went back to, uh, books and it's worked out pretty well. And oddly enough, I, you know, after five years of trying to get a TV series of my own on the air and failing, something that I wrote that I never thought could be a TV series business.

It's absolutely unproducible by all the standard rules, breaks every Hollywood rule. That's what gets on the air and becomes a hit series on HBO. So it just goes to show you that nobody knows anything. That's true. That's true. You're, you're background, your degrees were in journalism. Oh, yes. And as a journalist myself, I find that intriguing. How did that alter your, uh, so you, you had a bachelor's and a master's in journalism? I did from Northwestern, uh, Medell School of Journalism in, uh, North Chicago there. Um, you know, I wanted to write fiction, at least since high school. And in fact, I was writing fiction when I was in high school back in the 60s, little, little amateur superhero stories that I published in, uh, comic book fanzines, little amateur magazines, no money, but they, they would publish it and people would say, oh, good it was or how bad it was. And you got, you got that kind of feedback. Um, but even then the, in the, in the 60s, I, I knew that fiction writing was a very tough gig.

And it was very hard to make a living as a novelist or a short story writer, uh, but writing was from my only skill, so I said, what, what else could I do that could use my writing? And I settled on journalism because, you know, I also worked for the school paper and all that. And I figured, well, I'll be a reporter, I'll be a journalist and, and then I'll write my stories on the side, uh, was sort of my plan. Uh, it didn't work out that way, but I think my journalism education at Northwestern was immensely beneficial to me. Um, I mean, it, I think it helped me as a writer because the, the discipline you learn as a journalist about, uh, you know, getting to the point quickly and you pros and how to organize a story and things like that, um, oral, uh, great benefit to my development as a writer. But the main thing, even, even beyond that was, I was a very shy kid as, uh, as a young boy and even as a high school student, I was, I was very, uh, I don't timid, um, introverted.

I would come home and read my books. I always had my nose in a book and so forth reading. Uh, journalism forced me to get my nose out of a book and get my nose in a real world. It was getting, well, go interview this candidate who's running for mayor or go go to this demonstration that's happening. I mean, it was the late 60s. There was always a demonstration happening. And, uh, so I was in the middle of a lot of demonstrations with, uh, with a reporter's notebook and a pen, you know, getting quotes from policemen and, and hippies and hippies and ROT students, ROTC students and all of the, uh, you know, the format that was going on in the demonstrations and counter demonstrations and things. And I found myself talking to a lot of people who I never would have had to nerve to talk about without the official thing about, hey, I'm a journalist, of course, I was a student teacher and a journalist, but, uh, even so, yeah, it got you out there and I got to meet a lot of different people and, and, you know, developed a lot more, um, ability to interface

with the world, which I think is very good for a writer, writers need that, writer needs need experience. I need to experience, uh, as many things as they can, you know, it's all grist for the mill. Yes, yeah. You do have experience, of course, in the external world, but, but the, the master, the gift that you have is to create these complex, incredible world of Westeros and the other, the other countries. How do you hold all of that, all that history and everything? You know, James Joyce, when he was writing, um, Elysses, he had his walls covered with butcher paper and he would write down where every character was at every minute, what was going on. How do you contain these universes, once you've created them? Well, fortunately, we have computers now, which James Joyce didn't have, so he might not need to butcher paper now that, uh, uh, you know, I have the search and replace function, which is very useful.

I can look up where I left my character by searching for their name. Um, you know, the glib answer as to how I do it is with increasing difficulty, uh, you know, these, these books have gotten bigger than I ever imagined when I started, uh, and I'm not talking about their success, I'm talking about the, just sheer number of pages, the complexity of the story, the number of characters. And I've always just kept it in my head and I still mostly keep it in my head, but it's, it's harder and harder to keep it in my head because there's so much of it. So I have notes, I have files on my computer, um, but probably a lot less than you would imagine, uh, because a lot of it is, um, is still in my head. Um, I think, um, I have, uh, I don't know, kind of a trick mind where I, I, I remember these made up characters and these made up places and worlds, but I remember things in, in real life. Yeah. You know, I, I meet people that I met the previous week and I've already forgotten who the hell they are, but some minor character that entered three books ago with suddenly

he comes back on the stage, I remember, oh, yeah, he was the guy, he was the guy who served him dinner the last time they were at this end in that book I wrote in 2000. Yeah. So, um, it's kind of odd the way it works that way. Um, but I suppose that's what makes me a writer rather than someone who lives in a real world. Yes. And you have, I think the house across the street where you go over and you do your writing Yes. And come back, that's very, very wise. It's hard to, you know, it gives you a little space even if it's just walking across the street. I used to, I used to just have an office in the home where I would just go downstairs and work in the home, but, uh, you know, we got crowded out by a little of our books and things like that. Yes. So, I did buy the house across the street and made it my office. So now I actually have to get dressed in the morning and go on, I no longer, the weeks where I never wear anything but my red flannel bathrobe and write feverishly, those are gone because I have to, uh, can't scandalize the neighbors.

