A product specialist at Facebook has been identified as one of the two people who donated $20,000 each to buy their way into an upcoming release in author George RR Martin’s Game of Throne series.
The 30-year-old social network employee, Dave Goldblatt, donated the sum towards a charity endorsed by Martin after the author announced earlier this month that he’d create a character based off anyone willing to contribute $20,000 to the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary in Candy Kitchen, New Mexico. After being introduced in his series, Martin said, the character will then be killed off.
“At this level, you'll get the incredibly exclusive opportunity to have George name a character after you in a future A Song of Ice and Fire novel. There is one male character and one female character available. You can choose your character's station in the world (lordling, knight, peasant, whore, lady, maester, septon, anything) and you will certainly meet a grisly death!” Martin said when he announced his fundraising effort earlier this month.
According to ABC News, Goldblatt said he became hooked on Game of Thrones and read every book in Martin’s series after a friend suggested he check out the GoT television series. As for his choice of character, he says he’d prefer to be a “Valyrian.”
"You read some piece of fiction and for whatever reason you think one particular character or race is cool – and for whatever reason, I thought the Valyrians were cool. I’m hoping in future books we get to see more of them,” he told ABC News.
"I’m just lucky enough to be in a position to do this," he said of his donation. "Obviously, the money is going to charity, so it’s an added bonus. I didn’t immediately seek to help wolf sanctuaries, but the more I read about the charities, I learned it was a worthwhile cause."
On a public LinkedIn profile for Goldblatt, he writes that he joined Facebook in 2007 and worked on the website’s graph search function. In 2013, he claims to have won a beer pong tournament held between members of Facebook’s product operations division.
A second person has donated $20,000 to earn their way into an upcoming work of Martin’s, but ABC reported that the individual, a woman, has for now chosen to be anonymous.
Meanwhile, a rendition of the theme to the Game of Thrones television series is making waves after a YouTube video of cover performed by a New Orleans-style jazz band went viral this week. A clip of the group, Swamp Donkeys, performing their version of the tune has been viewed nearly a quarter-of-a-million times online already this week.