Word of God Thread.

TheWiseTomato · Sep 23, 2015

Wait I thought one of the Mothers had given up/moved on (Summer?) and that was the only change in the hierarchy of the Courts until Dresden showed up.

Ched · Sep 23, 2015

TheWiseTomato said: ↑

Wait I thought one of the Mothers had given up/moved on (Summer?) and that was the only change in the hierarchy of the Courts until Dresden showed up.
Click to expand...

IIRC Winter has /changed over/ once additional time compared to Summer, but... yeah, there seems to be something that doesn't gel. But I swear when Harry visited the mothers we found out somewhere in that book that Summer was a generation older? Or did I make that up?

Moridin · Sep 23, 2015

IIRC Mother Summer had changed once, while Mother Winter never has. I don't think we're told anything about the other Queens (before now, anyway).

Edit: It asks me to log in so I can't see the response, but the DF wiki cites this WoG:
http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,11033.msg494010.html#msg494010

chrnno · Sep 23, 2015

Moridin said: ↑

IIRC Mother Summer had changed once, while Mother Winter never has. I don't think we're told anything about the other Queens (before now, anyway).

Edit: It asks me to log in so I can't see the response, but the DF wiki cites this WoG:
http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,11033.msg494010.html#msg494010
Click to expand...

For those who also can't see:

Quote from: The Watchman on March 05, 2009, 01:23:09 AM
1. the mothers - how does a queen become a mother? like after a thousand yrs, old winter dies and mab becomes the new mother?

Essentially abdication. The previous mother wearies of her duty and moves along. There's been one new Mother Summer during recorded human history. Mother Winter has never retired.
Click to expand...

Though it is on the OP so you can check there too.

LittleChicago · Sep 23, 2015

I had no idea he had got a divorce, let alone was getting re-married.

Hats' off to him for keeping his personal life personal, I guess.

Unrelated; also thought naming the new kid would be a Big Deal, so to have it just tossed out as WoJ is a little odd.

Striker · Sep 23, 2015

I assume it'll be one of those things that's mentioned in the recap section of the next book. A lot of stuff involving Mouse was handled the same way, I think.

Aekiel · Sep 26, 2015

Damn it all. I was an hour too late. I wanted to ask Jim whether Harry's toeing/breaking the Laws over the series has changed his personality much.

Erandil · Sep 27, 2015

LittleChicago said: ↑

Unrelated; also thought naming the new kid would be a Big Deal, so to have it just tossed out as WoJ is a little odd.
Click to expand...

Yeah me too. I would have thought that, given how powerful names are in Dresden universe, there would have been a bit more thought put into it. (Plus Bonnie seems like a terrible name to me though I guess some of its charme is lost in translation)

The Curious Fan · Oct 15, 2015

The once and future podcast.

http://www.theonceandfuturepodcast....dcast/2014/11/16/of-podcast-ep-60-jim-butcher

Anton: I always wanted to know how he came up with Harry's three exclamations, Empty Night, Hell's Bells and Stars and Stones?

Jim: I'll just say this, they're not an accident, they're actually the titles to the last three novels, the big trilogy at the end. So the first one is Stars and Stones, the second one is Hell's Bells and the last one is Empty Night.

Anton: That will blow someone's mind I am sure. Let's see, will he be working on the codex, continuing more series or is he killing us all and making us wait for the next Dresden Files for the time being?

Jim: I just got finished with the first steampunk book so that will be coming out in relatively short order I would imagine some time in spring. But I don't have a date for that yet, obviously. And then I'll get to work on Dresden and I'll see if I can have that done before the end of the year.

Anton: Next question, is Lea Harry's grandmother?

Jim: No.

Anton: This one, and I will give this person a punch for you, why isn't he writing faster? Someone needs to duck tape him to his keyboard then do the same to George R.R. Martin.

Jim: Right.

Anton: I'm sure they meant that with love, because they were using duck tape.

Jim: And that's kind, yeah.

Anton: Next question, will we ever get a Furies of Calderon RPG?

Jim: Don't know. I am not opposed to it.

Anton: Was the island's resident that had a conversation with Harry the same one as Goodman Grey?

Jim: No.

Anton: Could you please thank him from me, all the way from Karachi, Pakistan, for portraying a positive Muslim character, at least yet, and tell him I love him very very much. May he live a happy, healthy, long and uber-productive life, amen.

Jim: Well from your lips to God's ears.

Anton: I would love it if you let us know if he has any plans to show anything of the Jade Court of vampires in the future.

Jim: The thing about them is that they're isolationists, they're isolationists to such a degree that they think this whole "Chin" concept is still pretty new and we're gonna have to stay and see if it still works out. You know this whole "China" thing, hmm...

But they're old school, they're really, really old school and they mostly stay within the Yangtze River valley and they don't want anything to do with the outside world or to have the outside world have anything to do with them. So it's not like they're gonna go traipsing around and I'm not sure Dresden could survive a visit there so we might see some of their agents at some point in the future.

Anton: Next, I love his humour and found it a missing element of the TV series, if he hasn't commented on this before I'd like to hear his thoughts. They put out the TV series and I seem to recall you saying something along the lines of "your books are your books and no matter what someone else did with a property out there it doesn't change what you've done". What were your feelings on the series? Assuming you at least watched part of it.

Jim: No I watched it. The show could have been a whole lot worse, I know it could have been a whole lot worse because I saw the first couple of treatments. I was very very lucky that the folks who did get on board with it were guys who actually read my books and came and talked to me about how we're going to do things for the show and actually communicated with me and so on. It could have been a whole lot worse than it was. Now the things that did get changed on the show, they got changed for a variety of reasons and one of the things you learn about doing TV is that there's all these other people and they all have brains and want to do things as well and they don't just want to do things exactly like you tell them they should be. They call it "collaboration" and I am so against it.

Anton: *laughs*

Jim: Oh my gosh I can't collaborate at all. But really, things could have gone a whole lot worse. I'm sort of of two minds about the TV show. On the one hand, they could have made it better if they'd gotten more time to work with it. On the other, it got cancelled before they could really totally ruin anything either. So we'll see.

Anton: I took several film classes when I was going to (Hostra?) and we would watch different edit cuts of different films depending on editors, depending on costuming, depending on all these million elements. The fact that we get /any/ series that remotely resembles anything near the core material out there is astounding.

Jim: Exactly.

Anton: All things considered, it certainly didn't hurt the books, I mean. I remember we did the tie-in covers with the little sci-fi logo and the sci-fi logo actually looked like it was about science fiction.

Jim: Right.

Anton: And the books are doing great anyway but there was this huge bump where people who might not have picked those books up were like "oh it's a detective series, it's got paranormal stuff in it but I guess I can read this detective series".

Jim: Right.

Anton: Seeing as most people love the parts with Maggie and Mouse, does he have any thoughts about writing their own short story?

Jim: No but they might have their own YA story at some point.

Anton: Does Ebenezar know Harry and Thomas are siblings?

Jim: Sort of, he's kind of in denial about it. We'll get to see some of that in the next book.

Anton: Here's one, this person clearly thought it out and I'll butcher the name of this. Why doesn't Harry use his forzare spell to fly? He could enchant his duster to make him lighter and then jump and glide over short distances. I know he's built a lot into stories and Harry running to get away to from point a to b but I have always wondered why he didn't just jump 40 feet in the air to get out of tight spots.

Jim: Harry's actually done some of that before the series got started. There's actually a mention in one of the books of Harry trying an enchanted broomstick and being lucky to survive the experience. The problem with learning to- I think the exact quote was "we never did get all the mud out of your eyebrows". The problem with learning to fly is the same problem human beings had, it's really dangerous and if you fail you don't get to try again. If you fail to fly you don't really get another shot at it. And wizards are the same way because everybody's magic is uniquely individual so basically every wizard has to be his own Wright Brother if he wants to learn how to fly with magic. Some of them have, but it's one of the best ways for a wizard to get himself killed.

Anton: It reminds me of the Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck talent show cartoon where they're going back and forth as to who can do what and at the end Daffy Duck eats this thing of dynamite and gunpowder and lights a match and blows himself up and Bugs is like "you win! that's great, that's great!" and he's just like "yeah but I can only do it once!" Same thing as with flying.

What is the deal with Harry and his dad? Is Malcolm an agent of Uriel's? Why do we keep seeing him?

Jim: No comment.

Anton: I at least wanted to get one "no comment" out of these questions cuz I knew someone was going to ask something and they were gonna be like "so what's the end of the series? Just tell us the end, tell me now."