Right. Well, we're speaking today with George R.R. Martin, author of the Game of Thrones, but not only are you an author and a television and screenwriter and producer, but you are an editor. So let us talk a little bit about some of your recent and talk about what, what, what editing does for you. Let's look at, this is one, old Mars. Old Mars came out a couple months ago. I edited it with Gardener and does why it's, um, original retro science fiction stories. Uh, old stories set on Mars by some of the top science fiction writers in the field, but not the Mars that actually exists, but the Mars from the old science fiction stories. Uh-huh. The one with the canals and the dead cities and, and the, the Martians of various different colors and, and all that. The Mars of Ray Bradbury and Edgar Rice Burrows and Lee Brackett and C.L. Moore. That was the Mars I fell in love with as a kid. I think there was a real appetite of, um, on a lot of science fiction fans to, to read more stories about that Mars.

It was a beloved setting, even though it's kind of been disproved by modern science and we now know that Mars is basically, uh, an airless red moon, um, and there's probably no dead cities or Martian princesses or I like the old Mars, yeah. And for the diehard Game of Thrones people, you recently put out the wit and wisdom of Tyrion Lannister, a delightful question, collection of quotes. And this huge magnificent anthology, a collection that you edited called Dangerous Women. Dangerous women, uh, another, of course, genre anthology that Gardner does on, I have, uh, done. We've done a series of these, uh, starting with warriors and, uh, down these strange streets and, uh, songs of love and death, but Dangerous Women is, uh, the latest. And, uh, we're very excited about it. It's 21 original stories on the very broad theme of Dangerous Women. But you know, when, when I was a kid, uh, in Bayon, New Jersey, we didn't have any bookstores

in Bayon. So, um, I bought all of my books at, uh, from a candy store as we called them, uh, you know, in my call them a bodega or something today, uh, just a little corner store. And they had a spinner rack, a wire rack full of paperbacks and I couldn't afford hard covers. So I bought the 25 cent, 35 cent paperback from the spinner racks and the thing about those spinner racks was they weren't sorted, you know, you would have, you would have Shakespeare next to Mickey Spleen and, uh, you know, you would have a science fiction book next to a mystery book, next to a romance book or a gothic or a nurse novel. Uh, well, everything was there mixed together and, and I would go looking through and, of course, I love science fiction fantasy, but I would find other books that interested me and I would pick up, you know, maybe some classic of literature or a mystery novel or, or, you know, whatever was there, books of poetry were in there. Everything with nonfiction, um, we've, we've lost that with the bookstores, uh, because

the bookstores sort and categorize and label everything. And the result is, I think, for a lot of people their reading has become very narrow. They're a fan of, say, fantasy, like many of my readers, they come in, they go to the fantasy section of the bookstore, they see what's new in fantasy and they have no idea what wonderful work is being done in, in mystery fiction or historical models or, or nonfiction or, you know, what, what have you here? So with these cross-genre anthologies, Gardner and I said, we'll, we'll, we'll just give these writers a very, very broad theme, like warriors in the first one or dangerous women in the last. And we'll invite mystery writers and science fiction writers, historical novelists, romance writers, supernatural horror writers, literary fiction writers, writers from every, every sort of genre, every point in the literary spectrum and give them just this one basic thing and

see what they give us. And dangerous women is the result and we have some, I think, some very wide and eclectic range of stories about, uh, women warriors and femme fatals, uh, some stories examining the very concept of what constitutes being dangerous, um, so, so, it was a fun book to edit. Well, not only have you given it these stories in this wonderful book, but you, in one of your other hats, you are the impressario of an art cinema, much beloved theater in Santa Fe called the Joan Cocktoe Theater. And you have been having these literary events where you invite people like Michael Siwan, Neil Gaiman, the six or seven of these wonderful writers from dangerous women. You've got Peter Beagle with the last unicorn coming. And so thank you for giving back to Santa Fe. I mean, this is such a gift to the community and you have always been supportive of writers, but to make writers of this quality available to us, thank you very much.

Well, it's been a lot of fun. Uh, yes, we reopened the Joan Cocktoe in, uh, in April or in August rather in last August. Um, you know, the theater was a beloved theater. I, when I moved to Santa Fe, I went to many, many movies here, uh, back in the 80s and 90s and, uh, well into the Orts, but, uh, the theater closed down in 2006 and has been dark for seven years until we reopened it, but I would drive by it all the time and wish it was open because it was a great little theater that its own personality had great popcorn. So we're trying to bring all that back. We've reopened it, we're showing movies. We have, uh, you know, live music, you know, uh, Steven W. Terrell, you're a next door neighbor, did our first live musical concert there and is coming back to do another one. We had Paul and Stormin. We have some magicians coming in now, uh, so we'll have live magic here in Santa Fe. I want to talk to you about your fans.

