I had to attend the UCF Book Festival yesterday, even though all I really wanted to do was work on City of Light. But I had a good time, and we had a lot of fun at the fantasy panel, so I don't regret it.

However, one of the most common questions I got was about the gender of my reader-base. People kept asking me who read my books, or telling me which gender should like my books.

As I dodged those questions like it was gym class, I started to realize: I don't even know.

One of my personal philosophies is that you need to aim at a specific target audience when you're writing, so I know exactly the sort of person I was aiming to hit when I wrote the Traveler's Gate Trilogy. But who actually read and liked the books?

So I started thinking. How do I talk to people who read and liked the books?

And here you are. So, if you would, could you tell me who you are? This is solely for the purpose of allowing me to answer this question, and will not affect my future writing (in case that worried you, for some reason). Also, I think it's an interesting question to know.

All that said, the poll:

I received these awesome pictures yesterday, but I couldn't post them because...you know, April Fools. Everyone would assume it was somehow a trap.

But now that it's April 2nd, I'm free to share this cool story with you: about six months ago, shortly after the release of Crimson Vault, I got an email from a fan named Aaron Hetherington. Aaron wondered if I could explain the different symbols/banners for the various Territories in more detail, since I only give a vague overview in Crimson Vault.

I described the banners as best I could, and then I didn't hear back from Aaron until yesterday. It turns out that he and a graphic artist friend of his, Sara Miller, had come up with banners for each of the eleven Territories in the Traveler's Gate Trilogy.

I'm not going to lie to you: they're pretty fantastic.

If these banners tickle your fancy, and you'd like to hit up Sara for some commission work, I hear she's available here: http://saraphimcreations.elance.com

This is one sample of her work, and you can hit the jump for the other ten:

Ladies and gentlemen, I couldn't be more excited to announce my new partnership with Facebook!

All my future novels (beginning with City of Light) will be published through the social media website, and will include the full social functionality that I know you've all been missing in your reading material. 

At the end of each page in the book, you'll be prompted to share your progress to your Facebook page, to let all your friends know just how fast you can read. All Facebook users will be allowed to leave comments in the book itself, which are viewable by any future readers and cannot be removed. This is your chance to make a permanent mark on your favorite ebooks, so leave as many comments as you can!

Facebook is very committed to your privacy, so they will never share the details collected during your time reading my books. Your average reading speed, the facial expression you made when your favorite character died, the number of minutes you spent reading on the toilet or in questionable social situations...those are some examples of data that Facebook will collect, but would never release to anyone they didn't absolutely trust to keep a secret.

These improvements will take a little time to implement, of course, so we're "adjusting" the City of Light release date to reflect the changes. You can expect CoL sometime around September 21st, 2017.

And, of course, all my future releases will be announced using the patented "GRRM Calendar" - with dates ranging from "It'll be a while" to "It's done when it's done."

Look forward to the new Facebook-enhanced Traveler's Gate Trilogy, coming "soon!"