GRRM in Portugal

[cteresa]

Me again, who really has to leave, but an important note, from the publisher site, in portuguese an extra session in Porto on the 3rd

[url="http://saidadeemergencia.com/index.php?page=Articles.ArticleView&article_id=199&SSID=vj7j0ueu60o9ufcgogl5sg90u3&SSID=vj7j0ueu60o9ufcgogl5sg90u3"]http://saidadeemergencia.com/index.php?pag...9ufcgogl5sg90u3[/url]

Dia 3 de Julho, às 18.30h, no auditório da Fnac do Norte Shopping (Porto):

• Pré-lançamento exclusivo de A Tormenta de Espadas, o 5º volume de As Crónicas de Gelo e Fogo (oportunidade única de adquirir mais cedo um livro que só chegará às livrarias dia 11 de Agosto)

• Palestra de George R. R. Martin sobre As Crónicas de Gelo e Fogo com moderação de João Seixas

• Sessão de perguntas e respostas sobre a série e o autor

• Sessão de autógrafos

Translating, 6.30 pm at Fnac of Norte Shopping, with a similar program.

[Ran]

Thanks for posting it, Teresa. :)

[cteresa]

Ran, you and Linda got mentioned, that GRRM writes to you when he needs to find something fast about Westeros ;) I met Tiago really easily, it was nice to meet Kheophex also, but Tyrion I missed, the one Lannister tshirt was the publisher ;)

I think it went really really well from the point of view of organizers - it was at a department store, they had it very well publicitized, a gorgeous room, free orange juice and canapés. And I am no good at counting but like 200 or 300 people, room completely full, and a big queue for the prerelease of the first half of the ASOS translation and a lot of young people and older people, really fascinating! I was later talking to somebody from the store who was saying it went really well from their point of view. I took a bunch of notes ( and some photos) but no particular news, I will try to summarize later ( maybe after the saturday session) when I got more time. In fact perhaps I will skip today´s session, I wil decide later depending how tired and free I am at 5-6 pm. I think there is no likelihood of any bombs about ADWD or the series. It is not finished yet, plan is to end it by the end of the year for a 2009 publication date.

[Ran]

Great to hear that it was a success. :)

[Lupigis]

Thanks for the report, cteresa!

[quote name='cteresa' post='1424240' date='Jul 2 2008, 12.34']I think there is no likelihood of any bombs about ADWD or the series. It is not finished yet, plan is to end it by the end of the year for a 2009 publication date.[/quote]
Did GRRM say/imply "by the end of the year" i.e. in December or "sometime before the end of the year" i.e. possibly earlier? Just to satisfy my morbid curiosity...

[cteresa]

[quote name='Lupigis' post='1424343' date='Jul 2 2008, 13.55']Did GRRM say/imply "by the end of the year" i.e. in December or "sometime before the end of the year" i.e. possibly earlier? Just to satisfy my morbid curiosity...[/quote]

The report coming eventually - there are no real news. BTW regarding questions, I kid you not, the first ( or one of the first) was really if Ned is dead ;) Somebody asked about Rhaegar and Lyanna what was up. general laughter.

And the word was the end of the year, for a publication date in 2009 and that publishers would be able to turnover the manuscript into publishing very fast ( by industry standards, 3 months), particularly the british publishers. I did ask about specific hints, but no luck. The poison question, sorry, not quite up to it - and honestly I don´t think he would let slip important details, his replies were always generic.

