Interview with George R.R. Martin

- CV, CS, IT and SL: How did you get involved in this new Wild Cards project? Did you have any previous familiarity with the series when you were invited in?

CARRIE: I'm a huge fan of the series from almost the beginning. I have all the books, comics, games, etc. I wrote George fan mail about it in 1993. (He wrote back--I still have his reply.) There is photographic evidence of me wearing a Peregrine costume. I've said too much already.

I'd known Daniel Abraham for a couple of years when Deuces Down, which includes a story by him, came out. I cornered him and demanded to know how he'd gotten in. Actually, I begged. Shamelessly. He invited me to Bubonicon, Albuquerque's SF convention, and introduced me to George and Melinda. Then I begged them. I'm not sure they appreciated being told that Wild Cards was my soap opera in high school and college, but I did anyway. I did that for like three years. Fortunately, by the time the current project got off the ground, my own novels (the Kitty series) were being published, so I could present actual writing credentials. Instead of just coming off as a crazed fan. They invited me to pitch characters and stories, and now here I am.

S. L.: Like most of the WILD CARDS writers, I was recruited by George -- he has final say on who plays in the WILD CARDS sandbox. I've loved the WILD CARDS books since Day One. I knew George had read some of my own work and had liked it enough to say so, and while he was in my town for a steamboat gathering (the man likes steamboats for some reason), I had the chance to sit down and talk with him. I guess I managed not to scare him off entirely with my appearance and my babbling, and he asked if I'd be interested in writing for WILD CARDS.

Now, I'd tell you that I at first declined, but George continued to insist that he needed me in the WILD CARDS stable, and he cajoled and complimented and bribed me until finally, after an entire three days of relentless and unending efforts to get me to succumb despite my strenuous insistence that I didn't have time given my own career, he battered down my defenses and literally forced me to agree to be a part of this. But that may not be exactly how George would tell the story. He'd probably tell you that he didn't even have the whole sentence out of his mouth before I screamed "Yes!"

That would be a lie. After all, George is a fiction writer and lies for a living.

CAROLINE: I was acquainted with Wild Cards for a long time because I had friends -- Howard Waldrop and Bud Simons -- who had written for it. I also knew George, though not nearly as well as I knew Howard and Bud.

I was at Conestoga in Tulsa a couple of years ago (George was GoH.) and after hanging with him and a bunch of folk from Austin that weekend, he emailed me and asked if I wanted to audition for Wild Cards. I was surprised and delighted to have been asked.

Oh, and I think I’m the only person portrayed as a character in Wild Cards who later became a writer for the series. (I was one of Fortunato’s hos. Bud killed me off horribly in Jokers Wild. What are friends for?)

IAN: I knew of Wild Cards from back in the late 80s, when I was a kid blowing my hard-earned lawn-mowing money on books. I'd go to the store to buy anything I could find by Roger Zelazny or James P. Blaylock, and there'd be all these Wild Cards books taking up shelf space... Which I suppose is ironic, since Zelazny was one of the original Wild Cards authors. I first met the man most people think is George R. R. Martin in a dimly-lit Santa Fe restaurant in October, 2005. I remember little of the evening; Melinda Snodgrass spiked my drink. Three days later, I woke in the cargo hold of a Dutch tramp steamer bound for Surabaya. I spent the next 87 days cowering from the captain's whip when I wasn't scrubbing the feet of sweaty, jowled Turkmen. On the 88th day I heard the dreaded click-thump, click-thump of George's artificial leg when he emerged from his gilded stateroom for the first time in three months. (The real GeorgeR. R. Martin walks on a stone leg carved from the tomb of Ramses II.) He loomed over me, adjusted his bejewelled eyepatch, and said, "You got spirit, kid." Then he proceeded to explain the new Wild Cards project while the albino raven on his shoulder screeched obscenities at me. And so here I am.