George R.R. Martin appearing at ThrillerFest in NYC; Hodor jammed w/ Megadeth (watch)
Annual NYC fiction festival/conference ThrillerFest — the “premiere conference for thriller enthusiasts, bringing together famous authors and new ones along with industry professionals, agents, and fans” — holds its 13th edition from July 10 – 14 at the Grand Hyatt in NYC. This year has an especially special guest, as ThrillerFest welcomes Game of Thrones creator and 2018 “ThrillerMaster” George R.R. Martin. He’ll participate in the different components of the fest — Master CraftFest, CraftFest, PitchFest, ThrillerFest, and the Awards Banquet — and will perhaps talk about the new edition of the Wild Cards series he edited, and maybe the announced HBO Game of Thrones spinoff and the 20 other irons he has in the forge while not finishing his next book in the Song of Ice and Fire series, The Winds of Winter. Learn more at ThrillerFest’s website.
Game of Thrones returns for its final season in spring 2019…will Winds of Winter come out before the finale? Before either of those, composer’s Ramin Djawadi‘s Game of Thrones Concert Experience hits NYC’s Madison Square Garden in October.
In related news, you probably heard that Kit Harrington and Rose Leslie (who play love/war interests Jon Snow and Ygritte on Game of Thrones) GoT married in real life, but did you know that Kristian Nairn, who plays Hodor on the show, can shred on guitar? A well-established DJ, Hodor can wield an axe, too, as he demonstrated by playing the riff to Megadeth’s “Holy Wars… The Punishment Due” alongside Dave Mustaine and other members of the band backstage at France’s Hellfest. “Sometimes I don’t know how things happen! My 14-year-old and 42-year-old self had a massive bucket list item checked off and got to play warm-up with Megadeth,” Nairn wrote on Instagram. “The band that started my journey. I don’t have the words. I just don’t. Thank you Dave Mustaine, David Ellefson, Kiko Loureiro and Dirk Verbeuren for being just a great bunch of humans.” Watch below:
