The Dresden Files > DF Reference Collection
WoJ transcription help needed + mention new WoJ's here
TheCuriousFan:
Might as well do Muskogee just in case it gets deleted too. Didn't get their names so I'll just call them Muskogee for simplicity's sake.
Muskogee: You're always telling us stories but we don't know about your story. Could you tell us your story?
Jim: *gets muted*
*several minutes of audio problems ensue before the story begins*
Jim: Oh um, not much to it. Boring, grew up, went to school and the university of Oklahoma, learned about writing there, went to their graduate program of professional writing, got kicked out, sold my first book and after that just kind of selling more of them and it worked out.
Muskogee: One of the things I've read about you, and I'm curious as to if this is true, is that the Codex Alera series came about because you were given a challenge to write a good story about a couple of lame topics. Is that true?
Jim: Sort of. Originally the challenge was for me to use one bad idea but I thought that wasn't sufficient so I told him to pick two. Originally back in the day it was the Del Rey online writers workshop, it was like the first big online writing forum where you could show up and talk to a broad range of people about writing. Mostly it was a bunch of wannabe writers like me at the time and we would just be on there arguing about writing, sharing our stuff and critiquing one another's stuff and talking about the industry and stuff like that. There was a big discussion one day and the discussion was concerning the nature of writing and writing specifically. The question was "what is more important, to write with a good idea or to write with good presentation?" and that was the argument that was going on. And one side of the argument took up the holy idea that if you had a good enough idea that it doesn't matter how awful your writing is and used Jurassic Park as their example. And then for me I was on the side that was saying "it doesn't really matter what your idea is, if you're a creative enough writer the way you spin and present it can give you a really good story that people are gonna like reliably over and over again, how many versions of Romeo and Juliet have we seen?" And so that argument went back and forth for a while and was one of those discussions where you just hit reply, capslock and then you start talking. I was the loudmouth leading one side and there was another loudmouth leading the other side and I forget who it was but finally he says "Okay let's see you put your money where your mouth is. How about I give you a terrible idea and see you write it into a book that sells" and I said "No! Why don't you give me two terrible ideas and I'll use them both and that was how Codex Alera got started. Because his first terrible idea was "lost Roman legions, I'm so sick of lost Roman legions. All the Roman legions should have been found by now!" and I'm like "okay and what's your second terrible idea?" and he says Pokemon. And so I took those two things and I shook 'em up in a bag for a while and eventually made Codex Alera.
Muskogee: Yeah when I read that I was like "you know that makes sense" because it's very much Roman legion and Pokemon.
Jim: Yup, lost Roman legion meets Pokemon.
Muskogee: Because my son is a Pokemon fan, when you created your elementals did you have any certain Pokemon in mind when you created the different ones?
Jim: No particular ones in mind but I did take the name of the mountain Garados just straight off of Gyrados, just switched a letter out and that was all I needed to do. Just because that was the most impressive Pokemon I saw the first time when I watched Pokemon. Cuz my kid used to watch Pokemon every morning and I would have to sit with him and eat breakfast and watch Pokemon because as a parent that's what happens to you. So I was in a pretty good position to write a Pokemon based epic fantasy.
Muskogee: Yeah I think we could do, my son sits down and reads the Pokemon encyclopedia all the time. He knows everything about all the characters.
Jim: Yeah eventually there's going to be so many Pokemon the kids are going to have to have a doctorate to be able to play the game.
Muskogee: Yeah they will, there are ten of them. So I have some questions from our chat so I'm going to read these. So... where is Lucifer in all this? I am remembering he made a play in Small Favour with helping Nick power up the trap for Ivy.
Jim: He runs a pretty big corporation, it was probably a subsidiary.
Muskogee: If Harry used the Darkhallow at the Changes crossroad who would his frenemies have been like how Mab and the Winter court is now and presumably Nicodemus and the Denarians would be if he took up Lasciel's coin?
Jim: *laughs and shakes his head* He wouldn't be friends with Nicodemus it wouldn't matter if he had a coin or not. That's not gonna happen. But if he'd taken- I mean the whole thing about being a necromancer, if you go take up the path of the necromancer you don't need friends you can make your own. All you need is the spare parts and you're good to go. But it would have been a much different series and there would have been a lot more conflict with like, Odin, that would have been a big deal with him. Let me think what else, umm, Molly would have gotten a lot gothier, that would have happened.
Muskogee: And the next one is "as of Battle Ground where is Bonea? Was she purposely left out of even Dresden's thoughts?"
Jim: Yeah, there were buildings being destroyed and people being slaughtered by the tens of thousands there was a lot to think about that didn't involve somebody who was in a box at Michael's house.
Muskogee: So Peace Talks came out in July and Battle Ground now, did you originally plan for it to be two parts because it's almost like one book but there's so much that you had to split it into two?
Jim: It was one book and it was too big they were going to have to charge like fifty bucks for it or something like that and I'm not going to be the first author to go over that line, somebody else can do that that's braver than me. But yeah they came out and said "it's been so far outside the window it's gonna be really hard to publish, it's gonna be expensive" and so on. "Have you ever thought about splitting this up into a couple of books" and originally the idea was to write the book that kind of started off being a political heist book but then turned into a war movie in the middle when you weren't looking for it, kind of like From Dusk Till Dawn where it turned from a psycho killer movie into a vampire movie. So that was what I was trying to do, trying to build a better mouse trap but it didn't work out nearly as well as I wanted it to unfortunately because I really wasn't pleased with it even when it was done, it was kind of a lumpy Frankenstein of a book and when they said "hey maybe we can divide it into two books" I kind of stopped and looked at it and said "well it really is, it's about two thirds of one book and about two thirds of another book so if we split it into two books we'll have two books that are two thirds of a book" so it's like I've got to go back in and retool a little bit what this first story is about. The story of going out to save Thomas and only sort of doing it kind of is what Peace Talks wound up being all about and drawing out that conflict with Harry's grandfather. And then we were just getting out all the action figures and smashing them together for Battle Ground. That's kind of what it is and if that's not your kind of book that's cool I don't mind at all but for me it was fun since I got to smash action figures together.
Muskogee: I loved Battle Ground. From the first sentence it's like you hit the ground running pretty much. Battle Ground has been great. Just finished it this afternoon at about 3:30. So between work and kids I've just been listening because I didn't want to stop listening, it's really good.
Jim: Well that's all about James.
Muskogee: One of my questions and you sort of touched on it here with having to split the books. Has there been things in books you wish you had put in or things you wish you had left out or just things you wish you had elaborated a little bit more on?
Jim: That sounds like so much work, just wishing about things that are done. Once that book is done it's done it goes out there and there's tens or hundreds of thousands of copies running around and you've said what you had to say whether you like it or not. So I try not to waste too much time regretting it once it's out there. And it really seems... considering how well the books have done and how well my career has gone it seems a little bit churlish to say "oh I wish how it had been different" oh I know how /that/ wish is gonna go.
Muskogee: It worked out pretty well huh?
Jim: Yeah I'm not gonna complain about any of it. I'm very happy with it.
Muskogee: Is Harry getting a round table for the castle?
Jim: Oh I don't know. He probably should. *laughs a little* Golly that would really mess with the Merlin if he did. I have to think about that now.
Muskogee: It's an idea. What do you do when you're trying to brainstorm for whichever direction the story is going to be going?
Jim: Well I haven't done that since 1996 or something like that. When I'm doing it for a new story what I like to do is run a campaign in my story world, then I'll try to run the campaign that is in the story, I kind of know what I want the story to be more or less so I'll run the campaign there and players being players they won't play there. They'll go anywhere but where I want them to go, and that means they generally just go off in a random direction and I have to frantically build this world six inches in front of their toes as they frantically charge along. Anyway... that has been the most useful creative exercise that I've been able to do to make things cooler.
Muskogee: As a D&D player I can relate. I'm one of those players that tortures the GM.
Jim: Yeah, yeah.
Muskogee 2: My DM calls me "the hammer" because I hammer his game every chance I get.
Muskogee: I had wondered if you had played D&D before. Because some of the things, especially in your last couple of books... you talked about "oh he failed on his initiative".
Jim: Of course. At some point I realised I had allowed my son to become 21 years of age without actually having played Dungeons and Dragons. Every other game under the sun but not D&D because it was 4th edition and I didn't have the energy for it. So I wound up running him, we wound up playing Pathfinder and playing Keep on the Borderlands/Caves of Chaos as our first game because because darn it when you play Dungeons and Dragons that is your first dungeon, that's the way it works. You go play the Caves of Chaos. But I set it during a fantasy zombie apocalypse so there's a zombie apocalypse going on and the only way to survive, the last human holdout, is the keep on the borderlands but in order to be let in they had to promise that they would serve on the expeditionary force because there wasn't enough room for useless people, you could only be there if you could do something useful so. The expeditionary force got sent to the Caves of Chaos to talk to the greenskins so I was running the Caves of Chaos as a diplomatic mission and it is the most amazing diplomatic mission you've ever seen. D&D players, if you want to have some fun, go run Caves of Chaos as a diplomatic mission, it's awesome.
Muskogee: For the adversary, is there a difference between the infection versus the possession and if so is there a limit to the number it can possess at any one time?
Jim: Gosh it would be really handy if Harry knew that.
Muskogee: It would help him a lot.
Jim: It would be super useful if he knew things like that.
Muskogee 2: That almost sounds like on the level of the balefire question to Robert Jordan.
Muskogee: At some point will we be able to see Ferrovax in his natural form?
Jim: Yes, yeah yeah yeah. I'm not gonna put that gun on the wall and not pull it off. That's gonna happen.
Muskogee: That would be amazing. Where is Mister as of Battle Ground?
Jim: As of Battle Ground Mister was in his crate at the Carpenters.
Muskogee: I'm glad somebody asked that question because I was wondering about that too before I read.
Jim: When Harry took Maggie over Mister and Bonea went with them.
Muskogee: Would you consider a Codex Alera short story collection of the older characters' backstories? Like Septimus and his friend, Sextus as a young punk, the Valerian brothers etc
Jim: No I would probably leave that backstory as backstory. I mean, part of what makes it good is that you don't know much very much about it so if I go back and start writing it I'm inevitably going to disappoint people because you don't know what's in the backstory so you've been making up cool things yourselves and there's like a million of you guys and you're smarter than me all together like that so you're inevitably going to think of cooler stuff than I would come up with if I tried to write a backstory for it at this point. What I would do is write more stories going along with the next generation of young people looking back at the older people that we got to see falling through life and goofing everything up and trying to get things right. You know because when they look back at them they don't see those people that we know they see these icons and these incredible heroes of the land, they don't know that the first lord just upchucks all over himself the entire time he's on a boat, that's not something that would enter into their mind.
Muskogee: It'd be like going back in time with George Washington and-
Jim: And finding out he was actually kind of an arrogant doofus in a lot of ways. He certainly should have listened to his noncoms that's for sure.
Muskogee: You stated 20ish case books with a big apocalyptic trilogy at the end. Is it now safe to presume 22 case books given Peace Talks was split and prior comments about how romance might have slowed the overall pacing by a book?
Jim: I don't know if I would say it's safe to assume cuz I've never written a series this long before, I don't know what I'm doing. But yeah I just figured out today that I think I'm going to have to put another book into the series just to get everything done and it was annoying but also exciting because now I get another book to write so.
Muskogee: We're all terribly disappointed that there will be another one.
Jim: Well if I do 22 and then a 3 book trilogy at the end and that's like a 5 x 5 series that's super powerful. If you want to get into numerology that's very solid, 25 is excellent so.
Muskogee: What are the chances of any new unknown to us book titles?
Jim: Yeah I've got several in mind that I haven't used yet but I haven't told them to you for the past 20 years and I don't see why I will now so...
Muskogee: It's not a surprise if we know about it right now. I have really enjoyed the Dresden series and the way the characters have developed. When they first started out they weren't real in-depth, Good was good and bad was bad there didn't seem to be any in-between but as the series has progressed it seems like there's not as much clearcut good and evil now, there's a little bit of grey in everything and people's motivations... they might be a good person but the motivation might not be so good or they might be evil but with a good motivation. So what is your process on developing the characters? Have you had characters that have started out on what we would traditionally think of as the side of good and you've been writing them you've found yourself think "no they need to go a little more evil"
Jim: It's not that simple there are no characters that are just on the side of good except for maybe Michael and possibly Father Forthill. They're the ones who might be on the side of Good with a capital G, most people are doing pretty good if they're just not awful. That's sort of my metric "have you murdered anybody lately? No? Have you stolen from somebody and left them in poverty or a horrible mess? No? All right. You're not beating on your children? and so on, okay, I'm not going to complain too hard about you because I really don't know what your life is like and you seem to have the minimum requirements met and I'll be over here if you need anything". And so for people in the Dresden Files world, so many of them are decent people, like Murphy, Murphy's a decent human being but not really necessarily labouring on the side of Good, maybe on the side of Law just for the fact that she does it 40 hours a week or at least she did for the longest time. Yeah I don't see people like that, people in general tend to labour towards the things that they're interested in.
Muskogee: Everybody's doing the best they can with what they have.
Jim: Yeah more or less. The whole point of the Dresden Files in many ways is an examination of choices, what do you do with the free will you have? How do you choose to do the things you're doing? Because that means a lot for Harry. If you're on the side of Good or you're on the side of Evil you don't really have the free will as much- well you do but you've pretty much already chosen. You've already made that call. Just writing about the characters that are stable and stick to what they do and what they have always done, those are great characters to have. Characters like Michael are wonderful but if you made everybody like that it wouldn't work out so well because if everybody's the paladin there's no contrast for the paladin to actually look cool and neat. And besides in the real world there's not a lot of paladins.
Muskogee: No there's not. That's one of the things I like about your characters that you see them struggling even if they're generally a good person, you see them struggle with the dark side of themselves they have because everybody has that.
Jim: Yeah people are strange creatures we are very strange we aren't very good at this whole peaceful civilisation thing, we haven't been doing it very long.
Muskogee: Will we see any more Greek gods or others such as Egyptian or something in later books?
