George R. R. Martin in Slovenia

I'm back from the book-signing I mentioned in the HBO GoT thread... dear Gawd... I was there an hour early at 5pm and there were already I'd say around 200 people in front of me in the queue. At 6pm when Martin arrived, the queue was spanning the entire length of the Konzorcij bookstore (it's a LONG one), down the stairs to the floor below, through the shop below and outside the main entrance.

When I left at around 8.15pm (yea, it took over 3 hours before I got to him), the queue's tail was still outside the entrance one floor down, so more people kept joining at the same rate that the others were leaving. All in all, I'd say that more than 1000 people turned up... and that Martin will be signing books well past midnight tonight - if he'll actually manage to do all the signings.

He's been signing 3 books per person (90% of the people had 3 with them or bought them there even though they initially announced that he'll only sign one). 1 book with dedication, 2 sigs only. But then they also allowed everyone to take pictures with him as well... and pretty much everyone did. Aargh! This took forever.

Now I expected a big turnout but this was crazy - it's like the entire 18-30 population was there. Oddly enough though, relatively few younger readers and very few over 40.

Obviously there was a lot of cheering when Martin and the Slovenian translator arrived. I always wanted to say this so here goes: I thought he'd be taller!

He was very friendly and in a good mood and let everyone know that we really shouldn't ask him if we can ask him something but just shoot (saves a lot of time, naturally). He's also let everyone know that his favourite character is The Imp and that NO, he's not going to tell anyone who Jon Snow's parents are. Apparently those two are the most popular questions. He's also very pleased with the HBO series, but that's not surprising.

Until the time I got my books signed, that was pretty much it in terms of interaction.

The host bookstore did a terrible job with air-conditioning (or lack thereof - didn't feel like it was on at all); it was a hot day already, but cram 500 people in a confined space and even open windows don't help much. Everyone was sweating profusely and standing in line was that much more uncomfortable. Luckily they were passing around cups of water every hour or so, but as tends to be the case in such situations, it only makes you sweat more.

By the time I got to Martin I was regretting not playing the press card and coming up with a few questions, which would allow me direct access to him, but on the other hand I was overjoyed that I was nearly out of that blasted queue! I'm sure that in terms of epic book-signings this one wasn't much, but it was certainly the biggest one I've ever been to. We don't really get (m)any authors of his calibre visiting Slovenia.

When I handed my three books to Martin to sign he remarked that my first (A Game of Thrones) was "an old one", which it really was - I imported the first three books from the US early on when practically no one here's even heard of Martin. In contrast, most of the other books he signed today were either the latest paperback editions or the recent Slovenian translations.

He was also surprised that they were all in English so I mentioned that I preferred to read the originals rather than the translations. Of course, at the time I bought them, the local translations didn't exist yet.

I was weighing whether I should start a debate on the size of the Wall in the HBO series with him (pet peeve) but decided against it - he already looked a bit tired and at that point the issue seemed rather too trivial to keep 500+ people waiting as a result. So I just shook his hand instead (he was in such an auto-sign mode that he didn't even remember to take the pen out ) and left the bookstore oven in a hurry.

Of course, I managed to forget my good cam at home and had to make do with my crappy phone cam with no auto-focus, but hopefully a few pics at least will be good enough to make the faces out.

I'll be linking them to this blog post as soon as I transfer them.

P.S.

Martin was shown one of our more remarkable castles, the Predjama castle, and loved it. Apparently, it'll make its way into one of his future books! Check out his blog post about the visit here.