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WoJ transcription help needed + mention new WoJ's here

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thelordbeans:
I'll finally get around to finishing Kansas City soon, only part left is part 4, and then you can cross it out in your OP

Edit: I will, I will! I swear!

Serack:
Hi guys, I haven't been terribly active, but I've found some new content including the Io9 interview mentioned earlier

The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy phone interview
NY Times profile (focuses on Jim's time playing AmberMUSH)
Short Story Geeks phone interview

I'll see about adding AA's transcripts to the WoJ forum later.

cass:
I've been away from the boards for a bit, and I think the search function is still offline, so I apologize is someone's already done this and I missed it, but here's the transcription from the Cambridge/Boston, MA signing.

[Question Unknown]
….satisfying story possible. Otherwise, you get the stories that just kind of trail off, and nobody likes those.

How tough would it be on Michael to sit back and to perhaps watch one of his own children take up one of the swords, considering he knows exactly what that means, and then sit him back on the sidelines and make him worry about his family? 

I don’t know.  Michael is a really interesting character in terms of his strength, because a lot of the things that would really gnaw on somebody who was a little bit more rational, he’s prepared to take on faith, and he’s comfortable with that.  I don’t think he’d like having one of his kids running around out there, but he could hardly throw a stone, so to speak.  Yeah, let he who is without action movie credits throw the first stone, in that sort of situation.  It would be hard on him, but he is the kind of guy who would handle it well.

How is the liquidity (e.g. several different kinds each of werewolves and vampires) going to affect the story as we’re going forward? 

Gosh, I don’t know…that’s kind of a neat question.  I know what I’m planning to do in the future, I know when I’m planning to throw the rock, but I’m not necessarily sure how the glass is going to fall out of the window.  I know the rock and the window, but not where all the glass is going to fall.  I’ve studied a bit of history, and I try to use that, what I’ve learned from there as my model, and I try to approach it from that standpoint, once the events start happening.  I knew Harry was going to handle the Red Court the way he did, but the fallout from it was something that I said, “Ok, now I’m going to have to stop and actually figure through this, and I based it on the fall of the Soviet Union, the fallout from the Red Court buying it, so, we’ll have to see! A lot of this is fun for me to find out, and I wouldn’t want to spoil you about it anyway.


Have I ever had character who I’ve been surprised by, who has decided to jump up and to be more involved in the series that I originally planned? 

Yeah: Butters.  [unintelligible]…Butters off as a one shot.  I wanted him to be the smart-mouth morgue-guy/medical examiner, because I love that character in The Prophecy and The Relic..because they have wise-aleck morgue people who are just hilarious, and I love that, and I wanted to do that for the Dresden Files.  But when I got done writing him, I thought, “This guy is so cool, I need to use him somewhere else!” So when Dead Beat came up and I was trying to work out a good sidekick for Harry for this particular story, I’m like, oh, wait a minute, there’s necromancers running around animating dead bodies, and having the medical examiner be the one to be helping Harry along in the middle of this is just so appropriate, and yet, totally useless to him as a helper.  That’s perfect!”  But, yeah, Butters is one of those characters who did that.  It happens occasionally, there’ll be a character who I don’t mean to stick around quite as hard as they do, but, like I said, I’m lazy, so if someone shows signs of being proactive for me, it’s like, oh yeah, I might as well have you show up  and do the work, go head. Get me a Coke while you’re up.

Is there a particular source of inspiration for any of the villains I’ve had?

Well, to a large degree, yeah. I read a lot of folklore, I read a lot of mythology.  By the way, if you ever go to research folklore and mythology if you’re going to write a book of your own or research it for a game or something, just do yourself a favor and skip the “Adult” section of the library, that stuff there, because if you start reading mythology in the Adult section, you aren’t going to go five paragraphs before you bump into Freud and Jung.  It’s like those guys do not know how to have a good time, when it comes to this sort of story.  Go to the children’s section, and read those stories, because they just give you the stories, which is where I draw most of my information.  And I draw it from things that scared me when I was a little kid.  I was sure Bigfoot lived in the lilac bush behind our house when I was small.  I had two older sisters, they were twelve and fourteen years older than me, who just loved scaring me. They had a good sense of drama for that. But that’s ok, because I can exorcise those demons now, and put them in a book, and make a dollar out of them, and that’s the American way.

With all these plots that are going on, with Mab and Lea obviously playing games against one another, with archangels sticking there nose in, with vague supernatural entities that live on islands, how are all these conflicting interests, where Dresden’s getting pulled in different directions by all of them, how are they going to play out in the future? 

