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dagaetch:
second half of Gamer's Haven...

There’s a few questions I try to ask everyone I have on the show, first of all, you mentioned a steampunk setting, what is it you’re playing recently or running gamewise?
I’m running a steampunk game that I’m going to have a steampunky story set in at some point, where I’m going to write some actual books there, so I wanted to run the world so I could…it kinda forces me to do some building that I wouldn’t do otherwise…using the Warhammer fantasy build system. I was one of the play-testers of D&D Fourth Edition, where I had to sign the Do Not Disclose agreement and had to give my firstborn to Wizards of the Coast and so on. I wrote my review , a two word review of D&D 4th edition which I don’t think they liked very much, because I just wrote, “New Coke” and left it at that. But in any case, I’ve played some 4th edition lately, I’ve played some Gamma world lately, which is, oh my gosh, that is ridiculous, we do total party wipes like every Friday it’s hilarious. That’s pretty much what we’ve been doing lately.

I haven’t gotten into the whole Gamma world thing, it just seemed a bit too random for me, but…
It’s very random and over the top, but if you approach it with the right attitude, “we’re all going to die as amusingly as possible,” then it becomes a much more fun game. You either have to play it like that, or you have to play it commando style, where everything is bland, and everybody is right on top of it.

Sort of reminds me of Paranoia, I don’t know if you ever played that one…
Oh yeah, absolutely.

That can be incredibly random, or be really really dark.
Exactly. It’s really hilarious or it’s completely grim. On the other hand, we’ve had some really terrible, I mean horrible hideous Cthulhu campaigns that were just fun as anything. Once you can be laughing about cannibalism because it’s hilarious, you’re doing something right.

I’m a big fan of the Lovecraft stuff, and…yeah. That can be darn entertaining, and it can also give you nightmares and not let you sleep at night.
Exactly.

With all these other iterations of Dresden out there, the tv series, the books, all that…with the comic books, do you write the comic books or do they have separate authors for the comics?
I wrote the entire script for Welcome to the Jungle, which is the four issue kind of preview. It’s this little prequel story to Storm Front. They’re writing the script based off of the manuscripts for Storm Front and Fool Moon, and they send me those for review. If anything, I think they stick to it too closely, because I look at that and go “Hey, I really didn’t know very much about storytelling there, you could’ve skipped this whole part and I don’t think anybody would have complained.” But they tend not to, so. I recently did an outline for another graphic novel, for Dynamite, which they’re going to produce, and I wrote a fairly in-depth outline and then there’s gonna be, the script is actually going to be written together with the same script writer they’ve been using for Storm Front/Fool Moon. That’ll be a new project coming out.

It’s just like with making a campaign world for D&D or any of it. How is it to have other people playing in your sandbox, as it were?
Oh, I get twitchy, I think anybody would. For tv, I kind of said, “Okay, these books may be my babies, but baby’s going off to college now, and is gonna get it’s hair dyed pink and get a piercing in an awkward place, and I just have to accept that.” Working with the comics, they’ve been very considerate with me in terms of, creatively speaking, which is great, and that’s been a fairly positive experience so far.

With these other people playing in your sandbox, one thing I like to ask the writers I have on the show is, are there any sandboxes out there that you would love to go play in?
Yeah, there are several story worlds that I would have so much fun romping around in. David Weber’s Honor Harrington universe just cries out for someone to go play in it. Black Company, I would love to write the new adventures of Black Company except I couldn’t, but that setting was just so wonderful and the characters were so much fun. There’s all kind of places where I would go and play, but it’s their sandbox and their creation, you don’t go over there and do that.

One thing that’s great about gaming is it lets you go play in other people’s sandboxes.
Absolutely!

With the RPG coming out, you’re actually the first writer I’ve had on the show that has worked on original content that has turned into a role playing game. With the RPG out there, now that there are countless people out there, “playing in your sandbox,” how does that make you feel as far as the attention that people are giving to your work over the last fifteen years?
It’s a lot of fun, basically. Folks are having a good time, which was sort of the point of the stories to begin with, to write things that people had fun reading. The idea that they’re going to get to go out and use their own creativity to add to the stuff that I’ve done, to have more fun, fantastic! Go for it. Do it.