Jim: We will definitely see more in later books, that's when we get to the professional wrestling book there's going to be a lot of gods running around so...
Muskogee: Do you remember what the colors and sigils of Forcia Attica and Parcia were? They were the only ones not revealed in the series?
Jim: They're written down somewhere, I've got a file somewhere that has-where I wrote up briefs on all the major cities and all their major exports and what their economy was based on and all these things that absolutely never came into the books, ever, but then I kind of had to know myself before I could do it. So they will be in my notes somewhere but those are in storage in KC, I'm not exactly sure where they are. I'll see if I can dig them up and look.
Muskogee: Did Donald Morgan train with the brute squad at Archangel and who was the person he cared for there?
Jim: I'm not gonna talk about that right now because I might do a little more Morgan story later because he's just an interesting guy and Dresden's pov was not shall we say a very objective or generous one and as a result Morgan is a very different guy from the one he's been presented as in the books and you see that in bits and pieces when Harry looks at him and goes "huh, maybe he wasn't so bad" but he's not quite self aware enough to go "maybe it was me" which is one of those things humans wind up having to do a lot as you kind of study yourself in life. "Oh maybe I'm bringing a lot of stuff to this that I didn't realise I was bringing" you know.
Muskogee: That is very true, we don't often think about how we don't see things the way everybody else sees it and yeah
Jim: But Morgan was definitely in with the Archangel crowd. They're the kind of guys who spar at full speed, those kind of folks.
Muskogee: Was the White Council given the Blackstaff or did he take it?
Jim: Oh as far as the history of where he got it I'm not gonna talk about that yet because we'll still have to talk about that later. I can't give answers to questions where it's gonna ruin the fun, I won't do that, I'll give you all the answers I can but I won't ruin the story for later on.
Muskogee 2: I have a question. My personal headcanon is that all the people of the forest dress in Victorian clothing, please tell me this is true.
Jim: Oh my gosh, probably. They're kind of orderly within and among themselves so they so they would have kind of got- the forest people are sort of the ultimate introvert culture so they would have gotten together and been like "okay we have to figure this human thing out, somebody's gonna have to make contact, who?" "not it!", you know, like that. And it would have just gone around the circle until River Shoulders was the last one at the meeting and they made him do it. And then they would have relied on his research and then said "okay that's the human research we have the human research established" you know because that's the sort of folks that they are, they like things to be the same. They're very close to nature and nature's pretty much unchanging or it changes so slowly we can't really see it. So yeah they would have found out about the humans and been like "okay now we know enough".
Muskogee: Do you prefer writing in an urban fantasy world or in a high fantasy world, a swords and horses world?
Jim: There's different advantages to each. When I am writing in a completely alien world I can make it in any way I want and that's pretty cool, on the other hand, because I can make it any way I want it means I have to do absolutely all the work, I have to describe everything. I can't just say "they were in a restaurant" because what does a restaurant look like in a fantasy world where there's dragons and elves? You have to actually do all the work and be describing that whereas in the Dresden Files I can say "they were eating in the cafe of a Walmart" and everybody goes "I know that one, yeah I ate in that one once and I regretted it" you know, like that, where everybody knows it.
Muskogee: Are there any plans to put together a compilation of the graphic novels in much the same was as Side Jobs/Brief Cases?
Jim: I mean there are several graphic novel compilations already where they group the graphic novels into several. I know they did that for Storm Front and Fool Moon. And then when they were doing the original ones though- the originals are separate stories I don't think they've done big compilations of those yet. Oh they have? I'm told they have.
Priscellie: Yes Dynamite has two omnibus collections.
Jim: Oh okay Dynamite has two omnibus collections of the original Dresden Files stuff so you should be able to look those up. I didn't realise that, cool.
Priscellie: Go to the official jimbutcher.com store
Jim: Go to the official jimbutcher.com store, if you go to my site and go to the store you'll be able to find links to them there.
Muskogee: Followup to Harry the necromancer path. Why would he be fighting with Odin? Wouldn't he be fighting the White Council? How strong would he be if he performed the Darkhallow when it was not on Halloween?
Jim: Well for one he'd be fighting with Odin because Harry would be wanting /useful/ dead minions and useful dead minions, bringing folks back from the dead, that kind of starts walking towards Odin's territory. He would be a little concerned about that. And of course he'd be fighting the White Council /all the time/.
Muskogee: In Codex Alera how did you come up with the various cultures and races?
Jim: I was at work and it was boring. I was working 10PM to 6AM at a local internet provider at Norman Oklahoma in the mid 90s. After 1 in the morning you don't get so many calls there and you've got 5 hours to kill and you can only play so much Everquest.
Muskogee: Is there a reason Dresden stopped making potions as much?
Jim: Yeah because I was doing other stuff and I had done the potion thing over and over so I only do it occasionally now. I mean it was an entire dedicated chapter of just making potions and after a while I was like "I'm tired of the potion chapter, can't we just say he went to the lab and we'll have a 5 minutes later and he's done bit" because yeah I had been writing that scene over and over I got tired of it.
Muskogee: What happened to the rest of the dragons excluding the one Michael killed?
Jim: Various stuff happened to all the dragons over time. They just sort of got whittled down slowly over the years. By and large they were killed by mortals.
Muskogee: I think I read on Reddit you are planning on having a dragon book, is that correct?
Jim: Yeah, I don't have the teleport yet though I'm still working on it.
Muskogee: I can't wait it'll be great when that comes out. What's the most dangerous thing in Demonreach?
Jim: It's sort of hard to say because some of the stuff that doesn't seem as bad kind of has the horrible long term consequences whereas compared to the overt "this is the thing that will eat you and then divide into two parts and eat two more people and divide into four parts and eat more" like that. That's sort of a world killer thing right there whereas opposed to the thing that just makes everybody so sad that they eventually stop eating. That's not quite as bad but it'll also do the same thing, it'll get you there. So really it's not a question of what is the most dangerous thing it's just what flavour of awful do you want? It's there.
Muskogee: Do you think you'll ever expound anymore on what all is in Demonreach?
Jim: *smirks* Oh why would I do that?
Muskogee: Because inquiring minds want to know.
Jim: Oh yeah yeah that might be fun, we'll have to see.
Muskogee: I think it would be really interesting because we know there's all these big baddies out there but sometimes stuff we can make up in our own imagination is worse than what is actually there so...
Do you have any recommendations on programs or resources for organising your thoughts and stories?
Jim: For organising thoughts and stories? I know there's a lot of writing programs, Scrivener is the one I hear most often that people use. I tend to organise my books in the same way I organise my campaigns. I'll put a notebook together for them, put all my files in one place... Anything that you already do to organise thoughts and ideas, just port it over and apply it. If it's something you're already familiar with that's a good tool just go ahead and use that. For me I started organising my stories in the same way I organise my campaigns and it worked out well for me. Right down to doing character sheets for the characters.
Muskogee: That's actually a really good way to do that.
Jim: If it ain't broke don't fix it.
Muskogee: Was one of the big D Dragons named Hydrovax or Aquavax?
Jim: *laughs* No. All the water dragons- they tend to- they wound up over in Asia for the most part.
Muskogee: So in 2007 there was the Dresden Files TV series which is actually how I discovered the Dresden Files books.
Jim: Tons of people did, tons of people did.
Muskogee: Yeah flipping through the channels one day saw this show and was like "this is awesome and oh there's books". I understand it has been picked up again by Fox Studios, is that true?
Jim: That is true. It's in development. Development is a funny place.
Muskogee: Means they're working on it, might not happen but hopefully it does, I would love to see another TV series. I was sad it only lasted one season.
Jim: I'm not sure I'd say it was sad it only lasted one season. I kind of wish there had been more but at the same time it did kind of end before it blew up anything completely that I would have to deal with in the books later on. I like to think positive.
Muskogee: Are there still plans for a series about Maggie at her school?
Jim: I'm thinking about it, that's what plans mean to a writer, we're thinking about it. Until there's a contract and a cheque I don't know if I would give much more credit to plans than that.
Muskogee: Can we get a microfiction of Kincaid going hunting post-Battle Ground?
Jim: Huh. No I don't think so but we'll probably see more Kincaid before very long.
Muskogee: Will a certain Black Court leader that was shown in Battle Ground return before the BAT?
Jim: Before then? Maybe, maybe not, we'll see. Oh wait yeah absolutely will before then because there's some vengeance that needs meeting so.
Muskogee: Are we going to see any from the Jade Court before the end of the series?
Jim: I am iffy on that. I don't know if it'll happen in Dresden at all. They get by by staying home. That's what they do.
Muskogee: Do einherjar have to make a choice to be recruited?
Jim: No not really. They can get roped into it. I mean if they've already got a claim somewhere else that's different. In which case Odin has to make a deal of some kind, it's like "I know you had plans for this guy and all Anubis but I really need him for the rest of the mortals" and that's the kind of thing that can happen. Very confused people occasionally wake up in Valhalla.
Muskogee: What caused you to change styles or worlds? You had written urban fantasy, you had written swords and horses fantasy and then Cinder Spires is more of a steampunk so is there something that inspired you to go that direction instead of your usual?
Jim: It was just a matter of- I had done several projects at that point and I showed each of them to my beta readers and sort of got their reactions to them and by far the Cinder Spires got the strongest reactions so I decided to go with that. I'm pretty happy with the choice but I see it less as a steampunk series and more of a space opera but that's just me. At one point I called it a steam-opera and my editor was like "you're not allowed to make up new genres" so I'm like "darn it!".
Muskogee: You're not that powerful yet.
Jim: Apparently not.
Muskogee: Okay one more question. You've mentioned one of your influences is Roger Zelazny. My dad really wants to know who is your favourite character in the Amberverse.
Jim: I think Merlin is the most interesting because he has the most options, if I was writing I would want to be writing Merlin. But my favourite character is still Benedict. I mean to the point where I named a guy after him in the Cinder Spires so.
Muskogee: Oh there you go. I admit I have not read Cinder Spires so that went under my radar and somebody mentioned and I was like "how did I miss this?"
Jim: Yeah there's like talking cats and everything.
Muskogee: If it's got talking cats in it I have to check this out.
Jim: How can you not? It's a surefire winner, how could I not use talking cats?
Muskogee: Exactly you can't go wrong with that. How do you feel about the fact that some of your works are being used in college lit classes?
Jim: Really? *laughs* I feel that it was appropriate that I got kicked out of college, for crying out loud. Oh my gosh, using my stuff for lit.
Muskogee: Your professors would not believe it, would they?
Jim: Well my professors thought I wrote fine. My issue wasn't with them it was more with administration but that's a different story.
Muskogee: Alright we're at our time limit so I'm gonna let you go but I really appreciate you rescheduling and coming back to do this and sorry for all the technical issues we've had but you've got to admit that with Harry Dresden that's kind of ironic.
https://www.facebook.com/MuskogeePublicLibrary/videos/336641817608014
TheCuriousFan:
Found money so time for the Mysterious Galaxy transcript.
Matt: How have you been doing this year? How has the covid pandemic life been for you?
Jim: For a writer it doesn't really change things too much you know I mean I'm basically a hermit anyway so you know the whole lockdown came down and was like "I could get work done" but you know, not really as it turns out.
Matt: I've definitely heard that from authors so I guess we have to turn the tables on you. What advice do you have for all of us who are now working from home and being more like authors?
Jim: Enjoy not wearing pants. You know I mean that's really kind of how it is.
Matt: That is great advice. I need to take you up on that, doing laundry way too often so.... Obviously we're all here not only to talk about Battle Ground but Peace Talks which is the first part of this duology. Just in case anyone hasn't heard about it or read them yet, do you want to give a little breakdown of what the duology is about?
Jim: Well it's about the great big peace talks that come into town where everyone's trying to settle all the world's problems and hold hands and sing kumbaya. It's basically just that. So yeah. But yeah Dresden has been assigned to the White Council as security liason for the White Council team and he's going to be off making sure things stay smooth between the White Council and the faerie courts, you know so that goes well. And Dresden runs into a few problems, his brother kind of causes some trouble, maybe it's less kumbaya than everybody intended as things go along.
Matt: So did you write these books together? They came out very close together obviously. What was the process like for that?
Jim: Originally they were written as a single book, the book came out like way way longer than I intended. And so as soon as I showed it to my editor she read it and was like "Jim" because honestly I wasn't trying to write like another Dresden Files book I was trying to invent a better mousetrap. My original plan was to take this book, and we were going to be riding along with this book and there was gonna be like this political setup and these scenes and then in the middle of it the book takes a hard right turn into an apocalyptic war movie, no one was expecting that (everybody was expecting it because the twist was something we were told before Skin Game even came out) so I mean originally that was the inspiration I got From Dusk Till Dawn which starts off as a serial killer movie and then turns into the vampire movie in the middle.
Matt: Nice. That's a good pitch for it. So, when did the announcement for Battle Ground go out? March? April?
Jim: Something like that. There was a great big plan and then there was this little problem with a disease from China. Kinda knocked all the publicity stuff we had ready to go. We had this huge tour lined up and everything was gonna be happening at hall 8 at Comic con. That was when we were gonna have the trailers and everything showing up. It was going to be a big deal and we didn't get to do it on account of nobody going to conventions this year.
Matt: I think people still freaked out enough based on the reactions to Battle Ground. Because people knew about Peace Talks but then we got the bonus book it felt like which was awesome it felt like. And I was gonna ask you about the trailers because they were amazing. How did those come about? That's not a normal things for most books.
Jim: I spent a whole bunch of money on them because I really wanted cool trailers. Well I spent a bunch of money on them and I worked together with Priscilla Spencer who you've seen running around in the background because she's part of this because of the book premiere and so on. But she was the writer, producer and director of the trailers, so she's the one who did like all the work, I didn't do anything on the trailers I didn't even write them I just wrote the books. And then I screwed up the books at the last minute and made edits that made the trailer, that kind of took things out of the trailer that should have been there but weren't or that were there and shouldn't have been and so. I still remember after I got those last few edits done and turned them in I was like "I'd better show them to Priscilla" and I did and she just kind of gives me this look. Because honestly doing something even like a trailer is so much more work than a book is because a book might take hours and hours and hours but it's just one guy. If you're gonna do a trailer, there's a hundred people on the crew, they're all working on stuff, they're all trying to get their act together and get the product done. So it was an intense process. I know that for her she's been working on it for like the past 18 months, she's been doing nothing else. Because she's been doing all the special effects and stuff like that as well, she's kind of a one person movie basically, the way she works.