[Sir Tiago]

Yup, what Teresa said, questions were asked but not a lot of details were givin away ;)
Yesterday was great, got to meet cteresa, which we have talked through here only, got to meet my favorite author, and probably the greatest fantasy/sci fi author of all time :D
Dance comes out 2009, he said so last night. So...we have to wait a bit more. The whole question and answer thing went really well, someone asked q GRRM had a favorite POV caracter, he replayed that since he has to live out every one that's it's kinda hard to point out a favorite, he need to love each one to be able to write about them..he did say Tyrion chapters were easier to write ;)

Today is another day, and I'll be there as well :D

[Sir Tiago]

Day 2 went REALLY well, it was at another place, a lot less people, but he theme of the discussion was about writing in general, and not about the series in particular. So GRRM spoke alot about how he creates characters, how he started writing etc.. There were more questions and answers from the crowd and book signing (I actually bought Armageddon Rag in the store and got it signed as well ) I also got my Dr Weird comic book signed, how cool is that ;)

Today he is in Porto (about 250km's north of Lisbon) and on Saturday there will be a final venue (can't go :angry: )

[cteresa]

oh, you found dr weird, how cool! it´s legit right?

A pity i could not make it yesterday, sounds very cool. I am going on saturday, hope that session is good as well.

[Sir Tiago]

[quote name='cteresa' post='1426358' date='Jul 3 2008, 17.38']oh, you found dr weird, how cool! it´s legit right?

A pity i could not make it yesterday, sounds very cool. I am going on saturday, hope that session is good as well.[/quote]

Yup, legit but a remake from the early 90's ;) I gave it to GRRM before the presentation so he could have a look and I think it brought back memories for him :D He told us how it was actually written in high school etc..

[Simone]

News?

[cteresa]

[quote name='Sir Tiago' post='1426386' date='Jul 3 2008, 17.58']He told us how it was actually written in high school etc..[/quote]

:) That sounds like it would indeed bring back all sorts of good memories. An interesting piece on Diário de Noticias, one of the two major portuguese Daily papers, an "interview" in Portuguese

[url="http://dn.sapo.pt/2008/07/02/centrais/o_mundo_criei_vezes_dominame.html"]http://dn.sapo.pt/2008/07/02/centrais/o_mu...s_dominame.html[/url]

which is called an interview but sounds precisely almost like the day 1 session discussion. Nothing there is really new. I will take some notes of saturday´s session and try to summarize those later in english here, of both sessions I attended together, just later ( and really no real news )

[cteresa]

I was at yesterday´s session, it was much less attended - and less fans and more of a certain group of portuguese writers and critics. It was a double session, questions to GRRM and a portuguese author ( whose opinions and tastes do not particularly overlap mine, so will not comment). Perhaps tremendous bias from me, but GRRM´s comments were very interesting indeed. There were no mention of ASOIAF (just some tidbits about covers and policies, and about ADWD beeing announced as forthcoming in about 1997 ;)) and no questions. GRRM was incredibly kind at signing piles and piles and piles of books.

I am trying to transcribe my notes today, will return later probably - discussion was mostly about genre and writing, with some detours into portuguese publishing situation ( sometimes rather ungraceful ones IMO).

[Padraig]

Thanks for the updates Teresa! Sounds fun! :)

[cteresa]

awww Pod, you making me feel guilty I still have not transcribed the notes. Guys, if anybody is interested, do I post the notes someplace else? If so I want to go through them again. But just in case here goes my attempt at passing my notes from saturday. It was fun, sort of, a lot was discussed about things I love to think about, like genre and history of sf and so on.


These notes are not representative of the whole session and might have errors, I am just trying to write down in good faith what I remember. My memory, handwriting and language skills all got failings so please keep that in mind.

The theme of the session was genre: fantasy, sf, horror from an author´s point of view. Moderator was Rogério Ribeiro and the other participant was a portuguese author ( of sf I think) called João Seixas. Saturday, 5th of July 2008, 16.00 at the auditorium of Biblioteca Orlando Ribeiro ( Biblioteca de Telheiras) in Lisbon.

The discussion started with genre, in which field did GRRM feel more comfortable writing. GRRM replied he does not differentiate to any great extant, that he believes people write what they read and mentions the overlap of genre historically done, like Lovecraft´s sf stories, Jack Williamson´s work particularly "Darker than You Think". Discussion then turned to that in the USA there is strong differentiation of genres by the public, including separate labels and for younger writers breaking into the genre if they want to write in a different genre ( or subgenre) name changes are suggested.