When Fred Hicks went to you about making a role playing game, was that something you always wanted to see happen with the Dresden stuff?
I thought he was kinda crazy. I thought it was an awful idea, but he said he wanted to. Fred’s actually an old gaming buddy of mine, we gamed together a lot in college and he was one of the people I took particular delight in tormenting when he played in my game. Because really, that’s what a good GM does, he goes out of his way to make things awful for you and that’s the fun! But when he said he wanted to make a Dresden Files game, I thought, you know, Fred, don’t feel like you have to do this because I’m your friend or anything, I think you’re crazy, but if you think you can do it – “Oh I think it will be great!” – Okay, if you say so…I think it was a much bigger project than even he knew it was going to be, and it took him several years, but you know the game when it finally came out, it was worth the wait. They had really made something cool.

You haven’t actually had the chance to play it all, right?
No, I’ve gone to a couple sessions where people were playing and sort of observed, and I’ve read the rulebooks and I steal all the things that I like for my own game, so…

Did Fred have to fill in any blanks for you? I mean, what kind of leeway did you give him on that?
The guys who were doing the research, were so in-depth, there were pages and pages of communication between us. One of the problems that I had was not so much getting them enough information, as grabbing them because they had been research the books in such depth that they could say “Well, if these two things are true this third thing must be true also!” and I’d say “don’t put that in the role playing game I’m saving that for the book! You can’t possibly say that!” “Oh, okay. But it’s true, right?” “I’m not saying whether it’s true or not!” “Okay Jim.”

Well, looking at wrapping this thing up, I know we have a limited time with you, I have a series of questions that I try to ask, I’m going to try to put my James Lipton face on.
Okay.

In your gaming background and in your years as a gamer, what stands out right at this moment as your favorite game?
My favorite game, like system?

It can be system, it can be session you played, it’s whatever you take from the question.
Oh…You know what, the thing I enjoyed the most, was running a Birthright campaign under the old D&D rules.

My co-host would talk your ear off about that.
I mean, I ran a Birthright campaign that was epic. It was fun. You can ask Fred about it sometime if you ever talk to him.

I have never played Birthright *gasp from Jim* but my co-host has threatened to tie me down and make me play once.
Oh, it was awesome, everybody in the party basically gets to be a highlander unless you want to be just a regular old human, in which case you go up in levels faster than everybody else.

Along the same lines, have you had an absolutely terrible time in a game system, or a setting or anything like that?
Oh…I really haven’t enjoyed the new D&D very much. I think it feels very artificial, that the wonder of the game system, the fantastic element of it seems to have vanished into simulation.

We’re all pretty edition neutral on Gamer’s Haven, we just want people to play games, we don’t care what edition it is. We’re always making the point that we live in a very interesting time with D&D because you have 4th edition, plus you can still play Pathfinder which is the 3.6, you can go back and play the 3rd edition books, you can go back and play 1st edition, you can play original D&D still! That stuffs all available.

Finally, I just want to ask you real quick, one thing Gamer’s Haven is all about is sort of spreading the knowledge of and love of the hobby of gaming. I’m always curious, what is it about this hobby that you love? What brings you back to it time and again?
Really, gaming I think is the social interaction, it’s the fact that you’re there with friends is what really brings you back to the gaming over and over. The stories that you get to tell later, the laughs you get to have while you’re doing it, really people build up their communities, their social friendships around all kind of different things, gaming is no crazier than going to professional football games or any number of other social centered activities. I think what brings me back to the gaming is that, being with my friends, and then telling the story. You’ve got to be making stuff up left and right, and even when you’re a player, if you’re a good player, you’re still continually adding things to the game or creating headaches for your DM, so…

Ghost Story comes out in hardback on July 26th, and I believe the audiobook is about a week or so after that, like August…?
Yeah, a little bit after that.