Matt: So is she putting out the full length versions anytime soon.
Jim: *shaking his head* I don't make that much money man. I mean, I got about four minutes and it was a whole bunch of money to get those four minutes. And I really like it but I don't have that much money.
Matt: Definitely a worthwhile four minutes.
Jim: I enjoyed a lot of it. There's like 250,000 views and I'm like 200,000 of them.
Matt: I'm probably in the minority but my introduction to Harry Dresden was through the TV show.
Jim: Oh lot's of people were.
Matt: So it was really exciting to see it back on the screen. Just a big tease, that's basically what you're telling us.
Jim: Yeah. That's kind of the idea. I've seen so many book trailers where they don't actually do any movie-esque. They just sort of have things happening, they just have some cute people and maybe they have them kiss or something like that. And I wanted something that was a little more theatrical, a little more movieesque. Ideally it would've been like a Marvel trailer but you know how expensive stunts are? Oh my god stunts are so expensive. So yeah, if I do another trailer that's my big thing "do I splurge and go for stunts" because that would be awesome and I kind of want to. If only I made enough money to be a professional movie guy. Maybe I could go like Roger Corman and make cheap horror movies. That would be fun.
Matt: Well everyone here has bought your book that means everyone here needs to go and tell all of their friends to go buy your books so you have enough money to make these full length.
Jim: That'd be fun.
Matt: So the other big thing about this year is it's the 20th anniversary of the Dresden Files.
Jim: *scrambles* My drink keeps sliding down a flat table.
Matt: As we've heard there's ghosts in your house so we'll let them show up as they will... I know you had lot's of things planned for this year, just looking back over it. 20 years ago was 2000, the world has changed so much. Who do you think has changed more, you or Harry Dresden?
Jim: Probably me. Harry Dresden is... you know he has the advantage of he only gets to evolve when I'm paying attention. SO he doesn't really get to sneak up too much on me, it's probably me who's changed more. Just... life, stuff keeps happening to you.
Matt: I've read you're kind of a plotter. You do things in order, you know how this series is gonna end, right?
Jim: Mostly. I don't know if Harry's going to live yet or not.
Matt: You definitely don't have to tell us.
Jim: Good, I don't know. We're gonna have to get to the end to find out it's, there's several different endings for epic style heroes with lots of books behind them and so on, and one of them is "no he doesn't make it out", that is definitely one of the possible endings. I'm not exactly sure what's gonna happen yet. I'm gonna be at the end of the third book before I know.
Matt: Luckily that is in your hands and not ours.
Jim: I guess. I mean somebody else might be better at it than me I don't know.
Matt: Dustin just says "don't kill Toot" so...
Jim: No promises man, it's not a safe world. Not at all.
Matt: How do you keep all of this straight? I mean this is book 17 right? Battle Ground? How do you do it?
Jim: I use the fan wikis a lot. Because they're way more accurate than my notes, I mean for crying out loud. The difference between us is that the fans are having a good time when they do the wiki, they're having fun. For me it's still work, I have a good time at it but it's still work. So the people who are having fun are going to do it way harder than I ever will so I go and check the fan wikis when I need to. And then I have a crew of beta readers, Priscilla's been a beta reader for like forever, she's like indispensable. She's like my personal Molly in terms of being able to say "no Jim you killed that character two books ago" "okay better not write them in I guess or I better do a lot more writing before I do". But yeah she's got a real gift for continuity and I've got about 15 other people that are on the beta list and the beta readers read through and I get feedback from them and they will look up previous stuff. They tend to be highly intelligent nerds who love this series and read the books a lot so it's very hard to get anything past.
Matt: Any of you out there who are editors on the wikis just raise your hand and take some credit for these books. Let's get to some of these questions because we have a ton. So I'm just gonna go in order that you've voted for them. I take no responsibility whatsoever. This first one is from Charles. Have you ever set up a story arc or twist or significant detail and then forgot about it?
Jim: If I forgot about it I wouldn't remember it to talk about.
Matt: The second part is did you recover it and move on?
Jim: I don't normally just forget things. I'll often change my mind and find a better story and and take a look at it and say "I know I had something else in mind three books from not but can I take a look at this and change it around and maybe make it more interesting" yeah stuff like that. That's always as I go back and look at some scene and I'll be like "that's a nice scene and it's all done and everything but it doesn't give me anything for the future" and I'll go back in and add some detail. Something that'll come back to haunt Dresden in the future. Basically that's what it is, as a writer it's my job to come up with the details that'll haunt Dresden in the future. That's most of my job.
Matt: The Devil's in the details, right. So this next question is from Charles too. Harry is becoming a balance point of forces, summer fire and winter knight, hellfire and soulfire. Is this typical for wizards or has it given Harry capabilities beyond on the norm?
Jim: It depends on the wizard. Every wizard that is out there is like a professional athlete. But saying that there's a lots of different kinds of professional athletes and the flyweight boxer is a much different athlete than the sumo wrestler is a much different athlete than the pole vaulter is a much different athlete than the long distance runner. Wizards are like that and what you're good at as a wizard is something that tends to be based upon the talents you're born with. So like your really good specialties as a wizard, people who are really good at certain things, they were just that was their proclivity they were born with, it was their natural tendency. That sort of breaks the wizards down into general categories. This wizard is really good at finding information, this wizard is really good at working with energy and forces which means he can blow people up and burn them down really well, this wizard over here is really good at enchantment and making really cool items, this wizard does something else completely different, this wizard is brilliant at working with entities from different realms and so on. Again I use the professional athletes a lot because it's just so useful when you go back to "who is the more powerful athlete? Is it the PGA player who makes berjillions of dollars getting paid to play golf? Is it the NFL center who is the most powerful man in professional sports?" It's all a very different sort of thing, it's all very confusing.
Matt: That begs the question.
Jim: So Harry is not, what Harry's really good at, what Harry's really good at as an athlete he's a weightlifter. He is really good at moving big heavy things and getting things done. He's strong he's resilient he's extremely capable at things he does and if you just try to go head to head with him it's not going to go well for you. Which is why he gets defeated by people with more sqwab, more skill. The weightlifter doesn't do so well against the Olympic fencer in fencing. It doesn't go so well, so Harry's constantly trying to find ways to bring conflicts into his area of strength. Now he is /very/ strong as a wizard, if you just try and arm wrestle him magically he's gonna beat 99% of the wizard on planet Earth because that's who he is, that's the talent he was born with, he was born with lots of magical muscle. But that said, there's wizards that are more experienced than him, that are smarter than him and there's some that are stronger than him and there's lots and lots of them that are just better than him because they have more experience because they've been alive for centuries and he hasn't. So Dresden is formidable among wizards but he's always been a medium splash in the pond because even though he's as strong as, he's in Ebenezar's weight class for example but he can't beat Ebenezar in a straight up fight it's just not gonna happen. And as a result he is looked as a very powerful wizard by people who don't know a lot about what wizards do. So other people from outside the White Council look at him and go "wow he's a powerful wizard" while everybody in the White Council goes *puts palm on head* "oh god that kid is so strong and he doesn't know a goddamn thing". And that is kind of their perspective of Dresden, he's that one ten year old who accidentally got to be six foot five and two hundred pounds for whatever reason his genetics did that. I mean, he's that kid so everybody and so all the other kids are like "he's so great" and all the adults are like "I'm terrified of this individual" and that's sort of the way he lives. But you know he's like one of the most powerful wizards on planet Earth or anything, I mean he's strong, he's in a class where if you want to fight him you better bring friends but at the same time he's real limited in what he can do, that sort of backs him off in terms of the scale of beings of centuries and millennia he's interesting, he might become something cool one day.
Matt: That's a great way to explain it. The athlete analogy really helps.
Jim: Yeah it sort of makes it simple.
Matt: Um, so if you could pull one character from the Dresdenverse into the Cinder Spire or Codex Alera world, who would you pick and why?
Jim: Harry Dresden and he would go over there and be a mysterious stranger and probably be helping. I mean if I was going to do anything like that that's what I'd do.
Matt: Just like a background character who pops up occasionally, cryptically?
Jim: He'd be a wizard obviously. You always have wizard characters that show up and they're mysterious and they hand out quests and items and they're like this "here try it with the blast shield down this time", wizards do stuff like that. So Dresden would just show up in those other places and be doing weird wizard stuff. I mean that's probably not going to happen until the Dresden Files are over and I really want to write him some more but I don't want to write more Dresden books so.
Matt: Well we look forward to that possibility. Alright, in White Night Bob says that Harry gave Lash a bit of soul. When she died could she have gone to heaven or become an angel?
Jim: I'm not gonna tell you that.
Matt: Oho. I'm sorry I'm just asking the question.
Jim: Okay I'm just gonna say it, okay this is Charles, Charles I'm not gonna tell you, I'm not gonna tell you because you need to find out later. Okay.
Matt: So that means keep reading.
Jim: Yeah. There's lots of things... Partly this is a question that would be difficult to answer because it's really really deep, it's an extremely deep question that I would not throw myself into lightly. I would have to stop and think about that question for a while, probably a couple of weeks. But yeah, but Lash herself was... kind of a hybrid entity. She was half-human and half something else, honestly she was kind of a Nephilim in terms of how you would do the definition that would be it. But she's also this creature that doesn't really have a physical body and is sort of attached in a very loosely attached to the mortal world and so as a result so she probably wouldn't find herself coming down and being judged on the same scales as all the mortals are. Being as she's not necessarily a creature of free will and so on that's a very mortal thing. Judgement is very much tied in with free will generally speaking so... I think it would be a really complicated question to try and figure out what happened to Lash. We'll have to have Harry try and figure it out. I'm gonna have to think about it and talk to my Catholic friends they love talking religion.
Matt: The viewers are very happy that you gave more info on that. It is a fun theological discussion to have.
Jim: Yeah, I love the talk. I love the theological discussion.
Matt: I don't know if you've watched it, but Lucifcer is now on Netflix.
Jim: I need to watch it, I don't really care for Lucifer but I'm a Michael fan so Michael shows up in season 5 so now I have to watch the first 4 seasons as research.
Matt: Season 5 is excellent.
Jim: Okay cool.
Matt: Just sort of talking about these sorts of theological questions, it's research for that. Alright so what beer are you drinking tonight?
Jim: Tonight is Colorado Cola, which is a very fine cola. It's basically just a coke style cola except with a little bit of cinnamon in it I think and that makes it taste good.
Matt: Are all white court vampires bisexual? That is, are they omnivores feeding on different genders?
Jim: They can be, at the end of the day when you're a white court vampire and you're hungry enough you just don't care what the food is. Maybe tacos aren't you're favourite food but if you're hungry enough then yeah you'll scarf down some tacos, same thing.
Matt: That's me most times I'm hungry.
Jim: On a regular day I'll normally go "I don't want a taco, I think I'll have a hamburger" you know like that. But if I'm starving and somebody says all there is is tacos then give me some tacos. Yeah, I'll eat these.
Matt: Tacos do sound good right now. It's tough living in San Diego, there's so many good options. So... who said this... Shawn asks, spoilers for Battle Ground, given that there's such a long time between Skin Game and Peace Talks and Battle Ground should we prepare for another long wait? I'm assuming another Cinder Spires book will be coming out next.
Jim: It doesn't come out until tomorrow and you want to know when the next book is out Shawn? Really? Wow that's soon, normally I wait till after people have got a couple of the book, then they ask when the next one's coming.
Matt: I'm assuming Shawn got an ARC, read it already, his review's up already and he's done it all right.
Jim: I'm working on it. I've actually got to write a Cinder Spires novella first and I'm a solid chunk of the way through that. And that'll come out before too long and I'll release that online. Because I've got to figure out what happened between two books and I haven't been in that world in a while and I kind of had to write a warmup to get the rest of the world moving because everything had frozen in the meantime. So I'm working on that now. I'm gonna finish that before the end of the year. And then I'll start Cinder Spires probably in December at some point, I'll finish it by March and sort the next Dresden book in the spring and that'll be done some time in the fall so that'll be out either in the winter or in the following spring. Depends on Penguin, a lot of it does.
Matt: Hopefully it's on time and we can see you in person.
Jim: Yeah I hope so. Yeah we should be done with this stuff by then.
Matt: Hope so. Had this question over and skipped over it but I'm gonna ask it now. How do you approach or do you approach short stories and novellas differently or do you work on them the same way it's just you're telling a story it just happens to be a different length?
Jim: It's always the same, telling the story is the same activity regardless of how long the story is. The stories all have the same pieces and parts, the parts just get bigger as the story gets bigger. I'm sorry remind me of the question again?
Matt: Short stories, novels or novellas?
Jim: The difference is you've got to do every thing you do in a novel, in a short story except that you've got about a hundredth of the space to do it. So writing a short story is like having a knife fight in a telephone booth there's just not enough room to do everything you want to do and anything you do has to be much shorter and more direct than you'd prefer. But that is what you're dealing with when you're writing a short story. Novellas are a bit longer, they're like a short story except you can take deeper breaths and there's a little more room to swing the knife, but that's about the only difference. Novels are the ones that you- I mean, they're much easier. At least in my opinion novels are a much easier thing to do than a short story or a novella because you have more room, you can take more time. But at the same time they take a lot longer.
Matt: As someone who's not a writer, that seems so backwards. Like, a short story seems like it should be easier. Novels are so daunting.
Jim: Try to imagine putting together a ship in a bottle, that's writing a short story. Writing a novel is like building a ship outside of a bottle and then bringing the mast out. It's still difficult, just not as difficult as reaching tiny instruments in through the neck of the bottle and trying to put things together that way.
