Kings are falling like leaves this autumn.

I've written some standalone novels, but a book series allows fans in. There's much more intense involvement.

I will take what is mine with fire and blood.

I'm honest. It's the world that's awful.

A cold wind was blowing from the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things.

The snow drifted down and down, all in ghostly silence, and lay thick and unbroken on the ground. It was a place of whites and blacks and greys. White towers and white snow and white statues, black shadows and black trees, the dark grey sky above. A pure world, Sansa thought. I do not belong here. Yet she stepped out all the same.

Believe it or not, I worked four summers in college as a sports writer covering baseball for a parks and rec department in Bayonne, N.J.