GRRM mentioned that in the USA fantasy is going much better than sf. Historically sf outsold fantasy but then in the 60s Tolkien and then in 70s the Del Rey imprints and authors like Donaldson and Terry Brooks started to show up in the bestseller lists. Currently it´s not clear, that now that bestselling authors like Asimov and Heinlein and Clarke died, which sf authors can emerge to have that sort of bestselling numbers and status.

GRRM - Fantasy outselling SF seems to be a worldwide phenomen, even more pronounced in Britain than in the USA, the exception seems to be Asia, Japan particularly. GRRM thinks that is because the Asian countries have more belief in the future, that in the USA maybe readers have lost the belief in the “sf future”, that most americans when polled reply they think their children will have a worse life than they have, due to things to pollution and climate change. The attitude in Asia resembles 1950s America. Na example is the tallest building in the world. Through many years in sf that was a symbol of progress, giant towers of early sf, and they are not being built in the USA anymore. Through the beginning of the 20th century, American buildings suceeded each other higher and higher has being the tallest building in the world but now those supertall towers are getting build in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Malaysia, Dubai… The obsession with the futuristic seems to have moved to Ásia.

Then some arguments from the portuguese sf author about role of science in asian societies, but I really did not agree with some of those points and can think of plenty of counterarguments so I did not bother with notes or trying to transcribe. Let me just say that a lot of science development happened and a lot of sf got written in post-1945 America IMHO.

GRRM then told an anecdote that when he was growing up, a lot of sf authors had a written future history, a universe defining how the future would develop. Heinlein, Asimov had it, got published as appendixes to their stories ( personal note: GRRM´s own sf all seems to fit the same universe, anybody ever tried to build a timeline or concordance for that? I love his sf stories as well). The one future history which GRRM did not think believable was Heinlein´s which seemed arbitrary and full of incoherences. Turns out Heinlein was closest to the truth, he was right that people did go to space and then stopped. Heinlein predicted the crazy years, predicted a theocracy dictatorship, Nehemiah Scudder as dictator, which some days does not seem so implausible. Perhaps Heinlein was the accurate one.

GRRM - that there are many types of sf, but that the story of space travel was central to the genre. Like in history historians talk of the Matter of Britain or Matter of France ( Arthur or Charlemagne), to american sf its central core was The Matter of Space, and the space program was abandoned and it undermined sf. A lot of people present at the conference were too young to ever had somebody walk on the moon during their lifetime.

A new question, if sf has run out of new ideas? According to GRRM no, there are always new ideas and even fads coming up in sf, things like nanotech, but perhaps the problem is that people stopped imagining the future as a terrific place.

Another new question about the "american Tolkien" comparison, from a critic for Time magazine. GRRM did not adress that but mentioned a bit of ASOIAF publishing history, that since the beginning his publisher has been convinced that ASOIAF is very likely to appeal to people who do not like fantasy ( personal note - I totally agree, I have had tremendous luck recommending it to people who do not like fantasy but love historical fantasy or just plain good stories). As an example the first cover of AGOT, which will now only be found in the ARC had a veyr fantasy feel, GRRM described it and it does not sound familiar at all ( Catelyn mentioned perhaps? anybody knows?). It was precisely the same type of cover to a lot of fantasy novels which were selling very well. Publishers hoped a non genre cover would appeal much more widely so picked a "big book, important book" non genre cover to catch the eye of everyone, silver foil with a generic symbol and planned subsequent covers to be of the same style with a common metallic theme. The hardcover edition of AGOT turned out to be partially a failure so publishers panicked a bit, and when it came the paperback edition they picked a typical genre novel cover ( the one we know, with jon Snow riding a black horse). The second book´s cover was a compromise, picking up the gold foil from the AGOT hardcover edition, but using an illustration box for the fantasy genre feel. With book 4 came a complete redesign, the publishers think they got all the fantasy fans aware of the series, time to go after the non-fantasy fans. GRRM mentioned that the difficulty on reaching, on perception of who are the readers who might like a certain book can be frustratring to an author.

