He is pretty involved in it, I think. He is listed as a co-executive producer and as a writer in the credits (on Wiki anyway) and it also says he's writing the script for 1 episode per season.

Sigh.

He played a pretty big role in making the HBO series so I'd imagine so.

I also read somewhere that if he were to have any untimely death all of his notes, outlines etc for the remaining books would be given to HBO and another author so they could finish out the series. He's had the entire story planned out forever, when he originally started the books he planned to end the first book with the Red Wedding. So I think it's very likely that is the case.

jesus christ this is going to take a lot of books

He said on his blog at one point that he's told the writers a bunch of stuff from the final books so they know where the overall plot is heading, and can prepare as necessary

Should only take 7, although if he continues his current trend it will take a lot of pages. ADWD is around 1600 pages without appendixes, so by the time he gets to book 7 it might be 4000 pages long :P

by my calculations he should be able to knock that out in 17-23 years.

lol a generous estimate

I think he said somewhere on his "not-a-blog" that the 1600 pages is his word document. As printed pages it is going to be a little longer than A Storm of Swords, which is obviously long enough.

On Jon's parentage:
The most popular theory gets some hints in the first book, but I missed it the first time around (maybe because I was listening to the audiobook).
But there is one piece of information later on that pretty much gives it away.
Still some people will not find out about it on their own. There are things that are hinted at far more strongly in the books and are still overlooked. My favorite is always Ser Loras and Renly praying. I really don't see how you can miss that one.

If he really uses word, lol.

Amazon says 1200 pages for the hardcover. That works out to something like 1400-1500 for the paperback, based on the previous editions.

I missed the praying thing my first time around. It's just said in passing and I don't think it's THAT obvious. Stannis's comments to Renly make it pretty clear though.

I thought Theon was nicely scummy and evil in the show.

Don't jump to conclusions.

I have never read internet forums for speculative fan theories, nor would I expect the average book reader to do so, as that would be absurd.

This is something I thought about during my reading of the first book. This is a thread for people that have read the books. I would assume most would have picked up on the connection, but again I was not sure, so I thought I'd find out.

I admit, I am quite baffled.

Baffled that not one, but at least two, [likely more] people would assume that someone that has mentioned this theory had likely researched this book vs simply picked up on it from reading.

I'm not sure whether he specified the program,but he wrote that the number of pages on his computer was different than the one in the book.

Some other people (Tyrion, Cersei?) also talk about how believable it is that Margery remained a virgin in her marriage and even mention her brother in that conversation, I think.

GRRM doesn't use Word

He uses WordStar(?), that runs on DOS. He's had the same program since 1993.

NOW you can lol

Youtube video of a first time viewer:
http://winter-is-coming.net/2011/04/...s-for-thrones/

Some funny misconcepitons (he thinks Jon Arryn is Robert's father).Around the 8 minute mark he stars talking about Bran's death. What I would give to experience some of it for the first time again...

I'm still trying to figure out what's wrong with word, but LOL at what you just typed.

Yeah I saw that the other day, pretty jealous of all the stuff the first-timers are gonna go through. Link to start of Bran part: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UA8swJtPsQ#t=7m55s

What the heck to authors write in if it's not Word?

I think there are specil programs for people writing scripts. George even mentioned that when he wrote about "his" episode.
Otherwise there may be special programs that make layouting final products easier (including chapter icons, easier to adapt to page size etc.). But I would expect that mostly these would be publisher exclusive and able to import standard files.

Is there someone working for a publisher who can help out?

you can write your book however you want. I hear Neal Stephenson wrote The Baroque Cycle out in longhand. Scripts are different.

I'm sure many/most do.

I just would have guessed that in his case he'd use something more... nerdy.

It's cool how everyone in the other thread thinks that Bran is dead. Good ole' HBO's deceptive preview editing.

Yeah, this could convince them that "oh, they'd never really do something like that." In that sense, it's a good thing. I think finding a balance between the suspense of the "is he/she dead?" and the relative rarity of major characters actually dying is going to be a big part of the show.

(Then again, many other shows are suspenseful without major characters dying ever. I can't wait until



and we can see the reactions.)