All summer jings! I'm a really slow reader..it'll take me a year to read the first book! It takes George Martin up to 6 years to write one of the books which is why the adaptation is overlapping the books. The big fear amongst fans is that he's quite elderly and not the healthiest looking person on the planet, and everyones terrified that he won't get round to finishing the series. It's all so complicated he has to check and double check what he's written about each character. He's very involved with the series though, and writes one episode per series [not usually allowed as they say the author is too close to the story to adapt it]. I would imagine that he's given them a synposis of the whole story just in case something happens to stop him writing it.Dan and Ben [?] write most of the episodes anyway and they know the characters inside out. One of the things George Martin asked them when they wanted to produce it [people were lining up to do so I think] was 'who is Jon Snow's mother'. When they told him, he knew that they 'got it' and let them produce it. I know I'm quite bonkers about it but the characters are as deep and complex as any that I've read in other books, because he explores what makes evil people evil and you start to question everything and everybody and the reasons/motives for what they do. But, hey, I don't need to sell it to you . And you get to love the characters so much that you fear for them [and quite rightly so ]. The only one that bores me is Stannis [my daughter says the same] but it may be different in the books....[?]