Got the pleasure of meeting Martin tonight at Books & Co. here in Dayton, Ohio. Great night, George was extremely gracious toward his fans and a fairly good speaker. During the formal Q&A and during the signings I asked the following questions:
I asked George about a title for the seventh book and he said that The Winds of Winter could work for 6 or 7 and he doesn't have a new title yet that he likes (and he's not that fond of TWoW).
Asked if he'll ever tell which character is Dunk's descendent. Got a rather acerbic, "I gave a pretty strong hint in the new book," to which I sheepishly replied "Yea, but I read it real fast, in three days."" I told him I suspected Brienne but thought that she was too obvious and that he'd be more subtle than that and he said, "You think?" Coy bastard.
Asked him how he was going to handle the sheer # of the POVs in the sixth book when all these separate narrative threads come back together and he answered, "I'm going to kill a lot of them." The crowd laughed so hard they started applauding his answer.
Martin was asked about favorite and least favorite POVs to write and gave his usual Tyrion for the former and the children for the latter. Children are hard to write since he hasn't been one for decades and doesn't have a youngster readily available to take advantage of.
The highlight of the night was George coming over after finishing off the 2-hour line of signings to chat it up for 15-20 minutes with the three of us (me, my friend, and a co-worker I met there whom I had no idea was also a Martin fan). Kinda amusing to hear about his skinny dipping days back in the '70s at hotels during conventions, though George isn't the most svelte of men and readily acknowledges his physique's shortcomings. I asked George about royalties and he said he pulls about 10% of the hardcover's price, but only after his advance has been covered. I asked if he's ready to pull an "Asimov" and go with a $1 advance and he said he's not quite ready to do that, which surprised me considering the popularity of these books.