Ask for an example of the elements of creation that Dragons used to be in charge of, pretty please? It's been killing me for years and shouldn't tread on any spoiler ground.

Jim: Dragons are the kinds of forces that you put in charge of things like "it's time for another ice age, you, go handle that" and that's the kind of thing that Dragons would be doing. "You know what? We really need this continent to be split by a giant river, arrange it" that's the kind of thing Dragons are doing.

Anton: Last fan question here, was reading Even Hand last night and was wondering if Marcone's real name is pertinent and will factor in later?

Jim: *nervous laughter*

It won't factor in later because nobody's getting it. Marcone is, as far as this series is concern he is the most magic-savvy mortal that is running around these days and he is covering his bases and is very good at it. Marcone is the guy who has read the Evil Overlord List and would roll his eyes at why anybody would do such a thing.
Click to expand...

fuubar · Oct 17, 2015

http://thegridscififrontier.com/jim-butcher-qa

A couple of nice bits on the White Court and why Mab owed Anduriel.

Zeelthor · Oct 17, 2015

Empty Night is the result of Outsiders getting through whole-sale. Stars and Stones refers to a passage in revelations, which also refers to the passage in Cold Days where Dresden almost breaks the jar for Wormwood. Check the passage from revelation and it'll all make sense.

Hell's bells seems sort of self-explanatory but has yet to get a proper explanation in the series.

Innomine · Oct 17, 2015

For those of us know don't know what revelations is, (Apart from something to do with the bible i presume?) care to share the passage?

Ryuugi Shi · Oct 18, 2015

For simplicity's sake:

Let’s get a few things out of the way first. Yes, I am working on the next Dresden book. It’s due to be turned in this Christmas and should be out somewhere around next spring.

Q: When you are writing books, do you keep character bibles for yourself or for the publisher?

A: I do keep them for myself every time I’m making up new characters and so on. I make up a little dossier entry on the character, of who they are, Sometimes I draw a picture of them, but because I can’t draw…they don’t look like that. I’m not sure where the Dresden Files one is right now. Probably in a box somewhere. Mostly I use the Dresden File wikipedia these days, because the fans, you guys, are so much more on the ball than I am with this stuff. Now, bear in mind that I’ve seen so many slightly different versions of the Dresden Files over the course of writing the books, whereas you’ve only seen the final version. So it’s much easier for you to remember, “Oh yeah, that character had purple eyes”, even though in my head they had been yellow. I’ll look at the book and think, “Oh, I must have changed the eye color and didn’t really think about that. Well, it was 4:30 in the morning when I was doing those edits.”

So now mostly I just go to the fan wiki. Fans are so much better at keeping track of that than I am, and the fans are the ones that want to say, “Look, you missed this detail, you got it wrong.” I guess you’re right, I did. But now people like that build wikis, so “No I didn’t, because I cheated.”

Q: Harry Dresden started out as a really humdrum, normal, not big danger character, and now he’s a much bigger threat. Is he going to continue to progress on to confronting bigger entities?

A: My intention with Harry Dresden was never to make him the big fish in the small pond. He was always the medium sized fish that had to be smart and fast if he wanted to come out on top. So everything that I’ve given him that makes him cooler, only serves that purpose. Because he’s going to be continually going up against things that he has no business going up against. Storm Front Harry Dresden would never have survived Skin Game. I mean, he just wouldn’t come out of it in one pieces.

I’m kind of reminded about at the end of Changes, when I killed him…ahem spoilers…and my publisher called and was freaking out on me, going, “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, you killed him, you killed him!” And I’m like, “Yeah, yeah, I know! Now we get to do the cool stuff!!” So look for the series to go increasingly off the rails in terms of how bombastic some of the bad guys are going to be. We’re going to have a lot of fun from here on out. Especially since my special effects budget has gone up a lot. Which is cool because it doesn’t cost me anything to do that. It costs me just as much to burn down Chicago as it does to not burn down Chicago.

Q: Why Chicago?

A: Because my writing teacher wouldn’t let me set it in Kansas City, which is where it was originally set. She said, “You’re walking close enough to Laurel Hamilton’s toes that you can’t set your books in the same state. Just pick a different city. Not Kansas City.” And…ok, Chicago.

Q: You swore to never to two series at the same time again. Why are you doing it again?

A: The answer is alimony.

Q: Is there ever going to be a Dresden movie or a (no offense) better TV series than the last one?

A: What I’m hoping for is that we get a Netflix series. It is being shopped around in Hollywood, so we’ll have to see what winds up happening. It’s Hollywood. Hollywood is all talk, man. Nothing is real until the check has cleared. Just to give you the check, that’s not reality yet. Once the check clears, now it’s real. So we’ll see if anything happens.

Q: When are we going to see Ramirez again? And will he ever get his own short story?

A: In the Shadowed Souls anthology that I just got done editing. I’ve been an editor this year. Which was a really interesting experience. I’ve never edited anything before. At one point I read a story and fired off a critique to the author, and then I stopped and realized, “I just told Nora Roberts to cut 10 pages from her short story…She’s like the pro-est pro that ever pro’d a pro and I just said ‘drop 10 pages’.”

In that anthology there’s a short story called Cold Case. It’s Molly’s first job as the Winter Lady, and Mab sends her off on her first mission, and you get to see what her job is. And Ramirez teams up with her against a Cult of the Sleeper in a town in Alaska. There’s a town called Unalaska, Alaska. Really. There’s really a town called Unalaska, Alaska. It’s where Deadliest Catch is based out of. So they go find a bunch of Deadliest Catch fisherman who have started worshipping Cthulu basically. But that’s a fun story, and that’s where you’ll next see Ramirez pop up again, and he’ll show up in Peace Talks.

Peace Talks, I really should have subtitled that one ‘Blue on Blue’ or something like that, because basically I’ve set up a situation where I can do all these theoretical fights. “Who would win if these two went at each other? Let’s see!” We’ll see what happens.

Q: One of the forum posts I really enjoyed on your website was the one where you answered a question about The Archive and said “I’m going to tell you this because it’s never going to show up in the books. How much of that kinds of material do you have, and are you interested, or would you be interested in maybe putting together some kind of Legendarium for the world of Harry Dresden?

A: There is a TON of that material. There is so much of it. Because I’m constantly thinking of stories that could happen in the Dresden Files universe. “Oh yeah, that could happen. This is totally happening…how am I ever going to connect Harry Dresden to that. There’s no way in hell he’s ever going to be in the Grand Canyon doing something.” So as far as a Legendarium goes, I don’t think I will, because I want to have the option to do spinoffs. And if there’s no mystery, there’s no spinoffs, for when I’m done with Harry’s story. I’ve got a couple of different characters that it would be really cool to do spinoffs of. I don’t want to end my options on that.

Q: Question about Lord Raith. In Blood Rites, Lara bests him in the fight, but in the White Knight he’s still up, walking and talking, with her controlling him. How does that work? Is he a ventriloquist dummy?

A: He appears to be in charge, but he isn’t, because Lara can do terrible things to him if he doesn’t play along, and that’s his option now. So he has to play along with Lara and wear the target on his chest while she runs things from behind the scenes. Everyone else in the White Court, it doesn’t take them very long to figure out this is what’s going on. But that’s the play that they have going on, everyone has to pretend that Lord Raith is the one in charge even though they know better. Until it comes time to unseat Lara, and they’ll have to take Raith out of his position in order to get Lara out of hers. Lara, at the same time, she’s got to ferociously protect his position. It gets very byzantine in the White Court. They’ve basically got a figurehead emperor, and a pile of ministers with the real power. Lara happens to be on top of that pile of ministers at the moment.

Q: At a Con you attended recently, you mentioned that the reason Mab owes favors to some unsavory characters is due to debts she accrued when the Winter Fey first assumed the duty of manning the Wall. Can you tell us who was manning the Wall before?

A: I can. And I won’t.

Regarding that favor, it was a situation where Mab needed to be in two places at once and couldn’t. So Anduriel loaned her Nicodemus to step into one of the places she couldn’t be. Man has since learned better than that and now she has somebody that will step in for her when she needs to be in two places at once. Which is why the Leanansidhe has got so much power and generally shows up whenever Mab isn’t there. If you’ll notice in the books, the Leanansidhe and Mab very rarely show up in the same place at the same time. That’s because Leanansidhe is covering things that Mab should be doing, while Mab is wasting her time on Harry Dresden. And vice versa.

Q: At the beginning of the series, there’s only a very vague, amorphous big bad. As the series has progressed it’s gotten more complicated and more convoluted. How much of this were you planning all the way back when you started writing?

