The Dresden Files > DF Reference Collection
WoJ transcription help needed + mention new WoJ's here
Starshine:
BEAVERCREEK PART 5
I've got whole armies painted up. I can field a bunch of different armies - if my son hadn't lost all my models by now. He likes the game too, so - and the poor kid, he grew up in a family surrounded by all my nerdy friends - he had no chance.
ARE YOU EVER GOING TO EXPLAIN HOW MAC GOT HIS PUB TO BE ACCORDED NEUTRAL GROUND?
Well, he filled out the paperwork and there was a $40 fee - yeah, we'll get into that at some point.
DID YOU ACTUALLY WRITE CODEX ALERA ON A BET?
Indeed. This was before I had gotten published and I was on several different writing groups on the internet, and there were all these discussions that went on constantly - and these were discussions that went on constantly because these were the kinds of arguments that pretty much you hit the reply button, then your caps lock, then start typing.
And I was a little loud-mouthed kid on the internet at the time with all the other loud-mouthed kids on the internet and there was a big argument that came up over the concept of the sacred idea vs the creator's presentation. The idea behind the sacred idea is that if you've got a good enough idea you can sell a book that's wildly successful even if you write terribly and the example they held up to embody that was Jurassic Park. Their example not mine.
Whereas I was on the other side of the argument that said that you could take the oldest, tiredest, worst idea in the entire world and if you had a good enough writer writing it and handling it, he could make it fresh and new and create something new out of that, that was still valuable. I mean, how many versions of Romeo and Juliet have you seen - it's unreal.
So the discussion went on back and forth and finally this guy said - You know what? Why don't you just put your money where your mouth is ? Why don't you just let me give you a bad idea and see if YOU can write a series out of it? And being the nerdy kid I was at the time, I said - No, Ive got a better idea. Why don't you give me TWO terrible ideas and I'll use them BOTH.
That'll learn me to keep my mouth shut. So the kid says - All right. First terrible idea - lost Roman legion. I am so sick of lost Roman legions stories. All lost Roman legions should have been found by now!
So the lost Roman legion was the first idea. So I said - Okay. What's number 2? And he said - Pokymon! So I went and researched it. I went and researched the lost Roman legion. They usually mean the 9th Hibernia Legion when they talk about that. It was the Legion that disappeared while marching in friendly territory - and, marching through a thunderstorm - and never marched out. And to my way of thinking probably that territory wasn't quite so friendly. But on the other hand, what if they went somewhere else? Okay, where did they go? Land of Pokymon - obviously!
So I went and researched Pokymon - which is itself a fusion of two ideas, one of which is the Shinto religion with the idea that within all natural things there is a vital spirit of life called a Kami and if you've got like a little pebble there's a little teeny kami and if you've got a great big mountain, there's a great big kami inside it - and you'd better respect it. And you should respect the pebble too, but if you don't - what's it gonna do - it's a pebble. It's really limited in terms of how it can harm you.
And for Pokymon they took that idea and they fused it with professional wrestling. So I said - okay. You know what? Let's take that Shinto idea and use that and I'll infuse the natural things in the Pokymon world with these spirits and the lost Roman legion will show up there, and I mixed it together and I gave them a couple of thousand years to have a complete apocalypse on their planet, and then form a society, and started growing and kind of documented everything that happened and then said - Okay. This is point where I'm going to start. And I started writing it with a boy on a farm because that's where fantasy starts. Not my rule - that's just how it started.
And started writing that. And then as I got into it, I was like - ooh - this is actually a really good story - I like it - I think I could do something with it . And I said - You know what? Im not going to put this up on the list because that's [tantamount?] to publishing it and it could cause me a headache selling it later, so Im just going to keep this. And I'm not actually going to put that up there, and the guy sent me an email back, and said like - hamf! In other words, I won.
[And now I can go] yeah - you won - sure.
WHY DOES MORT NOT INFLUENCE TECHNOLOGY THE WAY HARRY DOES?
