Lynch/Rothfuss London signing

Last night I attended a joint signing by Scott Lynch and Patrick Rothfuss at the huge Forbidden Planet store in central London. I'd met Pat before, four years ago, but this was my first time meeting Scott.

The signing table looms into sight at last, like Mount Doom after Frodo's long journey. Or something.

The signing was packed out. I mean, huge. The queue snaked around the entire store back and forth like a slow-moving conga. Fairly late in the process someone counted the number of people in the queue and came back with 300, but I think it was a fair bit more than that. Forbidden Planet is used to hosting massive signings from movie stars, but the size of this queue for two fantasy authors whose names don't have the initials 'R.R.' or 'J.K.' in them seemed to take the staff by surprise. I arrived at the store at 5.30 (the signing was due to start at 6.00) and finally got to the signing table at around 8.15pm. It turns out S.M. Stirling was also doing a signing upstairs and I contemplated getting one of his books to get signed, but he was long gone by the time the Lynchfuss signing was done.

A Gentleman Bastard and myself, yesterday.

Following the signing, we repaired to a nearby hostelry where Pat and Scott chatted with fans and did a bit of a double act discussion talking about their books and writing process. It sounds like we shouldn't be holding our breaths about seeing The Doors of Stone in the near future, but things sounded a lot more hopeful about The Thorn of Emberlain (though neither author, with wisdom born of experience, offered up potential release dates).

Myself, Pat Rothfuss and Pat Rothfuss's beard, which had its own hospitality suite. We should really be charging Tad Williams for free advertising here as well.

It was a bit of a slog to get through the signing process, but Pat and Scott were good speakers and the evening was fun. In the future, however, I think I'll make sure I get to the signing a bit earlier.

The Queue. Long will it haunt my dreams.

Patrick Rothfuss's NAME OF THE WIND optioned for television

It has been announced that New Regency Productions and Fox Television have optioned the TV rights to Patrick Rothfuss's novel, The Name of the Wind. If successful, the series would also adapt the other two books in The Kingkiller Chronicle trilogy, The Wise Man's Fear and the forthcoming The Doors of Stone.

Eric Heisserer will be writing the script. Heisserer's previous credits include Final Destination 5 and the unnecessary prequel to The Thing, as well as the reboot of A Nightmare on Elm Street.

There is no word on what network or channel this will air on yet. It's also only an option. A script will need to be written and then greenlit before it moves into production. Given Rothfuss's well-known love of the works of Joss Whedon, which have had 'problems' with Fox in the past, it is surprising that he's agreed to sell the rights to them. Some have suggested that Fox may be intending this project for their FX channel (which is more forgiving of low ratings and usually givest its shows a fairer shake than Fox itself), though that is pure speculation.

It will also be interesting to see how the story is translated to TV. Most of the story is from Kvothe's POV, and in fact there are strong hints that Kvothe is colouring his story for his own ends. How this would be translated onto screen remains to be seen.

Rothfuss recently said that The Doors of Stone should be published some time in 2014.