The Dresden Files > DF Reference Collection
WoJ transcription help needed + mention new WoJ's here
thelordbeans:
Will we ever see Dresden forced into a situation where he may have to jump through time to do something?
That would require him breaking one of the laws of magic, and it's not as though I have seven books outlined, one for each law, or anything. We may, probably, possibly some see such as thing at some point.
Have you ever had the idea to have a short story of Dresden crossing over into another universe, like Star Wars?
No, because I don't want to get sued. However, just so you're aware the Dresden Files universe exists in a big, wide, spectral multi-verse. It's not like there's parallel Earths. There's an entire broadcast spectrum of parallel Earths, and if you go far enough you'll find the parallel that's where ???. You'll find the parallel Earth where Star Wars stuff works, and so on. Dresden could get there if he wanted to, but stop and think about that for a minute: Would you really want to go the Star Wars universe? Because you're not going to be a jedi over there. Really jedi are a lot scarier on the ground level than they are from passenger seat view next to one. You know, "There's a bunch of heavily armed fanatics with mind control powers here; they say they want to talk to you." That's kind of spooky.
The RPG mentions that you can have different Dresdens based on choices you made in past books, and is that for the RPG only?
No, they came up with that because they know I'm using that as a storyline in the future. Because I've said several times it's only going to be a matter of time before I can resist doing a Mirror Mirror episode of the Dresden Files. In fact, I think I'm just going to call it Mirror Mirror. It's a great title: the same number of letters and everything! My work is done.
Will the Jade Court vampires ever come up?
They might briefly come up in the big finale. They are in China, and they are isolationists, and they stay isolated. But yeah, there's are a gang of Chinese vampires that are no one to be trifled with. (I saw Princess Bride recently. If a bunch of references slip in I am sorry.)
As an author, when did you know that Maggie existed?
By book three. By book three I realized, "Oh, wait a minute, I have to do this," because I remember there being some huge uproar on The List ??? and I was still kind of keeping track of things at the time. There's nothing that will get me riled up faster than a discussion on the Internet. There was somebody upset about the Laurell Hamilton books and going on steady with the argument that these books have devolved into BDSM* sex that have nothing to do with plot. So one of the counter arguments was, "How could you possibly have a BDSM sex scene that was actually plot relevant in any way?" *Jim makes the facial equivalent of "Well..." and the audience laughs* It could be done, plot relevant, there you go. So her existence was planned - though the specifics didn't get settled until a little later - but in book 3 was about where I figured it out.
Great, powerful wizards are staple, but generally speaking by the time that these big, powerful wizards get to the end, in terms of the big finale of the series, what they actually accomplish is fairly small. Are you planning something like that for Dresden?
Yes and no. The problem is that most of the wizards who do that are simply not the central character of the series. Gandalf: not the central character of the series - that's Sam. (Not Frodo. Frodo was not the central character. Frodo was a junkie who happened to be along for the ride. Sam was the man.) Similar with classic wizards like Merlin. Arthur was the center of that story, for the most part. Am I going to go all the way to the end of this to have Dresden be the one who pushes the button that says, "Destroy the universe? Yes : No."** It's not going to be anywhere near that simple. Hopefully, if I do it right - which I don't know, because I've never written a twenty book epic fantasy before - we'll set it up to where if it had been anybody else it would have ended in disaster. But because it's Dresden, we all get to keep getting along. If you're doing your job as a writer, by the time you get to the end of your story, any other individual other than that character whose making things happen... if somebody else had been there, it all would have ended horribly wrong. Hopefully I'll be able to do the same thing.
*You have no idea how long it took me to figure out that he was saying "BDSM"! Stupid initialisms.
**I never thought I'd use the ? : format outside of coding.
thelordbeans:
--- Quote from: derek on July 30, 2011, 12:18:53 PM ---Part of it was actually figuring out, 'Oh, wait a minute. The actual plot that I thought was happening is not exactly the plot that I thought was happening.' And that only came together in the last month or so.
--- End quote ---
Sorry, that was bothering me.
Crawker:
Yo Serack, you didn't update this translation on the front page, thought I'd let you know.