Mort is not nearly so powerful or disruptive or conflicted as Dresden is. Mort is very comfortable with being a coward. He's totally at peace with that - which is one of the reasons why - one of the things that causes the whole magical haywire thing is the fact that human beings in general are very conflicted creatures. And that sort of tends to put off - with their baser nature conflicting with the better angels of their nature kind of puts off the interference that causes all the trouble around them. It wasn't always shorting out technology. 100 years ago - or 200 years ago - it was making milk go sour. Before that you got weird spots on your body. That sort of thing changes as you go along - the rules of magic are always changing.
And it also means - like if it's a fairy magician - someone like Lea - she could play Nintendo all day if she wants to - because she's not conflicted at all about her nature. "No - I'll turn you into a dog. Really - it'll be good for you".
THE OTHER BOOK THAT YOU TALKED ABOUT WRITING AFTER DRESDEN - WOULD THAT BE PART OF A WHOLE OTHER 26 OR 27 BOOK OR -?
Oh - the other book that I was talking about writing? It is a - the way I see it in my head now - it's a trilogy that is actually a threefold trilogy for my epic, epic fantasy epic that Im going to write some day. It's so epic that it has to be a threefold trilogy - or maybe it wont be that epic - but I'll end up writing it eventually - when I grow up.
IS IT SET IN ALERA?
No it's not in Alera - we're going off to somewhere else. It's very heavily influenced by the Black Company - and we'll run with it from there. It's sort of set in the days immediately after the end of the Giant Apocalyptic Fantasy War, which didn't really end spectacularly well because [the Euros??? ] there blew it. And while we're not quite as apocalyptic as a [Brandon Sanderson?] novel - he's happy to write novels where the end of the world came and now you've got to live through it - it's not quite that bad - but it is exploring a little bit different [feelings?] than we normally see. There wont be any marching to Mt Doom. It'll be more like how do we put the world back together after these idiots shattered it.
DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE IT IS POSSIBLE TO BE BOTH A STAR WARS AND A STAR TREK FAN AT THE SAME TIME?
Probably - but really - nobody's equal. You can't tell me anybody is - Oh SW and ST - I like them both. Unless it's like my wife who doesn't care for either of them. I mean, she'll watch 'em for me, but she's always got to make fun of 'em.
YOU KNOW SOMETIMES PEOPLE WILL SAY - ARE YOU GOING TO DO THIS WITH THE CHARACTERS? AND YOU SAY -IM NOT GOING TO TELL YOU. BUT INSIDE, ARE YOU SOMETIMES THINKING - YEAH, I THINK I WILL, NOW THAT THEY SAID THAT. DO YOU EVER GET YOUR IDEAS THAT WAY?
Do I ever think to myself - hmmm - and actually take inspiration from that? My lawyer told me to tell you - no. But - the fact of the matter is - is that if you did touch off a good idea in my head, yeah I'll use it. I want to write the best story I can. Occasionally people have asked me stuff and I went - haaaa - I almost DO have to do that - I've got to get Dresden in a giant bunny costume somehow. That'd be awesome!
[VERY LONG QUESTION - TOO FAR FROM THE MIKE FOR ME TO GET - SOMETHING ABOUT THE COLORING OF THE FAIRIES/FAIRY COURTS - and unfortunately Jim didn't repeat it]
Yeah but she can make her hair and her eyes any color she wants to. The question here is that the Leansidhe nature seems to conflict with that of Summer - or with that of Winter - and she seems to be much more Summer-y, since she wears lots of reds and greens and so on.
[FURTHER QUESTION FROM SAME GUY - SOMETHING ABOUT HARRY AND THE GARDEN]
No spoilers! - I'm sure there are some people here who haven't read the book.
