Via Winter is Coming:

We have some exclusive casting news for you, the House Gatewatch faithful. British actor Patrick Malahide has been cast as Lord Balon Greyjoy.

[…]

This probably completes the casting for Ironborn speaking roles this season as it looks like Aeron and Victarion will be shuffled off to later seasons. Malahide looks to be a solid choice for the role, being an experienced character actor and one that tends to play the villainous roles. Balon isn’t a villain per se, but he definitely has an edge to him. As a Greyjoy fanboy, I approve of this casting.

For the rather small role he’ll play in season two of Game of Thrones, I don’t have much to say. Looks scary and angry enough.

I made some waves earlier this year when I posted my thoughts on the nominations for the 2011 Hugo Awards. Bottom line, it’s an old men’s club that rewards the same people too consistently, doing the entirety of the genre an injustice. The awards are exclusionary in their ruling (just look at some of the changes being made to force StarShip Sofa out of the ‘Best Fanzine Award’). In any case, here are the winners, plus some thoughts on a few of the sections.

Best Fan Artist

Winner: Brad W. Foster
Randall Munroe
Maurine Starkey
Steve Stiles
Taral Wayne

No comment.

Best Fanzine

Winner: The Drink Tank, edited by Christopher J. Garcia and James Bacon
Banana Wings, edited by Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer
Challenger, edited by Guy H. Lillian III
File 770, edited by Mike Glyer
StarShipSofa, edited by Tony C. Smith

Don’t recognize any of these names? That’s because they’re almost all (with the exception of the aforementioned StarShip Sofa) print or pdf ‘zines’ that you probably didn’t even know existed. Since my first complaints a few months ago, I’ve followed File 770’s blog with regularity, but none of the other publications have held my interest. Yeah, there’s some good writing there, but this category needs to change in a way that encourages people to also include online only publications (like this blog, for instance) in the voting. ‘Fanzine’ is an outdated term. If the ‘zine scene is afraid of the online/blog scene, perhaps we could all agree to create a new category at the Hugos that encompasses ‘Online Fan Publications’. This category needs to grow up and become more inclusionary, to celebrate all reaches of fandom regardless of whether it falls under the umbrella of ‘fanzine.’ Unfortunately, the old men’s club wouldn’t even know where to begin. The Drink Tank hasn’t won a Hugo before this year, which at least shows some progress being made, but perhaps it’s time for some of the mainstays (File 770, 6 wins, 28 nominations; Banana Wings, 5 nominations; Challenger, 14 nominations; though a case can be made for those with several nominations and no wins) to follow in the steps of John Scalzi and Clarkesworld Magazine (in 2012) and consider withdrawing themselves from nomination in favour of exposing new and exciting fan publications. There’s no harm in spreading the love, is there? But, hey, what do I know? I’m just a blogger.
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Do you pine for the days when RPGs were simpler? Do you look back fondly on grinding against T-Rexes in Final Fantasy VI (or III or whatever you want to call it these days), or the time-travelling antics of Chrono Trigger? Now you’re all grown up, though, and can’t get enough of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire or HBO’s Game of Thrones, right? Well, have you ever been curious what the videogame version of A Game of Thrones might’ve looked like if the series had found superstardom when it was first released in 1996? Thanks to College Humor, we don’t have to ponder any longer!

It’s a terrifically funny little homage (which has its tongue planted firmly in cheek); the absolute highlights being Jaime Lannister’s infamous run-in with Bran Stark, Dany and Drogo’s rhythm-based mini-game, and the MIDI rendition of the Game of Thrones opening theme song.

As with all things Game of Thrones- or College Humor-related, it’s NSFW!

This article was originally posted on Tor.com.

Via Abercrombie’s blog:

So I’ve finished the first draft of the second part of my latest masterwork, workingly titled, ‘A Red Country,’ or possibly just, ‘Red Country,’ we will see on that score. For those who have failed to follow this blog religiously for the past few months (shame on you faithless scum), it is another semi-standalone set in the world of The First Law, and fusing fantasy elements with western elements, in the same way that The Heroes was a fantasy/war story and Best Served Cold fantasy/thriller-ish. That puts me about 40% of the way through a first draft, though I suspect there’ll be a fair bit of work to do once the first draft is complete. Isn’t there always? Now the terrifying wait for feedback from my editor and readers while I try and sort out what exactly I’m going to do with my next part. I guess one could say that if Part I was a little bit Searchers then Part II rolled into Lonesome Dove territory and Part III has something of a Deadwood/Fistful of Dollars motif.

I feel a fair bit more comfortable with this second part than I did with the first, as you’d expect or at least hope. One generally aims to get a better and better handle on the plot, settings and characters as one goes through a draft, until by the time you’re finishing your first draft you know pretty much exactly what you’re aiming at, and editing becomes largely a case of bringing earlier parts into line with that final one.

I’ve made quite a significant change to the personality of one of my two central characters – or perhaps not a change but a clarification, a shift of emphasis and a refinement of style – and he seems to be working quite a bit better now. In essence, I’ve made him a bit more of a shit than he was before, which tends to be a fruitful direction for me to go in with characters on the whole. Who knew?

It’s taken me a little longer to get this part together than I’d hoped, what with one thing and another, but if I can up the pace a little from here on in we should still be looking at delivery early next year and publication somewhere around late summer early autumn 2012. Such is the hope. But you know what they say about hopes.

Don’t make a parachute out of ’em.”

Abercrombie’s oft-rumoured, but never quite understood ‘western’ finally has a title to go along its bloody interesting sounding premise. I always love getting a look into Joe’s world as a writer. His efforts make his craft appear so effortless, but the comments quote above just go to show how much work goes into the novels. I mean, changing the personality of a character mid-way through a draft? That can’t be easy. And ‘more shit’? Has Abercrombie found deeper depths of human depravity from which to draw his characters? Can’t wait to find out!