For a guy who still has however-many books left to write before he dies, George R.R. Martin sure does a lot of things other than writing books. Think of all the time he wastes sleeping. If he just stayed awake forever, maybe we could actually get the rest of his Song Of Ice And Fire books in a timely fashion.
At least his most recent book-avoidance hobby involves helping animals, so it’s hard to get that mad at him for it. Martin is soliciting donations on Prizeo to raise money for the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary in New Mexico, an organization that houses rescued wolves and wolf-dogs. The thing about Prizeo, though, is that it offers Kickstarter-style rewards for certain donation levels, and the rewards Martin is offering will certainly be exciting for fans of the books that he’s not working on.
For starters, everyone who donates will be entered into a drawing to win a chance to fly to New Mexico, meet Martin, and take a helicopter ride to visit the the wolf sanctuary. Along the way, Martin says the winner will have the chance to ask him anything they’ve ever wanted to know about his books or the show. This would obviously be the perfect opportunity to bring up the fact that he’s taking you on a helicopter ride instead of finishing the damn books, but we’re not going to tell the contest winner how to use their prize.
Most of the other rewards are pretty straightforward stuff, from t-shirts to signed maps and letters, but things reach a whole new level of crazy for people who are willing to give over $4,500. At that level, you’ll get a signed copy of the script for the first episode of Game Of Thrones, but for $7,500 you can get one of Martin’s actual hats. Yes, a real hat that he wore on his head for a presumably extended period of time. Imagine all of the great scenes he wrote while wearing it! Imagine the smell!
If you bump your donation up to $15,000, you’ll get a chance to eat breakfast with Martin, which he will later describe in disturbingly elaborate detail for much longer than necessary. Finally, for $20,000, Martin will write you in as a character in an upcoming Song Of Ice And Fire novel and then kill off that character in a “grisly” manner. He’ll even let you choose their social status in Westeros, so they can be a “lordling, knight, peasant, whore, lady, maester, septon” or whatever.
Hey, what if we all pooled our money together and won that top reward? It would be pretty great to see Lord Avey Clubbe be the first to die from some horrible disease.