How Neil Gaiman helped with the Fire & Blood audiobook

We talk to audiobook narrator Simon Vance about his work on Fire & Blood, and his chances of narrating The Winds of Winter when it finally comes out…

Simon Vance is a giant of the audiobook world — he’s read books like Dune, Dracula, Great Expectations, Alan Moore’s Jerusalem, and many, many more. Of particular interest to Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire fans, Vance narrated Fire & Blood, George R.R. Martin’s history of the Targaryen dynasty that HBO is even adapting as House of the Dragon.

We talked to Vance — along with other audiobook champion Scott Brick — about how he landed this gig, and about a possible return to Westeros.

As you can tell by looking at his catalog, Vance has an abiding love for fantasy, and got proper into Game of Thrones while it was on. But it would take more than love of the genre to get the audiobook gig, so Vance enlisted the help of another major name in fantasy:

"I heard that he was producing this history of the Targaryens, so I used a connection that I had through someone I might thought bump into George Martin at conferences — it was actually Neil Gaiman — and I sent him an email, saying, ‘Hey, Neil, if you happen to see George at any of these things could you mention I’m interested?’ And he actually said, ‘Oh, I’ll forward an email from you.’ So I actually sent an email to George through Neil saying, ‘Hi, George, love your work.’"

Hey, if you can get Neil Gaiman to help you out with anything, more power to you. Soon enough, Vance call from someone at Macmillan Publishers saying that Martin wanted him to narrate Fire & Blood. “So whatever it was it worked…It was such a thrill.”

You can hear Vance’s work on Fire & Blood right now. However, that book is just the first part of a two-part story, with the back half still to come. Naturally, Vance is looking out for it. “The book that must be forthcoming at some point, having done Volume I of the history of the Targaryens, I may get to do Volume 2,” he said. “However, given George Martin’s rate of output, it may be a decade or two before we get there.”

I think most fans would agree that they want to see Martin finish up The Winds of Winter, the long-in-coming sixth volume in the Song of Ice and Fire series, before he writes Fire & Blood Part 2. But when Winds is finished (hopefully very soon), might Vance be first in line to do the audiobook? Actor Roy Dotrice did the audiobooks for the first five entries, but he unfortunately passed away a few years ago. Does that mean Vance is first in line for the job?

“It’s not impossible,” Vance told us. “I couldn’t possibly comment; nobody has reached out to me. I’ll have a word with Neil who’ll have a word with George who might have a word with…”

"I’m quite open to the fact that they will get a name actor who has experience doing audiobooks to do it. Cause you know, George Martin could pick anybody to do the next Game of Thrones book, so you cannot bet the house on something like that."

Martin tends to work with people he’s comfortable with, and obviously he trusted Vance enough to let him narrate Fire & Blood. I wouldn’t be shocked if he was on a shortlist for The Winds of Winter somewhere. “I’ll cross my fingers for it,” Vance said. Us too.

We talk with Vance and Brick about a lot more than just Fire & Blood, including Brick witnessing firsthand just how tight security is before the release of a hotly anticipated new book. “There was this one pallet and it had four armed guards, one at each corner…so the employees can’t go in and lift one and bring it home,” he said of the release of one of the Song of Ice and Fire books. “It’s crazy. They’re a license to print money so I can understand.”

Feel free to check out more of the interview above!

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