Obviously, paperback is TBD at this point. The role playing game is getting tons and tons of praise, it came out last year and a lot of people are salivating over it. I want to thank you for being on the show, and you have a good one!
Thank you very much for having me! You too.

dagaetch:
Naperville (Chicago area) Signing Q&A Part 1
Transcription by dagaetch

JB: Okay, Hi. *applause* Wow, there’s a lot of people here. Alright, well let’s just…I don’t like to do a reading, most of my fans can do that for themselves, so let’s just go to questions and answers if that’s okay with you guys. *more applause* Okay, but for it to work, someone has to ask a question. Okay good, right here.

Does the relationship of Ebenezar McCoy and Thomas Raith ever come into play as grandfather/grandson?
That’s one of those things that’s in the future, that’s way more fun if you don’t get to find out about it. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your particular point of view on the matter, I think blood relations come into play and that’s all there is to it. One way or another, positive or negative, they’re there for something always, so yeah.

Is Mouse going to come back soon?
How far have you read? *laughter* Oh, you just didn’t want him to disappear? I’m not giving anything like that away. You don’t ask me questions I can actually answer *unintelligible* coming in the future!

Did you know all along that Harry was going to get shot, or did it just come up in the writing?
Well I don’t know, gosh, I had him dead solving his own murder in book 13. Yeah, I pretty much planned that out. I know there was a bunch of ways I wanted to end the book with him, and a bunch of ways I wanted to begin a book with him, and I’ve gotten to do several of them so far, I’m going to have to step it up though to be able to get them all in.

Is the Winter Court interested in Molly?
Lea’s offer (back in Grave Peril) was a pretty generic, “Give me your first child” offer, as opposed to “Hey, I specifically want that one.” But Molly is unfortunately in a position where she’s going to get noticed by all kinds of things that intent her no good, and the Winter Court may be among them, yes. But that’s what you get for hanging around with Dresden, it rubs off on you.

Is Harry’s daughter going to be a big power play in the series?
What, it’s not good enough for you already? I mean, we did a global extermination of Red Court vampires, she was kind of fulcrum-ish in that, yeah.

Is she going to have powers of her own?
There’s another one of those questions I can’t answer! It’ll be more fun when we find out later.

Would someone in Mab’s weight class be capable of taking a White Court demon out of a vampire?
Oh, absolutely. She could rip that thing right out of Thomas. Not that there would be much of Thomas left after she was done. Mab’s not particularly gentle that way. It’s possible that there might be some way to get out of it, maybe, but what fun would that be?

Why are you in Naperville but not Chicago?
Because I don’t schedule these things. I just go where the editor tells me. “Jim, you’re going here.” “Yes, I can do that.” They’ve got like a minute by minute schedule for my day that I can follow and read and look at, it’s like “Okay, quarter of seven get to the bookstore, seven, start talking…” I’m following the schedule.

How do you feel about the tv series?
Could’ve been worse. No seriously, it’s a glass half full situation. It’s one of those things where, had the series kept going, it might have gone all squirrelly. The fact that it went down early, meh, I don’t necessarily like that. I have a theory about why it happened. It’s this whole conspiracy theory about, I mean there’s shooters on the grassy knoll and…there’s no proof to it, but I figure a good conspiracy theory, that actually makes it stronger. In any case, they could have done a worse job with it, and I certainly could have gotten burned harder than I did. I got to go up and do the Stan Lee appearance in the background on the show, and I got to meet the actors and the people who were making it and so on, so that was a fun experience, it was cool.

What’s been your favorite part about writing the Dresden Files?
I would have to say, going to work in my pajamas is the very best part. I don’t ever have to wear a tie, I just hate them, like with a completely irrational pathological hatred. So I haven’t had to wear one for a job lately, and I get to go to work in my PJ’s, and I got to spend a lot more time with my kid while he was at home than I would have gotten to otherwise. So that’s probably the best part about the job. The actual specific working on it? The reader screams of pain, maybe? *audience member: good to know you can hear those!* Just occasionally, well I don’t hear them so much as sense them through the forest. Yeah, I do occasionally. I’m even worse to the poor people who beta read for me. They go on a chapter by chapter base, and I make it a point to make them scream every chapter. But, I mean, you can’t do that to everyone! Darn it.