END OF PART 5
Starshine:
BEAVERCREEK 6
They're not elementals. They're not divided along the lines of - specifically - of the classical elements. They're more about the elemental portions of the soul, which - okay, that's getting really technical and highfaluting. But the point is, Lea drains people's blood and drinks it, and that was how she made her bones in the fairy world. She's an actual legendary figure, where bards and poets and painters and so on would come to her and seek her inspiration. And she was kind of this vampire-muse - that was the original Leansidhe - that's her original story. And in the DF universe that was how she made her bones, that's how she impressed big Mab. It was like - oh wow - you took these guys who were out there just seeking to create something beautiful and yet increased your dark and evil power - Well done!
HOW DO YOU SET UP YOUR WORK SCHEDULE?
That would imply that I know how to use a schedule and have some kind of circadian rhythm. Yeah - I don't dance. I don't even have circadian rhythm. But generally speaking, I'll get up in the morning around 11 or 12. I'll spend the day taking care of business stuff that needs to be taken care of - you know the regular house stuff that needs to be taken care of, maybe go to the gym, evening I'll be hanging out with Shannon [
.] or we'll do stuff in the evening. She'll go to be around 9:30 or 10 and then I'll settle down to write. And I will write from whenever she goes to bed until 5, 6 7 in the morning - whenever I'm done - as long as Im not playing too many video games - and then she gets up - and I'll go to bed and she'll get up not too long after that, and then she gets to do HER writing while the house is quiet. So we're not ever walking into one another because three dimensions were not enough to keep us far enough away while we were working so we had to be apart in time as well. But so far it's worked out. We haven't stabbed each other in the eyes with pencils like we almost did in high school.
ARE WE GOING TO BE INTRODUCED MORE TO THE OBLIVION WARS AND IS GOD HIMSELF GOING TO EVENTUALLY STEP IN?
Well there are sort of these archangels and holy swords running around. I sort of do regard that as some kind of intervention myself. As far as more Oblivion Wars stuff, not a whole lot. It's not really tied into Harry. It's one of those things that has been going on for a long, long time in the background. I always knew it was going on - but Dresden could not play that one - that's the kind of war you have to fight with discipline and Dresden can't keep his mouth shut to save his life - like literally he cant't keep his mouth shut save his life.
ARE THERE ANY CHARACTERS THAT YOU'VE CREATED THAT YOU THOUGHT WOULD GO SOMEPLACE AND THEN AFTER THE BOOK WAS PUBLISHED YOU TRIED TO BRING THEM BACK AND YOU JUST - IT DIDINT PAN OUT THE WAY YOU WANTED IT TO OR YOU DECIDED NOT TO INTRODUCE THEM AGAIN?
Are there ever any characters that I introduced with broader designs in mind that after the book was over when I went back to try and dig them out again it just didn't work. Have I ever done that? No. I have problems in the opposite direction where I create a character that's supposed to show up for one scene and that's all he's supposed to be there for but he winds up being cool enough that I end up using him again and again and again because I just can't get rid of him. That's what happened to Butters. He was supposed to be just a one-shot scene guy and by the time I got done with him I'm like - this little geek is cool. I need to have him around more. But no, so far we're doing okay in terms of, when I need to bring a character back, it's okay, I can do that. It works so far.
I SAW ANOTHER QUESTION YOU WERE ASKED AT A DIFFERENT SIGNING WHERE YOU MENTION THAT THE BLACKSTAFF CAME FROM SOMEBODY [
..CELTIC MYTHOLOGY
..IS HE LIKE HUNTING DOWN
.]
Im not gonna tell you - is the answer to that question. It's more fun to find out as we go along. There's a little bit of a revelation about the Blackstaff's origin - it really was something I mentioned somewhere else - like at a convention or something - and told folks - Yeah. The Blackstaff, it came from somewhere. It's not just something that came out of Ebenezar's yard. And the original owner of the Blackstaff is quite perturbed that he no longer has it - he, she, it no longer has it, so that will come into play eventually.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE BOOK IN THE DRESDEN FILES?
Dead Beats. [
.] dinosaurs. I was ready for like 6 years to write that. You can only put that stuff off for so long without going crazy.