Matt: I love short stories. I love reading anthologies so I appreciate all these metaphors, these are very helpful ways to explain the difference. Chat is telling me that I have missed a question and I apologise. Here it is, how do you temper Goodman Grey, who is a skinwalker, who has an incredible amount of power without handicapping him or making him feel overpowered?
Jim: Goodman Grey isn't as powerful as Harry Dresden and certainly isn't harder to do than Dresden is. Dresden's the one who can wreck everything because he's got too much power. Grey is cool and all but he's got limits that he doesn't talk about because it's smart not to. And he's also well I mean you'll see more of him as we get into more of the stories. Goodman Grey is going to be the character that when I'm done writing Dresden I'm going to be writing Grey stories in the same world. That series will be called Monster LLC. Goodman Grey is a professional monster for hire, he's the scion of a naagloshi and is an incredibly talented shapeshifter like low level down shapeshifting (presumably low as in down to the retina) but at the same time he's also got all these issues and he lives in a very different part of the magical world than Dresden does. Dresden is very much one of the movers and shakers among the magical community, he's a member of the White Council, he's the 1%. And Grey lives in a very different world than Dresden does and he interacts with the magical community that doesn't exist inside cities which is a very different community when you don't have to worry about humans as much. Anybody who lives in a city's got humans around all the time, always has to be thinking about them, always has to be worrying about them. If you're out in the country, different story. And so the magical community out there tends to be very different and Dresden doesn't know a lot about that because he stays in town most of the time, he's not a country guy. So we'll get to see very different portions of the world that exist under very different circumstances when you don't have all these humans around that you have to worry about all the time.
Matt: I know you're not looking for real-time feedback but people are very excited about the prospect of a Grey series.
Jim: Yeah that'll be a lot of fun, that'll come along after we're all done with Dresden. I mean Dresden that'll probably one of the characters in it because he hires Grey all the time and causes him trouble and he'll probably be a villain actually. One of the antagonists in the series, good lord, while being Grey's ally because that's Harry Dresden for you.
Matt: Nice. So many questions. Jim, can you tell us about Toot's growth over the course of the series? He seems to grow mentally along with his size, some fans have theorised it is a result of the growth of his responsibility.
Jim: That is, hey, fans are smart, what cam I say? Yeah, as Toot has been given more responsibilities he has gained more power within the realm of the fae. He's a squire to the winter knight for all practical purposes which is a position inside the court which actually gives him some clout and some juice. He doesn't know it because he's a pixie, he's a jumped up pixie who is slowly growing into a sidhe. But at the same time, he's becoming a different creature than he was before and Dresden's making that happen. There's a lot of things Dresden is doing that he doesn't know he's doing, doesn't know that he's responsible for, he kind of has a vague idea about Toot Toot but he's not quite sure what's happening with him. He's never had a pixie hang out with him for a long time before so he doesn't know if this is unusual or not. But yeah, Toot Toot growing bigger and stronger is largely a measure of him getting increased responsibility because with great responsibility comes increased power.
Matt: Cool. Sounds like we can confirm that.
Jim: Yeah absolutely. Whoever figured that out is smart.
Matt: Before I get to the next question, I'm a big audiobook guy, the audio books are read by James Marsters. Did you have any influence over that? Because he's great.
Jim: My influence was mostly jumping up and down in excitement when they hired him. They hired him during season 3 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I think it was season 3, it was when Buffy went to college. That was the year when I sold Storm Front as an audio to a small company named Buzzy Multimedia who I still work with. But you know they were the first ones to believe in me so I kind of have a soft spot for them. But yeah, Marsters they called me up and said "hey we want to do an audiobook of Storm Front" and what I heard was "hey we want to pay your family's health insurance for six months" and I said yeah absolutely, that'd be great. And so we made that deal and they called me a week later to say "he we got Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to do the reading is that okay with you" and did a Snoopy dance and called up a bit more serious and was like "yeah I guess that's alright, he'll do." I knew, from where he was on the show, that he was gonna a lot of clout, he was gonna have a lot of fans. He was gonna have a fanbase of his own, which was just fantastic. I was so pleased with it the whole time but I can't claim credit for it because it's not like I went out and did it, that was somebody else completely.
Matt: Well it was a great addition.
Jim: Oh it worked out I'm so happy.
Matt: It was very jarring to me as a Buffy fan to hear him not having a British accent.
Jim: Oh I know, oh my got. He's /not/ British, wait, he's not? That was my reaction when I first heard him reading.
Matt: The British accent sounds so good on him.
Jim: Oh yeah he does it well.
Matt: Will Harry get another get another big spell in his repertoire besides forzare and ventas servitas?
Jim: Probably. I mean, he's always coming up with new ones or trying new things. Those are the ones that are like his basics, you know, spells that wizards learn to be able to do them fast enough and reliably enough to do them one some slobbering monster is coming to chew your face off. Most wizards only know three or four things that they can just do off the top of their head. The ones who are in combat a lot, the three or four things that they know are really useful and can be applied to a lot of things, like Dresden's stuff. Other people can throw a bolt of fire or something but that's all they really bothered to learn with combat, because honestly what more do you need to do besides set somebody on fire to win a fight most of the time?
Matt: It's effective most of the time.
Jim: Yeah if you can set somebody on fire you're pretty good. If you can just look at somebody and speak a word to set them on fire you're doing okay. As fights go, you're probably better off than 99%. But the heavy combat wizards, they'll go up to a dozen or even a couple of dozen spells and Dresden will get there eventually, it just takes time. You've got to learn, you've got to practice and you've got to have a superhuman amount of discipline to keep making yourself go when you've already been doing it for a century and a half. But that's something Dresden will learn but for the time being he's got his three or four things he can do off the top of his head. He can make things stop and he can make things go, that's really what he does.
Matt: That'll solve 99% of things right. Another question about magic from Kevin. Hi Jim, I've always enjoyed how you've used elemental magic in the Dresden Files, especially how the forest people and Ebenezar and Listens-To-Wind use earth and water magic. I was wondering what advanced air and fire magic would look like if it was used by the forest people or other powerful wizards? Thanks again hope you and Fenris and Brutus are doing well.
Jim: Fenris is doing great *camera pans to Fenris snoozing on Jim's lap*. He's not impressed with you guys though, he's just sleeping through this whole thing. Advanced air magic would look like what Yoshimo does, she's like really really good at air so she does like the wushu/wuxia fighting and that's what advanced air magic looks like, stuff like that. Plus meteorological stuff, weather stuff is almost all air magic, air and fire. Advanced fire magic, weather would be one of them because you need a lot of fire if you really want to change weather around and then actually Dresden is a pretty advanced fire guy, of all the things he does he does fire pretty good. Everyone in the council goes "yeah he can burn stuff" like that but, but yeah it's a different story, there's a very different mindset of magic if your main magic is water. Your mindset a very different one from all the rest of them, you can have basically the same attitude about air, about earth, about fire, but if you're working with water it's a much more complicated art and you can mess yourself up a lot worse so it takes a different attitude to really wade into it. And that's why Ramirez is so different from Dresden, Ramirez is a highly talented water mage and he is the guy to take Dresden apart if there's ever a need because he's the Olympic fencer that'd be going up against Dresden the weightlifter and if Dresden tries to fence with him it's not gonna go well.
Matt: The athlete comparison comes in so handy. How fun was it as a dad to start getting to write Harry's perspective on fatherhood and how it now factors in all his decisionmaking.
Jim: /Painful/. Yeah when you... when a kid comes into the picture it changes /everything/, everything. It's one of those things people get upset about because "oh people tell me all the time that you won't understand until you have a kid" but yeah, you won't understand until you have a kid. Or at least until you've been in a position where you're taking care of one and there's this tiny human who relies on you for absolutely everything, that is such a responsibility. But I don't know it was fun writing it in the Dresden Files but it was necessary. What's Harry gonna do, stand there and not be her dad? No it's not gonna happen. Maggie comes up and says "do you want to be my dad?" and Harry says no? That's not gonna happen. I didn't even realise that was going to be an issue until I wrote the scene with Maggie in it and that just took me by surprise when Maggie said "do you want to be my dad?" because of course that's what a kid is going to say. And then to have Dresden be hit with that all of a sudden, the problem was having /me/ be hit with that all of a sudden. Because you know, "Dresden what are you doing that was so irresponsible of you, going and having a child. Think of all the complications you're throwing in my life by having this child, I cannot believe you did this!". I kind of know what my parents must have felt like freshman year of college. But yeah, but Dresden working with Maggie, it needed to happen, it was one of the most important decisions of the series, I just didn't know I was going to be making it until I was in the middle of it.
Matt: That's a great answer and I can confirm that you don't realise until you have a kid what it means as I'm broadcasting from the baby's room.
Jim: Exactly.
Matt: Besides the forgotten sasquatch, is there another paranormal beastie you've remembered to include in Battle Ground for a future book?
Jim: I mean there's got to be new beasties, you can't just not write a book and not have some new monster show up and try and kill Dresden. So there the ones I've been looking forward to using were the Cornerhounds which came out in Peace Talks and then I just outright stole the Huntsmen from the Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander and from Welsh legend. They're from Welsh legend but I learned about them from Lloyd and I just stole them outright because they're so awesome.
Matt: It's like an honour at that point.
Jim: When you're putting together a group of bad guys who their whole things is they collected the survivors from the evil pantheons who lost their fights over the years, you can just find your favourite bad guys and put them all on the same team. That's so good, I'm constantly opening up my mental toychest and pulling out mental action figures and smashing them together and you guys will spend money on it. I don't know why but you do so I'll keep working on it.
Matt: It's worked out well so far.
Jim: Yeah I think we're having a good time it seems to be going well.
https://www.crowdcast.io/e/virtual-event---jim
*end at 40:30, pick up from there in the next post*
TheCuriousFan:
Continued from the last post.
Matt: In Changes Lea says that if she were to dwell on the infection that it would resurface, can an infection be cured or does it simply go into remission? Thank you Jim for all you do to drive us crazy.
Jim: You're very welcome I love driving you guys crazy thank you very much for giving me the opportunity. I'm not gonna answer that question because it's a much better one to find out later. I love to answer questions and I will do that unless I think it's gonna ruin something that's gonna ruin something later on in which case I'll make fun of you and say I won't answer because that's my job, to write things that are fun so I'm not gonna undermine it by telling you stuff.
Matt: You've talked about this a little bit, where do you fall between I write instinctually vs I plan everything out? That spectrum.
Jim: When I write a book, I always know how it's going to start, how it's going to end, a big flashy bit in the middle and about a dozen one liners I want to use, jokes I want Dresden to use during the course of the story. So once I know that I get started and because I've written so many Dresden Files books they have a similar shape, most of them do, so it's--- I suppose I'm writing on the fly but I'm not really writing on the fly because I've done it a lot. Once you're one of those painters who paints the same picture over and over again and sells it over and over again you get pretty darn good quick at making that picture so you're not really freehanding it anymore, which is sort of where I am with Dresden Files books. But at the same time though, you can't... you've gotta make your plan, you've gotta stick to your plan generally but you've also gotta be sharp enough to whip your car over and pick up some flowers along the way if you see a nice opportunity as you're going along, because you never think of everything up front, you always have new ideas as you're proceeding and then the question becomes: Do I run with this good idea or do I ditch the good idea and stick with my outline? And that's the part where you kinda ditch craft and science and start thinking of art. Because you've got to figure out "this is gonna be a good portion of the story but if I change it around it's gonna undermine this facet and this facet and then I'll have to make other corrections on the other side" and so every time you make a change from a plan there's a ripple effect that spreads out through the rest of the book and the book that came before it as well and the story that came before it as well. So the more you dart off to one side or the other the more work you wind up handing yourself so it's a matter of striking a balance between doing the thing that is cool, because the rule of cool always applies, and doing the efficient thing for your story that's going to get your reader to the end of the story in the most enjoyable path possible. So yeah it's six of one half a dozen of the other and as a writer you make your choices and hope you guess.
Matt: Was there anything in Battle Ground or Peace Talks that you wrote yourself into and you were surprised by yourself that that's where you ended up at?
Jim: I don't think so. I mean, it all turned out pretty much how I thought it was going to go. There was some extra stuff with Marcone I didn't know if I was- if this was the right book for it or if I needed to wait a couple more but I decided "ehh I've been holding out so much on the readers, I've got to give them some nice juicy steak" so I started shoveling more stuff in.
Matt: Oh they appreciate it. Do you remember Fitz from Ghost Story? Whatever happened to him? I loved his development and would like to see what he became.
Jim: Okay, I'll do that. You're right, I'll go back in there and do a short story or I'll do a microfiction and we'll drop it on the website or something like that, that's a good idea. There's lots of times where as humans we don't- we'll help somebody who needs help but we don't follow up as well as we'd like to. So maybe Dresden should follow up on Fitz and see how he's doing. That would be good thing for Harry to do. *idea strikes* Oh I know what he's gonna do mmm okay, I got it.
Matt: And you can't tell us.
Jim: Well I'm not gonna tell you. But I will write it up and you'll be able to read it so.
Matt: How often has Harry had to buy beer for the game night?
Jim: About once a month. Because he is the wizard and he actually has a D&D sheet where he's a wizard and not a very intelligent one, he's got like a 16 intelligence. But he's got an 18 constitution from when I rolled the character up so I was like "I guess you're getting beat up a lot Harry" you know like that. That was sort of random stuff that happened when I was putting the character together as a college class exercise. But yeah so. But yeah as a wizard he's always questioning details especially about magic because he knows real magic so.... it's like taking an astrophysicist to a Star Trek movie, they're not gonna enjoy it and they're just gonna ruin it for everyone else and that's really what Dresden does most of the time. But because he doesn't really get too involved and he just wants to play the dumb barbarian who hits people with swords he can avoid it most of the time, just once in a while whoever is playing the wizard does something that is unrealistic as far as he's concerned that it just ruins his suspension of disbelief for the Dungeons and Dragons game, and that is when he winds up buying beer for everyone.
Matt: How do you write women so well? Who inspires you from life and fiction to create such amazing characters?