This is like heroin for writers. [singsong] I’m not gonna tell you! I’m going to write it, and we’ll have fun.  I know that a lot of the folks that are generally perceived as bad guys aren’t necessarily, there are several who are currently perceived as good guys who aren’t necessarily, and we’ll continue to have those fall out over the next several books. I got some outraged emails from people for the end of Changes, and I just didn’t understand it, okay, because first of all, that technically was not a cliffhanger.  Technically, I mean, in terms of story craft, not a cliffhanger, because Harry Dresden sets out to rescue his daughter from the Red Court, even if it kills him, and it does. But I sometimes forget that everybody else doesn’t know the rest of the story.  My reaction was that I thought everyone would be really excited, because now that he’s dead we get to start the good stuff!  But as it turns out, no, I guess you guys don’t know the rest of it like I do; that might have a slight effect on your perception.


Did I set out to make Harry a nerd?

Yeah, absolutely,  he’s a magic nerd instead of a computer nerd, but yeah, I set forth to make a guy that I would relate to and, really, all my friends are nerds and I’m a nerd, and it wasn’t a big deal to make Harry a nerd, too, for me, that was a no-brainer. He just can’t play video games, which really cripples his nerdness.


There’s a lot of characters in the story who have lifespans that have gone on over many generations, do I ever plan on having any backstory on them, stuff like “young Ebenezar” or “the Bob adventures”? 

Bob tales? The only thing I have in mind is where I might write the history of the French and Indian War in the Dresden Files universe, back when all the people who were on the Senior Council who can’t stand Harry because he’s a young hothead getting into trouble were young hotheads getting into trouble.  I think that would be a lot of fun to do, I just have to bone up on my French and Indian War stuff to be able to do it, and so far I haven’t had time yet. 

Is Lasciel going to make a comeback? The coin is still buried in the lab, right?

Her coin isn’t in the lab anymore. Her story is not yet over. However, both Lasciel and Lash appeared in Ghost Story, but not under those names. [Hums the “I’m not gonna tell you” tune]


With the publication of the Dresden Files RPG, what is it like to turn over my world to my fellow nerds to play with who love it so much? 

Awesome! It is awesome.  Sadly, I’m the one person who can’t play the RPG. I mean, try to imagine being my GM, really.  “Yes, it is that way, and if necessary, I’ll write it that way IN THE NEXT BOOK!!!  You give me that +2 [unintelligible]!” But then, if I’m GM, it’s too much like work! But everybody else has a good time, which makes me very happy, and was kind of the point of the books to begin with.


Given that I’ve planned out so many things, and there are so many stories and actions that have consequences that have to be played out in the course of the series, are there any seemingly insignificant actions that are going to be played out later on?
Yes, there are. A bunch of them. But we’ll see. I’m still working out how to get them all fit in, but the next six books are going to be very, very busy. Six or seven or eight or however many it takes.

Since you only get books once a year, do I have anything planned like Backup to help you…cope?

Normally, yeah, there’re story projects that are going on on the side, right now I’m writing a trilogy of short stories that I’m calling the Bigfoot trilogy; Bigfoot’s the client.  You know, there’s issues with the kid, and he can’t exactly walk into town and take care of them, so he’s got to find somebody to help him out. Yeah, I’m going to continue to do short story projects like that on the side, I’ve outlined a new graphic novel, which I’m going to be working on.  Also remember that I’ve got to get a break from that tall creepy loser once in awhile, or I’ll just kill him.  Oh. Wait.  I always love it when I get to start something else because I go, “Oh, I’m so sick of that loser Harry Dresden” at this point, and then I’ll start writing something else, and by the time I get done with that, I’ll go back to Harry and be like, “Oh, I’m glad to be back in the saddle with Harry, because this feels easy!”

How much time has passed, approximately, since Storm Front? 

Um. I could go check the Wikipedia? I’m trying to make it more or less real time. So I think it averages out to about a year between each.  Some are a little bit more, some are a little bit less. But I try to make it real time, sort of like Joss did with Buffy.

Who are my favorite writers?

This is a question I hate, because I’ll start on them, and I’ll remember half and hour later somebody I should have mentioned and didn’t. Robert B. Parker is probably my single favoritest writer. I’ll read anything he wrote. I’ve still got the last Spencer book he wrote, which I won’t read, because then there won’t be anymore Spencer books to read. And that’s sad. But I’ve got it. Robert B. Parker’s pretty good. Lately…there’s Rothfuss, that jerk. I just can’t stand Rothfuss, he can write such beautiful lyrical poetic lines in one, and then shift gears and be writing this short choppy pulp-action-style fiction, and just do it so smoothly you can’t even tell what’s going on.  Oooh, I hate that. Scalzi’s brilliant. John Scalzi…he’s amazing, he really is.   I’ve been reading Brandon Sanderson lately. Picked up Way of Kings, and was like, “Ohh, that is so cool!” Oh, I just love the fantasy world where either you’re a guy with a knife on the end of a stick and a leather jacket or you’ve got Iron Man armor and a lightsaber. That dichotomy is awesome. Lemme think who else I’ve been reading lately. Harry Connolly’s books, I don’t know if you’ve read Harry Connolly, his first book’s called Child of Fire, it’s really good. There’s a new guy coming out, he’s British, his name is Benedict Jacka, his first book is called Fated. It’s a wizard book, it’s really excellent, he’s got a great imagination.  I read the Temeraire books, I read the Honor Harrington series.  Pretty much anything Glen Cook does I like. But there’s