ROWLING SAID THE [
] WHERE HARRY DIES WAS ONE OF THE TOUGHEST CHAPTERS SHE'D EVER WRITTEN. HAVE YOU EVER HAD A CHAPTER LIKE THAT?
Heck no. I love those scenes. I love that. That's one of my favorite things to work on. The hard chapters for me are the ones where anybody really is trying to sit down and figure something out, and there's not a lot of dialogue and not a lot of action. Cause if I cant [live off?] somebody or punch them in the face I hardly know what to do with myself. At least as a writer.
WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE PART ABOUT GOING TO CONVENTIONS?
Meeting you guys and talking and having people laugh, getting the sign table for the books - that's fun. I'm an awful traveller. I travel so badly I actually have to buy one of those big bottles of dramomine to come with me. The best part about conventions is getting to actually sit out and meet people. And like people going Yay! when you walk into a room - that doesn't hurt either. I only say this like once a year - or at conventions or maybe at bookstores sometimes - and the rest of the time I just go home and mow the lawn but - it's kind of fun, I have to say.
WAS IT HARDER TO GET YOURSELF OR THE PUBLISHER TO DELAY GHOST STORY?
Well it wasn't hard to convince the publisher because on the day it was supposed to be delivered I was still about 12 chapters short of the end. They simply couldn't have done it - there was no book there. Convincing myself that I needed to admit that I needed more time - that was harder. But I had a lot of things that I had to pull together and the story hadn't gelled yet in my mind - to figure out what was going on in the end - and when it finally did, it was like - Aha! Now I got it! It actually came in early from the second deadline, but - you know - that's almost like being on time.
HOW DID YOU END UP DOING THE SPIDERMAN BOOK AND WOULD YOU EVER DO ONE AGAIN?
I went to [Dragon?] - com and the original editor of the Dresden Files, Jen Heddle [?] was there, and she had moved positions - was working in Pocket - and said "We're publishing some Spiderman books and I wanted to see if you wanted to write --. And she got about that far before I said - YES!! I want to write a Spiderman book." i don't think I could play poker very well or negotiate anything at all. Everyone reads Spiderman - what are you crazy? She's like - Oh the money isn't bad. I WANT TO WRITE SPIDERMAN!!! Okay - these days, I don't think I could do another one, my schedule is so busy - although that could probably change in the future. Cause I love the heroes that I grew up with when I was a kid. You can put the Rhino on Aunt May's couch drinking tea - awesome!
Okay - last question.
WHAT WOULD YOU BE DOING IF YOU WERENT A WRITER?
I would probably still be working tech support somewhere. It was a fun job. I worked at an internet tech support company and I was the all night guy. It was a great experience. I was actually good at doing the job. I was the guy who could always piece together something to keep the system up until morning so I didn't have to get people out of bed - that's why they gave me the night shift. So I'd probably be doing that and liking it.
Okay guys - thank you very much for putting up with me.
Serack:
--- Quote from: Starshine on February 24, 2012, 09:32:59 AM ---Okay guys - thank you very much for putting up with me.
--- End quote ---
No Thank YOU so much for doing this for us. I'll get it transferred over to the WoJ section soon. I've been distracted with diapers and guests come up from Florida to see lil Serack and such.
Serack:
Thanks for the heads up, I've also posted a thanks in the OP.
Korwin:
--- Quote from: Starshine on February 23, 2012, 01:11:44 AM ---Lets see - [Scal ---] I read [Scal--] . I read [
.] and [Hagen?] for being able to write this beautiful poetic passages and then switch instantly to the gritty, pulpy action prose - I hate that guy! He's really nice though.
Recently I've been reading [Brandon Chanderson?] I finished Way of Kings this morning on the plane. I thought it was a wonderful book. I hope I can do happy fantasy that good at some point.
--- End quote ---
Pretty shure that should be John Scalzi, Patrick Rothfuss, no clue about that hagen and Brandon Sanderson.
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