Editing George R. R. Martin (section)

=== Concentration on writing ===
While he enjoyed teaching, the sudden death of friend and fellow author [[Tom Reamy]] in late 1977 made Martin reevaluate his own life, and he eventually decided to try to become a full-time writer. In 1979 he resigned from his job and moved from Dubuque to [[Santa Fe, New Mexico]] at the end of the year.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.vanityfair.com/vf-hollywood/george-r-r-martin-interview|title=George R.R. Martin Has a Detailed Plan For Keeping the Game of Thrones TV Show From Catching Up To Him|magazine=Vanity Fair|date=March 14, 2014|access-date=October 30, 2014}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://georgerrmartin.com/about-george/life-and-times/dubuque/|title=Dubuque {{pipe}} George R.R. Martin}}</ref> There he would live alone for almost three years, a period he described as tremendously productive in regard to writing.<ref name="New house">{{Cite web|url=https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2020/08/15/back-in-westeros/|title=Back in Westeros {{pipe}} Not a Blog}}</ref>

Martin is a member of the [[Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America]] (SFWA); he served as the organization's Southwest Regional Director from 1977 to 1979, and as its vice-president from 1996 to 1998.<ref name="prior-sfwa-board">{{cite web | url=https://www.sfwa.org/about/current-officers/prior-sfwa-board-officers/ | title=Prior SFWA Board & Officers | publisher=SFWA | access-date=December 19, 2022}}</ref> In 1976, for Kansas City's [[MidAmeriCon]], the [[34th World Science Fiction Convention]] ([[Worldcon]]), Martin and his friend and fellow writer-editor [[Gardner Dozois]] conceived of and organized the first Hugo Losers' Party for the benefit of all past and present Hugo-losing writers on the evening following the convention's Hugo Awards ceremony. Martin was nominated for two Hugos that year but lost both awards, for the novelette "...and Seven Times Never Kill Man" and the novella ''The Storms of Windhaven'', co-written with [[Lisa Tuttle]].<ref name="Locusmag">{{cite news|url= http://www.locusmag.com/SFAwards/Db/LocusNomList.html|work= The Locus|title= Index to SF Awards|access-date= August 14, 2012|url-status=dead|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20090505221416/http://www.locusmag.com/SFAwards/Db/LocusNomList.html|archive-date= May 5, 2009|df= mdy-all}}</ref> Although Martin often writes fantasy or horror, a number of his earlier works are science fiction tales occurring in a loosely defined [[future history]], known informally as "The Thousand Worlds" or "The Manrealm".

In 2017, Martin recalled that he had started writing science fiction-horror hybrids in the late 1970s to disprove a statement from a critic claiming that science fiction and horror were opposites and therefore incompatible. Martin considered ''[[Sandkings (novelette)|Sandkings]]'' (1979) the best known of these. Another was the novella ''[[Nightflyers]]'' (1980), whose screen and television rights were purchased by Vista in 1984, which produced a 1987 film adaptation, ''[[Nightflyers (film)|Nightflyers]]'', with a screenplay co-written by Martin.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://grrm.livejournal.com/555986.html|title=The NIGHTFLYER Flies Again|last=grrm|date=November 27, 2017|website=livejournal.com}}</ref> Martin was unhappy about having to cut plot elements in order to accommodate the film's small budget.<ref name="NPR2012">{{cite web | url=https://www.npr.org/2012/09/15/161142894/thrones-author-george-r-r-martin-plays-not-my-job?ps=view&ec=mostpopular | title='Thrones' Author George R.R. Martin Plays Not My Job | publisher=NPR | date=September 15, 2012 | access-date=September 16, 2012 | author=Peter Sagal}}</ref> While not a hit at theatres, Martin believes that the film saved his career, and that everything he has written since exists in large part because of it.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://grrm.livejournal.com/553183.html|title=NIGHTFLYERS at the JCC|last=grrm|date=October 23, 2017|website=livejournal.com}}</ref> He has also written at least one piece of political-military fiction, "Night of the Vampyres", collected in [[Harry Turtledove]]'s anthology ''The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century'' (2001).<ref>{{cite news|title=Night of the Vampyres|last=Martin|first=George R.R.|editor1-last=Turtledove|editor1-first=Harry|editor2-last=Greenberg|editor2-first=Martin H. |work=The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century|location= New York|publisher= Ballantine|date= May 2001|pages= 279–306}}</ref>