A: All of it. I kind of had a good idea of what the big bad was, and what it looked like, and where it all lined up. We’ve still go the really excited things in front of us. We’ve got giants and apocalii (which I judge to be the plural of apocalypse). Kaiju and gods. Plus we’re going to have a dragon vs. wizard fight. Because…you knew that was coming.

Q: The Gate seems like something that, if it didn’t start with a consciousness, would develop it over time. Is that the case?

A: It probably is, but the consciousness of an inanimate object like that is mostly like that of a mountain. “I AM HERE.” And it’s just increasingly aware of its here-ness. The Gate actually exists very differently than what Harry saw, but that’s how Harry has to interpret it because it’s far out in the Nevernever. Your mind has to put things into terms it can understand or you go squirrely. Harry’s got a very good mind for reducing things to simple ideas. Which most of the Senior Council would say with a roll of their eyes.

Q: Even though you write all these characters, have you ever had one that refused to do what you wanted it to?

A: No, because those people work for me. There are times when the characters don’t seem to be going as easily in a direction I want them to go. Often I will have to stop and take a look at what I’m doing since maybe the story has squirreled off in the wrong direction. Which is sometimes the case and I’ll have to rewrite. Often what I will do is I’ll go back and I’ll play Time Lord and go back and retool the character’s past to give them a good motivation to do what I want them to do.

Murphy was continually too much in the way in Fool Moon, for example. She kept trying to participate in what was going on and not in the adversarial way I needed her to, because she was essentially a minor villain in Fool Moon. It was not working out at all until I went back and tinkered with her backstory and Murphy has a paralyzing fear of big dogs. That was changing her opinions and put enough brakes on her that I could get her to slow down enough to let other people get killed instead of her.

But it also means that she wasn’t too sure about Mouse the first time she met him. She’s OK with him later on, because he’s a big dog that she doesn’t have to be afraid of, she trusts him despite that fear. But that’s all under-the-table stuff that I can’t write about because Murphy is not going to go up to Dresden and say, “I’m terrified of big dogs.” Because Dresden would make fun of her for being short and it’s not going to happen.

Q: Who is your favorite character in The Last Airbender series?

A: I think Zuko was the most convincing in showing a character turn 180 degrees. The personal redemption arc for Zuko was pretty cool. When he got to the point that he realized, “oh wait a minute, I’ve been struggling all along for my honor. I thought that having my father’s respect would give it to me, but no, I need to have my respect for it to work. And that means I need to do the right thing and I’m going to turn against my father, the most powerful man in the world, and help the Avatar fight him.” And that was kind of the turn of the tide of the series in many ways. So Zuko was kind of my favorite.

Although my favorite characters are almost always villains. So Azula was really my favorite character of the entire thing. Because Azula was just crazy. She was such a good example of a psychopathic villain that was still human. You could tell there was something broken about her, right from the very beginning. And yet she kind of carried on and you almost feel for her, every once in a while. At some point she’s standing there saying, “My mother called me a monster…he was right of course. But it still hurt to hear her say it.”

There was some really brilliant writing in Avatar.

Sokka was a lot of fun, and at the end of the day, Sokka took out Sparky-Sparky Boom-Man, who was one of the scariest guys in the series to show up. Which I thought was just awesome. I am a fan of Avatar, I like Avatar a bit.

Next time I have a dog, I’m going to have a little white dog and name him Appa. I’m going to train him with hand signals so whenever I want him to do something I’ll say, “Appa, yip yip.” And whatever the hand signal is will be what he does, but all I’ll ever say is “Appa, yip yip”. And then I could do a cosplay where I could be grown up Aang, and shave all of the hair off of the dog’s head except for a big arrow on the little dog’s head. And dye that blue. Cause that would be awesome.

I’m a nerd.

Q: You’ve written ancient Rome and urban fantasy. What was the motivation for the Cinder Spires?

A: I was sounding out several different ideas. I wrote out the first 20%-25% of four different novels and showed them to my beta readers and said, “which one strikes you?” And as I showed them to them one at a time it was pretty clear that the steampunk idea was really hitting bells with the readers. So I thought, ok, I’m gonna work with the steampunk. It really all started as an exercise in trying to figure out why they needed to wear goggles. Someone was always like, “just write a steampunk story,” and I’m like, “I can’t, because there has to be a real reason to wear goggles all the time.” So, ok, stop and figure out why they need to wear goggles.

By the time I was done answering that question, I had a universe.

So I know why they have to wear goggles all the time, but they don’t necessarily know all the reasons it’s necessary. They know the consequences if they don’t, but they don’t understand why those consequences exist yet. And it’s all coming, later in the series.

Q: Will you ever visit Alera again?

A: I don’t have any definite plans to go back yet because I have so many stories that I want to tell, and I’m going to have to live to 128 to get them all written. And I keep coming up with new ones, which doesn’t help. So come on, all you bio-med people out there, biological immortality, get working on it.

I could at some point, there are a couple of places I could go back to if I wanted to. But nothing on the drawing board right now.

Q: Did I create the spiritual daughter as a companion to Bob, and Is Dresden going to have to have a father-with-a-shotgun talk with Bob?

A: That’s a fair question. The answer to that is no, I wanted to show what Bob was like when he got started before he had generations and generations to figure out how things work. But yeah, the shotgun talk is inevitable at some point. Dresden is definitely keeping Bonnie away from Bob, because he fears Bob will be a terrible influence. And he’s right.

Q: Will Dresden be featured in any of the spinoff stories?

A: Very possibly. I like the character a lot. Although I think he will be very different in the spinoff stories, because when you’re not seated inside his point of view you don’t see how scary he is to everyone around him. He is creepy. For one thing, he’s huge and dark and scarred, and never makes eye contact with anybody. He doesn’t talk a lot, but when he does he usually says something that is reasonably incisive or makes fun of someone. It would be a little eerie hanging around him if you weren’t close enough to see behind the mask that he wears. He would be a totally different person showing up in a place like that. Although it would be fun to do a series of short stories showing people seeing Dresden from the outside. Maybe I’ll do that in the future sometime.

Q: What are your steampunk influences?

A: Probably Rudyard Kipling and Jules Verne. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Horatio Hornblower. I don’t really think this book is steampunk at all. I think it is Steam Opera. But my editor says I’m not allowed to create a new genre whenever I want. So, ok, it’s steampunk…*sigh*…but I think it’s Steam Opera myself. Because it has that kind of Space Opera scale to it in many ways.

Q: Will we get more history of Harry’s mom and grandfather?

A: Yes, in the next book.

Q: Why does Harry keep wearing a hat on the book covers, when in the text of the book Harry keeps talking about how he hates hats?

A: That didn’t really start until Book 8 or 9 or something like that, is when I started making that comment. It was because on Book 7 the Art Department decided that the perfect way to say “Wizard P.I.” was to have the guy with a wizard staff and a P.I. fedora. That it would be the perfect psychological shorthand for “Wizard P.I.” So they directed Chris McGrath to “make it like this.” And Chris, who is a professional artist said, “I will make it like that,” and did so, and fulfilled his commission.

And I didn’t like it. So I got all passive aggressive about it, and started making fun of hats in the books.

So when the new book came out, the steampunk book, Grimm is one of those characters that would never be caught dead without his hat. So of course they draw him with no hat.

Q: How many books have you planned for this new series?

A: I’ve planned 3 books to start it out with. I planned a 9 book arc, with cutouts at 3 and 6 in case it didn’t sell. If you guys don’t like it, you don’t buy it, that’s how it works. Hopefully we’ll do 9, hopefully people will enjoy it enough that it’ll go to 9 books. I want it to go that far. Because it’ll take that long to do the whole story and explore the back history of this world and show you all these different things i have in mind for this place that came from “why do we wear goggles?”

It’s sometimes frustrating because, as a writer, you build all this stuff and you don’t get to use it all. It’s so frustrating. Which is why sometimes I blow a gasket and mention something on the forums about The Archive or something like that. Or Murphy’s dog fear.

Q: Would you ever consider doing a collaborative effort with another author?

A: No. Because I would not wish to inflict myself upon anyone that I respect as a professional. I am high strung and way too controlling. It works well for me when I’m sitting along in a room, because no one else has to put up with it. But if I’m sitting there working with somebody else I’m pretty sure we’re going to start throwing our phones at each other. I am doing a couple of things, I’m doing a short story in Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter International anthology, because I want to know about the janitor at MHI. If you’re the janitor at a company that professionally hunts down monsters that routinely chew up cities and stuff like that, I figure you’ve got a job. So I wanted to write a story about that.

