George R.R. Martin in New York City

When rumors of Martin's arrival spread through the crowd, a standing ovation began. This one stopped quickly, as the rumors turned out to be rather exaggerated, but after another false alarm or two we greeted the man himself with applause, hooting, and shouts of KING IN THE NORTH. Martin talked for about forty minutes, answering questions for half of it and opened with "See, I really was working on it" while holding Dance up. I'll admit I took no notes, so I'm representing the questions in the order that I remember them, and everything's paraphrased unless explicitly quoted.

Throughout, you could tell that Martin was proud of his work, and deservedly so, but he was never arrogant or pretentious and mentioned the familiar but endearing story of the signing he held after the release of A Game of Thrones were the only four people in the store left as he began to speak, earning him an attendance of negative four. 

Of course, the first two things he tackled were the delay on this book and the feared wait for the next. He discussed the split, which most readers here no doubt know most of the details of, and mentioned that a part of the reason he split the characters up as he'd did was that he'd written far more for some perspectives than others. After that, he thought Dance would be fast, having already had enough finished manuscript pages to equal Feast. Alas, many of those were either discarded and revised, and the book proved a third longer (in manuscript form) than Feast.

As for the next book, and the length of the series, Martin would give no promises. He hopes soon, and he hopes no more than seven volumes, but we'll have to wait and see on both accounts. "It will be done when it's done," he said, to a fair bit of applause. Before Winds of Winter, he'll write – and revise and revise and revise – the fourth Dunk and Egg novella and work on the world book, which should likely be coming out next year and might help salve the long wait for the sixth volume. There's also a potential Cookbook of Ice and Fire on the way as well, courtesy of the female duo who're preparing the various meals described in the series here. George, "more an eater than a cook," was presented with a dinner that sounded rather scrumptious at the start of the event.

Martin said that the fans in attendance could be divided into three categories: those with him since the beginning, those who read after watching the show, and those who watched but never read. (I suppose that I, having come to the series at the tail end of '08, am in group 1.5.) About the show, he had nothing but praise and said that he "loved" it and the experience of seeing his work adapted. That being said, he cautioned us, particularly about season's two Battle of the Blackwater, to remember that TV shows have budgets to consider, and that no budget can stand against a reader's imagination. As for a cameo, he had one in the pilot, but those scenes – for reasons unrelated – ended up on the cutting room floor, both for actors that were recast and for the overly humongous hats the nobility of Pentos, of which George was one, were decked out in. He has, however, done a few cameos in Beauty and the Beast, back when his hair was darker and he was skinnier, and fans are free to seek those out. A Game of Thrones attracted no less than 13 Emmys, he told us, and then said that Dance was the biggest seller of 2011 so far.

A fan asked about gay characters in the series, and Martin confirmed their existence and touched on the rather explicit nature of HBO's showing of Renly and Loras. He tries to show people from all groups – "gay, women, and people of color" were, I believe, his words – and that he believes that we're "all human" and all have some good and some bad. He has villains, heroes, cravens, selfish, and selfless from each group and each walk of life.

He responded to a question about the purpose of the gods in the series by discussing the two kinds of readers, one which reads solely for the plot (to whom he suggest the cliff notes) and the other that reads to experience. He's firmly in the latter school, as any of his readers could no doubt guess, and mentions living along with the characters in Lord of the Rings. He's heard claims that his works have gratuitous sex, gratuitous feasting, and gratuitous heraldry, but never of gratuitous violence. To the first of those, he said (and I am, I should mention again, writing from memory, here): "I show an axe entering a skull, and it's fine. But when I show a penis entering a vagina, then the letters will come."

To "Hodor, Hodor, Hodor, Hodor, Hodor, Hodor," Martin responded "Hodor." As I'm sure most are aware, Tyrion is (still) his favorite character. When asked if his advice for writing has changed in the process of Dance, he said that it hasn't. He advocates writing every day and beginning with short stories, comparing starting with an epic series (one perhaps involving fire or at least some sort of ice) as equivalent to beginning one's life as a rock climber on Everest. "Start on Bear Mountain," he urged us New Yorkers.