In 1982, Martin published a vampire novel titled ''[[Fevre Dream]]'' set in the 19th century on the Mississippi River, in the heyday of the great paddle steamers. Unlike traditional vampire novels, in ''Fevre Dream'' vampires are not supernatural creatures, but are rather a different species related to humans created by evolution with superhuman powers. Critic Don D'Amassa has praised ''Fevre Dream'' for its strong 19th-century atmosphere and wrote: "This is without question one of the greatest vampire novels of all time".<ref name="D'Amassa pages 388-390">D'Amassa, Don "Martin, George" pages 388-390 from ''St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost and Gothic Writers'' edited by David Pringle, Detroit: St. James Press, 1997 page 390.</ref> Martin followed up ''Fevre Dream'' with another [[horror novel]], ''[[The Armageddon Rag]]'' (1983). The unexpected commercial failure of ''The Armageddon Rag'' "essentially destroyed my career as a novelist at the time", he recalled, and made him consider going into [[real estate]] instead.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://finance.yahoo.com/news/failure-nearly-made-apos-game-143043933.html|title=This failure nearly made "Game of Thrones" creator George R.R. Martin stop writing and go into real estate|website=finance.yahoo.com|date=April 14, 2019 }}</ref>

In 1984, the new editor of Baen Books, Betsy Mitchell, called Martin to ask him if he had considered doing a collection of Haviland Tuf adventures. Martin, who had several favorite series characters like [[Solomon Kane]], [[Elric]], [[Nicholas van Rijn]] and Magnus Ridolph, had made an attempt to create such a character on his own in the 1970s with his Tuf stories. He was interested, but was too occupied with the writing of his next book, the never-completed novel ''Black and White and Red All Over'', which occupied most of his writing time the same year. But after the failure of ''The Armageddon Rag'', all editors rejected his upcoming novel, and desperate for money, he accepted Mitchell's offer and wrote some more Tuf stories which were collected in ''[[Tuf Voyaging]]'', which sold well enough for Mitchell to suggest a sequel. Martin was willing and agreed to do it, but before he got started he got an offer from Hollywood, where producer Philip DeGuere Jr. wanted to adapt ''The Armageddon Rag'' into a film. The film adaptation did not happen, but they stayed in touch, and when DeGuere became the producer for the revival of ''[[The Twilight Zone (1985 TV series)|The Twilight Zone]]'', Martin was offered a job as a writer. Working for television paid a lot better than writing literature, so he decided to move to Hollywood to seek a new career.<ref name="berwick20120601">{{cite news | url=http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/bd1e2638-a8b7-11e1-a747-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1wYzURCl0 | archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221210201247/https://www.ft.com/content/bd1e2638-a8b7-11e1-a747-00144feabdc0#axzz1wYzURCl0 | archive-date=December 10, 2022 | url-access=subscription | url-status=live | title=Lunch with the FT: George RR Martin | work=Financial Times | date=June 1, 2012 | access-date=June 1, 2012 | author=Berwick, Isabel }}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mp2dODRtZOUC&q=fantasy+Moorcock%27s+Elric+Howard%27s+Solomon+Kane%2C+Gray+Mouser+Dominic+Flandry&pg=PT8|title=Dreamsongs: A RRetrospective|first=George R. R.|last=Martin|date=September 18, 2008|publisher=Orion|via=Google Books|isbn=978-0-575-08612-8}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.indiewire.com/2014/10/george-r-r-martin-talks-comic-books-taxes-and-hating-game-of-thrones-interviews-68889/|title=George R.R. Martin Talks Comic Books, Taxes and Hating "Game Of Thrones" Interviews|first=Zack|last=Sharf|date=October 21, 2014|website=indiewire.com}}</ref> At first he worked as staff writer for the show, and then as an executive story consultant.

