Here I am in Helsinki, and Finncon is well under way. I arrived late last night and headed straight to a pub where I found our GoHs, George RR Martin and Al Reynolds, in the company of the usual suspects (including Toni Jerrman who can always be relied upon where beer is concerned). From there we went to an interesting restaurant called Zetor. It has something of a tractor fetish. I had the sauteed reindeer, which was very nice despite coming with an Evil Dill Pickle.

I am staying with my good friends Otto and Paula (and their two cats). Otto is once again providing guest liaison services and his car has been transformed into the official Finncon GuestMobile for the duration of the convention. I’m very grateful to him because today Helsinki is getting the weather that London had on Tuesday.

The morning saw the traditional press conference which I am pleased to say went very well (good job, Hannele). There were several journalists and photographers, and both Al and George got taken aside for interviews. The general question session saw the expected questions – George was asked abut his over-enthusiastic fans and Al about his million-pound book deal. However, we did get other stuff as well. I suspect that the thing you will be most interested in is the Song of Ice & Fire TV show. Here’s what George said.

Casting is currently under way, and they are very serious about this. They are even holding casting sessions in Australia. I asked if I could play Sersi, but George politely declined to reply. Filming will be taking place in Northern Ireland, actually in a studio on the site of the old Harland & Wolff ship yard where, as George noted, they built The Titanic. HBO will not make a decision about the series, or even screening the pilot, until after the pilot has been shot. As George explained, some pilots never even get shown. But hopefully this one will and a series will follow.

George was also asked why he started such a huge fantasy series. He said that after years in Hollywood he got fed up with being told that his ideas were too big and expensive to film, so he decide to go back to books where he could have whatever ideas he wanted. The irony is that now those big ideas will be filmed, but of course technology has moved on a lot in the last decade (hello Weta).

There was also an interesting discussion about book signings. Al said that the bookstores and publishers in the UK are not interested in doing signing tours, or even one-off signings, these days unless they are sure you will attract the sort of crowds that Neil Gaiman (and George) get. Even someone like Al, who is a big enough name to be signed to a 10-book million-pound deal, apparently only attracts 20+ people to a signing at Forbidden Planet. It is all very sad.

I’m currently in a book store in Helsinki that is run by my friend Iida, and I’m borrowing her Mac to do some quick blogging before having to head off to the academic conference at 13:00. I’ll be tweeting from the convention throughout the weekend, but don’t expect much in the way of blog updates unless I can find free wi-fi at the con. If you would like to see what the Finnish fans are saying you might want to check out the Finncon Twibe. However, that depends on people remembering to use the #finncon hashtag, so when I get a spare moment I will set up a CoverItLive session for the weekend that will capture all tweets from the Twibe members.