Jim: I was raised, my sisters were 12 and 14 years old when I was born so I essentially grew up with 3 moms. And they- I was very used to operating with them and working with them so that's probably part of it. I know a lot of people say "hey Jim you write such strong female characters" and it's like "no, I don't, I write female characters". Look around guys, it's not really all that tough.
Matt: Can you give us some teasers for The Olympian Affair, the next Cinder Spires novel?
Jim: I can do that. The Olympian Affair is the next Cinder Spires novel. Captain Grimm and company are set off on the Predator to go to Spire Olympia for the- there's essentially going to be a peace conference there but what it really is is everybody on Albion's team and everybody on Aurora's team is trying to figure out who's going to be their allies and who's going to be their enemies and that's gonna get sorted out. Because Albion and Aurora are getting set to go to war with one another and things are gonna happen, it'll probably go bad, there will probably be cats. There will probably be etherealists doing weird things. There's gonna be more cats in this one because I get to introduce more than three cats now. So I'll have to add the other household cats into the series so that I can write them off.
Matt: The cats make anything better.
Jim: I mean yeah, how can you not have a better story with talking cats if you do it right?
Matt: Just based off the reaction when people saw Fenris, people just freak out when a cat shows up.
Jim: Well Fenris is amazing, you should freak out over Fenris, he's adorable.
Matt: Are the Daoine sidhe still around or just another name for the sidhe?
Jim: They were kind of a previous generation of the sidhe, you know a better stronger faster version of the sidhe before humans started taking over that role. So like the advanced ones, you know people like Cu Chulainn and the folks who were essentially gods, they kind of stepped back from the scene and from getting involved with the mortal stuff when all the other ones that happened in the Dresden Files universe at some point where eventually the Creator went "okay guys, it's time for the humans to make their own way. You were supposed to guide and protect them, you did that with mixed results, but you know what, we're gonna step off and let the humans do their own thing now. And the only ones who can stay involved are the ones who are willing to go be mortal themselves and be subject to death." That was sort of the line where most of the gods went "ho ho ho, subject to death? Forget it I don't like the humans /that/ much" but some of them did, and some of them stuck around and some of them took the risk. Guys like Vadderung, like Odin, who went "you know what? I can play that game. Let's do this." and he went out and started out as a regular human and built himself into something cool. But most of the gods did not follow that path, most of them were a lot more like "okay no nope hang on" you can't see Zeus doing that, that's not Zeus' move, that just isn't going to happen.
Matt: Another question about your writing style. As you're developing the timeline do you use excel or any other tools? How do you track each individual novel as you go through it?
Jim: At this point I write the story question at the beginning of the novel and I get a big piece of paper and I draw. Because when I was learning about story arcs I was a little literal I draw a big arc on the piece of paper and then I put the beginning of the arc on one end of the arc and the end of the story on the other end of the arc and big flashy bit in the middle on the top of the arc then I start figuring out the logical steps I need to get from this side over to that side of it. And then as I figure out the logical steps I'll make a tick mark on the arc and I'll put them in there and then I'll figure what order they need to be in and then I'll start writing.
Matt: That makes sense, no reason to complicate it.
Jim: Don't make it complicated, writing is a simple thing but it's not the same as easy. Simple is not same as easy, like lifting the engine block out of a car is simple it's not easy, writing is much the same way. There's a lot of simple stuff to the craft there's a lot of simple stuff to the art but that doesn't mean it's easy. It takes a lot of practice to learn simple.
Matt: That's a very good way of thinking about it. What made you decide that technology and wizards don't mix.
Jim: I didn't want to be hassled with cellphones. I was going to be writing mysteries and cellphones are just death on mysteries they just ruin everything. Smartphones are even worse I mean my god it's like the Riddler, the Riddler's not even a thing anymore he can't be a thing because everyone has google. The Riddler can ask you a riddle and you can go to google and that's all you need. That's a supervillain being defeated by technology.
Matt: Since you brought up superheroes, you have written a Spiderman novel in the past, are there any other universes or IPs that you're like dying to be a part of and write a story for?
Jim: Correia wants me to write a story for his Monster Hunter International where the Denarians attack Cazador and it's the Denarians versus all of the monster hunters. And that would be a great time, I would love writing that. I've got an idea for a story set in David Weber's Honor Harrington universe where-I want to write a story about a marine and his treecat, and the treecat's got like three little chevrons on his forehead so they call him sarge but he's the scout for the platoon when you've got a cat as your scout you're doing well unless the cat doesn't like you.
Matt: Very capricious animals. Can you confirm or deny a fan theory of mine, and this is from Zack, we haven't seen the last of the Eebs if being in a safe warded someone from the bloodline curse I can't think of many places than the Erlking's domain.
Jim: There's probably not many places that have as many defences as the Erlking's kingdom. Also keep in mind that the Red Court vampires are the vampires that are the ones who are the quickest to reproduce, the swiftest to replenish themselves, to make new numbers. It's almost like they're kind of idealised supersoldiers, the question is against what? They're safely gone now, good job Dresden.
Matt: I cannot help with that question. Any characters that have started off as minor who have unexpectedly become more important to the series or are there any more you plan that you see becoming bigger?
Jim: I won't tell you if it's gonna ruin anything. Minor characters that get bigger? I don't know about that but there's lots of characters that are coming back because they haven't done their whole thing yet. I mean there's various characters that I look at with "oh yeah I'm gonna do that with them one day" and I'm trying to figure out when. That's the hard part, I've never written a series 18 books long before and now I'm writing book 18 of a series it's new for me, that's new. That's sort of the challenge of writing a series like the Dresden File, every book is like a new challenge "oh have you written the 18th book of a series before?" no I haven't, okay good luck.
Matt: Fair enough. It's about the ending of Buffy, a campaign set in QS in 1992, any ideas for an awesome bad guy or plot arc I can throw in? Feels like you should be paid for this.
Jim: Oh my good 92, good lord what was I doing in 92.
Matt: I can't remember what I did this morning.
Jim: That was when I wrote the first short story that was in the Dresden Files universe but it starred Nick Christian who then became Dresden's mentor as a private eye. Nick Christian was just a regular private eye and I was having him go up against Red Court vampires and stuff like that. And he was the central character of a series of short stories I did for a writing course and then eventually became Dresden's teacher because I had to use him because I'd done so much with him. But when I was designing the series I was like "oh I can't use you Nick I have to use a wizard, sorry buddy" so he became somebody who's just in the background somewhere.
Matt: That's a deep cut is what you're saying.
Jim: I'll have to figure out who I can bring back from earlier in the series, I'm essentially a very lazy person so I don't like writing characters and them just leaving them and sort of having them done not much, I like them to come back and do more. So you know if I can I would rather bring back a character I've already created than create a new one. But at the same time I've got so many characters in the Dresden Files series now I partly wrote Battle Ground just so I could reduce the cast.
Matt: Fair enough.
Jim: You know, sometimes you need to do that so.
Matt: I think Zack would take one of your characters off your hands off you let them go because he wants to use them for his campaign.
Jim: That's fine with me. 1992... I mean 1992 Dresden was about 21, something like that, wait how old was I I was 21 so Dresden was 26 (wait what) he's always been five years older than me, or five years younger than me so I could write somebody who isn't quite as dumb.
Priscellie: But he was 25 in Storm Front.
Jim: And I was 30 when it got published.
Matt: Someone check the wiki.
Jim: *laughs with Priscellie in the distance* But the point is Dresden would have been in his early twenties he would have been, wandering around trying to find a place in the world, he winds up in Chicago eventually but if you want to stick him there in 92 he was a /bad/ wizard at that point, just awful. As likely to set himself on fire as anybody else and would probably be more harm to any group he took up with than good, so feel free to use Dresden like that.
Matt: Oh that's fantastic. And that's the hour mark.
*minute and a half of talking mostly only notable for Priscellie nonverbally indicating that yes, they have to do trailers for every one going forward*
Might add a question or two from the James Marsters one to this post since it's not worth transcribing that whole one.
EDIT: Went ahead with it.
Marsters: After 20 years of writing Harry Dresden and spending so much time with him, how do you feel like you've gotten to know him over the years and how has he changed from when he started?
Jim: Harry is, he's kind of that roommate that you really like but they're just kind of a lot, that's what Dresden is for me. I mean for everybody else even for you you start reading for a couple days, and that's your Dresden time. But for me I've got to live with him every day I get so sick of the guy, it's why I have to write other books, so that I don't wind up just murdering him, which I've done once and I guess I could probably do again if I really wanted to but... But yeah he's been this character who has... he started off as this character who was just sort of the guy I think I'd like to think I'd be if I had that kind of power. I don't think I'd be that guy I think I'd be one of the giggling villains, not just one of the villains but one of the ones who's having a really good time, that's the kind of villain I would wind up as. But as he's gone on he's faced so much stuff, he's gone up against so much stuff, you know stuff that an actual human being would survive with their sanity intact probably because they just wouldn't make it through that many books. Your average person couldn't survive the events of most stories because most story protagonists have to be virtual cartoon characters to be able to get up again and keep going you know. But yeah at this point I think it's a good time, Dresden's faced a lot, it's time for him to face up to some of the consequences of the losses he's taken, the pain he's gone through. The next book we're gonna be coming up on a time where he's kinda looking around and going "hey look at my life, I've gotta start things together to where this is gonna be a little bit more survivable and livable, I'm a dad now, I've got a little girl to be thinking about for the next several years I've got this person to take care of".
Marsters: That was one of my questions because it seems like as Harry got more powerful through the books the world around him got more and more messed up and so he was always kind of in over his head. And so my question was, how long can Jim keep that going? How messed up can the world get because it goes like Dragonball and the Earth is just cracking? There was one book a couple of books back where you went more, you took the scope smaller and I thought that that was really smart and I think that's also really interesting that you would go to an internal conflict for him. You were just talking about the ramifications of what he's done and what he's become and becoming a father and tightening that scope again. Because after reading the last book I was like "oh more god, this is too much"
Jim: You should have seen it when it was all one book. Originally it was all one book and it was a little bit shorter than it is now because I expanded a few things when I went to two books but yeah originally it was the entire Peace Talks/Battle Ground was all one thing because the idea was to make it like the movie From Dusk Till Dawn where it's the Quentin Tarantino serial killer's movie for the first forty minutes and then suddenly it turns into a vampire movie without warning and so originally this book was going to be this political heist that was centered around Thomas and I was gonna turn it into a war movie without warning because politics can turn into war without warning, that kinda happens. It became so huge and ungainly and it was about it was going on 400000 words long and they were like "we're gonna have to charge like fifty bucks for this if we print this as a hardback" and I was like "I'm not gonna be the first guy to go over fifty bucks, that can be someone else".
*prior bit was talk about Back to the Future 2 segueing into talk about the time travel book*
Jim: Maybe I should have tried to pull that off in the time travel book, that would have been more appropriate.
Marsters: Oh my god.
Jim: We know we're gonna have to do a time travel book.
Marsters: Oh god please no.
Jim: Oh yes, one of the laws of magic is you can't mess around with time so Harry's gotta go do that obviously you know.
Marsters: You're gonna break me.
Jim: I think that'll be the last one in the series and then we'll do the big trilogy at the end so.
Marsters: I can never follow time travel movies, I always get confused and I swear to god when I'm reading this books I'm holding on by my fingernails trying to keep things together, you're gonna break me.
*a bit later*
Marsters: You alluded to it a little bit earlier but what is the future of the series?
Jim: Well the original plan was we were going to do 20 case books like we've had so far and then I was gonna write a big old doorstop trilogy to kind of capstone the whole thing. It's got a definite beginning, middle and end in mind when I'm writing it. At this point we've had to split one book into two and it looks like I'll have to do one extra book to do the character stuff I want to do and then we'll a three book capstone which'll give us 25 books which is a nice number. It goes well with the five pointed pentacle and everything, 25 is 5x5 and numerologically it's a very solid plans.
*following on from an excerpt and talk about reading the books out loud*
Jim: I'm thinking about writing some short stuff that is meant to be read, like writing it just for you. And meant to be read aloud, it'll roll of the tongue better.
Marsters: I have to ask you this before we move, I've wanted this all my life. So you use the word little a lot in your books, I don't know if you know. I never notice when I'm just reading them in preparation for doing the audio but I always do when I'm reading them out loud because I have a problem, my mouth doesn't want to say the word little, it's a hard word for my mouth. In frustration I stopped recording, this is a long time ago, I stopped recording "Okay, stop, we're not doing the book right now. This is a personal message for Jim Butcher. Jim you are an amazing writer, there are so many words, let's explore all of them. How about miniscule? How about tiny? How about diminutive? Let's use all of them. Okay now let's go back to the book." Next book there were twice as many littles in the book, there were like two a sentence sometimes there were four a page, and I thought "oh shit, James Butcher he heard that note and he was like "fu James how about you write the book and I read it" you know?" *laughs*
Jim: Okay I'm gonna have to write something for you that doesn't have that word in it then, we'll skip that. And you know what I'll do it in the story, I'm doing a story about Toot Toot and Mister going on a mission together. So I will use every word but that one to describe that quality in that one. And then you can curse me for that.
Marsters: *laughs* Don't change a thing man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPu4pfWTQu0
TheCuriousFan:
This one is a few years older than the last few but it has some interesting things so let's do it. For sanity's sake I'm skipping the ones that have been answered a dozen times before.