Are there any characters in particular who inform Harry’s voice?

He’s [the questioner] noticed characters like Gareth [?] are very similar in terms of their outlook on life and so on.  I would say yeah, and the characters that inform me are folks like Dashiell Hammett’s lead character Sam Spade (or is that Ray Chandler? I’m getting confused. I think Dashiell Hammett had Sam Spade.) Ray Chandler’s characters as well. Of course, Robert Spencer is [unintelligible] as far as I’m concerned; I wish I could have Harry be as snarky as Spencer. But, yeah, definitely, he’s informed by a lot of things, and also just by the hard-boiled genre in general.


What is the first line of Cold Days?

Mab, Queen of Air and Darkness, has unique ideas about physical therapy. See?  First sentence is done! The rest is just typing.

Now that Harry’s died, that whole “Die alone” death curse, is that over? 

Was he not dead enough? Yeah, he got out from underneath that one. Sort of. It remains to be seen if he’s going to get out from underneath the rest of it. Which I’m having a very good time plotting out.

Is Maggie going to start playing a bigger role?

She’s like seven! Seven year olds….seven year olds, you’re lucky if their big role isn’t falling off the monkey bars and getting a broken arm, like mine did when he was seven. But, on the other hand, if I’m ever done with the Dresden Files and I’ve got to pay off my gambling debts or something, I suppose I could always do Dresden: The Next Generation with Maggie, although she’d probably think Dad was a little soft.

When will we get to see Ferrovax again?

Fair question, it probably won’t be until one of the last of the case files. If not in the big, epic, epic trilogy.  No, because Ferrovax was on his best behavior at that party, and the next time he’s got an excuse to smack Dresden, somebody’s going to throw down, and we’ll have a good time with that.

Serack:
OK, I think I'm caught up with transfering all the transcripts to the respective topics in the WoJ forum.  Next up, collating the rest of the 2011 signing tour WoJ's that are already transcribed, and updating the lists of what still needs transcription.

Thanks everybody that contributes to the transcription effort!!!  It helps in so many ways, and everbody here that likes to discuss theories based off of WoJ's has that much of an easier time because of your efforts!

cass:
Here's Part 4 of the KC release party Q&A (as it seemed like parts 1-3 and 5 were already taken/done.)

Great and powerful wizards are stabled(? Stapled? Stable?), but his statement is that, generally speaking, by the time they get to the end, what they actually accomplish in terms of the big finale of the series is fairly small and is my plan something like that for Dresden? 

Yes and no. The problem with most of the wizrds that do that is simply that they weren’t the central character of the series.  Gandalf is not the central character of the series [Lord of the Rings], that was Sam. Not Frodo, Frodo was not a central character, Frodo was a junkie who was along for the ride. Sam was the man.  Similarly, with classical wizards, with characters like Merlin, Arthur’s the central character, in that story, for the most part. Oh, there’ve been Merlin stories [unintelligible].  But am I going to all the way to the end of this to have Dresden be the one who pushes the button that says, “Destroy the universe, Y/N”, 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 20-book epic fantasy before, I’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, is kind of what I’m trying to come up with.  If you’re doing your job as a writer, by the time you get to the end of your story, if any other individual other than that character is making things happen, if somebody else had been there is all would have ended horribly wrong, if you’re doing your job right. Hopefully I’ll be able to do the same thing, but like I said, it’s big, and I’ve never written a story like that before.

What things would I go back to the earlier novels to change to tell things now?

