George R.R. Martin was born on September 20, 1948, is still alive and kicking, and mostly famous (in our circles) for his fantasy epic A Song of Ice and Fire (hereafter simply known as ‘Ice and Fire’, because the full title is too long, and the acronym ASoIaF is almost as bothersome to write).
When writing this first sentence I checked out Robert Jordan’s biography to see when he was born, so that I could scare you by drawing some parallels between unfinished epic fantasy series and old age. Uncanny as it might seem, Jordan and Martin were born on the same year, with only one month between them. Jordan, however, has already unfortunately passed away, and although his epic series The Wheel of Time is being finished by Brandon Sanderson, I guess I’m not the only one to think that it’s just not the same.
So fans of Ice and Fire ought to be slightly concerned, because Martin has become notorious for delaying the books. Although it was only two years delay between the first three books it was five years between the third and fourth, and the delay between the fourth and fifth is to be of the same span (four years so far). The books are very large – seven hundred up to a thousand pages – but readers become more and more frustrated with each delay, and the prospect of waiting five years between the last books (the series is planned to be seven books) is not enjoyable.
The nominations for this year’s 
Barbara Hambly was born in 1951, has written more than forty novels, and has recently started playing World of Warcraft. She is also my favourite author, beating out some fairly classy competition, as you’ll see from columns to come.
Quilldragon is to be a fantasy blog that focus extensively on fantasy literature. By that we mean that Star Trek is not fantasy literature, and neither is World of Warcraft or Xena the Warrior Princess. Instead we will focus on our genre and deliver news of books, authors and happenings; reviews of old and new books; insightful and interesting articles about the genre; and everything else we can come up with.