New question about media and fanzines, GRRM mentioned that fanzines seem to have moved online and there is all sorts of electronic media to fulfill that role. That magazines are folding and the ones holding out are selling less and less every year and that sadly will probably be a matter of time, maybe even less than 5 years till Asimov and Analog close. F&SF might last longer not being part of a big corporation. As a journalism graduate GRRM has recently been very impressed when he received a chinese sf magazine who was serializing Skin Trade. He could not actually read the magazine but leafing through, it was a very thick magazine, full of ads for lots of things, full color, with articles on all sorts of media ( games, interviews with authors) as well as fiction from several genres ( or subgenres), that the american sf magazines are stuck on time and while they might print great fiction they don´t make appealing magazines. Oh and apparently men´s magazines ( Playboy etc) are also dying out, it´s all in the internet now .

A new question, about if there is commercial pressure to write fantasy and if authors pick themes not chosen for literary reasons. GRRM mentions that there is a distinction between a career and a livelihood, that in the earlier days, a lot of writers were not fulltime writers. Heinlein was the exception, but Asimov was a college professor, Simak was a newspaper editor for example. In the 1970s it changed and a lot of emerging authors
were able to be "just" writers, to have writing be their livelihood. That is now changing back, that for a lot of emerging authors it´s just as possible to have a great literary career but maybe they might still not be able to do it as a fulltime job.

Another question, this time as a former editor of New Voices magazine, what did GRRM look for? GRRM mentioned that there are many kinds of good writing and good stories, mentioned he is currently editing an anthology "Warriors" with Gardner Dozois, a cross genre anthology where the theme is an examination of the warrior mythos. They will mix up all the stories without labeling ( genrewise) any story and hope it helps toe expand the horizon of readers . For example if somebody who bought it for the Joe Halderman story finds out the Cecelia Holland story and likes it and vice versa. GRRM believes they are all stories and that genre is an artificial construct which creates genre expectations which affect the way a reader reads a story. Classic example, a story where a detective finds a body drained of all their blood. If it´s an horror story we expect vampires, if it´s a mystery we expect vampire wannabes and that affects the reading experience.

A short mention of sf setup books written by non sf authors, often of literary acclaim, and that for sf writers or fans it can be frustrating to read reviews which seem to think the concept is original and has just been invented. GRRM mentioned Cormac McCarthy´s The Road, another author based in new Mexico but they never met. Trivia : some New Mexico based genre writers meet for lunch once a month.

Recommendations of books aspiring sf/authors should read were asked. Just caught GRRM´s replies, he warned he would mention only classic writers, that he is relatively stubborn and his influences came mostly from his earlier reading, so he is not likely to be influenced by another writer anymore. Sf recomendations: Zelazny´s Lord of Light, Heinlein ( his juveniles or The Puppet Masters, that Stranger in a Strange Land is not a particular favorite though it has many fans), Bester´s The Stars My Destination, Sturgeon´s Dreaming ( Dreaming Jewels?) and Jack Vance who he considers the greatest living sf writer. For fantasy the recommendations were Tolkien, Ghormenghast, Vance´s Lyonesse and Dying Earth series, Robert E Howard ´s fantasy stories, Fritz Leiber. For horror he mentioned Lovecraft, Stephen King who is unavoidable in the genre, Clive Barker. Then a mention I can not quite decipher ( Howard Block who also wrote sf?!?). And a particular recommendation of an almost forgotten author, Gerald Kersh who wrote strange little horror short stories and is mostly remembered by a mystery he wrote, Night in the City who was adapted twice to film, the last time starring Robert de Niro.

