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'Game of Thrones' Author Wrote First Novel While Living In Uptown

By Mina Bloom | April 9, 2015 6:14am
 George R. R. Martin lived in Uptown apartments at (top l.) 932 W. Margate Terrace and (bottom l.) 938 W. Argyle St.
George R. R. Martin lived in Uptown apartments at (top l.) 932 W. Margate Terrace and (bottom l.) 938 W. Argyle St.
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DNAinfo/Mina Bloom; Facebook

UPTOWN — Long before the HBO television series "Game of Thrones" became enormously popular, George R. R. Martin, the author of "A Song of Ice and Fire" and other fantasy novels that the series is based on, lived in a couple of different Uptown apartments.

While living in the North Side neighborhood, he wrote his first novel, ate at a nearby greasy spoon so much that he would routinely order "the usual," and got his heart broken.

After graduating from Northwestern University, Martin shared a three-bedroom apartment with "a bunch of guys" at 932 W. Margate Terrace from 1971 to 1975, according to Martin's website.

"I say 'three-bedroom,' but for our purposes there were five, once we put a bed in the dining room and another on the back porch," he wrote, adding that the rent was $150 a month at the time. 

Mina Bloom details Martin's time on the North Side:

He said roommates passed through the apartment "so frequently you would have thought the place had a revolving door," but he was one of the constants. He also recalled that musicians would always show up at their parties. They'd ask him what instrument he played and he'd reply, "The typewriter."

Cats were also constantly showing up to his Uptown apartment, Martin wrote. They started out with one cat but ended up with five. While most of the cats belonged to his roommates, Martin said he grew attached to a couple of them. One of the cats in his novel, "Tuf Voyaging," which is not related to "Game of Thrones," is based on a cat, Dax, that lived in the Uptown apartment. The fictional cat is also named Dax.

"The original was not telepathic, but he was dangerous," Martin said of the cat. "He sent me to the hospital once."

Martin left the Margate Terrace apartment when his girlfriend Gale Burnick, whom he would later marry, said she didn't like living with a lot of roommates and cats. They found a place of their own one block north at 938 W. Argyle St., also in Uptown.

Martin called the move "the worst" he's ever experienced.

"Down three flights of creaky back steps, through the alleyways, across the street (dodging traffic, since we weren't about to detour to the corner to cross), and then up two flights to our second floor apartment," he wrote.

But he finally had his own office, which allowed him to write his very first novel, "Dying of the Light."

Other highlights of Martin's life in Uptown: He ate breakfast at a greasy spoon on Argyle Street, Don's Grill, three or four times a week. There, you could get two scrambled eggs, bacon, buttered toast and coffee for $1.31 plus tax, he said.

"It was the only restaurant I've ever eaten at where I could go in and order 'the usual,'" Martin said. "The last time I visited Argyle, it had all gone Asian. Don's is still a greasy spoon but now it's a Vietnamese greasy spoon, and I doubt you could get breakfast for $1.31."

He also recalls getting his heart broken by Lisa Tuttle, who would later become an award-winning fantasy novelist.

"I won't say that wasn't hard, but we continued to correspond and collaborate, despite my broken heart," Martin said.

Martin is also a big fan of the Uptown Theatre, which he said used to screen "grindhouse" films in the '70s, according to a 2010 Tribune article

"The Uptown Theatre broke my heart," Martin told the Tribune. "It's one of the great theaters of the world and it's just sitting there, just decaying."

"Game of Thrones" will return to HBO on April 12. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Martin is at work creating a new TV series, "Captain Cosmos." It will revolve around a TV sci-fi writer in 1949. 

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