Page 3 Profile: George RR Martin, author

George RR Martin, author

This man will kill you…

… and he’ll charge you $20,000 for the privilege. But before you grab the baseball bat and draw the curtains, please note: it will be a literary death.

Murder, he wrote?

Exactly. Mr Martin is the author of the novels behind the wildly successful Game of Thrones TV series (you may have heard of it). As part of a fundraising campaign, he is swapping the chance to be a character in an upcoming book for a $20,000 (£12,000) charity donation – along with a host of other literary prizes. And he’s promised that the immortalised fan will “certainly meet a grisly death”!

OK, let me crack open the piggy bank.

The donation to one of two charities of Mr Martin’s choosing – the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary and The Food Depot, both based in New Mexico – will see one man and one woman written into an upcoming novel in the epic A Song of Ice and Fire series.

They’ll be able to choose their ranking in the fantasy world – lordling, knight, peasant, whore or lady – before being dealt their ultimate fate.

The gas bill’s just come in – anything cheaper up for grabs?

If you can scrape together $7,500 Mr Martin will pop his “well worn” sailor’s cap in the post to you.

Yeah, that gas bill again…

Cheapskate. The least expensive lot on offer through the prizeo.com sale is a $10 entry into a draw to be flown to Santa Fé to meet Mr Martin and take a helicopter ride with him to the wolf sanctuary.

So, when’s the next book out?

Perhaps a long time – Mr Martin is a notoriously slow writer.