Other than that, if other authors wanted to do a Dresden Files thing, I could maybe do something like that at some point.

My stomach hurts just thinking about it.

Q: Will you ever do a crossover between your universes?

A: It would be kind of cool. I’m not sure if it sounds cool or cheesy. Harry’s the wizard, Tavi is the thief…I’m not sure if that would be cool or cheesy. Though really that’s been my entire career.

Q: Are there limitations to how magic works in the Dresden Files?

A: Yes, there’s always limitations. But the people in that world don’t necessarily know where those limitations are. And as you get closer and closer to them, the likelihood of bad things happening gets worse and worse. It’s why you don’t see a lot of wizards flying around on brooms, in the Harry Dresden universe. If you’re experimenting with a flying broom, you get to make one mistake. And then you don’t have a flying broom or a living wizard anymore, due to the high speed crash. But you can get other things that are slightly safer than a flying broom. A flying carpet does make a little bit more sense than a flying broom, because at least you don’t fall off it quite as easy.

There are always limits to things that can happen, but you have to find someone that’s willing to test those limits. Without getting killed. You can always test the limits, it’s the ‘not get killed’ part that’s difficult. You can ask Marie Curie about that one.

Q: Whenever Harry’s had a relationship it hasn’t worked out. Is there something big coming?

A: When you say ‘something big’, do you mean that in a positive sense, or…? Yeah there’s something big coming….poor Murphy…

Q: James Marsters does a wonderful job as the reader for the audiobooks for the Dresden Files. Is he going to continue as the reader until the end of the series?

A: I do not want the publisher to change the reader from Marsters, because he is great. The problem is that he is the highest paid actor in Hollywood. Literally. He makes more money than anyone else in Hollywood. James has a very savvy business manager. The point is, James is only doing the series out of a love for the series and his fans at this point. Because we can’t possibly pay him what his time is worth. So it’s up to him.

Q: As a very successful author, why do you still live in Independence, Missouri?

A: I asked the very same question of a martial arts instructor when I was a teenager. This was the kind of guy that could catch arrows out of the air, the CIA had asked him to come train them and he told them to go fly a kite, just a world class martial artist. I asked my teacher, who worked for him, “why does he live in Independence, of all places?” The guy looked back at me and said, “because he wants to.” And that’s kind of my answer as well.

Q: How much input do I have in the Harry Dresden RPG?

A: I gave them a series of notes on things they could not have known because they weren’t in the books, but are features of the story world. Then I told them, “but you can’t reveal any of that, but you need to know it in order to build the world correctly.”

Then I went through and I nixed a bunch of things that they had put together, that they had effectively added up 2 and 2, and came up with 4, and I erased the 4 and said, “no no no, because this 4 is going to be a story later. So you can’t lay this out here for everybody.” I believe very strongly in building a story world where you could predict what was coming next if you had 1 more fact. And a lot of times people have made the intuitive leap and predicted what I’m going to be doing with something anyways. Somebody who is a reader has come up and told me essentially everything that’s going to happen, every major event, that’s going to happen for the rest of the story. It’s all scattered out amongst the collective, but the collective knows what’s going to happen. I feel that’s a very good level to be at, as far as writing the story goes. That people can look at this imaginary place, and the rules works well enough that you can say “Oh, this is coming!” Which is really rewarding for me.

Q: Do you get ideas that change your story? When someone asks you a question or something like that?

A: Oh yeah, that’s happened. Somebody else will come up and say, “Is this going to happen?” And I’ll be like, “No, that’s not going to happen…but…that’s better than what I had…that’s a really cool idea. Can I make that work?” That’s happened a couple of times for smaller things on the side.

Q: Have you been approached to do anything more with comics or Marvel?

A: No, which is good. Comics/Marvel doesn’t pay very much. I don’t get a royalty, I get a flat fee and then I go away. And everything has to be approved by a committee, and then if you want to change anything, it all has to be approved by a committee again.

I have been approached by others. At one point Wizards of the Coast wanted me to do the Dragonlance reboot. This was when 4E was just coming out. And I thought this was a really cool idea. So I re-read the first 3 books in Dragonlance, and came up with a plan for a story, of how the entire story universe would change if Flint had caught Hasselhoff trying to steal his dagger in the very first chapter. Because then, Tanis gets wounded by an goblin so they’ve got to take an extra 45 minutes taking care of Tanis before they can go into town and help Goldmoon. And that changes the entire story, everything, based on the fact that Flint goes, “Ah hah! You weasel, you can’t take my knife!”

I took Raistline, and it was going to be Raistline as portrayed by Dr. House. And it was going to start there, because really, that’s how Raistline should have been portrayed. As Dr. House.

So I was very excited, and I had all the plans together, and then I went to Wizards of the Coast and I said, “Tracy and Margaret know about this and are cool about it, right?” Wizards of the Coast started giving me these weasel answers and I was like, “Oh, ok. They don’t know, and you haven’t run this by them, and the only reason I’m a writer is because Margaret Weis came in to my high school and gave a talk about writing. And that’s the only reason I thought “well maybe I should write a novel” when I was 19. So I kind of went, no I don’t want to do this.

And then they had the disaster that was 4th Edition come crashing down on them and I think everyone behind the idea lost their jobs anyhow. Really, 4th Edition was a disaster for those guys. I’m sorry, it’s much nerdier than I really should be going on at this point.

Q: Of all of your published works, are there any that stand out to you as the best or worst?

A: To me, Storm Front is the one I wrote when I knew the least about how to tell a good story. And really that’s just a fact. Ghost Story was a book that I was trying to do something very different for Harry Dresden, because Harry is the guy who kicks down the door and saves the day. When he can’t kick down the door and save the day, who is he? That was sort of what Ghost Story was about, and I’m not sure I pulled it off as well as I wanted to. But I knew it was going to be a very very difficult book to write, and it was.

As far as the best work I’ve done, was probably Changes, because everyone wanted to kill me. And I’m happy with that. And then Dead Beat, because undead T-Rex. I don’t know how I’m going to top an undead T-Rex, maybe I should have saved that for later on.

Q: How did you originally build Harry’s world? Did you start with the magic system or the world around him?

A: I started with the premise that I needed to prove to my writing teacher that she was wrong about what she was trying to teach me. That was where I started. I decided to prove it to her by doing everything she told me to do, and put my characters together in this exaggerated way, and using story outlines and chapter outlines, and to do all these little worksheets that she had, and character sketches and profiles. After I did all of that she was going to see exactly what horrible cookie-cutter pack of crap emerged from that artificial stilted process.

So I wrote Storm Front.

After that, I started with Harry. I put him together as a frankenstein of Merlin and Sherlock Holmes and Spencer and Gandalf. Just borrowing traits, basically ripping off their arms and sewing it onto another body. And after that, well he’s a wizard, the next thing to figure out about the world was the magic. Because that’s how he’s going to relate to the world. So I went out and raided the local bookstore, it was a Border’s at the time, raided their metaphysics section. It was all books about people that incorporate magic into their religious practices. I took everything that I thought would have a good effect or would be fun to work with later and left a bunch of the rest of it behind.

So first it was Harry, then it was the magic, and then everything else.

Q: Your costumes were great at DragonCon. How long did it take anyone to figure out who you as a group were cosplaying as?

A: Well, nobody could figure out who we were cosplaying at DragonCon because we were cosplaying people from Cinder Spires. Which nobody had read. It was the most hipster cosplay ever. “I’m dressed as Captain Grimm from Cinder Spires. You’ve probably never read it…” Although, to be fair, I cheated on that costume, because I wrote Captain Grimm’s costume as a costume that I already owned. It was in my closet. I wanted to cosplay convincingly as somebody from one of my books, and I didn’t have anyone else that I could do that with. So it was Grimm.

Q: What authors do you look forward to reading, when they release a new book?

A: Brandon Sanderson, he’s like the Terminator or something. I don’t know what it is. I’m going to get on a plane tomorrow, get to the airport, new Brandon Sanderson book. Take off, land in Cincinnati, and there’s another book! That’s what I feel like he does.

Brian McClellan is probably getting added to the list really soon, since I’m really enjoying is Powdermage books.

Larry Correia, John Ringo, I always pick up those guys. David Weber.

Naomi Novik, I love the Temeraire novels. Give me those, give them to me faster. What do you mean this is the last one?
Click to expand...

fuubar · Oct 18, 2015

Ryuugi Shi said: ↑

For simplicity's sake: ...
Click to expand...

Thanks for pulling everything in, was in a bit of a hurry when I posted that link!