Another writing related question followed, where a fan mentioned Howard's sudden and vivid inspiration for Conan, and George's on mention of seeing the direwolf pups out of the blue, and asked how long should fans work towards such visions. Martin's response was to always try and make something out of them, and to keep working at it, though he did caution that it doesn't do to be too romantic about these things. One chapter in Dance came to him perfectly clearly, and demanded to be written, but it led nowhere, and – after attempting it half a hundred ways and even in dream form – he had to leave it on the cutting room floor. He also took a few stabs about the idea of a muse or writing via telepathic communication with another dimension; believe it or not, it's all one rather imaginative bearded man.

Segueing from there (though it was an entirely different question likely asked at the opposite end of the event), Martin said that he keeps almost everything in his head, though he does keep notes. He praised Elio, a certain Westerosi King , and Linda for knowing more about the series than he does and always having an answer (within five minutes) to any question he might ask. He's not totally sure how he remembers all the details and heraldry that he does, as all his prior works were stand alones (which he plans to go back to, after the series).

Despite notes and Ran, he does occasionally make mistakes – the two he cited being a character's magically changing eyes and a horse's sex change – which he hates, because they obfuscate the intentional mistakes of character memory, such as Ned's and Jaime's different descriptions of everyone's favorite kingslayer's finest moment. He hates when "George the Author" detracts from the work of "George the Brilliant Artist."

The last book that he read that made him go wow was James S.A. Corey's Leviathan Wakes, written by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, which he said had a war between Earth and Mars, tough Belters from the asteroid belt, and space zombies – exactly the kind of space opera he likes to read. It's received great reviews, so now Martin's got no choice but to keep Ty's head down by showing him the reviews that Dance has gotten. The last question was whether he got protests from his editor about that big thing in A Game of Thrones, to which he only answered "No."

While waiting in line, I agonized the whole while about how to act in my two seconds of fame with him – overly heartfelt? Misery-esque devotion? glib? – and ended up asking if any one scene in Dance was as difficult to write as "a certain wedding in book three" (attempting to avoid spoilers for the A Game of Thrones reading fellow two places back, just in case). He said that Dance was hard in a different way – chronologically, lining all the perspectives up in Meereen – but no one scene was nearly as troubling as the Red Wedding.

Oh, finally – to the fan I sat next to – hello, Zach, if you're reading this. Nice to meet you and talk to you for a few hours. Perhaps we'll meet again, come the winds of winter.

Patrick Rothfuss in Brooklyn

Tuesday night, I went to go see Patrick Rothfuss in Brooklyn. He was everything he sounds like in interviews and writes like on his blog, funny, charming, and intelligent. 


The Barnes & Noble, on the other hand, was infuriating, and, if there'd been another venue where I could've purchased my book and not missed the signing, I would've done so if it was twice the price. Because there "wasn't room," the discussion and question and answer portions of the signing were cancelled. Now, it was obviously true that the store lacked room – after all, they didn't even have an events room, making me wonder where exactly they were planning to put all these people before they shrugged and decided they couldn't be bothered and left us to wait outside. 


I've no complaints about Rothfuss, but if I'd known that the store was so incompetent I probably wouldn't have made the trip. Hopefully Rothfuss chooses a better venue next time he visits New York.

Brandon Sanderson in New York City

Monday night, I went into New York City to go to Brandon Sanderson’s book signing. A combination of more people than last time and a smaller venue led to a more cramped feel with ghastly waits, but I’m still happy I went. Now, I think signed books are decently snazzy and all, but the main reason these events are cool for me is to put a face to a name and, especially, to hear the talk/Q&A. I’m not doing a word for word recreation here (my memory’s not that good, I didn’t take notes, and, besides, that’d be totally unnecessary), but I’ll try and get the gist of all of it.

The questions got off to a spoilery start, as the first half dozen were all RAFO’d, as Sanderson put it. Those included: Do we see Verin in Towers of Midnight? Do we see a 13 channeler conversion in Towers of Midnight? Who are the Red Veil dudes at the end? Etc, etc, etc.

