And the the Oh, November 20th, 2018, just under five years ago.

It's, you know, August as we're recording this,

but yeah, that'll be the five-year anniversary of Fire and Blood.

George had so much fun writing the world of Ice and Fire that he wrote way more than was necessary or even viable to put in the book.

You've seen it. It's pretty big, but you know there's a lot of art in there full-sized art full-page art maps and

things like that. So he wrote so much of the so-called extra stuff that the extra stuff was more than what he wrote for the world of ice and fire, which is a little funny because

fire and blood is smaller physically but longer in terms of word count.

And that's where Fire and Blood came from, that extra material.

All that so-called extra stuff became more than just extra stuff.

And of course he added a bit more to it and edited it, but ultimately he unleashed himself on it and it was interesting because he held back for so many years.

A lot of authors have the attitude.

In fact, most authors, like the overwhelming majority

of professional authors have the attitude

that backstory and history and world building should serve the story. You shouldn't have much in the

realm of extraneous. Now I'm going to bring this up later because I think that might be changing

for modern audiences in some ways. but regardless this is the way George

his career went it was the common attitude for authors as I've said not just authors

but screenwriters storytellers in general.

He had all these ideas though, like he knew some of these details,

he just couldn't justify fitting them all in.

He's already fitting in a lot of backstory. I mean he already puts in more than most authors would.

I wouldn't say it's extreme. He does it to serve the story. It's not extraneous. He's not just

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