AlbusPHolmes · Oct 31, 2015

Don't know if this is common knowledge or not, but apparently Donar Vadderung is mortal and very killable - he became mortal to stay involved in mortal affairs, and of all the pantheons the Norse gods were one of those most interested in protecting humanity.

Also gives a lot of credence to the theory that they were the former guardians of the Outer Gates.

Source: Here, somewhere around the 4-minute mark.

Zeelthor · Oct 31, 2015

Told ya so. thanks for sharing

The Curious Fan · Nov 2, 2015

Nothing else to do today so I'll type up that interview.

Jim: I am Jim Butcher, the author of the Dresden Files, the Codex Alera and the new steampunk series the Cinder Spires.

Question: What do you think of Salt Lake Comic Con?

Jim: Oh I love it, this might be the most fun I've ever had at a Comic Con.

Question: Not shown but presumably about the other Comic Cons he's been to.

Jim: A bunch, San Diego, New York, Denver, Kansas City. This has been really amazing and I'm totally impressed with the balance of commercialism to nerddom and the nerddom ratio is very high here, I very much appreciate that.

Question: How are the cosplays here?

Jim: I'm having a good time looking at 'em, I've been going around the con floor for a couple of days now and got to see a bunch of really cool costumes, been a lot of fun.

Question: What has been your favourite cosplay of a character you have seen from your books?

Jim: They've cosplayed as a bunch of different ones, the most unlikely cosplays went to the folks who decided that they wanted to cosplay characters from the book that hadn't come out yet, so they managed to scrounge up a copy and were able to cosplay characters from the book that has not yet been published and that was kind of ultimate hipster nerddom, "I'm cosplaying a character from a book, you probably haven't read it yet." The best cosplays that I've seen, I saw a group of, there's a group of like tiny faeries like little pixies in the Dresden Files, Toot toot and company and when they're not occasionally murdering somebody they're kind of the comic relief for the series and I saw a group of pixies a couple of years ago that were just amazing. The best one I saw was the Dresden that was all bruised up and had a broken nose and was bleeding from one side of his mouth it's like okay, that's Harry Dresden right there. I was super impressed with that.

Question: Will there be a short story for when Harry met Michael?

Jim: About how Harry met Michael? Probably could but I don't know how interesting it would be. I thought it was one of those things where I was originally gonna get set to write it and I was like "you know what? I don't wanna do an origin story let's just jump right into this and the readers are gonna be smart enough to figure it out." They were both after the same bad guy, one that had Dresden outclassed by a bit so, the knights of the sword, the knights of the cross, they show up when they're most needed so that's kind of what their thing is to ride over the horizon just in the nick of time you know so.

Question: What did fans think of Michael's role in Skin Game?

Jim: The group of fans that did the trailer put that at the end of the trailer, you know they showed Michael picking up the sword again it was like okay yay, everybody was like "oh my god is that going to happen?" I was really happy with that.

Question: How many gods are in the Dresden universe and what are they doing?

Jim: From the beginning when I was putting the Dresden Files together I knew the kind of format, the basic skeleton that I wanted to use was the private eye going off onto a investigation, that was basically what I knew I wanted the skeleton to be. And after that I decided I was gonna be pulling in all these supernatural elements, I was trying to decide "what kind of vampires do I use? What kind of werewolves?" and so on and I came to the conclusion pretty quick in, I need to use them all, I need to have a world that is inclusive of all supernatural phenomenon and legend and so every time I would come across a new bit of legend or folklore that I wanted to incorporate into the story it was never "how do I make this fit?" but you know "how does this adjust the entire world as it comes in?". I wanted to be sure to include everything rather than picking and choosing, I wanted it all you know so it's kind of a salad bar of the supernatural where I've been able to just take absolutely everything that I think is awesome and fun. Some that I've made up, some that I grabbed straight out of folklore, some that I've tailored and adjusted to fit but that's kind of been the experience. I never wanted to say "this is my vampire" I wanted to say "let's have all the vampires" you know and sort of tried to build a place for all of them.

Most of them are sort of living in retirement, they've sort of been disassociated from the events of mortality in general for a long time. Not that they're not about and still listening and still paying attention to people who still have faith in them but they can't get involved in things the way they used to. They can't turn themselves into a swan and show up and seduce somebody anymore so they've sort of been hanging out in the background. But the gods have been doing things lately, somebody like Vadderung actually became mortal so that he could stay involved in mortal affairs, he's killable, I mean he's putting himself on the line you know because he's- the Norse gods were very unique in that more than any of the others they were very much protectors of humanity so I was like "I'm gonna grab these guys because they're awesome and they're great storytelling" and so that's why I decided to use them but I'm gonna get to bring more of them in as the series goes on.

Question: How do you choose where to pick up in Harry's life for each book?

Jim: The worst weekend of Harry's year, that's what I want to write the story about, "what is the absolute worst period of Harry's year this year?" okay good that's where we start the story. I never wanted us to ride along for every moment of Harry's life, you know like I said only the worst weekend of the year but then I also want the sense of this greater story world happening so there are these other events going on that you hear about only in passing or hear about only as a mention that goes by in a scene and there's lots of good reasons for that. One I think it does a good job of helping to create the illusion of a larger world going on around the events of this book and second I can always go back and do short stories or comic books or a number of other things. I mean I've done a number of graphic novels that got a mention in passing you know so it's been a ton of fun, nowadays if you're writing books you've gotta be cognisant of the fact that oh well you might be doing some other stuff with this story at some point and how are you gonna transition that.

Question: There are a lot of Dresden Files products. What else is in the works?

Jim: Yeah, the RPG, the comic books, the audiobooks, the foreign language editions. There was the RV show of course and there might be a TV show again you know, so we'll have to see how it turns out.

Question: Would the new TV show be better than the last?

Jim: I would hope that it would be. If we do a show again part of the package is going to be me along as a consultant. Not so much to keep it as much like the books as possible as to make sure it's as good a story as possible. At this point I'm confident enough in my ability to tell a story, that I know what I'm doing that it's like "yeah, you need me along, I'll be an asset."

Question: Is Molly your new punching bag, the way Harry is?

Jim: No, she's not really although she has gotten herself into a fairly serious position by virtue of- she loved the wrong guy, who was Harry Dresden, who never really loved her back, at least not in the way she wanted. So now she's kind of in deep trouble because she, you know, stood by her friends and stood by her principles and if you do that kind of thing long enough then eventually you get in deep trouble that's kind of how it works out.

Molly, she actually kinda likes her new job. I've written a short story from Molly's point of view that describes her first mission as the Winter Lady and that'll be out later this year and that was a ton of fun, I loved that one. But she's got her own set of priorities and conflicts and things that she can't really talk to Harry about so it's sort of a pain because she's got to keep all these kinds of faerie secrets now that she's a faerie princess but at the same time she still cares about her friends and her family and so on so she's got to balance her duty and her very normal needs so she's having a tough time of it but at the same time she kind of likes her new job, she always had a ton of little brothers and sisters, now they just happen to be you know, murderous and rampageous and she needs to keep them in line so...

Question: Do you have plans to go back to Alera?

Jim: It's possible that we'll go back there, although if we do Tavi will be more of a background character the way Gaius Sextus was in the first series. There's a couple of different places I could go back into that story world if I want to. I don't have any plans to do it right now cuz I've got all these other stories I want to tell and I've worked it out that at the rate I'm writing I'm gonna have to live to be 128 to tell them all.

*odd cut*

Jim: The advancement of medical science is very serious and it certainly is possible that you could live that long maybe it's possible that I could live that long. We'll have to see.

Question: Tell us about your new book The Aeronaut's Windlass.

Jim: It's a steampunk series called The Cinder Spires and the first book is called The Aeronaut's Windlass because I wanted it to sound very Victorian and steampunk-y and so it is. I used to say that it's the X-men meets Horatio Hornblower but that didn't sound steampunk enough so now I say it's the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen meets Horatio Hornblower. It's a story set in a world where the surface of the world is very dangerous to live on and so everyone lives in these enormous black towers called the Spires and Spires are connected by airship from one to the other so all trade, all diplomacy, all war-fighting gets done by airship and two very powerful Spires are getting ready to go to war with one another and the lord, the monarch of one of these towers has decided that he needs a special operations team to kind of position himself a little bit better before the war gets started. So he recruits more or less a pirate captain, he's a privateer he has a letter of marque so he's not a pirate, but he gets a pirate captain and basically a princess and a wizard and a girl who can talk to cats and a warrior and a couple of other figures and gets them together and sends them off on a mission to find a trader within the Spire who's been selling them out to the enemy. And so that's kind of the first- kind of where it starts so there's airship battles and there's wizards who can't open doorknobs and there's talking cats and all kinds of just complete insanity, I had so much fun writing it.

