GEORGE RR MARTIN Comic Con Panel 

I have watched a lot of GRRM interviews but I never get bored.I can listen to this guy talk for hours.No wonder he's a legendary writer.

He always has fantastic and detailed answers. Good on you George!

This is amazing. This man is a legend, I cling to every word he said. Thanks for posting this.

27:38-28:54 Words ANY storyteller should take note of.

he is so down to earth and has a humor as well, it is interesting that he was into a lot of comics and writers.

the last part is particularly inspiring for someone like myself (I'm an aspiring writer). i have managed to create a career in tech but writing is where my true passion lies. i often told myself that even if i never sold a single book, what's more important to me is just being able to have something out there and hope that others can enjoy it just as much as i do writing my fiction.

Thanks! You guys never miss a beat. Can't wait to see the Game of Thrones panel.

thanks for the hi res video. you've really done a great job with george and song of ice and fire.

Gotta love George. I'm not really into comic books, though I'm only 14 so maybe I will be one day. Either way George is a great guy who I really look up to as a person.

A really great interview.

George is walking on stage like. "Yeah. my hat is better than yours"

Loved this

He talked about H.P. Lovecraft hnnnnnnnnggggggg

Wuuut!? No sailors cap on George?

Holy CRAP!! He actually went a day without wearing his Earnest Hemingway cap.

then a book cost only 35 cents Wtf okay in my time machime!

Wait, did Geroge create fandoms?