More comments about writing and fandom, that writers of other genres seem to write in isolation and not often meet the people who read their work, that sf/fantasy authors are much more fortunate than those in other fields. Sf fandom exists since the 1930s, possibly since the 1920s, conventions have been going on since 1970s. GRRM mentioned that he believes relations between friends are stronger in the sf world, gave an example from his post-college parties, that it´s his sf friends who still keep in touch.

Then some more discussion about the generics of awards, that GRRM thinks awards are good even when given to the "wrong" book, since they get people talking about books. That the purest awards are the ones directly given by fans, and that a problem with the Hugos is that so few people ( of all those who could) vote for those, that 20 votes might be enough to put any work in a shortlist, so it´s very important that all those who can vote or nominate do so.

And that is about it. Any misquotings or misinterpretation ( nevermind missspellings and assassinations of grammar) are all my own, for which I apologize.

I still go to pick up my notes from last tuesday, i really want to do those today since (yes!) I am going on holiday for a few days. I will post about those later, with a double warning for misspellings, grammar and general incoherence.

[Ran]

cteresa, I'd be very happy to get the transcribed notes on to the SSM collection as reports. :)

The cover GRRM mentioned was used in the first Swedish edition of AGoT. You can see it on his site [url="http://www.georgerrmartin.com/gallery.html"]here[/url]. It's by Stephen Youll still.

I'm guessing GRRM meant Robert Bloch, the fellow who wrote [i]Psycho[/i]. He started his career writing pulp horror stories in the Lovecraft vein.

[Xray the Enforcer]

thanks for the full report!!

[cteresa]

Ah, thanks Ran, that makes sense - I miswrote Kersh´s name as well, but the movie mention allowed me to find out about it.

I would love to rewrite the report for the SSM collection, in case some of the trivia is interesting to anyone. Just let me do it after I return from holiday ( my grammar will probably be much improved by holidays!). I will try to do the report from the first day tonight though, while I still remember it well, it´s just that first draft the grammar and all is probably going to be oh so embarassing. Same applies will post here, but give me a couple weeks and will correct it and send it to you!

[cteresa]

These notes are not representative of the whole session and might have errors, I am just trying to write down in good faith what I remember. My memory, handwriting and language skills all got failings so please keep that in mind.

This is about the session at Corte Ingles in Lisbon on July 1st 2008. Moderator was Safaa Dib, and the topic was A Song of Ice and Fire followed by a signing session, and along with a pre-release of the portuguese translation of the first half of A Storm of Swords ( I think.)

Room was filled, it was standing room only before the beginning of the session, perhaps some 200 people in all, I was impressed by how diverse, ages, gender the audience was.

First thing is, the book is not finished. Probably another 6 months, the hope is by the end of the year, so it comes out sometime in 2009.

GRRM was asked the typical question, of where the idea for ASOIAF had come from. He replied that in the summer of 1991, when he was working as a Hollywood screenwriter, in a gap between assignments he began work on a new novel, a sf novel called Avalon ( personal note, no I would not swap it for ASOIAF, but I would have loved to have read it), set in his future history universe. And somehow, he found himself writing the first chapter of AGOT, about the direwolf pups un the snow. And after that came a second chapter and pretty soon he spent the whole summer writing AGOT.

From there he started to plan a trilogy, since there were 3 main conflicts ( Starks/Lannisters; Dany; and the Others) it felt it would neatly fit into a trilogy (ah!), but like Tolkien said, the tale grew in the telling. He ended up putting the project aside after being asked to write a tv pilot, he had about a 100 pages written of both Avalon and AGOT. With his projects he has a problem that when somethings goes cold he can not pick it up again. Avalon has gone cold, but with a ASOIAF it has never happened, he kept thinking about it. Some time after, driving through Britanny once he was thinking of Tyrion and what would he think or do, despite having been years since he wrote about Tyrion and being a couple years till he wrote again about him. He summarized it all in that he has no idea where the idea for ASOIAF did come from.

