Yesterday I went to the first of several events where George R. R. Martin will be present, in Lisbon. He gave a lecture about ‘A Song of Ice and Fire‘, and answered questions about his work.
It was really nice to see him live and hear his ideas and some humorous comments about several things. Among other things he explained why he didn’t describe magic much in his novels, keeping the use of it to a minimum. He made an analogy of him having discovered that he liked anchovies a pizza that had all the toppings, and later on deciding to order an anchovy pizza which turned out to be a bad idea because it was pretty much a salt pizza. Just a little bit is okay, but too much ruins it, he explained.
Anyway he gave people autographs and I managed to get all four novels signed, including my hardcover ‘A Feast for Crows’. Hurray. All four novels have different quotes. Yeah I know that he probably has a list of quotes he uses for this – I know he’s a writer but there’s no way he’d keep inventing new lines for everyone. 😛
Oh, I was able to tell him that his character development was perfect, to which he replied ‘Thank you’. Later today I’ll be going to another event – a lecture about writing and also an autograph session in which I’ll probably ask him to sign a couple of cards of the card game based on his novels (the two next links contain huge plot spoilers, be warned) – Daenerys Targaryen and unfortunately I didn’t have a card of Eddard Stark, so I’m taking the House Stark card. I’m also thinking of attending the final event, which is Saturday afternoon, but I’ll have to coordinate that with my Karting event at lunch time, so we’ll see. There’s also another event tomorrow in Porto, but I won’t be able to go for obvious reasons. Anyway for the list of events go here (it’s in Portuguese).
Corusca 
It was really nice to hear him in person, unfortunately with the noise at the end (whats up with that the man was reading !!) and my back hurting like hell I couldn’t hear that chapter as I wanted >_<
I had the exact same thought about the noise. It was really impolite for people to start talking when he was going to read… Could not understand a word, but then again I had to stay standing at the back of the room because I arrived 15 minutes late. Also, there were a couple of kids constantly making noise. I really don’t get why parents take them to these events. I mean, okay maybe they couldn’t find anyone to keep them for a couple of hours, but why should the other dozens of people in the room have to endure it? :
Agree, those kids where getting on my nerves (specially since I was right in front of them). As you say I can understand that their mother couldn’t just leave them heh, but I don’t think she could hear Martin, since she was constantly having her attention on them instead.
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