Yesterday I drove down to Huntington Beach to see George R. R. Martin at Barnes & Noble. There was a massive crowd there. (They said 260 people had bought books to be signed, and there were probably a lot more people — including me — who were just there to hear him speak.) GRRM was great, as always. He related hilarious anecdotes from earlier in his career (when not quite so many people showed up to see him), such as the time he gave a reading in a coffee shop and the only people in the audience moved out to the patio after he was introduced. There was also the time he had to sit and watch as hundreds of people streamed past him in order to have their Clifford the Big Red Dog books get stamped by a junior store employee in a dog costume. Fortunately, things have changed. He said he’d just gotten word that A Feast for Crows will be debuting at #1 on the NY Times bestseller list, a first for him. That got a big round of applause. He joked that taking five years to write AFFC was all part of his brilliant strategy to build up the series’s popularity so that AFFC would sell better.
I had managed to get a pretty good spot right behind him, so I decided to hang out there during the signing and take note of what sorts of things people said to him and how he handled them. One couple described how they’d saved AFFC to read on their honeymoon. One guy came up and was like, “I just wanted to say that you’ve been my favorite author for 30 years now. Ever since I read ‘A Song for Lya’ in Analog magazine.” They chatted a bit as GRRM signed all the guy’s books, and as the guy gathered up his pile, he said, “I hope you keep writing for another 30 years,” and GRRM joked, “It may take me another 30 years to finish this series.” One guy said something to GRRM about the “Brothers,” by which I figured he must mean the Brotherhood Without Banners, the GRRM fan club. I’ve met some of the BwBers at conventions, and had figured some members would probably show up to this event, but I hadn’t been organized enough beforehand to find out for sure. I wandered over to where the guy was hanging out with a large group of people and introduced myself. They were indeed the local BwBers, and they invited me to join them for dinner. One woman very nicely offered me a ride.
We were supposed to leave B&N, turn right, drive a few miles, and look for a Blockbuster on the right. The restaurant would be behind it. We drove down the strip without seeing a Blockbuster and got out into the darkened residential streets. We figured we must have missed it and turned around. We drove all the way back to B&N without seeing it. We decided maybe the directions had been confused and that we were supposed to turn left out of B&N. We tried that, but still saw no Blockbuster. I tried asking for directions at a few gas stations and liquor stores, but couldn’t find anyone who spoke English, let alone knew where Blockbuster was. Finally we found a pay phone, called information, and got an address for Blockbuster. It was back the other way, of course. We headed back, trying to read the numbered streetsigns, which was somewhat difficult in the pitch black darkness. As were doing this, going maybe 40 mph, a small woman wearing all black tried to cross right in front of our car (and not at an intersection). The driver slammed on the brakes and the car skidded twenty feet, tires screeching. I was sure the pedestrian would be killed, but somehow she managed to kind of leap out of the way at the last minute, missing the hood by less than a foot.
Adrenaline pumping, we finally located the address, and discovered the dark, abandoned husk of what had apparently once been a Blockbuster, though all the big glowing letters had been torn off. So we did finally locate the restaurant. We heard that even the guy who’d picked the restaurant had driven past it once. Anyway, after that everything was fine and dinner was a lot fun.
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