Where was Harry’s apartment?
In the same mythical four or five blocks where his office was, and where Mac’s is. It’s really dangerous to use an actual location because there’s always that occasional unbalanced person who just decides “Well, this needs to be true to the books, I’m going to burn this house down.” *audience laughter* I knew I was gonna be wrecking the place, so maybe I’ll just kind of make it semi-mythical and that will be healthier for everyone.

What was the actual delay about in the publishing of Ghost Story?
The deadline date that it was due, the last day that they could do it without changing the publishing schedule, I think I had written up to the scene where Dresden is talking to Molly outside of the Big Hoods hideout. So there was still like a third of the book left to write, which was most of the issue. When you get right down to it, it just wasn’t done yet. I write as fast as I can, and in this case, it was considerably harder to write, it just wasn’t done yet, so I had to say “It isn’t finished!” and in New York they went “Ugh, creative people! Okay…”

Are you working on any other projects besides Harry Dresden?
Yeah, always. Right now, I’m working on a fantasy trilogy which I think is going to wind up being the prequel trilogy to my epic epic fantasy epic. I’ve got my big epic fantasy epic in mind, but I feel I need to lay groundwork with a prequel trilogy. So far it’s a lot of fun, it’s very strongly influenced by the Black Company, and we’ll see what happens.

On the JB forums, there’s a “Give Him Idea’s” topic. Do you ever take any ideas from your fans to put into your books at all?
There is? I didn’t realize that! I knew there were several “Ask Jim Questions” things, which I will occasionally jet by and answer, at least the simple ones. I didn’t realize it was there! That’s interesting. There are folks who kind of occasionally stop and say “Hey! I would really like to read a story from, you know, Toot-Toot’s perspective.” That would be such a wild perspective. I’m going to have to eat nothing but *crowd offers suggestions* stuff like that, I would have to just fuel myself purely on sugar. Pizza doesn’t have the same affect on my it does on faeries. I just sort of get sleepy myself. But yeah, definitely have to do some serious candy for that to happen.

Do you have anyone in mind or assigned yet for who bears the Swords?
Several people actually, I haven’t decided who they’re going to fall out to. I’ve got several really cool candidates that would just be a whole lot of fun, but it’s like, “But I don’t want to do it to you guys, you’re nice! Give you one of these Swords and I’m going to have to be mean to you.” That’s kind of the way it works out.

Is there any possibility of you going to WizardCon?
Oh no, I’m going home and staying there for like, a month and a half. I’m gonna go crouch down in my aerobic room and just stay there like that. Maybe order out for pizza sometimes, that’s about it. Besides, I gotta get to work on the next book, so…

What do you think of the graphic novels?
Depends on which ones you mean. I really enjoyed writing Welcome to the Jungle, it was a lot of fun to write. I really enjoyed the artist they had on it, Ardian, he was awesome. But apparently there were some issues with checks bouncing, and somebody came to Ardian and said “Hey! We would like you to write for our comic book, Batman!” And Ardian said, “Very well, I shall write Batman now.” For which I can hardly blame him. We tried some different artists and we’ve got a new artist that’s coming in to do Fool Moon, and I’ve written the outline for another original graphic novel which will be a lot of fun. As I’m writing the outline, I’m like “Man this is cool! I should have written this as a book!” If only I knew then what I know now.

Given the role of the White God in the books, is Dresden ever going to meet Il Papa and will he be badass?
The answer to that is, I’m not sure. I’m not sure that the public Pope is the real Pope in the Dresden Files. The real Pope might be way stealthier than that, I’m not certain. That might just be the guy designed to draw political fire and tangle up everybody who really wants to get things politically involved in church things.

Serack:
thanks dagaetch and everybody else that has been working on transcripts lately!

dagaetch:
Naperville (Chicago area) Signing Q&A Part 3
Transcription by dagaetch

How strong is Demonreach compared to Mab, Nicodemus, and all the other antagonists Harry faces?
That’s depending on where you stand. Like literally your GPS coordinates. If you’re in the right spot, don’t mess with Demonreach, and if you’re not, who cares. He’s one of those situations. If you want to go out to that island and play, you better bring your A game, is the way it works out.