After that, we get into some questions with actual answers, though the first proved obnoxious as hell. A man asked why the old tongue sounds more formal when Mat speaks it in the early books than when he does in the later. Sanderson said that the difference was caused by Mat’s familiarity with the tongue. But no, that’s not good enough, because the asker doesn’t buy that. Uh…what? It’s the guy writing it with the series’ creators notes. He knows the Objective Truth here, and, if you don’t like it, that’s just unfortunate, because it’s Correct.

Anyway, the asker’s reasoning was that the earlier segment was Germanic in its structure, the later French. Sanderson then spoke of all fantasy novels inherently being in translation and the difference in formality and base being the way to obtain the effect that the original had, whether the original was actually changing from German to French or not. He then went off on the subject of fantasy puns, which he said require some fancy meta footwork, because, really, if it’s a pun in our language it’s pretty unlikely in theirs as well. At this point, Alan (one of Jordan’s assistants and, evidently, the resident Old Tongue expert) then picked apart and stomped on the asker’s arguments using his far superior knowledge of said Old tongue. In short, it’s a fluid language that has depths we haven’t seen yet, which will be revealed in the house-sized Wheel of Time encyclopedia coming after A Memory of Light.

The most interesting question of the evening was how Sanderson finds it to work from the outline of another. As anyone who reads Sanderson’s blog or listens to Writing Excuses knows, he’s an outliner. Those outlines are, it seems, organized, not in a strict chronological progression, but rather as a succession of major events, with the connective tissue added later. In many cases, this was the form that Jordan’s notes took, with the central scenes often written or at least alluded to and with the gaps between them left dark. There were a select few Jordan planned events that Sanderson altered – mostly things that were set down indefinitely: “maybe I’ll do this. Or this. Or neither,” as Sanderson paraphrased – but he stuck to the outline the vast majority of the time.

For the scenes that were not in any way planned, Sanderson brainstormed a large number of possibilities, ranging from the obvious to the out there, and then took the one that he thought best – often in the form of an already written scene – to “Team Jordan” to get there opinion. Occasionally, he had to axe the idea, though he managed to sway them a majority of the time. There were two main “eyebrow raises” in his planning for the first two books of his series-capping trilogy, one of which made it into the books and worked, the other of which was dumped. As to what any of the eyebrow raisers – major or minor – were, Sanderson declined to reveal, due to not wanting us to pick apart the books by author, though he did say that he’d speak more freely after A Memory of Light.

There was a question about whether it’s possible for there to be female ta’veren and, if so, whether Egewene was one. The answer to the first is yes, but, as to the second, there are no female ta’veren in the main storyline, so Egwene’s out as a candidate.

Finally (though I’m totally improving the order, here) there was a very sensible question about the total lack of communication in the series: Why do the three men always banish the visions immediately upon their appearance rather than, you know, using them as the incredibly useful tool that they are? Sanderson said that the three are all a bit shell shocked about where they are and that all of them – even Mat, though to a lesser degree for him – still wish they were back in the Two Rivers, so they rid themselves of the reminders of their importance (the visions) as fast as they can without really thinking about the consequences. To me, that answer sort of reeks of plot convenience (Rand got over his wah, wah, wish I was a farmboy thing six thousand pages ago), but ah well.

When I was getting my book signed, I asked the only non-Wheel of Time question I heard that evening: “What’s the connection between the three planned Mistborn trilogies and the short novel in that world? Is there going to be some kind of overarching plot?” He said that there would be a large scale plot that unified the series, but that it’s not going to be something initially obvious, and that, though we’ve seen elements of it, it’s unlikely we could ever really guess what it is.

So, all in all, it was a good evening, even if I had to wait an inordinately long time, and fail an inordinately large amount of trivia, before I could have my forty-five seconds with Sanderson. Oh, and I’ve now got signed copies of Mistborn, Way of Kings, and Towers of Midnight, to go along with my Gathering Storm, Elantris, and Warbreaker from the last signing he did here.