I totally agree with GRRM when he talks about how 'diverse' the publishing and literary world has become, restricting authors to a single genre instead of allowing them to simply be writers. Books can no longer simply be books, they have to be a [insert any genre here] book, and that's that. Sure, a book can be defined as a science fiction just so that the publishers can make it easier on themselves to market it (the book industry has become very much like Hollywood in that it has slowly become less the quality of the novel sells the novel and much more the quantity that the novel can sell makes the novel, which is a very sad thing in my opinion as it has made for a saturated market in many respects, not to mention in the realm of the 'YA Revolution', which don't even get me started on, because I'll go on for days), but that science fiction book could just as easily be a horror novel, a romance, or a mystery. That's one of the things that always made the great books great (including George's), is because they don't confine themselves to a genre, they are there own genre and they exist as they exist with no restrictions, those are the best stories because they have all the stories. One of my favorite examples of this has been _To Kill A Mockingbird_ by Harper Lee, which I think is as much a fantasy as it is an autobiography, a thriller and a mystery, a coming of age novel and one of a special kind of magical realism; it has all the elements of a good story and that's what makes it so great, one of the reasons it has stuck around for so long. One of the best things that I have learned from Martin as a writer, along with other things (in combination with other authors, most prominently Fyodor Dostoevsky), is the ambiguity of characters, that no character is wholly good or wholly evil; as real people, we all have the capacity to save a person from falling, at the same time we have the capacity to watch that person fall and break theri neck; we all have the capacity to stop a school shooter, and we all have the capacity to be one, and because of that, no character can be good (even in those moments of 'good', there is something that is not noble about what they have done, something that goes against their morals) all the time, and if they do, they end up doing more bad than good. The colors black and white are simply colors; no matter what banner or color of robe you wear, those colors do not define you, only you define you and because of that no one can walk a single path without stepping on a stone from the other path and reach the end of the journey successfully, for even the yellow brick road was not completely easy in it's going. Characters that are only good or only evil are the worst characters, because they are not believable, and while they might be fun to read about, they're not the characters that stick with you. People will remember the epic saga of Walter White because he was not a hero, he was an antihero, and while he had good intentions, those good intentions resulted in his killing of many people, sometimes for a reason, other times based on suspension, and it lead to his inevitable downfall and his family rejecting him, the death of his brother-in-law, and even in the end, he still died (and it wasn't even from the original threat!). I totally agree with GRRM on the whole thing about death mattering. When my brother died last year, it was a sudden thing that happened the day before Easter, and believe it or not, it was raining, pouring. My mom woke me up at about 4 o'clock in the morning telling me that there was something wrong, asking me if I wanted to go to the hospital with them. In a sleepy haze, I denied them (mind you, I was horribly conflicted, but in the end, sleep won out) and they came back later telling me he had passed. I cried then, but for the next 4 months, I held it within me, not believing it, even as the funeral happened, even as I watched them close the casket for the last time, even as I watched them shoveling dirt, I held it in. In July of that year, it was the middle of the night and I began to think about how I would never get to talk to him again, and a rush of memories came over me, and before long I was sobbing into my pillow, and for the next week or so, I couldn't do much because the death finally hit me so hard. Death is hard. Death is not fun. Death is not something that anyone can really smile about in the end; when Joffrey died in the show, many people may have rejoiced, but you still couldn't deny that he was a brilliant character. Every character's death should matter, and it's not something that you shrug off, it hurts and no one wants to go through it, but it's a part of life; you'll always be wanting to hear that it was all a hoax, but you never get that call and that's what makes it so painful, which is what I think that all writers should strive for in their stories, there should be a mourning and a deep sorrow for the death of characters that you love, and even a small something for those that you hate (I felt a little sad when Gustavo died, because he was the villain and he was just as much a part of Walter Whites story as any other character, and then he was gone). Death is real, even in fiction. While I have gotten over my brother's death (to some small degree at least), there is a picture that I have of him and every time I look at it, I cannot help but feel overcome by a sense of grief; death lingers. Even as far as _A Dance With Dragons_ people still echo on about Ned Stark's death, years after it happened. Death is real, death lingers, death matters. "Even I can do better than _that_," George echoes Stephen (King) in this matter, and while it may have worked for them, I am sad to say that such an echo did not hold up for me to well with my first book. I decided that when I was 12 (I'm 14 now and realize the error of my ways, and I've mature din my writing quite considerably if I say myself) that I could do better than _The Maze Runner_, because King once said that, "Have you ever read a book, and thought, 'This really sucks?' and said, 'I could do better?'" and so I took that to heart after reading five chapters of _The Maze Runner_ disliking it with a passion (more so these days than ever for other reasons that have little to do with the work itself) and began working on what inevitably became _The Maze Games_ (the title wasn't a jab at _The Maze Runner_, rather it was the only phrase that I could think of at the time that defined exactly what was going on in the book). It was a monumental flop, of course at the time I thought it was a glorious piece of fiction, when in fact it was a culmination of about every action movie I'd see up to that point (Michael Bay comes to mind, if that gives you any indication of the books plotting and pacing) along with every book I'd read up to that point with action, not to mention it was infused (at the very last minute) with every boys fascination with Greek Mythology (thanks very much to Rick Riordan, I might add). I sent it out to the publisher and it went off to print with a light edit (a very, very light edit) and formatting, and there it was (and still is) on Amazon. I regret having published it in the format that it was in (and I'm even making an effort to 'reboot' it with a rewrite), but in the end, what can you do but move on, right? Better to learn from _that_ mistake instead of crying over it; maybe if I win my statewide contest and get my more recent work out there, it won't haunt me so bad anymore. On writing itself, one thing that I have learned that is the most important about writing anything is that, you have to dedicate yourself to finish it. There may come a time when you will write a story that you just cannot finish, but so long as you have all the parts of a story, there is no reason not to finish it. Not finishing things can become a terrible habit, and it can be your downfall if you end up not finishing all the things that you write; you will most often try to finish everything you start, movies, TV shows, books (even the bad ones), because you don't want to be surrounded by a court of things that you didn't finish. You can start a billion fires, but can you put them all out?

OMG 47:07 Nods for time's up. Says something instead, followed by talking OVER G.R.R.M. Eventually does it. I mean I know you're doing your job and there's a tight schedule, but as you booted him, he was gonna say something, possibly EPIC, that will now forever go unsaid. Also, what's with the edit? 48:28

Please stop flying GRRM around to do interviews so he can focus on Winds of Winter. I'm teasing, but seriously.

34:10 "Having meaningless sex" Is there such a thing as meaningless sex?

Even if I had been born a thousand times I i couldn't made the historys he does. (sorry my inglish)

Who is the author he mentions at 8:20? Could someone help me please.

Get out of there ang go write the next book!! I'm just kidding.

It would help if the hosts would stop trying to be funny, clever, etc. while George is talking.