[Note: This report fleshes out details given in Rhelle's report.]
OK, some more info:
That convo that was referred to above went like this:
Q: "Do you know how the books will end?"
GRRM: "YES" (emphatically)
Q: "So do you have it written down somewhere... just in case?"
GRRM: "Nope. It's all in my head. So if I die, you all are shit out of luck"
LOL, I wonder if Parris knows...
On POVs
George said that at first he was just going to use the original POVs from AGoT for the entire series, then he realized that he needed to see what Stannis was doing, but did'nt want to use Stannis as a POV. So he created Davos. Davos was his first added POV. The rest followed.
On writing his POVs, as Rhelle mentioned above, he uses their motivations and desires. What do they want? What do they want to achieve? What drives them? What SHOULD they do? Ethics, morals, ambitions, etc... all part of the mix.
On the 5 year gap this has probably already been discussed before, but here goes. George said that he was writing ADwD and was writing the flashbacks (he confirmed that they would have been flashbacks) and then he realized that he couldn't just skip things like Myrcella being crowned and the resulting dornish problems, for example. Originally he had wanted to skip the 5 years to make the kids older. But he said he realized that he was being impatient, and that those 5 years had too much important stuff to skim over. And as banditski noted above, Rickon will not be in AFfC. George's exact words: "no, he's not old enough yet." Hmmmmm. YET.
On Jaime
at a panel:
Q: "Did you know from the beginning that you would flesh Jaime out and make him a pov?"
GRRM: "I knew I would flesh him out, but no, I did not know he would be a pov."
Some pronunciations:
Lyanna = lye-anna
Catelyn = cat-linn
Maester = may-ster (that one's pretty obvious)
Moat Cailin = Moat Cah-lan
Sansa = Saun-sa
Khaleesi = Khal-eee-see
Missandei = mees-anday
Tommen = Toam-in
Davos = Dah-vos
Varys = Var-us
Many of you probably knew those, but they were new to me! So I thought I'd share
Something weird: I THINK he indicated that the dragons are NOT all the same sex. My question was intercepted, but I believe that was the answer. Cool. Reign of fire baby! One of my favorite things that George said: he was talking about how he uses ancient software on his computer and he said something like "no fucking dancing paperclip for me." LOL. we were dying.