The Dresden Files > DF Reference Collection

WoJ transcription help needed + mention new WoJ's here

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AcornArmy:
Link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xigIxpGVcqc

Q: Are we going to have to wait a while until we find out what's going on on the island?

A: Yeah, you'll have to wait until at least the next book. We should actually be able to get some real stuff on Demonreach in the next book. You'll get an idea of why it's there and why Dresden is probably the worst possible person to be in charge of it. Yeah, really, Dresden is the worst possible person to be in charge of every story, that's just kind of how he rolls.

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Why did you cut your hair?
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Q: You're writing twenty books, how much of it did you have plotted?

A: The answer to that is I had twenty books plotted. [stuff about his writing class]

Q: Are we going to see more of Nicodemus or Mavra?

A: Nicodemus will show up on schedule(which you can figure out if you stop to look at things, I think). Mavra's not done yet either, but she eventually probably will be, and I'll leave it at that.

Q: Why did you end the Codex where you did, knowing that the threat was still viable?

A: The threat was viable, but it's not going to show up for a while. They had won the day, and much of the drama that was going to take place afterwards was going to be stuff like, you know, fighting over where the new Fury roads got built, and who got the contracts to do the projects that were going to have to happen in order to rebuild everything. And that struck me as a little bit less quickly-paced than I would be good at writing. I need to blow things up or everyone would be bored stiff with me. That said, if I do go back to the Alera books, which I may well do one day, it'll be a couple of generations in the future. After they've set up the universe, after Tavi's radically altered the way that people use their furies. It'll be a much steam-punkier Alera. That could still be fun, because there are still gonna be some characters that are still alive.

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How do you fact check yourself with thirteen books? ~5:00, Part 3
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Q: What was your motivation behind "Curses" and where does it fit into the Dresden universe?

A: I wanted to write a story about the billy-goat curse that the Cubs have labored under for more than a century, just because it was in the news that year. I think it falls just before Dead Beat. That's the story that's not in Side Jobs, it's in the Naked City anthology. I'm gonna put it in the next group of short stories, which I'll probably call, being as original as I am, "More Jobs." But there's gonna be more short stories, because there were a couple that got missed, and I want to have them all in anthologies, so someone can pick up one paperback and say, here, I've got them all.

Q: Is Mac ever going to speak more than ten words?

A: Not for a while. He's not a man of many words, as most truly dangerous people are.

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How do you come up with names? ~7:45, Part 3
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How you approach creating new characters? ~8:40, Part 3
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AcornArmy:
Link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RegkZlLuXBQ

Q: Did you have Maggie and her name planned far in advance, or was she just thrown in?

A: No, I had her planned out, which is why the scene in which she was conceived was actually in the books instead of a fade-to-black. That, and someone had bet me that I couldn't write a plot-relevant bondage scene. But yeah, I planned the kid all along. It was just a matter of when I was going to get a chance to pull it out. [snickering in the audience] And I thought it would be a really great way to get Dresden-- oh come on, you people, grow up!-- I thought it would be a perfect motivation to get Dresden to do things he normally would not ever consider doing. Which is what is getting us into all the lovely trouble in Ghost Story, and will continue in Cold Days.

Q: Is he going to get a new Beetle or is he going to fix up the old one?

A: We'll see. There's no fixing up the old one, it got squished flat. It's possible he can get a new one, I don't know yet. He's not going to have nearly the material resources he had before-- assuming he comes back from Faerie at all.

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How many of your best ideas came from bad bets? ~1:45, Part 4
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Why Chicago? ~2:01, Part 4
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Q: Will there ever be a spin-off series based on another character in the Dresden Files?

A:  Maybe. Could be I'll have to pay off my gambling debts or something someday. There's all kinds of different people I could use who could do their own series. I'd actually considered doing a kind of a side-project called "The Dresden Contracts," which I would set during the Dresden Files, only I would have these other people going out doing things. You know, where Dresden more or less subcontracts them to help. But I'm not sure yet at this point. I've never really written a 20-plus volume epic fantasy before, I'm sort of new to that, so I don't want to throw too much more clay on the spinny-thing for fear that it might fall off.

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Do you have real-life inspirations for your characters? ~3:35, Part 4
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Q: How much have you plotted out in advance the fates of the supporting cast?