I can't remember the name of... there was a con I've been to here, was it Armadillocon? Okay. So this is the first time I've been to Austin since Armadillocon 99. Which I showed up to, they had invited me to be there, but I hadn't actually had any books published yet, I'd gotten sale but it hadn't actually come out and I'd gotten the sail like three weeks before. They wanted me to come down. And so here I am at my first convention and they put me in a panel with Patrick Nielsen Hayden and the editor of Tor, with Glen Cook who writes the Black Company series and Garrett P.I novels and with Neil Gaiman and me. And the title of the panel was "books that needed a better editor." *audience laughs*
And I'm sitting there and I'm like in my late twenties maybe and there's all these other people who have been professionals in the industry with years and years of experience under their belts. I'm just keeping my mouth shut because that seems like the smart thing to do, but Neil's not having that. So we're about 45 minutes and Neil kind of leans over and says "you know, excuse me Jim you've been here this entire time and you haven't had a thing to say. I would really be interested in hearing what you have to say about this subject" and I was like "nah I'm the new guy, you guys aren't here for me" and he's like "no no, we really wanna hear from you, who do you think needed a better editor...." "The Lord of the Rings doesn't really start until page 202" (someone doesn't appreciate a slow start to introduce and endear characters) *audience laughs* And I had like a good two minutes of rant to explain my position and man, man, Patrick Nielsen Hayden who is like the most awarded editor in fantasy just blew up at me, he tore me apart as he started to argue with me. But anyways, so that was my last visit to Austin.
Hopefully it's a better one.
Yeah, so far so good. We've been on the right track so far. But anyway I don't usually show up and give speeches, I'm not really good at that. I like to talk to people so I'd like to just do a question and answer forum, I'll give you answers, I don't promise to give you true answers. Bear in mind that I am an unreliable narrator. But if you've got questions, somebody has to ask a question.
If it's not a spoiler, can you tell us the name of the new intellect spirit?
Her name is Bonea, it's Scottish for beautiful and also the first four letters spell bone and Harry's just not that sophisticated in his sense of humour. She's living in a skull, Bonea. He calls her Bonnie, she does a lot of hanging out with Maggie because Bonnie's like super smart but she doesn't know how anything relates to anything else. She has like zero real world experience at all, so she gets to have conversations like, Harry walks in and Bonnie and Maggie are cooking in the kitchen and Bonnie gets to say "pancakes are inanimate". Okay Bonnie good job, that was a good observation. It takes centuries to build up a Bob.
I've been waiting for a short story from the pov of Mouse, is it in the works?
(this is the brief cases release tour, she already got it, skipping)
In the reddit AMA on Friday, someone asked who the people who were trapped at Arctis Tor had to have ticked off to get trapped there and you said the better question is who had to have ticked off the Custodian. The question is, who is the Custodian?
That wasn't a question about Arctis Tor, that was a question about Demonreach.
Oh so that's the Warden then.
Right now it's Harry.
How soon are we going to see Harry's next encounter with John Marcone and what kind of role is he going to be playing considering John has been playing a big role in defending Chicago while Harry was gone?
We get more of him in the next book. Which I'm working on as soon as I'm not doing this. But there's more to it than that and Marcone has gotten a lot of respect from people. You know at this point Marcone took down Nicodemus Archleone, that's kind of something everybody goes "damn kid, alright" you know. That's been sort of the response from people. But still, he's not a very nice guy. But I really did enjoy reading the story about him, in the audiobook I'm the one who reads Marcone so...
(when is the next novel out, you have this novel already so skip)
When's the next time we're going to see Cowl and if it's not too much of a spoiler when is his birthday?
I don't know when his birthday is, he's cagey about that. When's the next time we're going to see Cowl? Last I remember, he was pretty much dead, he's probably gone, don't worry about it.
What's the condition of Lord Raith and the death curse he was under and has that changed since the events of Changes and would the bloodline curse have gone up to him?
It wouldn't have gone any farther than Thomas, monster blood doesn't as far as that spell is concerned because they were designing that spell to kill humans so. But basically nothing's really changed except he's worse and worse and worse and worse and Lara's just enjoying the hell out of it. Because she's just running more and more and basically telling him to go to his room and bringing him out for public events so..
Will we ever find out who Kincaid's father is?
Maybe. I don't know. We might get to it in a spinoff somewhere. It's not really a big enough part of the Dresden Files to spend a lot of time on Kincaid's heritage. Especially because we're getting towards the end of the series here and I've got a lot to do, we've got a lot of things to wrap up. But it's possible we'll get to it in a spinoff afterwards.
So if Harry hadn't taken the Winter Knight what would his second choice have been?
If he hadn't become the Winter Knight he could have done a couple of things, he could have picked up one of the coins because he could have summoned Lasciel to him if he wanted to, or he could have used the darkhallow from Kemmler's book to become an uber-necromancer. At that point in the series I didn't know what he was going to do but I knew it was going to change the theme of the series pretty significantly (and just like that I have my next AMA question). So yeah, Harry the necromancer would be... that'd be a hell of a series. But he'd probably do necromancy before he messed with the coins again so.
Are we going to see Austin from the short story in this book again? He seems like an interesting character.
I'm not going to spoil you or anything but maybe not, he could pop up as a minor character somewhere down the line but for the short story stuff, I try to get the new actors and give them a chance to do something. I can always grab some new characters and say "is there a character here who is going to take off? And if so I want to use them". But that's about it.
So if and when you get the books adapted what would the ideal medium be?
I think I'd want to do the Dresden Files as an animated series because in an animated series you can burn down Chicago and it costs you just as much as not burning down Chicago. You know, there is sort of a history with Chicago. I'm sorry, I laugh at myself sometimes.
What are you reading?
I'm doing a lot of reading of the stuff my apprentice is putting out, that would be my son James. He's getting pretty close, I think his next book will do it. He might even be able to sell the last one he wrote, he wrote a really good series and it's great because he's got a really good imagination better than mine. He's really good with the witty dialogue, better than me, because he's had training, you know. We've been like insulting each other for years and years. But yeah I've been reading a lot of him but when I'm not reading his stuff let's see, Robert B Parker is still a major influence on me. He's sort of my hero as a writer, he wrote the Spenser series of private eye novels, he wrote 80 or 85 novels, something like that, and he died here a couple of years ago, died at the keyboard writing his next novel, /like a man/. I wanna do that.
Finish your series first.
Yeah well, eventually. They'll get somebody to ghostwrite me.
So Butters pointed out that Harry can basically come back from anything given enough time, does the winter mantle enhance that? It seems like it's just upping his metabolism, removing all the governors essentially. Is that upping his actual metabolism, will we see him recover from like a bone fracture all the way or is it just an illusion to him? It just removes all the governors or not?
I'm not gonna tell you if it's an illusion or not because that'd ruin it but points for trying. But mainly yeah, the summer mantle is a lot better at putting you back together afterwards, the winter mantle is mostly concerned with making the other guy put himself back together, that's really what it's for. Harry is an all-offense champion, you don't put defensive items on him, that's my League of Legends addiction showing. But uh, he can heal from just about anything as long as it doesn't kill him, he can come back eventually. The mantle doesn't help him with that but it does help him with not knowing he's been hurt so...
You answered a couple of questions about the Jade court in the AMA, I had one other question about them. What do they feed on?
I'm debating because I'm not gonna tell you is such a great thing to say. No I'll just go ahead and tell you, they feed on breath. One of those guys can kill you from the hotel across the street and you'll never know what is happening.
Now that your house is built, what is your favourite part of it?
My Kitchen. I've gotten so territorial over My Kitchen, capital letters. My fiance will come in and I'll be like "okay Kitty I've got the kitchen set up, this is it's natural state, it's clean, if you do anything to disrupt the natural state, put it back, this is for the environment". She's very amused because I'm not a very organised or neat or kitcheney person but now that I've got this kitchen and everything in it works, and it's all within easy reach and I'm cooking things and yeah I'm more into cooking things now. But yeah my mom came up to visit and I was like "I'm gonna go make some dinner" and she said "oh I'll help" and I said "no you won't, get out of my kitchen, you're my guest you will sit down and enjoy yourself. I permit you to sit at the edge of the kitchen and have conversation if you wish, just don't distract me because these are really good steaks, okay?".
With the possible exception of Harry, who is your favourite character to write?
Who is my favourite character to write? It's sort of a tossup depending on what kind of mood I'm in and how badly I wish I could murder someone. But Mab is always a lot of fun to write, because she is just a villain and she literally doesn't care. She is just not concerned with whatever nonsense it is you are occupied with, she's doing important things and you need to get with the program, it's just so fun to write a person like that. Butters is always a lot of fun, any of the knights are a lot of fun to write, Bob the skull is my inner 14 year old without any filters, I love writing that.
I read Cold Case last Night, am I allowed to be mad at you?
I would be a little disappointed if you weren't.
Are you going to give us more of her point of view so we can get past that?
Get more of Molly's point of view? So she can get past it?
No, so I can get past it.
So you can get past it? When's the last time I wrote something that really just helped you recover? Compared to the last time I did something horrible to you.
It seems like loneliness is a pretty big thing in the Dresden Files, the more time Harry spends alone the more dark stuff gets, does that reflect on your experience as a writer?
No that reflects my experience as a human being. Too much alone time is no bueno and I'm somebody who loves my alone time and occasionally Kitty has to sometimes basically drag me by the collar kicking and screaming to socialise and have fun so...
The dragon in the 3rd book has never come back and it's really bothering me.
Dude, it's like this huge series of books man, I mean I, okay I'm just gonna say this. Have some faith in me, if not in my diabolical plotting at least in my innate sense of laziness that makes me want to use things I've already done the work for. So yeah there's all kinds of stuff, when I was writing the Dresden Files the major influence on plotting events in the Dresden Files was Babylon 5. Yeah I mean I watched Babylon 5 from start to finish by the week, had it on video tapes with the commercials not recorded, I mean I was hardcore about Babylon 5. But one of the things I liked most about it was, you got to the end of season 5 before- the last episode of season 5, before you tied off some of the plot hooks that got started back back in season 1. I was just like *gasp* I want to do that, that would be so cool, so yeah there's a dragon in book 3 and like book 20 maybe he should show up. I refuse to make dragons lightweights, dragons should be way more epic than that, I don't want there to be- not a sky full of dragons there's just a few dragons and when one of them shows up everyone craps their pants, that's the way it works. But I get to have him show up in the next one because he's gonna be at the peace talks so.
Other than Babylon 5 are there any other ones of those long running plots that you really admire?
Well, the first six seasons or so of Game of Thrones I guess, Altered Carbon was pretty good. Westworld, that is one of the most intricately plotted things I have ever seen. I thought it sucked when I was watching through it the first time until I got to rewatch and see how everything tied in and I was like "oh they didn't suck they were just better than me". You've gotta take those lessons so your head doesn't get too big.
Are we ever gonna get anymore of the Codex Alera universe?
I don't have anything on the drawing board right now, I've got a couple of points where I could go back into the story. One of them is to go back 150 years later so you see all the fallout from what the characters in the first series did and then because they spent the entire first series fighting the Zerg we have to have them fight the Protoss instead (will they be more heroic on average than the Alerans?).
Nerd.
I just rip things off man. I don't mean to I just don't realise it until after I'm done and I go "oh, that's what you did". And then the other place I can go back is to the next class of Cursors that are graduating from the academy that Ehren is running and Fidelias is the headmaster, he's Dumbeldore. And it would be like the new class of Cursors, the first Canim Cursor, the first Marat Cursor and like that and Ehren would have to ride herd on them and they would drive him insane, that would be a lot of fun as well.
So I was a really big fan of the Cinder Spires novel that you wrote.
Thank you.
I also loved the Dresden Files comic books. And I was just wondering, is there any chance we'll see a Codex Alera graphic novel and if you could write another novel based on any comic book character which would you choose?
If you could write another novel based on any comic book character what would I choose? Spiderman again. I could probably do Thor or Hulk, sorry Cap, Hulk's never really been my guy, I already have anger management issues I don't really need to get lessons from him. What were the other questions?
Codex Alera graphic novels.
Sounds like a good idea to me. Don't know if it could go anywhere though. If I was gonna do a graphic novel idea for Codex Alera I would probably want to do one of the other ones, so there would be new story material. That seems like a better idea.
Are you currently studying any martial arts and how long did you study aikido?
I studied aikido for like two weeks *audience laughs*. Aikido is a brilliant martial art, it's beautiful, but it's the martial art that is essentially "how stupid would you like to look? Come at me /that/ hard" and that's what aikido is kind of about. But it wasn't for me, I was too impatient to be an aikido guy, I could probably go back and do it now and be better at it. I wanted the dramatic stuff, the taekwondo stuff at that time. I started off with Ryūkyū Kempo and then Goju-Shorei-Ryu, I've done kung fu, I've done taekwondo, I've done aikido, I've done a little Judo, not enough, my ground game is real weak right now so...
Have you made any progress on the second Cinder Spires?
Oh god no. I'm still at Dresden with Peace Talks. Don't get me wrong I want to get it done but I'm gonna have to write the next book shorter or something because that was the longest thing I've ever written and it took so much time and so.
We've seen a lot with the Carpenter family from say Charity, Michael, Molly and Daniel in Ghost Story, how much if any are we going to see of the younger children as they grow up?
A bit here and there. They mostly don't want to go out and battle the forces of evil they mostly wanna go to work and come home and play with the dog. They're a pretty quiet family. And besides, mom and dad were all into the evil smiting and that makes it really seem uncool. You know, so...
I'm curious. When does Molly if ever, get over pining over Harry and when does her mental breakdown recover?
It would be so tough for her to disengage from that without taking extreme measures like just saying "I don't want to be human anymore" it's not gonna last for forever obviously because it doesn't. And when is she going to recover? So adorable, you think people are going to get better. No I mean she has actually recovered quite a bit as this story starts from her time as the Ragged Lady. She's been running business for Mab and there's a story in this collection about exactly what kind of business she's been running and it could have been something that could have something that would have really broken her but she's turned it around and said "okay I am rounding up these kids and taking them to war but these are /my/ kids and I'm going to teach them how to crush everyone in their path" so that's a little more, she is becoming more assertive and more confident as she goes. But yeah poor Molly, I pick on her so much. More than anybody but Harry himself.
If Harry hadn't encountered Lasciel's coin, which would have been your next pick for the coin he'd end up with?
Probably Thorned Namshiel who could have been like a teacher and tutor and so on. But Thorned Namshiel, he's a terrible demon, not all of the fallen are equal with everybody else and Thorned Namshiel is so busy with his nerdy research that he barely has time to torture anyone. *audience laughs*. So the other demons kind of look at him and go "well at least he can fight".
