Bestselling fantasy author George R. R. Martin (of the amazing series A Song of Ice and Fire, which is right up there on the top of my personal list of favorite books) is making an appearance in the virtual world of Second Life. He’s joining a growing list of politicians, authors and musicians who have been using SL to connect with people in the virtual environment.
Yes, I’m making a virtual appearance in Bantam’s virtual bookstore on Second Life. For those of you who don’t know it, Second Life is… well, sort of like World of Warcraft without the axes, swords, and monsters. Our world, kinda sorta, virtually. Anyway, I’ll be there this Thursday evening, in avatar form, doing a reading from A DANCE WITH DRAGONS and doing a Q&A afterwards. Proceedings will start at 9:00pm eastern [2am GMT] and run about an hour. This will be a first for me, so it will be fun to see how it goes. Ah, ’tis a brave new world, surely.
If you’d like to be part of the festivities, get thee to www.secondlife.com. You can sign up there, download the software, and design your own avatar. (I’ve never done a reading with monsters in the audience before, at least not the sort you could tell my looking at ‘em).
The virtual bookstore can only hold about sixty avatars, but the overflow will be able to see and hear the reading from satellite sites, and send questions via IM.
I’ve never done this before either, so that’s about all I can tell you about how things will work… but if you live out in the bookdocks where I’m never likely to visit on a book tour, this virtual appearance could be the next best thing. See you there!
Link to blog post. For those of you with Second Life (and if you don’t have it, get it – it’s very easy to set up), just search “bantam” in the places search tab and teleport over.
See you there!