Oh. I don’t know.  I would probably scrap the first two books completely and re-write from the ground up everything about it, which would probably be a disaster. I’ve learned that going back and rewriting a novel doesn’t work anywhere near as well as you think it should.  So at this point, I’m happy to accept the flaws and imperfections from early on, because that just means, “Oh, wait a minute, now I have a good direction to go to keep things moving the way I want to go.  I probably would never have figured out that the whole thing about [wizards] recovering from injury has a lot to do with them living a long time, because they have far groovier telemeres than any of us have, that their DNA copier works better than ours does. I probably wouldn’t have figured that out if somebody hadn’t pointed out, “Hey! I’ve been keeping track of the folks, and physical therapists, and I just wanted to let you know that in the past five years, Dresden’s abrogated on about seven and half years of therapy, and you need to be aware that this injury would have required this kind of surgery, and this kind of recovery and another surgery to correct that and some more therapy and by the time we get to that, he’s already been busted up by the next book, which would have done this and this and that.”  Ok, ok, so obviously, wizards are cooler than that.  I figured out how. And that’s why, and that’s a good reason, and that’s why they live a long time, too. Awesome. This is working out great.  As long as I can stay on my mental toes, I guess we’ll be all right.

Have any of my characters surprised me or done something I wasn’t expecting them to do or developed in a way I didn’t want them to go. 

Those people all work for me.   Occasionally they are harassable and I have to make sure to give them good motivations to do things that I knew they would do.  And occasionally they just kind of come out cooler than I thought they would be.  Butters, which was going to be my off-the-wall, one-shot, I-wanted-an-ME-with-a-sense-of-humor-cause-I-always-liked-them character.  I’ve seen [unintelligible], I’ve seen Prophecy and those characters are fun.  Which, if you haven’t seen those movies in a while, go back, because those MEs really are hilarious.  But after I wrote it, I was like, “This guy is just so zany, I’ve got to use him again somewhere,” because I hadn’t really planned Butters out at all, just said, “oh, I need an ME.” Or “I need an ME with a sense of humor”, so I built this guy real quick in 20 minutes while I was watching the end of probably a Star Wars movie, and said, “Ok, let’s go” and wrote him.  But he came out so neat, I said “I gotta use him again, I gotta find a good place to have this guy,” and figured “What better sidekick for a wizard going up against a gang of necromancers who animate the dead than a medical examiner whose job it is to deal with them all the time.  The catch here is that he’s absolutely no real help in any professional sense, I always like to plan things out for Dresden like that—I guive him a sidekick that’s great company, thematically appropriate, yet not actually offer any true assistance.  But that’s just kind of how he rolls.

If I could take any actor to play Harry and Thomas, who would I pick?

Oh man. I’d probably pick a mid-1970’s Harrison ford for Harry because I’m happy to pick actors from other times that I can’t possibly get. It’s only a matter of time before technology makes that possible, when we can actually have 1970’s Carrie Fisher starring across from 1955 John Wayne. It will happen, one day. But if I had to pick someone who’s actually working now, I’d probably pick Captain Tightpants for Harry, because he’s got a great action [unintelligible] and he was declined in that role.  [Transcriber note for posterity: “Captain Tightpants” is a reference to Nathan Fillion in his role as Mal Reynolds in Firefly and Serenity].  As far as Thomas, that’s a harder call.  Thomas in my head is the older brother from Lost Boys. Jason what’s-his-name. Yeah. Jason Patrick. He doesn’t look that good anymore, but I might also go with the guy who played Bryce in the first couple of seasons of Chuck, was actually very close to Thomas in my head, except his hair is too short. But other than that he looked pretty close.  And now everyone’s going, “Huh, who?” and now it’s like, “Wow, I am now an obscure reference to this room.”

Audience member: The White Collar guy.

Jim: Is he in that?  I’m not a White Collar fan.

Audience member: Matt Bomer.

Jim: Ok, Matt Bomer. Now we know.

Did good Bob make it out?  Is bad Bob still around? 

Is spoilers for the end of this book, which a lot of people here haven’t got to read yet.  And even if it wasn’t totally inappropriate for me to go completely spoiler-happy on this audience, [singsong] I’m not gonna tell you.  That’s my job as a professional storyteller. I give you some resolution on some things, and leave other questions still hanging, and that way you buy the next book and they don’t take my house away! 

What took the extra time to finish this book [Ghost Story]
This one was really hard to write because Dresden spends a whole big chunk of time not really able to communicate with very many people.  Which means I can’t write a whole bunch of snappy dialogue, which is the easiest, funnest part of my job as a writer. It was a lot of description and so on, and that’s grindingly slow for me.  That was part of it, was getting Dresden out of that quandary. 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 is happening.”  And that only came together in the last month or so. A lot of is was that this book is longer than most of the other ones. In fact, it’s longer than all of the previous Dresden Files books. And also, life happens.  I got my kid who [unintelligible] that all of a sudden I wasn’t a full-time dad anymore.  There was a rebalancing issue to be dealt with. So there were a bunch of different things, and finally I did get it done and I called up my editor and said, “This just isn’t going to happen” and my editor said, “Jim, you’re a creative person. You people are squirrely.”…..

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