I'm curious about the writing process, all the way back to Storm Front. Harry meets the postman and we find out he's a wizard, the fourth book we meet the faeries and so on. How much of the plot is thought out, how much is scaffold and how much do you fill in as you go along?
*you know this story about the writing teacher so skip*
Have you ever given any thought to doing a short story and delving into Ivy as a person vs Ivy as the Archive?
I can't cover that in a short story. That'll have to be plot. But we'll see, the problem she doesn't have a lot of her own personality. Since she was an infant she's had access to the amassed knowledge of humanity, it's kind hard to grow up as your own person with that kind of weight on your shoulders. She's had a very rough life.
What character's death was most satisfying to write and which one tore you up the most?
Most satisfying death? It would have to be Harry. That was satisfying to me because I sent the manuscript in at about 4 in the morning and I went to bed and I woke up about 2 in the afternoon to about 5000 voicemails from my editor "oh my god, you killed him! you killed him! What are you doing" "yeah now we can do the fun stuff!"
In Skin Game Uriel becomes a mortal and gets to trade places with Michael, what would have happened if he died? What would happen to his power?
If Uriel had died /somebody/ was going to be holding his grace, well it looks like you've got the job. And that would just be confusing because then there would be two Michaels that are archangels. "Michael the warrior and Michael the carpenter" "Carpenter, you mean like Jesus?" "No not the same guy". So it's probably a good thing it worked out the way it did.
Will we be seeing more of Toot Toot?
Of course we'll be seeing more of Toot Toot. He just keeps getting bigger.
Perhaps it's the pizza.
I kind of had three questions I came up with.
I won't promise to answer them all but go ahead.
The first one is, how has the oblivion war progressed from how we last saw it in Backup?
The same way it always does, nothing happens for 30 years at a time and then something shows up and everybody goes crazy backstabbing one another until something's been destroyed or forgotten or the memory of something has been removed from somebody's brain by removing the brain. The oblivion war is something that goes on over time and if you really wanted to write about it you would have to make it one of those timeskipping series which would be a lot of fun but also a lot of research and I vanish down those rabbit holes way too easily.
We've seen more of the old gods come back in with the Aesir and the Olympians with Hades, with the rise of the Fomor are we going to see the gods of the Tuatha Dé Danann come back since they're ancient enemies?
The question is we've already seen a bunch of the old gods with Odin hanging around and with Hades, are we going to see the Celtic gods, the Tuatha Dé Danann show up because the Fomor are there? Definitely as we get into the BAT, we'll get into that a little more. No, no we'll see them in 19, well we'll see somebody from them in 19 I can't reveal whole pantheons I'm busy but we'll see somebody.
You lay a lot of groundwork for mantles of power throughout the series, but can somebody like Harry or Molly, with the permission of Mab or someone else more powerful, can they give up the mantle of power or can it be taken from them without them dying or must they die to give up the mantle of power?
*long pause* I'm not gonna tell you.
Hannah Ascher I had a quick question about her because obviously you explained that she focused more on fire magic offensively because of Lasciel but is she a full fledged wizard? Could she have done any other magic or was she a pure pyromancer?
She was a pure pyromancer but a really really strong one, like maybe better with fire than Harry (more like way better).
A werewolf but for wizards, knows one trick.
Basically yeah. I mean she's a little better than that, she can do a lot of different things with fire, but fire, that's kind of her thing.
Out of any of the series that you've done, what is the hardest thing that you've ever had to cut?
I've actually got a file folder that's just called cutting room and that's where I drop all the chapters I have to delete. I work really lean so I don't usually have a lot of cutting room material. I kind of frontload my writing process because I can't get a chapter written until I can think through it and see it all in my head and then I can write the chapter and get it done quickly and I usually don't have to do too many rewrites if I've got it all planned out ahead of time. Problem is sometimes it takes days for me to put that picture together before I can get the chapter written. That's kind of how it goes.
So the big word that gets tossed around in the fantasy fandom today is worldbuilding. You've got three universes under your hat. How do you tackle worldbuilding? With Dresden it seems like you built the world through the characters, with each new series how do you start to handle worldbuilding?
My basic rule of thumb for worldbuilding I lifted from Mark Twain. Mark Twain said that if you're writing fantasy you've got to have two elements that are familiar for every element that's weird, I think he said fantastic. So whenever I build the world I try to have a couple of things I know my audience is going to be familiar with for every one thing that's going to be cool and strange. Yeah Harry's a wizard and can throw around unlimited cosmic power and so on but at the same time he's got car problems and he's got to pay is rent, that's stuff the audience knows. That's how I establish that he's just a guy who is trying to figure out life, in order to make him a larger than human figure so...
I'm a big fan of Murphy, I love her.
Thank you.
Is she a Cubs fan or is she a White Sox fan?
Murphy is more of a hockey girl.
But she's worn a Cubs hat and a White Sox jacket, or vice versa. So she just has no preference?
Most of that stuff is stuff she's got from boyfriends and ex-husbands and so on. It's like a hat.
So obviously it takes a special kind of person to be a knight of the sword, you've alluded to perhaps royal bloodline kind of stuff, but a lot of the people who have the sword have this kind of pretty typical holders Sanya with the saber, Shiro with the katana, Murphy with the heavenly judgment and stuff so my question is, are there particular characteristics or quirks that the swords kind of use to pick their people that transcend beyond standard virtue.
That's the thing you don't have to be special to pick up a sword and use it, you've got to be special to pick up a sword and use it right. Or at least one of the Swords which I assume will have a capital letter in Sword. What the sword looks for more than anything else is sort of the ultimate martial value, the ultimate martial value is love for the people in your life. Because if you love the people who are behind you, that's why you're willing to fight for them. So that's the first thing the sword always looks for, and if you don't have that you can't pick up a sword. Well you can pick it up but it won't do anything for you. That's the main thing, stuff like courage and athletic ability all that is secondary it's who are you and are you willing to die for someone else. That's really mostly what the swords care about, and then if someone uses them wrong they'll get shattered or whatever, you know, good job Murphy. But other than that.
Does that mean Butters is royalty?
Butters is Jewish, he's descended from the 12 tribes of Israel, he's going to have royalty in his bloodline somewhere. And not only that but really like- I think the number is at like 35 or 40 percent at this point of the people on the planet who have a king in their background somewhere. My family goes back to Charlemagne so you know.
*the last question is why Chicago*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDpvbX9eCK4
TheCuriousFan:
For sanity's sake I will skip and "why Chicago" questions that come up every other interview.
Carol Malcolm: The first lines of your books, do you make an effort to make them so special, something that stands out or is it just something that kind of happens?
Jim: I can't start the book until I've got a good first line, it just won't go. I can have a great story idea but if I don't have the first line it won't happen.
Carol: So basically, yes you do plan it. I don't think that comes as a surprise to anyone but I was surprised and kind of curious about the process you had. Right there.
Did Mac heal himself from the shotgun or did Mab heal him and leave Harry with a debt?
I don't give the answer to those sorts of questions. No, Harry's debt to Mab is between the two of them, and as far as fae debts go I'm not going to make any comments and see how those play out.
So was Mab born fully human, was she a changeling or was she fae originally?
You'll have to ask her about that. Don't ask questions about story that's still coming, jeez.
I'm pretty sure you're not gonna answer this but have we met Cowl as his alternate ego?
Again, jeez Louise, don't ask me questions I'm gonna make you pay me to answer. Points for trying, I feel you, I have GMed many players over the years. I understand this.
Back in the 30s or 40s Coca Cola changed the way Santa is portrayed. How does Mab feel about him being kinda tubby now?
It's annoying, oh god. Because when you put it the way that Dresden puts it in the books then suddenly that makes sense, Odin as Santa Claus makes sense. But then you look at the Coca Cola and then not as much. But yeah, he rolls his eyes at that but what's he gonna do? He's Santa Claus.
The other part of that question is, Harry loves Coca Cola. Given the two convergences does that make Coca Cola a vassal of Winter?
*audience laughter*
Honestly I think it's more likely for Winter to be a subsidiary of Coca Cola.
So we know there's a link between Vadderung and Santa Claus, are there any other characters which we've met that might have a similar link?
Are there any other secret characters who I've done other things in the *unintelligible*, really?
It was worth a shot.
Yeah in my head, history is especially intertwined within the Dresden Files supernatural world. There's lots of other people who have done other things. There were knights of the sword fighting the American revolution. There's all kinds of stuff, oh my god the Seven Years War is such a mess Dresden Files style because that's the Merlin and Ebenezar were young hotheads that were out kicking butt and they did it in very different ways and on different sides of the war. Which neither one of them was supposed to be doing because the White Council's got this whole thing about "wizards do not do politics because we watched what happened to Camelot and it was awful". But I don't know if I'm ever going to get to write those or not, it'd be fun. I'd love to write the story of hunting down Kemmler, that would be cool. Cause it would be like sixty years long, it starts like, a little bit after the end of the Civil War and goes all the way through to World War One where he was out there operating but anyway. That's for future stuff, paying off my gambling debts and so on.
So in the early days of the books, you made a big deal that Harry was the only practicing wizard in the Chicago Yellow Pages, how does he advertise now that they're no longer a thing?
Oh he doesn't have to advertise anymore now he's the guy everybody knows. He likes to brag about the Yellow Pages but yeah that's a thing of the past.
What about Elaine Mallory since she stole his schtick?
She did but she's got like a whole different sales pitch for her stuff. She's much more of a life coach for "extreme circumstances".
I just reread Changes.
I'm sorry.
*audience laughter*
I was thinking, the Red Court vampires that were caught by the goblins, could they survive the curse?
Oh you would have had to have been in the equivalent of like, a NORAD style Cheyenne mountain shelter, which is not an answer.
You've mentioned in the past that you've outlined the series after being told the first book will sell. What's the biggest divergence we've had from that outline at the point we're at?
Butters probably. He was somebody who was supposed to be a one off character. He was supposed to be a- I was writing a particularly gruesome ME scene and I wanted somebody there to add a little levity to it so I created Butters. Actually I didn't create Butters I stole him from the movie The Prophecy, only I died his hair black instead of red and made him Jewish and said okay go. But yeah Butters is the biggest diversion I never really planned on him being a big character and then my editor got in the way so.
So what was your inspiration behind the Cinder Spires and did they not pan out?
Oh, the inspiration behind the Cinder Spires, I was driving home from a LARP on a Sunday morning. We'd killed a big bad guy at about two in the morning and then we were arguing over treasure until four and then the sun was coming up and I was like "you know what I'm not sleeping in a sleeping bag I'm getting in my car and going home to my bed". And so I was driving home and it was a real real heavy midwest overcast thunderstorm territory. Except I was driving north over here on the right side the sun was coming up. It was all clear and blue and starting about right here *gestures at about right shoulder height* in my field of vision it was just /black, black, black clouds over there/. And then a lightning storm started as this storm was coming towards me and it looked like this big thing on lightning legs walking towards you. And I was like "oh this is just awful" and I turned up Nine Inch Nails because I was listening to Downward Spiral, nice and clanky industrial sounds. And then I raced the thunderstorm to the junction with I-70 so I could turn east and get ahead. And so while I was doing that and listening to Nine Inch Nails the first scene from the first book just popped up in my head and it was like "okay I'm doing that next. So sleep deprivation + running around in the woods like a crazy person + driving too fast in dangerous weather, that's how I got it. Some lives, be a writer kids.
You mentioned that you're looking to write about 24 novels in total and I was wondering if you're expecting to write them in ten years or thirty years? *unintelligible plus audience laughter*
There's some things I'm not gonna share with you yet. I'm planning on 20 case books like we've had so far and then a big old apocalyptic trilogy at the end to finish things off. We might need 21, or 22, or 19, I've got to get everything setup for the end. And then the big old trilogy and we'll be done with it. That'd be a fun story. I don't know how long it'll take I've got things to do and there's like these steampunk books and people keep wanting me to show up to conventions and things. Normally I say things like "if I wasn't here with all of you the next book would be done by now" but at this point I'm waiting on the editor so.
So the agnostic knight of the cross, you could have done a Protestant knight of the cross, you could have done an Islamic knight of the cross, why agnostic?
Why not? My point is, that at least in the Dresden Files world and my own personal viewpoint, people are fickle and people fail, people fall aside. God doesn't need people to believe in him, God believes in people and will still be even if you're the agnostic guy, I think God cares about you. I mean I'm fundamentally Christian but if somebody else is Islamic? Yeah God cares about them. The Hindus? God cares about them. We can go down this list like this but I think you see the pattern. And so for the knights of the cross that's mainly what I was interested in showing it's that "God is real and God loves you and cares and sometimes sends people to kick the ass of monsters".
When Dresden threatened to use necromancy against the Black Court, was that something he learned directly from the Word of Kemmler that was part of the book or was it just that he learned more about how they worked with necromancy?
Oh no Kemmler had a recipe, "how to make a Black Court vampire your bitch", he had that. That was practically the name of the spell. Dresden's like "oh yeah I see how that works now yeah I can screw you up ". It'd do horrible things to him, roll 3D6 that's how many sanity points you lose. Like that.
So you have this entire room basically hanging on your every word, how on earth do you keep your ego in check?
That's easy, all of this stuff here happens to famous guy Jim. Famous guy Jim is on stage with you today, famous guy Jim can talk to people, he can make jokes, he can be charming, make eye contact, remember people's names and generally function like a human being. Real Jim would not be in this room, he would look around and be like "yeah there's too many people here" and turn around and go. Listen, at the end of the day, I play D&D with myself and write it down. I eavesdrop on my imaginary friends' conversations and transcribe them. I write ridiculous wizard books, I'm not contributing much, "here, have a good time, get away from things for a while, that'll be $7 please" (I wish they were $7 here). That's how it works, $10 or whatever it is now, they were $7 when I started okay.
Which do you find more satisfying when you run across it online when people are talking to each other, is it more fun to see someone with a theory that's right and everybody says they're out of their minds? Or is it more fun when someone goes off with a theory and everyone's behind it but you know they're dead wrong?