After the [[CBS]] series was cancelled, Martin migrated over to the already-underway satirical science fiction series [[Max Headroom (TV series)|''Max Headroom'']]. He worked on scripts and created the show's "Ped Xing" character. However, before his scripts could go into production, the [[American Broadcasting Company|ABC]] show was cancelled in the middle of its second season. Martin was hired as a writer-producer on the new dramatic fantasy series ''[[Beauty and the Beast (1987 TV series)|Beauty and the Beast]]''; in 1989, he became the show's co-supervising producer and wrote 14 of its episodes.

In 1987, Martin published a collection of short horror stories in ''[[Portraits of His Children]]''. During this same period, Martin continued working in print media as a book-series editor, this time overseeing the development of the multi-author ''[[Wild Cards]]'' book series, which takes place in a [[shared universe]] in which a small slice of post–[[World War II]] humanity gains superpowers after the release of an alien-engineered virus; new titles are published in the ongoing series from [[Tor Books]]. In ''Second Person'', Martin "gives a personal account of the close-knit [[role-playing game]] (RPG) culture that gave rise to his ''Wild Cards'' shared-world anthologies".<ref>{{cite journal|last=Kerr|first=John Finlay |date=2009|title=Second person: Role-playing and story in games and playable media|editor1-last=Harrigan|editor1-first=Pat|editor2-last=Wardrip-Fruin|editor2-first=Noah|journal=Transformative Works and Cultures|number= 2 |doi=10.3983/twc.2009.0095|doi-access=free}}</ref> An important element in the creation of the multiple-author series was a campaign of [[Chaosium]]'s role-playing game ''[[Superworld]]'' (1983) that Martin ran in [[Albuquerque]].<ref name="designers">{{Cite book|author=Shannon Appelcline|title=Designers & Dragons|publisher=Mongoose Publishing|year=2011| isbn= 978-1-907702-58-7|page=87}}</ref> Admitting he became completely obsessed with the game, he stopped writing literature for most of 1983, which he refers to as his "lost year", but his shrinking bank accounts made him realize he had to come up with something, and got the idea that perhaps the stories and characters created in ''Superworld'' could somehow become profitable.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.tor.com/2011/06/06/1-the-first-wild-cards-day-or-the-game-that-ate-my-life/|title=The First Wild Cards Day or, the Game That Ate My Life|date=June 6, 2011}}</ref> Martin's own contributions to ''Wild Cards'' have included Thomas Tudbury, "[[The Great and Powerful Turtle]]", a powerful [[psychokinetic]] whose flying "shell" consisted of an armored [[VW Beetle]]. {{as of|2011|June}}, 21 ''Wild Cards'' volumes had been published in the series; earlier that same year, Martin signed the contract for the 22nd volume, ''Low Ball'' (2014), published by [[Tor Books]]. In early 2012, Martin signed another Tor contract for the 23rd ''Wild Cards'' volume, ''High Stakes'', which was released in August 2016.<ref name="HighStakes">{{cite web|title=High Stakes|url=http://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765335623|publisher=[[Macmillan Publishers]]|access-date=July 11, 2016}}</ref>

In August 2016, Martin announced that [[Universal Cable Productions]] had acquired the rights to adapt the ''Wild Cards'' novels into a television series.<ref name="George R. R. Martin">{{cite web|url=http://grrm.livejournal.com/496792.html |title=The Wild Cards Are Coming... to Television |website=Not A Blog |publisher=George R. R. Martin |access-date=August 16, 2016 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160818020405/http://grrm.livejournal.com/496792.html |archive-date=August 18, 2016 }}</ref> He noted that he himself would not write for the adaptation due to focusing on ''A Song of Ice and Fire''.<ref name="George R. R. Martin" />

In 2014, Martin said in a [[BBC]] interview that he writes using [[WordStar]] [[word processor|editor software]], on an [[MS-DOS]] [[Personal computer|computer]], because he dislikes having his work [[spell checker|spell-checked]] and to avoid [[internet]] distractions. He uses a separate computer for common internet tasks.<ref>{{Cite news |date=May 14, 2014 |title=Game of Thrones author George RR Martin: 'Why I still use DOS' |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27407502 |access-date=August 9, 2024 |work=BBC News |language=en-GB}}</ref>