Why did you choose Chicago as the base for the Dresden Files?
Because my teacher would not let me set it in Kansas City, my hometown. She said “Jim, I really think this is gonna get published, and you’re already walking close enough to Laurel Hamilton’s toes that you do not need to set your series in Missouri as well. Pick another city.” And I said “What other city?” “Any other city it doesn’t matter, just not there.” I’m like okay, there’s a globe on her desk, it’s got four American cities on it. I don’t want to do New York because superheroes have that all sewn up. I don’t want to do D.C., because then you have to write politics, and you’re going to lose people who don’t like your politics, where you stand. Los Angeles was on the map, but I didn’t want to do L.A. because then, then I’d have to find out about L.A. And you know, Hollywood and everybody are around to find out things about them, they’re fine. So last city there was Chicago, I said “How about Chicago” and she said “Yeah that’ll be fine.” So okay, I guess I better learn about Chicago. Somewhere around book 3 I actually did that. I mean beyond like consulting maps and so on, that was around the time where the internet was actually starting to come into full swing and I was able to make contact with people who actually live there, and be able to say “Hey, I need to know what the east wall of Dresden’s cemetery looks like.” “Oh, yeah, I drive by it on the way to work, I’ll take a picture on my phone and email it to you by lunch!” It’s like, wow! This is a great day in which to be a writer.

How many more books of Harry can we look forward to?
I’m going to write about 20ish of the case files, like we’ve seen so far, there are a few things that can change that including parts of the story that I haven’t realized I have to tell yet, or my son going to graduate school. But after we’re done with the case books, then I’ll write a big old apocalyptic trilogy to kind of capstone the whole thing, because you know, who doesn’t love apocalyptic trilogies. That would be the point at which we’re bringing aircraft carriers and space shuttles into the story. Well, I guess not space shuttles really, we’ll have to figure something else out. *audience: awwww* Well, obsolete enough technology, maybe it would work, it’s certainly going to be more robust than anything brand new.

[paraphrased due to length] Why hasn’t Harry told everyone (Michael, etc) about the thing with the necktie on Nicodemus?
Because c’mon man, he’s a wizard! Wizards don’t tell you things, wizards deliberately don’t tell you things, and then feel smug about it. Actually, he probably didn’t tell the White Council because he figures “Hey, maybe I’ll need a necktie one day.” He probably didn’t mention it to Michael because it just didn’t come up, or he assumed Michael knew. Really, he kind of got lucky working it out. Although anybody who really stopped and thought about it could probably work it out. You know, guy running around with a hangman’s noose around his neck, choke him with it! Really, that’s not such a huge almighty secret.

When you write short stories, are they always by request of the author writing the anthology, or do you have them lying around?
No, all the short stories I write are by request of whoever’s putting the anthology together. And they usually say, “and this is sort of a vague theme that we’re using,” and I’ll be great! Beer! I can write that, which is fun. The only time I’ve kind of made my own theme was for trio of short stories that I’m doing for anthologies right now, which is the Bigfoot trilogy of short stories. Bigfoot’s the client. That’s about the only time I’ve done that.