Another question was about the sucess of ASOIAF and if he ever expected it. He said he hoped but not expected sucess and that Armageddon Rag was supposed to be his breakout novel but it tanked instead. It got great reviews but nobody bought it. So he is always anxious when a book comes out. And sucess for ASOIAF was slow, it only picked momentum when the 2nd book came out in hardcover and AGOT was released in paperback, around 1997/1998. The Legends anthology did a lot to help popularize ASOIAF, he hears frequently from fans that they bought the anthology to read the story of this or that other author, but ended up loving Dunk´s story and from there finding out about ASOIAF.

On being asked if he feels comfortable getting called the American Tolkien, GRRM considers it a great compliment, since he loved Tolkien when he was a kid, that his were some of the books he never wanted to end reading. But he is very different from Tolkien and writes very different type of books. The moderator somehow blurts out sex, general laughter, GRRM´s replies he does not know where little hobbits come from. But that he thinks Tolkien has darkness,that the end of TLOTR is crucial, the Scourging of the Shire, that the Tolkien immitators always end with triumph but never cover the cost of triumph.

From then the questions moved to historical fiction, there being similarities between ASOIAF and the War of the Roses, if he had ever thought about building a story about them. GRRM replied he liked historical very much, mentioned Cornwell and Pressfield as infusing history with the tropes of fantasy ( I think) but that his problem with history is that he knows too much history, that he can not read about the war of the roses without knowing who won the battle of Bosworth Field. With history, a lot of readers will know who wins and what happens and he likes to readers to not know what is going to happen ( ah!!)

He used an interesting analogy to his use of magic in fantasy fiction, he compared it to, on a college dormitory take out, him being used to plain style New Jersey pizzas, first trying anchovies in a garbage pizza ( that was the expression used, really). He loved those anchovies, but when he next ordered an anchovy pizza he thought it was awfull, overwhelming. Magic and fantasy can be like anchovy in pizza, too much unbalanced can ruin everything . Tolkien did it right, on his opinion, that his magic is often knowledge and the sense of magic is very low key, that we are often not sure, are the fireworks real magic or just fireworks? Magic should be mysterious, unnatural. In a Song of Ice and Fire (or ADWD) we have two sources of magic descending on Westeros from opposing directions.

He mentioned he created history and dinasties as he goes along and that it was Tolkien which created the truly serious worldbuilding expect in fantasy. Before Tolkien a lot of fantasy writers did not bother, Robert E Howard had perhaps the name of 3 kings, Lord Dunsany did even less ( paraphrasing "there was a king who had a daughter"). But with Tolkien it was like an iceberg, 3/4 are under the waterline. All other authors ("us") are just pretending, ice on a raft floating giving the impression it is an iceberg. Some fans get furious at that admission. Once a fan wrote asking him for word lists in high valyrian so the fan could start to work out learning the language on his own. GRRM says he knows 8 words of high valyrian, and when he needs a 9th, he will just make it up. ( despite this very funny impressive anecdote which was very well received, in the question session, yes somebody started to make complicated questions about language).

Another classical question, on what writers had an influence on him. GRRM replied the authors he read and enjoyed when he was young, Lovecraft, Robert E Howard, Heinlein was his favorite sf author, Zelazny, Jack Vance. Apropos of Jack Vance, GRRM mentioned he is editing an anthology, where 20 top fantastic writers are writing each a Dying Earth story ( or so I understood it. Dont quote me if it contradicts other reports). He mentioned also other non genre authors, Goldmann, F Scott Fitzgerald, Lawrence Block, McDonald, Raymond Chandler.