Question: Who has been the most fun character to write?

Jim: The character who's most fun to write? It's a tossup between Bob the skull from The Dresden Files who is basically my inner fourteen year old with no filter whatsoever and then one of the viewpoint characters from The Cinder Spires, a character named Raul (Rowl?) he's a cat and he's essentially a prince of his people and is the most obnoxious, arrogant, egotistical, overbearing bully you've ever seen but he's almost as good as he thinks he is and he's kind of adorable so, you know, he gets away with it but it's so much fun to write him.

Question: Tell us more about these cats.

Jim: They're very large cats like Maine Coon size so they're twenty to thirty pounds and they're very serious they live on their own. They also kind of do business with humans occasionally. Actually, the cats in the Cinder Spires are sort of like you know "I notice your warehouse is rodent free, perhaps you would like it to continue to be rodent free, perhaps there will be cream waiting for us at 3 o'clock every Tuesday". It's easier to make an accommodation with the cats then it is to put up with them because they have like a little opposable thumb and matches so you've got to take so you've got to take them seriously, you can't just blow them off or kick them away (personal note: but what about just killing them?).

Question: Did you make a cat mafia?

Jim: I kinda did they're like a little fuzzy mafia, they show up and and you have to accommodate with them because otherwise they can make your life miserable and I've had a ton of fun writing 'em. Mostly they sort of regard themselves as the primary species on the Earth and they have to share it with humans. They also arm themselves with fighting spurs that they put on their back legs so they'll have like little hooked scalpel like knives for when they go to war. You know cats go to war it's serious, plus it's a very dangerous world there's all kinds of horrible things, horrible creatures from the surface that are trying to get in and some of them are quite large and that's when the cats are like "okay we're gonna have to go get the humans to help us" but lots of them are smaller so you know anything under about 200 pounds the cats will handle themselves but after that they're like "yeah, we better get the humans, they've got the guns."

Question: Are you more of a cat person, or dog?

Jim: I'm a dog person. I had a Bichon Frise for 14 years, he was a little twenty-pound fridge dog. And Mouse is the dog that dog thought he was. To be fair, he saved my kid from a bear and he fought of a coyote when he was 13 years old, he probably saved me after the divorce and he was quite the guardian angel. When we first got him I was like "okay I'd forgotten how cool having a dog in the household was, Harry needs a dog and that was when I wrote Blood Rites, like the very first chapter Harry's got a dog.

Question: Everybody loves Mouse.

Jim: Right right, really he's a better people person than Harry is, he's better with people, he's got more communication skills than the wizard does.

Question: How is writing for a silent character like Mouse?

Jim: Oh fun, it's not hard at all, I mean. I don't know if you ever saw- did you watch Buffy were you a fan of Buffy? Did you see the episode Hush? Where they took away the character's inability to speak for an entire episode, there was a monster that took away their ability to speak and what really impressed upon me in that episode was the fact that how unnecessary words are for so much of what we do and what we mean to one another. My dog had no difficulty whatsoever communicating with me and he never had to talk, obviously he's a dog he can't but he could make absolutely clear what he wanted and needed down to the point of- eventually I would go through a checklist of things that I do he might be interested in until right one and then he would bark. I mean, he was an intelligent dog but yeah, you don't need to talk to be able to communicate what's really important. Harry just doesn't know how to listen and so...

You can convey so much without words at all which is a weird sentiment for me to have because my trade is just purely words but at the same time I think you can show that in the written page you know so...

Question: How many books will be in your new series?

Jim: The new series I've got a contract for three books, I set it up to where I could write it as three, six or nine depending on how it was received. I hope to be able to write the whole thing which would be a nine book long story but we'll see how it goes.

Question: And how many for The Dresden Files?

Jim: Looks like it'll be twenty-one of the case books like we've had so far and then a big old apocalyptic trilogy at the end as kind of a capstone. The titles of the last three books are the swears that people use in the story, which is Stars and Stones, Hell's Bells and Empty Night. Those are three curse phrases that the various folks inside the story use and most of them don't know why those are curse phrases but they're relevant to the story world so that'll come out as we get into the last trilogy.

Question: What would you like to say to aspiring authors?

Jim: Writing stories is mostly not a matter of talent, writing stories is mostly a matter of learning the craft of how to tell a good story and it's something you can learn nuts-and-bolts it's just like woodworking or any other craft. If you want to put the time in to learn it you can learn it. It helps if you're born with a lot of talent but you don't have to have that if you put in enough work. That said, it is real work but if you're willing to do it you can get yourself published.

Question: When will the next Dresden Files come out?

Jim: I'll be turning in the next Dresden Files by this Christmas or so. So it'll be out early next Spring and then I'll immediately begin work on the next Cinder Spires book and then hopefully I'll be turning 'em out about every six months. I'll be turning out one book from each series every six months.

Question: Is there anything you think your fans have missed in your books?

Jim: No my fans are too smart, I can drop in a joke about a medieval mathematician and there will be somebody in the room who busts out laughing, you know, when I do the reading for it. The only things that they don't get are the things that they can't get yet so a couple of months ago when I'm writing about Butters and Butters is talking to a bunch of the Norse guys and they're like "hey when are you gonna get into the practice ring with us" and he's like "I'll get in there just as soon as I get a functioning lightsaber" and nobody says anything about it until they get to the end of the last book when he gets one or something very close to one and then they're like "oh my god he mentioned this three books ago (actually two books beforehand but hey) and I'm like yeah I kinda did.

Question: Has there been a part of The Dresden Files that you didn't plan out, but you just let play out on paper?

Jim: Well the fun part is when we got up to Changes Harry Dresden basically came to a big crossroads in his life and he got himself into a position where he was gonna have to make a deal with somebody if he was going to save his daughter's life. So he was gonna have to get faustian with someone and the question was- he had about three different options that he could take and which one was he going to take and I wasn't sure until I wrote the book which way he was going to go. So the Dresden Files could have looked like a very different series had he decided to take up one of the Fallen coins, one of the 30 silver coins with fallen angels in them. It would have turned out very differently if he'd taken up the old necromancer's- the book of Kemmler, and caused an ecological disaster to gather enough power to save his daughter. And there would have been very different views on that, the series would have come out in very different colours, very different palette depending on which way he went. But he went with- made a deal with Mab, the queen of air and darkness and off they went to save the universe Mab style.

Question: Thank you, Jim Butcher.
Click to expand...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmHX9jD8Uzw

I want to hear more about this Darkhallow AU that could have happened.

The Curious Fan · Nov 5, 2015

This was easy enough to do, it took less than an hour since it's so short.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV1FzVQ5cr0

TM: Hey everybody, Tigermonkey here, I am honoured to be interviewing Jim Butcher, the author of the latest Dresden Files novel, Skin Game. Jim, thank you for being here, Skin Game is the fifteenth book in the series of The Dresden Files, if someone was thinking about jumping into the series, what would you tell a new reader that they are getting into?

Jim: If you're jumping into Skin Game, I guess you're getting into the Ocean's Eleven episode of The Dresden Files. It's Buffy the Vampire Slayer starring Phillip Marlowe. That's been my favourite description of it so far.

TM: What made you decide to get into the heist genre with Harry Dresden?

Jim: Oh you've gotta write a heist novel at some point, I wanted to write the League of Doom episode of The Dresden Files where it's like "we've gotta put Harry in a black hat and put him with all the bad guys doing bad things and see what happens."

TM: What would you say is your favourite aspect or part of the book?

Jim: This is one of the first times in the series that we're getting into ah sorta the major league kinda the heavyweight power group that Dresden hasn't been in before he's actually had bad guys come up to him before and thrash him and then say "ah, I just kinda wondered if you were ready for the big time yet". He's playing with the famous people now so people like Hades are showing up, you know, I'm finally getting to do this sort of thing where it's like "ooh, I get to grab cool stuff from mythology and so on and start bringing that into the story" and so that's been a great deal of fun.

TM: So James Marsters has been the reader for the audiobooks um, most of the audiobooks since the very first one. I am a massive fan of the audiobooks, I get them every single time, do you ever hear his voice when you're writing for Harry now or has it always been the same voice that's in your head ever since the very first novel?