Man that's a good question, that's tough. I don't know. I mean I enjoy it when somebody's dead right and everybody's yelling at them, I just kind of want to look at that person and go "hang in there buddy! Just another book!". What really bugs me is when I read the crack theories that just break my brain. Because there are such incredible crack theories on the Dresden Files flying around out there, and some of them I don't even want to think about them, I get a skip in my head every time I hit the memory, that's my own personal version of the Naagloshii that I've seen with my true sight, crack theories, I think about them and just *neck twist*. And then the other thing that disturbs me is some of the fanfiction, there is some really unlikely slash fiction of Dresden out there. Putting it out there and leaving it at that.
Hi, so it's kind of interesting to hear you say you're not making an impact with your books. I'm actually a librarian for the New York state corrections department and let me tell you, the men at *unintelligible jail name* love your books *more stuff obscured by crowd cheering*. And my personal question is, is Mister ever going to get his own side story?
I could probably write a good one because I actually know cats now because there's enough of them. Because you know we have four cats, we have three maine coons and there was a little feral cat that got born under the porch, her and her brother did, well her and her brother survived so we trapped them and her brother was socialised so we got him out to a family and he's spoiled rotten all the time now. And he's like this Siamese looking cat, he's gorgeous. And then his sister is a little tuxedo cat who is this big full grown *holds hands indicating about as long as the distance between middle of neck and left shoulder* and so we named her Zantanna and she didn't like people but she bonded to our cats. And so we're like "okay you can hang with our cats and that'll be fine" and then eventually she started going "okay human, pet me". She kind of walks up to you and goes "MEOW" and then you're like "ok I've got to pay attention to you before you kill me". I probably could write a good cat story, but Mister's a cat man, he's taking naps. He's an elderly cat at this point, he's stretching out in the sun.
So I was wondering, you've kind up set up the morality system of the Dresden Files, in other settings they have laws of magic that the wizards council came up with and enforces, they're made by people. But in your universe, if you break the laws of magic it taints your very soul. It's inherent to the universe itself. And in other books monsters can redeem themselves and I know *unintelligible* kind of has that but with the Red Court vampires it's like once you're a vampire, you're just that.
Well you could potentially walk into the sun or something, but yeah.
So I was wondering why you made those choices when you were kind of setting up the world, with objective morality or something.
Well you just said it yourself, choices. Thomas didn't choose to be born a White Court vampire, he chooses what he's gonna be and as long as you are somebody who is making choices like that, there's always a chance at redemption. You can decide "you know what, I'm going to be a better person today than I was yesterday", that's possible. And every single Red Court vampire chose to kill someone so they could slake their thirst, every Red Court vampire said to himself "I'm more thirsty than that guy needs to be alive", that's a choice, it matters in the Dresden Files.
So does that mean you can break the laws of magic and come back from that?
What?
And choose to redeem yourself.
I mean the laws of magic are broken all the time. I mean the ones the White Council makes, those are pretty broad. There's only some of it that's going to start twisting you into a horrible something or other but the White Council is real thorough on trying to control wizards. They want to keep wizards from, you know, blinking reality out of existence, they have some concerns. They'd rather be more careful than less careful, that's sort of how they roll.
So in terms of writing advice, I hear a lot of talk about how they break pieces of themselves off and use them as the basis for characters. Is there any of this in Harry or any other characters of the Dresden Files?
That's not something I'm gonna talk to you about. That's some pretty deep stuff there, that's personal. Ultimately everything I put in the book is me because I was the one writing it. As far as pieces of my own personal self yeah they're all over it. You can't make art without putting a piece of yourself in it, that's how it works, you break off a piece of your soul and you put it someplace else and you look at people and you show it to people and you say "isn't it pretty?" and they go meh and you go "that's my soul, okay..." but yeah you have to. It's terrible because you read it and go "gee this is really tearing me up, all the stuff about Harry's dad", you know, stuff like that. But yeah you have to and you don't even get to pick when you do it or which bit of your soul to break it off you just suddenly realise "oh there it is in the book".
So I when I read the twelfth book I read that speech that Harry gave to Mab about the ability to attain power and I'm not going to ask you what he's going to do to get more power. I was wondering if the Darkhallow would work in the Nevernever.
Oh yeah, you can pull that off anywhere. The location is not important, Harry could go to the Nevernever and pull off a Darkhallow if he wanted.
I was just curious since immortality was a factor and I'm not sure.
Yeah I'm pretty sure he could pull it off there. He'd have to have a bunch of people to kill though.
Carol: Minor technical detail.
It came out of the book of the big bad necromancer guys, what do you want to do? They kill people.
Carol: The title kind of gives it away, doesn't it.
*question is if Marsters will do the Peace Talks audio book, the answer is yes*
Hello, well as an older woman I am interested in McCoy, Blackstaff McCoy. Just kind of sexy and *audience drowned her out* I don't know twenty years ago I was doing *audience drowned her out again*. So is there a way that you might write something about the old dude?
It's possible. Though if I wrote McCoy I would go back to where he was wrecking stuff and getting in trouble all the time and then write that guy, he was way worse than Dresden. *audience drowned her out yet again* Yeah I mean Dresden's the kind of guy who, yeah he gets into trouble and stuff but what he /really/ wants to do is be at home reading on the couch with his dog, that's really the kind of way he wants to spend his life. McCoy was the kind of guy who would just kind of look around after work one day and say "you wanna go get in a fight?" and then they would go do that, so it was much different.
If Bob ever found himself online in say, an online game such as Second Life, what would he choose his avatar?
Bob's avatar? He'd just be a penis with legs. He would do what like every fourteen year old boy would do and if he could pick something he'd take one of those.
So in terms of Gaius Sextus and John Marcone are described very similarly, what was the inspiration behind that?
I always wrote Marcone, the model I kind of had for him in my mind in the background was a medieval baron. By the standards of the medieval times Marcone would have been a highly respected, competent, just and fair baron if he ran his barony exactly like he runs the mob in Chicago. So when I was building him I used the model of a medieval feudal lord and what the ideal feudal lord what behave like and I extended that to Gaius Sextus only he didn't quite live up to many of them because he was kind of a weasel. But I wanted to write him as that weasel that you kind of admire a bit, it's like "man you caused all this trouble, but damn you did it with style" like that. But that's why.
Michael Carpenter is one of my favourite characters in all of fiction. I want to know what was your inspiration for creating such an awesome paladin of awesome.
From what I could tell of the fiction that was around me up to when I was writing Michael, there were only two kinds of Christians that appeared in fiction: They were either lunatics, hypocrites oh wait there's three, or happy dumb sheep. And that was the only way they were portrayed and I was tired of that and so I thought I'd do it my way. I didn't do it for you *gestures at cheering audience* but I'm glad you like it.
When you actually settle down to write and try to get into the mindset, do you have a particular playlist you use and how does that vary across the different series you write?
Oh, excellent question. I do, I used to make up a playlist for each book, now I generally have like theme songs for characters that I keep in mind. Harry's theme song is Gone Away by Offspring (fun fact, this used to be his pick for Elaine's theme song). And there's a bunch of other ones. What's the cover, of Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You? That is done in minor that is for another character that I really love that is- look for a minor version of I Will Always Love You, I forget the name of the guy who performs it but it's amazing. But it's like the most angsty "this is definitely my RP character's story" sort of song, I mean, everybody can say that about their RP character. Oh my gosh.
So Cinder Spires, you've got Albion, Aurora and you've got a third name coming up Olympus or something-
Olympia, yeah.
So how many spires are there and can you tell us their names?
Um there's dozens and dozens, they're scattered all over the world, not all of them have contact with all the others, some of them don't contact anybody, they stay isolated. It's a whole confusing thing but when I get to the next book, the next book's called The Olympian Affair, and essentially there is a meeting happening to try and head off a war that's coming between Albion and Aurora so that's what The Olympian Affair will be all about. Which is all it really is is everybody angling to get the best allies, everybody showing up to pick their team for dodgeball.
Oh no.
Hi.
Hi.
So I have a super serious question.
Oh god.
Now that Butters is a Jedi, do you think that we'll get a terrible prequel series with him? *audience laughter*
It's probably better than a terrible follow-up trilogy, I don't know. So. I'm sorry I'm not in favour of the new ones. If you like them great you're ahead of your time but I'm gonna go see the next Star Trek thing I guess, I don't know.
So you have fifteen books of history to reference-
Tell me about it.
How do you make a book accessible to someone who hasn't read the entire series without being weighed down by the massive weight of this character's history and that character's history and this event?
Every story has to be it's own story, even in the Dresden Files. The story needs to embrace the problems and the conflicts that you set up in that story. So I mean ideally anyone who comes into the Dresden Files at any point should be able to have an intelligible idea of what's going on. They should be able to go "okay I get this story and there's a bunch of parts I didn't get because you didn't reference it but the story I got it it was good" they should be able to go along for the ride and have a good time. And the best way to do that is to make sure your characters are consistent all the way through, they have to grow as well but you really have to do a lot of work to keep each character grounded in terms of what they are so that not only the reader is sure of what's going on when that character comes on stage but that /I/ know what's going on when that character comes on stage. It's like "Butters is coming onto the stage now and I need these six different things to happen to make the story go forward and so Butters is going to handle this one and that one" and I've gotta pick the right ones for Butters to handle or else he's not really Butters and it gets more and more confusing as we go along so. It's partly homework it's partly just being buried in it this is what I've been doing my whole life and it's partly Priscilla Spencer who has been a beta reader for me for a good long while, has a freakish knowledge of continuity that is highly annoying and extremely useful.
I'm one of the people who not only read the books but play the Dresden Files tabletop roleplaying game by Evil Hat, I figured they'd basically read your books and then tried to quantify the characters into NPC stats. Which ones did they get right off the bat and which ones did you say "oh you've got that all wrong because there's stuff you don't know" and then you told them your advice?
*another repetition of how they saw Jim's notes/writing process and how Jim can't play the RPG and how providing info let the team guess book plots*
First of all thanks for writing my family into the Dresden Files I'm a Carpenter.
Excellent.... Yeah, sorry about that.
As an aspiring novelist when I get stuck I sometimes use dice. When you get stuck do you ever just use D&D and dice "oh that was a horrible bluff check let's see how it goes if he fails that"?
Oh god no I could do that for some things but for the most part by the time I'm writing the action scene it's /scripted/ we've got stuff to do there's no time for randomness. And to a degree while I think it's possible to use it and it could be good if you're stuck and need inspiration of some kind then embracing ideas you normally wouldn't embrace but you randomly generate is a good way to knock ideas loose and get going. Gosh I don't remember where I was going with that. Oh yeah once I'm getting going things are pretty tight and I don't have time for that. Art is all about separating meaningful signals from noise, that's what art is and the more noise you throw into your own stuff the more you're kind of working against yourself so. I try to be very focused and purposeful with everything I'm doing in the books.
Quick yes or no question, are there cats in Spire Olympia?
Oh obviously yes, there's like different breeds in each spire so they can look different and be cool, but they're very separated ecosystems, right? And when you have the same animal in different ecosystems it goes in different directions. So yeah there's cats everywhere and they're different breeds so we get everybody's favourites.
Hey Jim, the Dresden Files has been around for twenty years now-
Well twenty years April 1st next year.
True, in that time they've been theorycrafted to death, in that time is there any Easter egg or plot point that has been totally missed?
I don't know. How do I know the answer to that? I don't track everything. I-actually no I don't wish I could, I don't track everything and I'm happy that way. I mean, I don't really follow that too much I'm too busy making it to look around and see what everybody else is talking about. But I'm sorry I wish I had a better answer. Even if-here's the right answer, no you've figured everything out the rest is just pro forma, might as well go home. Generally from what I can tell everybody's figured out some part of the big picture but nobody's figured out a significant part of the big picture, but somebody's picked up almost everything, it's just a matter of whether you've put it together the right way or not.
Greetings Jim, I know you're super busy with the Cinder Spires and the Dresden Files but is there any chance you'll pick up a continuation of the Codex Alera?
Codex Alera is a cool world I might go back to it one day. I've got a couple of points I can go back. One idea is to go back a hundred and fifty years into the future and see the fallout of the first series and how it changed the world and what's different then. I've got three ideas for it. That's the first one, second is to do the first class of the new Cursor academy which features Ehren as the teacher and *unintelligible* Batman is the teacher of all the new spies, and we have the first Canim Cursor and the first Marat Cursor and so on and that would be fun. And then the other one I can do is I already wrote the humans and the zerg so I can do the protoss coming in. Look man I'm a nerd.
Two part question, what kind of Scooby snacks does Bru like?
I get him, you know the bark boxes? They make ones specific to pitbulls with super tough toys it's called a bully box and it comes with lots of snacks but mostly he just likes bacon. I wake up for breakfast every morning and he comes in and he's my buddy. We start off the day with him just like laying his head on my shoulder and looking over my shoulder at my plate you know.
And second question, are Selkies and Owlbears existant in the Dresden Files?
Selkies and Owlbears? Yeah because you've got access to the Nevernever and you've got essentially range to whatever you can imagine. So yeah Harry could go to the Nevernever and bring back an Owlbear and be like "haha! mad wizard right there! Who's got two thumbs and just created an Owlbear!?"
So in the Dresdenverse you've got a wide variety of characters and side characters and backup characters so aside from Harry Dresden which character is your favourite to write and which is your least favourite to write?
Least favourite to write? Start with that because that one's easier for me. Charity's very difficult to write for me, I don't know if that's my least favourite but she's difficult because she's tough for me to understand. Don't know who else as far as least favourites go, if I didn't like them I wouldn't write them. But as far as favourite character other than Harry, it varies from day to day depending on what kind of mood I'm in. If I'm feeling particularly puerile and in need of inspiring chaos then it's Bob, if I need to get things done it's Marcone or Mab, you know one of those characters. I love writing Mab though, because in many ways she's kind of a mystery to me so a lot of things I find out about Mab I don't find out until I've written them and then I go "wow, that's deep" and "I should tell the author something" "you wrote that" "that's confusing".
*stopped at 39:45 continue from there in the next post*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byT-u7Q_UhI
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