--- Quote from: Crawker on July 08, 2011, 11:01:19 AM ---Notes:
-Video link
-I can't hear the place the woman asking the first question says before New York, can anyone make it out? (around 2:40 in video)
-I also can't hear what Paul Blackthorne had done in the second question (around 4:20)
-The video ends before the second question gets anywhere, so you might want to just cut the last bit
Host: Hi, welcome everybody!
{audience cheers}
Host: Welcome, to the second ever New York Comic Con which clearly is getting bigger and better, fantastic turnout, thank you so much for coming. My name's Jay Pow, I'm the general manager of the Sci Fi channel, based here in New York.
{audience claps}
Host: It's great fun to be in our home town as opposed to San Diego, which is on the other side of the country
{audience cheers}
Audience member: New York!
Host: We've got a great treat in store for you tonight, we're gonna give you a sneak preview of Sundays episodes of Dresden Files and Battlestar Galactica
{more cheers}
Host: You'll see them before anybody else, including me, I've not seen these two episodes so I'm looking forward to them as well. But before we kick off with that we've got fifteen minutes in which to introduce you to two new talent, new stars at Sci Fi; Paul Blackthorne
{loud cheers from audience, Paul nods}
Host: A talented actor I think we've seen on Sci Fi for a very long time
{applause}
Audience Member: We love you Paul!
Host: Dresden Files is the best new edition to our schedule of shows I think in the last five years. We're thrilled. And while Paul Blackthorne's character himself, he doesn't do potions, he doesn't do parties, but he does do Comic Con conventions.
{cheers from audience}
Host: And let me remind you, we would not be here without Jim Butcher!
{very loud cheers from audience}
Host: Jim started us off in 2000 with an amazing series of books; he's bringing out number 9 of this series in April, called White Night. He's just told me that he's mapped out 20 books, so that bodes incredibly well for Jim and the book series, and actually for our TV show as well, so welcome to you both and I'm going to take some questions from you guys for about 10 or 15 minutes, so go ahead:
{host gestures at audience}
Host: I'll pick someone close to the mic I hope. Oh yes actually if you could go out to the middle there's a mic just in the middle there, if you can just repeat the question.
Audience member: My name is Connie Coleman and I am now the biggest Dresden Files fan in {see notes} and maybe New York.
{a few laughs from audience}
Audience member: I've just read two of the books,it took me two days. And I just wanted to know, how you feel about how they adapted it for TV, and Mr Blackthorne, Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, that's a great name, have you read the books and were you familiar with the material beforehand?
{Paul gestures to Jim}
Paul: Your question?
Jim: How I feel about it? You guys are getting to see the show tonight, I'm not even getting to see this episode yet! I can't even watch it on Sunday because my hotel doesn't have Sci Fi, I'm gonna have to wait and watch it on cable on Monday when I go back home! Which I'm disappointed about because I'm really enjoying the show. I like it a lot.
Paul: What was the question again, I'm sorry. Have I read the books, yes, yes I had all these wonderful ideas of reading all the books when I got the part, but of course I had no time to read them before doing the first pilot movie shot way back when. But I was able to read Storm Front after that, which of course I very much enjoyed, so. And then I didn't get a chance to read any other books because these scripts started coming in! So I figured I ought to concentrate on those. So yeah, Storm Front is the only one I've read. The first story. Next?
Audience member: Well Paul, I have read online that you had done {see notes} and {see notes} and I'm also quite priveleged I totally think that's awesome. And I -
End of video
--- End quote ---
I'll do some more this week.
Crawker:
Sorry Serack, this one too:
--- Quote from: Crawker on July 09, 2011, 09:39:29 AM ---Suduvu interview video
Transcription by Crawker
Notes:
-Video link
Jim: Hi I'm Jim Butcher, I'm the author of The Dresden Files.
Interviewer: Now The Dresden Files, for those that aren't familiar is?
Jim: The Dresden Files is a series of books about Harry Dresden, He's a private investigator in Chicago who also happens to be the only professional wizard in the phonebook. Dresden gets involved in all the cases the police run into where there's something wierd going on that they're not set up to handle on their own. So when there's a vampire attack, when a fairy swoops down and abducts a child it's Dresden who's the one that gets called to look into it.
Interviewer: I know with a series of books like yours it's got a complicated chronology and back characters and a whole universe. What are the challenges of working with that from book to book?