Jim: No, Harry just sorta sprung full being into place in my head when I started writing him, I sat down and the very first line I ever wrote for Harry Dresden was "My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, conjure by it at your own risk". And then I just started writing and like the first two chapters sort of flew off the same night, he's sort of grown into it I think, as he's been reading, but it hasn't really changed the way that I think of it in my head, so much, although he does a fantastic job of the reading of it though. I was actually very pleased to hear with Skin Game to hear he was recording it and then it took him like an extra hour or something to record one scene because it was the scene where Harry actually meets his daughter for the first time because he kept breaking down crying. I'm like "yes! I made Spike the vampire cry".

TM: Nice! We know there's an endgame in sight with The Dresden Files, there are only so many books left and you know it's all kind of leading towards something. When this series ends, do you think you'll ever actually be able to let go of Harry and just stop writing for him as a character?

Jim: I kind of can because I know where he's going. The thing about stories is that they've gotta have an ending, if they don't have an ending that's when stories start to get stale because they just circle and do the same stuff over and over again.

TM: Harry practices a good amount of parkour in this novel, what kind of other special skills do you think you'd wanna throw at his way in the next couple of books?

Jim: Oh gosh, he should probably learn how to keep his mouth shut but I don't see that happening probably because that never really happened for me either. I got beat up a lot when I was a kid and I had the bad taste to be the smallest kid in class and and one of the smarter kids in class and I might not have been able to keep my mouth shut. Let's see, as far as learning other stuff goes, I wanna see him start to learn shapeshifting because that will be hilarious.

TM: Random regular question, what books are you celebrating right now?

Jim: Let's see I just got caught up with both the most recent book in Benedict Jacka's series, the Alex Verus novels, which if you haven't read you should check them out they're really very good. I also just finished Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson. I hate that guy, but yeah, you get to the end of Words of Radiance and you're like "oh my god! oh my god! this is epic! This is what epic fantasy should look like because this is epic!". But yeah, I've got to get together, maybe get Pat Rothfuss and we can go find Brandon and break his fingers because he's writing entirely too fast.

TM: Damn healthy competition!

Jim: I know!

But at the same time, I wanna write him to say "write faster", you know, one of those things you always love and hate to hear as a writer because you know, you love it because you want people to love your stuff, you hate it because it's like "oh my god I'm already working so hard you don't even know. It took me nine months and you finished my book in eight hours aaah."

TM: Well how do you deal with that kind of pressure?

Jim: I blow up a lot of people virtually. So yeah whenever things are too tough I've gotta log onto Battlefield 4 and start killing.

TM: So Harry's subconscious ID shows up again in Skin Game, are there any plans for Harry's subconscious to shave his goatee anytime soon?

Jim: Well no because c'mon we all know that our evil mirror wears a goatee, I mean if Star Trek taught us anything is was that.

TM: For my own personal I-just-want-to-knowness (should have just said curiosity), how long did it take for you to come up with the name Octo-Kongs?

Jim: *laughs*

That was one of those on the fly moments, I actually had to stop and consider a minute because I thought I might do something with Pong instead of Kong.

TM: So, this is not the last book for Harry Dresden, what is going to be up next for him? What other stuff are you going to be writing in the near future?

Jim: We'll call the Mirror universe story in the future, I've still gotta do the professional wrestling story which I'm looking forward to. The next one though is going to be, there's going to be a peace summit in Chicago between the various supernatural nations that is going to go horribly wrong because, you know, we can't just have a peace summit show up and for everybody to be happy, that just doesn't happen in Harry Dresden's day.

TM: Thank you, Jim Butcher, for being here and letting me ask you a couple of questions, this was tons of fun, thanks for being here.

Jim: Thank you very much, I'll try and get an actual camera to use at some point in the future.
Click to expand...

Innomine · Nov 5, 2015

These transcriptions are great. I much prefer reading interviews to watching the video, so thanks a lot for the effort.

The Curious Fan · Nov 5, 2015

I'm on a roll today so I may as well do a double, this one has completely accurate subtitles so it's easy enough to do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRv_ejA0BK0

Veronica Belmont: We are very excited to have Mr. Jim Butcher here with us today. Thank you so much for joining us.

Jim: Sure. How are you doing?

Veronica: Excellent. Thank you for asking. So we wanted to know first of all what can you tell us about what you're working on currently?

Jim: Currently I have just finished up the most recent of the Dresden Files books, "Cold Days." And right now, I am working on the first book of my steampunk series, which I'm about halfway through right now, a little bit less.

Veronica: So that's kind of a genre you haven't really gone into before. How has that been?

Jim: Lots and lots of fun. I'm having a really great time putting everything together. Not just to tell a good story, but I also kind of want to embrace- I want people to be able to say "finally I have somebody I can cosplay steampunky that they like." So I think of all these cool things that are available to get at conventions and so on. So I'm kind of writing this for the people who love that sort of play. So fare the folks- the beta readers- who've read what I've done so far are all like "okay, I get to cosplay this one""No, I get to cosplay him." So it's been a lot of fun. But you get to write all these painfully precise dialogue scenes and so on. It's kind of a quasi-Victorian setting. And I'm having a really good time with that.

Tom Merritt: It seems like a lot of folks are getting drawn into steampunk. We've had Cherrie Priest on recently, Gail Carriger. It's a really fun world to inhabit, huh?

Jim: It's a great genre. And I'm getting to put this together in a way that's very unique to anything I've done before. But yeah, we've got airships and pirates and captains and monsters and horrible things. It's going to be a lot of fun.

Tom: I can't wait. I think a lot of people have found out about you through "The Dresden Files" TV show who may not have found out other ways. What do you say to people who are coming to your books for the first time saying, "I've liked Harry Dresden, I've met him on the screen, but I haven't read about him yet"?

Jim: First of all, I'd say there's actually no hat. The hat's on the covers, okay. We get that. But the actual character, not so much. But in general, I think one of my favourite descriptions of the series is "Buffy the Vampire Slayer starring Philip Marlowe." I think that's fair. Really, Harry Dresden, he's a PI, he's a wizard in Chicago. The books kind of embrace a much larger world than the TV show really got to explore and play with. The TV show was limited to the few episodes they did for season one. And I think they were planning on expanding it, but they didn't get the chance to. So really, the books kind of take place in a much larger world with many more concerns. And Dresden's a much smaller piece of the overall story.

Tom: Perfect way to satisfy your need for more Dresden.

Jim: Well, theoretically, yeah. There's some comic books and stuff, too. But really, I kind of like the books. I'm a little biased.

Veronica: So how do you think coming from a role-playing background has affected your worldbuilding? I mean I know that's a large part of what you do for fun and we've talked to a lot of different authors that have been on the show in the past who also come from that kind of background.

Jim: Oh, it's done a lot of things for me. One of the things that I have done several times is that I run game sessions here at home with my own gaming group that is set in a world that I'm building for a story. And the main thing that it really does is the great thing about having players in a game is that they never do anything right. They never do what you expect them to do. It's like no, you're not supposed to stampede a herd of pigs through the duel in the emperor's garden. That's not how it works. But as they do that though, when you're being the GM for them, you're kind of telling that story. Like I kind of frantically feel like I'm building sets and laying out the floor about two feet in front of them as charge forward. So there's a lot of creative energy in that. It does a whole lot for me to help me get more things established than would have been there otherwise.

Tom: Now we've mentioned, as Veronica did, that a lot of writers come from a role-playing background or use role-playing or are just role-players. But not every role-playing game player becomes a writer. How did you end up becoming a writer?

Jim: At some point, I was reading a book and I was dissatisfied with the way it went. And I said to myself "I could do that" and sat down to start doing it. I couldn't, not at the time. But nine years later, I started being able to. And that was when I eventually wrote the first book of The Dresden Files, it took me like nine years. I didn't realise how much work there was involved in actually writing a novel and putting everything together like that but as it turns out, it's a job. But a really, really good job with totally awesome problems.

Tom: Did it change your opinion of that book that spurred you along? You're like "maybe that book isn't as easy as I thought it to write."

Jim: Oh, no, because I'm obstinate. But it did though- it gave me a much greater appreciation for the sort of challenges authors have to face. And so now I wouldn't be the kind of the "well, I could do that thing" now, I'd just be like, hmm, I might have done that a little differently, but that's cool.

Veronica: So we have a few questions from our audience members. And this first one comes from Daran, who asks, "Are there any non sci-fi/fantasy series that influenced the Dresden Files? For some reason the series has always reminded me of "The Rockford Files", am I crazy?