Where did you get the idea for Harry?
My teacher told me, after several semesters of me writing books for her in her Writing a Genre Fiction Novel course, in which over the course of the semester you wrote a genre fiction novel, that was the class, and if you finished the book you got graded on it, and if not you failed. Yeah, it’s like here you go, get a book done. She said “Hey, you know Jim, when we talk in class you’re always talking about this trilogy of books that you really like called the Anita Blake novels (because there were three of them out at that time), and you’re always talking about Babylon 5, and lately this year you’ve been talking about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, why aren’t you writing something like that?” I said (posh British accent) “Because I am a fantasy author.” *laughter* She’s like, “You know, maybe you should think about doing it,” it was very diffidently put because she’d worked out at this point that if you tell me something I have to do the other thing, just by reflex. And so finally, that semester I decided that I was going to prove to her how wrong she was about all her writing theory. Her whole process and her whole everything, I was going to do it by being her good little writing monkey, and doing absolutely everything she told me, all the worksheets and outlines and everything, and then she would see what awful terrible cookie cutter crap comes out of that process, and I wrote Storm Front. *laughter and applause* I sure showed her! You know, I put Harry together out of Gandalf and Merlin and Sherlock Holmes, and Spenser, and Travis McGee. I said, let me go find the best qualities from these long running, successful, hard boiled private eyes, the original private eye Sherlock, and let me go find out all the qualities from them that they share in common and then all the qualities from these classical wizards that people love as characters, and I found out that if you’re a wizard, you have to be grumpy, there’s no other recourse, because wizards are grumpy. You’ve got to be nosy, and you’ve got to be a meddler, if you want to be a wizard. There’s no good wizard who’s not a meddler. I mean even Radigast was doing stuff and he got mentioned like twice. And then when I went to private eyes, what I found out about the most popular private eyes was, one of their main traits was they were tenacious, you absolutely cannot stop them from doing what they’re doing, they’re going to keep going no matter who gets in the way, that’s one. Two, they can all take a beating, and they get delivered horrible beatings left and right. So I had to have that. And then three, all the ones that I liked the most are willing to flip off to absolutely everyone, at absolutely the worst time, every time. So that was my ingredients list for Dresden, that I put together. So I made him tall like Sherlock, and skinny like Sherlock, and gawky, like the private eyes that I liked, and I beat him up a lot. I didn’t realize until I made my son watch, he was fifteen and I realized he’d never seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, so “Stop! Sit down.” And he’s like “What?”, I gotta go to a store and get a copy of Raiders of the Lost Ark, because we don’t have one, but “sit right there!” and so I made him watch it and I realized oh my gosh, that’s what Dresden is, he’s Indiana Jones, we just keep getting him more and more busted up, and I’m making it up as I go along, but anyway.

Now that Harry’s working for the Winter Court, is he going to have to deal with things like paying the rent and things like that?
Spoilers! That’s something that I’m going to let see, because it will be more fun for you to see it than not see it. I’ll tell you that Harry’s going to look at his job, his first day on the new job, he’s going to look at it much as anyone would their first day in prison, but we should have a good time with that.

Why did you cut your hair?
Mostly, to shock my wife. Plus, it was the tour for Changes and I thought it would be thematic. Yeah I walked out of the house with the hair down to the small of my back and a big old full beard, because I hadn’t done anything to it in a while, because I’d been writing, walked out with it like that, came back crew cut, clean shaven, and waited for the explosion of Oh My Gosh, and instead, we had one of those conversations where she doesn’t look up from what she’s doing for 10 minutes, *laughter* and I got tired of waiting, and finally, like 20 minutes after that, she looks up and goes “Oh my god! If I hadn’t been having a conversation with you I would have shot you!” But I’m glad you dig it. There’s a lot to be said for “I need to comb my hair! Where’s a damp washcloth *rubs his head* Done!”

Are we ever going to get to find out more about why Bob’s so squirrelly about the Winter Court, and why he’s nervous about Mab and so on?
Yeah. The next book is pretty much going to be our Winter Court book, so assume that’s true.

What did you do for fencing?
I did epi and foil in college, I graduated from that to LARP fencing, which is fencing with nerd swords, which is actually, there’s a very strong correlation if you’re in a system where you can hit people on the fingers. After that, I shifted to a different LARP game, where finger hits don’t count and so it’s a much more dramatic style of fighting, which I still do. In fact, I went mad with power when the Dresden series got popular and I bought a farm for us to go LARPing on. So I actually own a 160 acre farm, about 140 of which is 200 year old forest, it looks like Last of the Mohicans in there, but it’s awesome, we’ll go LARP in there and chase each other through the woods at night, with no lights and Nerf swords. Which is fun!

Serack:
dagaetch, I'm going over the naperville signing for the compilation now and I have to say...

Excellent job editing!  If Jim repeats a question back, I don't see the point in writing it twice, and making everyone read it twice, and you do great with that.

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