A: I actually have not plotted out what's going to happen to them in the long run; they're vulnerable. And occasionally, writers get bored or frustrated and we kill somebody capriciously. Although, I probably will avoid doing capricious deaths, just because I don't like them, I don't like to read them, so why should I expect anybody else to like them? But, no, nobody's safe. Sorry, that's the best I can tell you.

Q: If we like a character and want to know more about them, could we email him and get more information or get another short story?

A: What you could do is you could send email to me or to the site on the forum I have at jim-butcher.com, and say, "Hey, I would love to see a short story like-- blank; I would like to see more on blank." Because I actually do stop when I'm putting books together, and say, occasionally I'll stop and say, hey, who do you guys want to see more of in the next book? And I'll say it on Twitter or on my webpage, and that's one of the ways that I determine which characters to pick up and stick into the various plots. I'm not promising it will be good for the characters to get them more involved, but I do like to have the people that-- I mean, you guys are essentially-- you know, artists have always had to have patrons in order to practice their art. You guys are my patrons, and I'd be a fool not to listen to your reactions and to what you want to see. And plus, I just, you know, I like doing that, because then your favorite character's there and I get to torture them. That's a good time.

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If you couldn't be a writer what would you be? [Insane.] ~6:38, Part 4
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Q: [Where did the name "Fitz" come from, does it have anything to do with the fact that the word means "bastard?"]

A: Yes, it means he's an illegitimate son, and we'll find out more about that later.

Q: Where was Marcone and what was he doing during Ghost Story?

A: Check out "Even Hand." He was doing that sort of thing, if not that specific thing.

Q: Ragged Angel Investingations, is there more to that than Harry ever caught on to?

A: No, Harry was pretty much onto all of it. But it was where he got started, and Nick Christian was a character who I wrote several short stories with when I was learning how to write short stories. Don't get worked up or anything; they were terrible short stories. Plus, they were set in Kansas City. So, I regarded Nick as a learning experience, and made him thirty years older, and I dropped him off as Harry's mentor. Because, you know, I had learned things from Nick, even if it hadn't been so good for him.

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Have you ever considered a video game adaptation of the Dresden Files? [I have, but I thought it would just take too long to code.] ~9:05, Part 4
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AcornArmy:
Link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x349JEPmgJo

Q: Could you tell us about a time where the character surprised you with where they went?

A: Not so much, on account of, those people work for me. And if they start veering off track, all I have to do is go back in and provide them with good enough motivation to do what I need them to do. 'Cause, as far as the Dresden Files universe goes, I'm God there. I can go back and alter the past and everything, and I am a cruel and malicious God, at times. But there are characters who surprised me with how they developed after I created them. It wasn't that they didn't do their job, it's just that they did their job too well to get rid of. You know, I wanted to have the mouthy medical examiner, because I love that kind of figure. So I created Butters, and figured he'd be there once. But after I got done with him, I'm like, this guy's way too cool, I have to find an excuse to use him again. So, yeah, Dead Beat came along, and I'm thinking, oh, man, this character, the medical-- against all the necromancers who are going around animating corpses, who needs to be your side-kick? The medical examiner, who works with corpses! You know, how completely appropriate, yet useless to the hero. And so Butters jumped in, and now he's getting even more involved. Poor guy.

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How much martial arts experience do you have, and where is it, and how much more do you look into it for the books? ~1:40, Part 5
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Q: There's a lack of Mouse in this book. Are we going to have more of him, or is he going to be protecting Maggie from now on?

A: ...And the answer to that is: Yes. Yeah, Mouse was one of those characters that I wanted to create so that Dresden had kind of a home security system, 'cause otherwise, there are more and more of these bad guys coming that would just kill him in his sleep. It's like, Oh wait, there's a Foo dog there, that isn't going to work.

Q: Is he going to get Bob back or is he going to stay with Butters?

A: [sing-song]I'm not gonna tell you.[/sing-song]

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How come you don't mind it when people play your characters on Twitter, and why aren't you savagely defending your intellectual property? ~4:04, Part 5
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Q: How do you justify saying that the end of Changes is not a cliffhanger?

A: I will tell you this, sir, here is the story: Harry Dresden sets out to rescue his daughter, even if it costs him his life, and it does. The End. From the perspective of storytelling format, that is not a cliffhanger, because you know the end of it. Of course, I do sometimes forget that not everyone knows the whole rest of the story. Sorry.

Q: Did Mab lie?