Jim: I think that the main challenge is the fact that the readers know it so much better than I do. By the time I've finished a book, I've written maybe seven or eight slightly different versions of the same book and not only that but there's also all the versions I could've written in my head and didn't, and they're all sort of bumping off one another in my brain, but the reader only gets the final one. So they know. Fortunately readers these days make wikipedias so I can go to the Dresden Files wiki and look things up now, so I can make sure to get the details right.
Interviewer: Now I understand you've got a new book coming out, a collection. Is that right?
Jim: Yes, October 26th, the new book is called Side Jobs, it's a collection of the short stories that I've written for The Dresden Files over the years. It ranges from my very first Dresden Files piece that I ever wrote, which was a short story which is fairly awful, to all the different short stories that I wrote for various different anthologies. A lot of readers couldn't afford to go out and buy eight or nine different anthologies so I said "Hey I'll try and get all my short stories together in one book." and not only that, at the very end it contains the novella Aftermath, it's set about 45 minutes after the end of Changes, it's from Murphy's point of view and you kinda get to see some of the fallout of what's happened after the last novel.
Interviewer: Now I found a couple of people on twitter asking, because I mentioned I was interviewing you, they wanted to know whether you'd ever considered writing about any of the other secondary characters, maybe giving them their own stories, their own novels, set in the same Dresdenverse but not...
Jim: The only time I've done other characters has been in the short stories, I think that the main novels that we're on are definately gonna be from Dresden's point of view. I think it's possible that in the future, I don't know maybe I'll have to pay off gambling debts or something, and want to go back to The Dresden Files after I'm done and be able to write the stories from the other people that were living at the same time Dresden was doing his thing. I know there's all these stories in my head about what these other characters are actually going through, as opposed to what Dresden thinks they're going through, so it's possible we could do something like that.
Interviewer: Now I also know that The Dresden Files has been sort of merging into other forms of media, there's a roleplaying game that Fred Hicks worked on is this right?
Jim: Yes, yes.
Interviewer: Have you had much involvement with that or...?
Jim: My involvement with The Dresden Files roleplaying game was largely sitting down and talking to folks about the Dresden files universe, it was reading through all the stuff that they'd read, and they were so into it, some of them were going, they were drawing conclusions and I had to tell 'em "You can't put that in the book, it won't come out in the novels until book fourteen! Don't blow it for me!" But they worked very, very hard on it I don't think I've ever seen something that as many people put so much love into creating. And the book's just gorgeous too, it's far prettier than the Dungeons and Dragons rulebook so I've got the prettiest book.
{interviewer laughs}
Interviewer: Well what is it like to be a writer and to know other people are going to go traipsing around the world that you created?
Jim: More power to 'em, have a good time guys. Actually I've dropped in on a couple of groups in the Kans City area who were playing the game, there was one game set in Prague and another set in Kans City, and they seemed to be having a good time, and that's the point. The whole point of writing the novels to begin with is for folks to enjoy and have a good time with, so they're gonna go playing around the story world? OK have fun! That's awesome!
Interviewer: So did you ever see yourself at the beginning of your career getting to a point where you would have to issue a book collecting all of your short stories? Did you ever see yourself doing that?
Jim: No... no, no I never really... I've been fairly mystified by my success. But I like to think that I've been very fortunately stupid in a couple of places and in a lot of other places just worked hard enough to make things work. But I've been very fortunate and I've been very fortunate to have such a great crowd of readers. They're like cultists or maybe drug pushers, that's what I always get. "He's the high priest of Dresden in our neighbourhood", or "Oh yeah, I gave her the first 3 books for free" So OK we've got cult drug dealers. Thank you guys.
Interviewer: Well do you have anything else you want to say to your readers?
Jim: I know a lot of people that say "Hey Jim, what's with the cliffhanger at the end of Changes?" And I can only say to you; a cliffhanger is what you don't know what happened. Changes was: Dresden sets out to do anything to save his daughter even if it means getting killed and he did. The end. But not the end of the story, so we'll keep going with Harry's story in book thirteen, Ghost Story.
Interviewer: Thanks very much!
Jim: Thank you.
End of interview
--- End quote ---
Serack:
np, you don't have to quote the whole thing, just link to the post.
Actually, more than np, thanks for going through the additional effort of checking behind me and pointing out the ones that I missed when I last updated the list.
*goes and checks to make sure there weren't any other crawker transcripts he missed*
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