When asked what he considered to be his greatest strength as an author, he replied characters, that he thought characters to be the most important part of any story. And on what was his favorite PoV characters, he likes all of them, that it is important to consider that a hero is a villain from the other side, that Theon, Cersei and Jaime all think they are doing the right thing. perhaps Tyrion is his favorite character, his chapters are the easiest to write and he is the most like GRRM himself. He can think of no good definition of good and evil and that struggle to define it is a common theme in his work. That is one difference between him and Tolkien, that there is nothing redeeming in a orc or Sauron. It´s fine in Tolkien, but it´s a problem on his less subtle immitators.

On if no character ever being safe if it was part of a writing strategy , he said he he tries to write with honesty about war, it´s not about who is going to win a soccer match ( personal note - well, there actually have been real wars about that. And he probably has not hear of a *few* matches I can think of. And the Maracanazo probably caused deeper social trauma than any brazillian border war of the 20th century. sorry, can´t help myself) and that death and grief can happen to all characters not just extras. He brought up a anecdocte about the tv show Beauty and Beast and network concerns ( network speak violence is bad, action is the euphemism for it). The series lasted 3 years, at the end of series 2, the main character ( the beauty, Catherine) was killed because Linda Hamilton, the actress wanted to leave. The writers, against the network´s opinion ("get on with it, don´t mention the name again"), had some episodes written which dealt with the grief of remaining characters. The ratings plummeted - so while they made the right artistic decision, commercially they had failed. GRRM thinks authors can not worry about commercial sucess when writing.

The moderator praised ASOS has being his masterpiece, he said with the proviso that AFFC was not a complete book but half of a whole he agreed "so far". When she asked if If the pressure of being considered the "best fantasy writer" ( there were probably a couple adjective there like american or living) affected his work, he says he does not enjoy the pressure but is still enjoying the writing. Most days, some days don´t go well!

About the famous 5 year gap and the delay of ADWD he sais the problem was precisely the idea of the 5 year gap, which would give the kids time to grow old. he spent over a year writing the book that way, but ended up writing endless flashback scenes so he had to scrape that.

If he knows how the series will end, yes, he does in broad strokes, compared it to a drive from Lisbon to Moscow, you know where you are going, but not seeing all the steps of the way.

There was some talk also of HBO optioning AGOT, that two scripts have been written and the BBC is now a partner and budgets are being drawn ( if that is the word). Possible locations mentioned were Ireland, the Czech Republic and New Zealand, but of course they are looking at any possible cheaper options. He thinks a pilot might get filmed. After that a possibility is maybe that each book will be a season, 12 hours but is not really sure if ASOS would fit that.

Then GRRM himself very kindly asked if fans wanted to make some questions. And yes, somebody did ask if Ned was really killed ( to be fair, only AGOT and ACOK have been translated into portuguese yet, so I am sure lots still had some hopes for Ned to do a Gandalf act by the end of ACOK).

When the manuscript for ADWD is finished it will be rushed over in 3 months, which is amazingly fast for the book industry.

He does find hard to keep track of all characters and keeps flipping back and forth through his notes to find out the color of this character´s eyes or the name of this cousin. Elio and Linda are great help, so sometimes he writes to them asking them this or that. He is very good at changing the sex of horses between books, he calls those his transexual horses.

An interesting comment about the focus and pace of LOTR and ASOIAF. TLOTR starts slow and very focused, on a small part of a very large world, with things unfolding and the world getting bigger. He wanted to do something like that in ASOIAF, starting with a very tight focus on Winterfell drawing bigger and broader. The action is now at its broadest point, and it´s going to start narrowing again.

We were read a prologue chapter for ADWD. The reading was very good, somewhat spoiled by some noise with the audience, I think something to do with the selling of those pre-release translations of part of ASOS. I did not get any notes on that, just enjoyed it.


And that is about it. Any misquotings or misinterpretation ( nevermind missspellings and assassinations of grammar) are all my own, for which I apologize.

[Lupigis]

Great reports cteresa, thanks a lot!