George R.R. Martin shares the "mistake" he made at the start of Game of Thrones

There are a lot of working authors out there, but relatively few who become household names. There are several exceptions that prove the rule, including legal drama writer John Grisham, horror writer Anne Rice, and fantasy writer George R.R. Martin, the man behind A Song of Ice and Fire, which HBO adapted as Game of Thrones.

Martin has got to be among the most recognized authors alive today, but it wasn't always so. While contemplating the pros and cons of fame during a talk at the Oxford Writers House, Martin remembered a time when his fame was at a much more manageable level. "I sold my first short story when I was 21 years old and, and had a certain amount of fame within the little puddle of science fiction right in the beginning," he recalled. "I could go to a science fiction convention and put on my name badge and people would ask for my autograph and I would be on panels and stuff like that, and I could take it off and I could go to McDonald's and have a cheeseburger and nobody would pay any attention to me. But that's gone now."

"[T[here [are] good things and bad things about it. The fortune, yes, the fortune is very good. The fame can be very nice. People say very nice things. But...I can't turn it off anymore. It's everywhere. And you know, I have my loyal minion here who is much sterner and more frightening to me and can chase away people. Perfectly nice people. But sometimes there's so many of them. You know, you sit in a restaurant and someone comes up to you and says, 'I don't mean to interrupt your dinner,' but you are going to interrupt [dinner]. There's someone else and then there's someone else and then there's someone else so it can be a lot."

On the whole, Martin is glad he's become famous. "I think it's more good than bad...It comes with the territory." But I don't think it's hard to imagine fame coming along with its fair share of challenges as well.

Would Martin return to relative anonymity if he could? It may not be possible anymore, although he does look back at one moment where everything changed. I" probably did make a mistake when we got Game of Thrones going for the TV show," he remembered. "We were using a lot of unknown actors. The best known was Sean Bean, who we were going to kill. They did a lot of publicity with me because I was a pretty well known writer and that really got my face out there, which wasn't necessarily the greatest thing in the world."

"Stephen King, who I know a little bit, told me once, 'you know, the worst mistake I ever made was doing that credit card commercial, where before that you may [only] have seen his picture on the back of his book. But after he did that American Express commercial back in the 80s...then everybody in the world knew what Stephen King looked like. [That] changed his life fundamentally, as fame has changed mine."

It's true: horror writer Stephen King did appear in an American Express commercial back in 1985. To be fair, I can't really make out his face in this grainy YouTube version, but I imagine it was a lot brighter back then:

I'm also not 100% clear on why American Express thought the guy behind Carrie and The Shining would be the best spokesperson for their credit card, but that's beside the point.

Some fans have speculated that George R.R. Martin's rising fame partially accounts for why he's taken so long to write The Winds of Winter, the next book in his Song of Ice and Fire series, since he now has other things competing for his attention. But ultimately, only Martin himself knows the full story. Hopefully he'll tell that story, among others, someday soon.

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and Twitter account, sign up for our exclusive newsletter and check out our YouTube channel.