So Paul and Storm wrote a song called Right Like the Wind because they did. The point of it, as you are, of, of authors, you are also have a very interesting relationship to your fans and your fans are, uh, are pressuring you a lot to right like the wind because you have written now five of the game of Thrones theories and two more are coming. Um, your friend, Neil Gaiman said, fans, she just backed off and give you a little space you're a creative person, you know, this bubbles up out of your, the wealth of experience you participated. Nobody should be flogging you saying, right, right, right. And so, um, have the fans backed off a little or you still feel a lot of pressure from them? I, there, there are a lot of fans and most of them are great, but the, there is pressure and I wouldn't say anyone is backed off or not backed off, but, you know, there, there's still pressure. But it's a small minority of people and the amount of pressure they put on, they can't possibly

match the amount of pressure I put on myself. I mean, you know, I'm in the middle of the story and I want to finish that story. But they're big books and they take a long time to write and the truth is, um, I'm a slow writer. I've always been a slow writer back in the days when I was doing books like dying in the light and fever dream, um, nobody knew I was writing them. I didn't, unlike most writers, I did not have a contract or anything. I just wrote a novel under my own time and when it was done, I gave it to my agent and said, look, I finished a novel here and see if you can sell it. And they did. Um, it's a little different when you're in the middle of a series and people read a book and then they want the next one and then they get, uh, they get impatient and they're crushed. There are some fantasy writers out there that you can set your watches by. I mean, they produce a book every year, some of them, a book every six months, boom, here's another one.

Boom, here's another one. Boom, here's another one. I can't do that. I've never been able to do that, um, and I don't think if, if I made myself do that, people would necessarily like the, uh, what would result from it. So, um, yes. I think some of it is generational too. I think the most impatient of my readers are the younger generations. I mean, I'm 65 years old. I come from a generation where we were used to waiting for stuff. Um, you know, I would hear about a movie that was supposedly a good moving. I had a way to, was on TV to see that movie, you know, it's, uh, oh, I hear the King Kong is pretty good. I wonder if they'll ever show it and then one day, ooh, I see it in TV, go ahead, look. You know, two o'clock in the morning, they're showing this movie King Kong. I've heard it's good. I'll stay up and see it and, uh, uh, then you might not see it again for a year. I, I mean, uh, the Wizard of Oz, they broadcast that once a year and it was sort of an occasion. Oh, it's, yeah, it's time for the Wizard of Oz to be broadcast again.

Um, there were no DVDs, uh, there were no VHS tapes, um, yeah, to wait for things. And I think my generation got used to waiting for things. The, this generation, um, is very different. Uh, it's all instantly accessible. You hear about a book. I mean, probably are people listening right now who've just heard about dangerous women. And in between the time you mentioned it and right now, they've gone to Amazon and they've clicked and they've ordered it and it's already in the mail onto them. So there's, uh, I don't know, there's people expect things, they want them and they want them right away. And, and Game of Thrones, we might add, you got the, for the second year in the row, the most pirated, the most pirated movie, what 5.9 million people, of course, in some countries it's very hard to get like us, Ray and people couldn't wait. But, but more than an extra song has changed that. I'm so glad. I'm so glad. But yes, the first season, the Australian television station that purchased it, decided they would wait six months, been broadcasted six months after they aired in America.

And, of course, all the Australians, fantasy fans, downloaded it, the day at aired in America. They wouldn't want to wait six months for it. So, I mean, this is a, this is the brave new world we live in here. I mean, it's a global marketplace, I think, for the days when, when every little country could decide what their programming schedule would be, are gone now. I mean, if something comes out, it's going to be available globally on, on the internet and on these torrent sites and so forth, and you got to, you got to get it out there quickly or someone that's going to pirate it and put it up there. It is, I mean, the people at HBO have said, you know, it's in a way it's, it's good press. It's good press and it's sort of a compliment that people will, you know, care enough about your stuff to steal it, you know, they don't steal something that's worthless, you steal things that are valuable and things that are desired. So, it is a compliment, but it's a compliment we would, we would prefer to, you know, do

it without, if we could sell them the thing or have them watch it in some legal fashion. But, you know, all of that is, is beyond my pay grade here. I just write the books and I'll let them worry about the distribution. It is a compliment and I am sad to say that we are, we are out of time. Speaking of time, you were named in 2011, one of the time's most, 100 most influential people in the world. Your reputation precedes you wherever you go, wherever you speak, you're just mobbed. I hope you can come back. There's a whole lot more that I'd love to talk with you about. I'm grateful for the time. Our guests, his George, are Martin. Thank you for coming. You're welcome, man. It was a lot of fun. It was. Take care. So, I want our audience to look for this wonderful anthology, dangerous women. And of course, Game of Thrones. You can see it on HBO. You can read the incredible series. And we look forward, they say, winter is coming, is what they say all the way through

the books. We are looking forward to the wins of winter and the dream of spring. Tell me about your sigil. Your symbol is... A turtle. A turtle. So, although you say you write slowly, you get there at your own pace and you're very strong. So thank you. I always wrote about turtles. I wrote a fantasy about turtles when I was a little kid, so they've always been my thing. Good, good. Thank you for joining us. I hope you come back soon. Welcome. And I'm Irene Mills. I'd like to thank our guests, George, our Martin. And I'd like to thank your audience for being with us today at Report from Santa Fe. We'll see you next week. Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by Grant Strong, the members of the National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future. And by Grant, from the Healey Foundation, Tows, New Mexico. Thank you.

Thank you.