Jim: You are not crazy. Although "The Rockford Files" influence is going to be somewhat limited on account of I only vaguely remember watching "The Rockford Files" when I was little. So if there's influence from "The Rockford Files," it's kind of subliminal. As far as other series go, I think Robert Parker's Spenser books have probably been the biggest influence on the Dresden Files. The late Robert B. Parker- dammit, he went and died. I loved his work. He's really probably the single largest non-science-fiction/fantasy influence on my work. I really have enjoyed his stuff.

Tom: Joshua wanted to know, "in the Dresden universe, an ongoing theme is that most mortals do not believe in magic. One of the few exceptions is the Chicago Special Investigations unit. Are there other governmental groups out there who are clued in? As an example FBI, KGB, NYPD, et cetera. Do they have their own versions of Special Investigations, and if so, would we ever see them in the course of the novels?"

Jim: It was Joshua, you said, right?

Tom: Yes, Joshua asked that question, correct.

Jim: Joshua, if you go back, a detail that a lot of readers have forgotten is the end of Fool Moon where Susan Rodriguez, the reporter, actually got on videotape the werewolf and the big closing fight scene at the end. And then the videotape disappeared and most people kind of forget that the videotape just sort of disappeared. They just sort of put it down to oh, that's random background stuff. It's not random background stuff. Somebody made it disappear, and yes, there are people like that that exist and the difference is that most of them assume that anybody involved with the supernatural is the bad guy, they don't make contact. Not only is Dresden the exception because he's reaching across the aisle, so to speak to work with Murphy, but Murphy's the exception because she's reaching out to work with Dresden. There's something more going on there but the only side of the story we get to see is Harry's side of the story.

Veronica: And that actually brings us to our next question, which mentions Murphy. Rich says "both the Dresden and Alera books have some very strong- more accurately, badass- women characters in Murphy and Kitai". Am I saying that right? I've read the books but I've never actually heard it said out loud.

Jim: Yes, Kitai, absolutely.

Veronica: Kitai? Awesome.

"to name the two most obvious. Are you intentionally trying to support or promote stronger women characters in fiction? Or do they just happen to be character whom you feel have the right fit for your stories?"

Jim: No, it's not something I'm intentionally doing. It's just that that's who I write. I like to joke a lot of times that all my female characters are based on my wife, Shannon, who was an engineer. And then she decided that engineering was no longer a challenge, so she took up romance writing. She writes romance now. But yeah, there have been a lot of strong female figures in my life and I just kind of write it the way I see it. And if you're somebody who is a woman, and you're a cop, and you're, "oh, by the way, it's not enough that I'm a woman and a cop, let's go mess with the supernatural too," you're not a milksop. You can't be that as that person so I couldn't write her that way.

Tom: So you heard it here, James Butcher on "Sword and Laser" admitted that his wife is supernatural.

Jim: Yeah, because all the villainous female characters are based on her, too.

Tom: James says "I've always admired the Dresden Files' willingness to stick to it's own rules for how magic and the supernatural operate. However, have you ever found any of your rules overly constraining or developed a rule early on you wished you hadn't later?"

Jim: I don't think of those things as constraints. When I run into something where I want to have something happen and then somebody will point out to me "hey, Jim, because of this facet of magic, it doesn't work like that, you've already established that" and I'll go "oh!" and then I'll go "okay, how can I use this to make it cooler rather than how is this a problem?" Really I think that's one the common traits of a lot of people who have done well is they don't look at those things as problems they look at them as an opportunity to make something cooler happen, and that's the way you have to think of it. You have to think of it as a challenge to your creativity, you have to think of it as not something that's gotten in your way but something you're going to be able to step on to make the jump even higher as you go over it. So that's always been my feeling, that I've never really felt that the rules have held me back, the rules are there to help things be better and that's what I use them for.

Veronica: Now one question that we got from a lot of people, actually, and this one in particular comes from Daniel- "do you have an overarching story in mind for Dresden or does it just kind of come to you book to book?"

Jim: Oh, there's definitely an overarching story in mind. From the get go- the Dresden Files started off as a class project in college and when I was laying out the structure for the entire thing that I wanted, I went to my professional writing teacher and said, "hey, I'm thinking I should write a series about 20 books long, you think that would be okay?" And I was too dumb to know that that was never going to sell to anybody and she kind of looked at me with this sort of very bland smile and was like, "yeah, I think if you could do 20 book series, you'll be doing fine." So that was sort of the way that turned out. But yeah, the plan was for all along, I've got a definite beginning and end that I want to go, I believe that stories should have a beginning and a middle and an end, and then they're over. And then you do the next story. But we're talking about 20'ish of the case books like we've seen so far, and then a big old apocalyptic trilogy at the end because who doesn't love big apocalyptic trilogies? And I saw Star Wars at a formative age.

Tom: Excellent.

How far along are we then with Cold Days, which is the next Dresden book, coming out soon?

Jim: Cold Days is the 14th book of the series and we're more or less on schedule to what I wanted to do. I'm still not stuck exactly to the original outline that I had written, partly because I thought of cooler things to do and partly because as it turns out, I didn't really account for Dresden's relationships or the romantic aspects of his life. Because I figured I'd just kind of let that grow on it's own and it turns out that the people you fall in love with have some minor effect on the rest of your life, I hadn't really accounted for that when I got started.

Tom: I guess that's true.

And finally our last listener question- Mike wanted to know, "if you could do a full book about one of Dresden's friends or allies, who would you pick?"

Jim: Full book about a friend or ally- I might go with Thomas, his brother, which is a spoiler if you've just started the series, sorry. But he makes an interesting character and he's got his own story going in the background that I know. But really, I've got some ideas for spin-offs that I might do someday, if I have gambling debts or something. But actually, I would probably set it with somebody else in a different part of the world and be able to explore more of the world than we can see from just where Harry's standing.

Veronica: Well, it already seems like you have quite a few books in store already. It's not like you need any more projects at this point.

Jim: I know. I'm going to be dead before I get to write all these stories, it's not fair, I need a longer lifespan, somebody should get on that.

Tom: Yeah, someone help extend Jim Butcher's life, please. We want to hear how this ends up.

Veronica: Absolutely. And our final question is from me, actually. Can you impart any writer's wisdom on us or other people out there who are just getting started in writing? We're both wrapping up with NaNoWriMo, I know a lot of other people out there are as well, what advice can you give to us?

Jim: Write every day. Even if you only write a little bit, even if you only write a sentence or a word. Because if you've written a word, you're at least one word closer to the end of the book than you were at the beginning of the day, and that's progress. Writing is really- it's about momentum, so get that momentum, set your time aside every day, even if it's only a little bit of time, and stay on it.

Tom: Thank you so much for chatting with us today, Jim. We really appreciate you taking the time.

Jim: Thank you very much for having me.
Click to expand...

DLP Flash Christmas Competition + Writing Marathon 2024!

Hi there, Guest

Word of God Thread.

TheWiseTomato Prestigious Tomato ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

Ched Da Trek Moderator DLP Supporter ⭐⭐

Moridin Minister of Magic DLP Supporter

chrnno High Inquisitor

LittleChicago Headmaster DLP Supporter

Striker What's up demons?

Aekiel Angle of Mispeling ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

Erandil Minister of Magic

The Curious Fan First Year

fuubar Headmaster

Zeelthor Scissor Me Timbers

Innomine Alchemist ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

Ryuugi Shi Hierarch

fuubar Headmaster

AlbusPHolmes The Alchemist

Zeelthor Scissor Me Timbers

The Curious Fan First Year

The Curious Fan First Year

Innomine Alchemist ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

The Curious Fan First Year

Writing Exercise Thread

Death Eaters: Who, What, and When

Any Good depressing stories?

First post from the "WoJ Rockstar"

650 000 Word Completed Fic

DLP Flash Christmas Competition + Writing Marathon 2024!

Hi there, Guest

Word of God Thread.

TheWiseTomato Prestigious Tomato ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

Ched Da Trek Moderator DLP Supporter ⭐⭐

Moridin Minister of Magic DLP Supporter

chrnno High Inquisitor

LittleChicago Headmaster DLP Supporter

Striker What's up demons?

Aekiel Angle of Mispeling ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

Erandil Minister of Magic

The Curious Fan First Year

fuubar Headmaster

Zeelthor Scissor Me Timbers

Innomine Alchemist ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

Ryuugi Shi Hierarch

fuubar Headmaster

AlbusPHolmes The Alchemist

Zeelthor Scissor Me Timbers

The Curious Fan First Year

The Curious Fan First Year

Innomine Alchemist ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

The Curious Fan First Year

Writing Exercise Thread

Death Eaters: Who, What, and When

Any Good depressing stories?

First post from the "WoJ Rockstar"

650 000 Word Completed Fic

Useful Searches