A: Mab did not lie, Mab was wrong. There's a subtle difference to that, at the end of Ghost Story. As far as Mab is concerned, she's telling the truth, because she's telling the truth from her experience, as she knows it. Dresden, however, is getting an earful of truth on a more cosmic level. So we'll see how that plays out a little bit more in the next book.

Q: Are we going to find out why Jim likes the name "Maggie" so much?

A: If you do find out, let me know. 'Cause then, that way, maybe I'll have a better idea. I don't know, a lot of the names, I just name names.

[same Q'er: --I mean, are we gonna find out the correlation, why it's used more than once, the name Margaret?]

A: Maybe. It very well could be. I'm not sure.

Q: Can we expect a short story from Molly's point of view, ever?

A: Almost certainly. I would probably write it from some point while she was busy being the crazy lady who defended Chicago. Actually, she's still doing that, as of now.

Q: You've mentioned several times that if you use wizard's sight irresponsibly, it can drive you nuts. What happens to the people who are driven nuts, and have we ever seen that in the series?

A: [Jim laughs.] You've read Changes, right? I mean, yeah, too much truth in the face of somebody who is genuinely sincere about their beliefs often pushes them to do really extreme things, like wiping out entire races of vampires. So, yeah, you are seeing it to some degree, but at the same time, while the truth can be painful, it's also liberating. Unfortunately, sometimes it liberates you of your sanity. That's the best answer I can give you.

AcornArmy:
Link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRIo4orMrbQ

Q: Is it possible that Susan left a ghost that we might encounter later?

A: No, probably not, not with that much energy flying around when she died. I don't like to do the, "they're dead, they're not dead, they're dead, they're not dead" thing too often, because then it's no fun. So just assume Susan is dead and gone. Although this might not be the last time we see her, now that I think of it. [laughter] I'll have to check my notes.

Q: What was Ebenezar doing during that six month period in Ghost Story? Because we kind of expected him to be doing "something."

A: Yes, he was doing something. He was doing stuff, but since Dresden hasn't found out about it, none of you all can know about it either, 'cause it's all told from Dresden's point of view. That's one of the unfortunate limitations of writing in the first-person. If this was Alera, I'd be showing other things that were going on off on the sidelines, because then it's a third-person book.

Q: Is Ferrovax going to be back anytime soon?

A: Nah, not 'til the very end. Not in the actual trilogy-trilogy[the BAT], but probably the very last of the case books will feature him in it.

Q: Was Mac's beer modeled after any specific beer?

A: No, I don't drink. I had to go to my drinking friends and say, you have to tell me what good beer is like. And they would write me explanations of it.

Q: Ebenezar is the Blackstaff, and we found out that it's not a nickname, it's a title. [Jim: And it's also an object.] Is "the Gatekeeper" a nickname or a title?

A: It is a title. [Q'er: And an object?] Well, just... him.

Q: At what point do you decide that Harry's odds are stacked high enough against him?

A: I'll let you know when I get there.

Q: Harry's pentacle necklace. Thomas had one like it, why didn't he use it to try to find Harry's body?

A: Can't use magic through that much water. Unless you're a water mage, but nobody called Injun Joe.

Q: Out of all the Dresden Files novels, which was the most difficult one to write?

A: It's a toss-up between Death Masks, which I had to write while we were moving cross-country, and this most recent one, which I had to write where Harry couldn't just go around kicking down doors and blowing things up. It was very hard to make that character try and do things in a more indirect and subtle fashion, and yet still be himself. It took a while.

Q: Molly seems to be doing a lot of very-close-to-black-magic stuff. Is she getting, like, totally corrupted?

A: Well... what's "corrupted" mean? [laughter] Yeah, she's playing around with some nasty stuff and it's only a matter of time before that catches up to her. On the other hand, she's doing things she knew Dresden would've done if he could have done them, so it's all Harry's fault.

LogicMouseLives:
Okay. It's my understanding (From the title) that this is where you want mention of new material as well, so I'll throw this in for someone to chew on. http://io9.com/5843677/ Posted September 30th, 2011. The interview with Jim is an hour and twenty minutes, and ranges over lots of previously trod ground, but there are a few interesting new tidbits in there, anyway.

BTW, are you interested in getting transcriptions of the interviews with Jim from Fred's "Butcher Block" podcast? There are several, and the last one in particular has some really cool stories, but they're mostly more personal and family related. The novel info is several years old. (I ask because I just got around to listening to the podcast for the first time this last couple of weeks while I'm doing cross-stitch, and really enjoyed that one.)

LML

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