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LogicMouseLives:
Dictation by LogicMouseLives

2008 The Dragon Page article (audio podcast)

Came out to 3 parts, in the end.

Transcriptionist's note: This one was quite a pain, what with no less than four (4!) interviewers, plus Jim, made no easier by the fact that Michael R. Mennenga, Brian Brown, and-under the right circumstances-Jim have unfortunately similar sounding voices, especially when making a brief comment. I've done the best I can to sort them out correctly, but if anyone notices any errors in attribution on this one, please let me know and I'll fix it right up!

PART 1

Voice Over: Dragon Page cover to cover episode 307, show A.

{Intro music}

Michael R. Mennenga: From the Dracovista studios in Phoenix, Arizona. Unlocking secrets of writing. Conversing with masters of the craft. And just having a lot of fun. It’s the Dragon Page, cover to cover.

{music and ‘dragon’ roar}

Michael R. Mennenga: And welcome back to another Dragon Page cover to cover I’m Michael R. Mennenga
Michael Stackpole: And I’m Michael Stackpole.
Laurie Mennenga: And I’m Laurie Mennenga.
Michael M: Ooh, Laurie’s joins us as well!
Michael S: All right!
Michael M: Awesome! Uh, hey! We’ve got an awesome, awesome show for you, Jim Butcher is in the studio with us and we had an awesome interview, it was just great.
Michael S: It was a lot of fun. It’s a good long one, so we’re going to probably cut this front-end  short–
Michael M: Yes we will.
Michael S: But we also want to remind you that in addition to having him in the studio here
{Brief fooferaw over who should tell the news}
Michael M: You can actually see Jim for about three minutes on our YouTube video, which is our “Slice of SciFi” video news edition which you can find on our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com and slash farpoint media I do believe. Farpointmedia all one word. Just do a search on it. Search on “Slice of SciFi.” Search on Farpointmedia and you’ll find us. We have a channel on there. You will want to go check that out ‘cause it was a lot of fun.
Michael S: It was a lot of fun interview. I did direct it. This was take three.
Michael M: Stackpole’s trying to get his director’s credit in here!
Michael S: Absolutely! Don’t worry, when we win the Emmy for that, I’ll remember you.
Michael M: God knows we need it, that’s for sure! {Laughter} So without further ado, we will dive into the interview with Jim Butcher ‘cause it was a lot of fun.

{Music}

{Advertisement for Parsec awards}

Michael M: And welcome back to more of Dragon Page cover-to-cover, I’m Michael R. Mennenga.
Summer Brooks: I’m Summer Brooks.
Michael S: I’m Michael Stackpole
Brian Brown: And I’m Brian Brown.
Michael M: And we’ve got a ton of people in the studio today because–
Summer: There’s a reason!
Michael M: We’ve got a special guest.
Summer: Uh huh. A surprise guest, right here in studio with us, and everybody, everybody in Farpoint Media-Land wanted to come here. So we had to beat them off at the door with a stick.
Michael M: On a Sunday, no doubt!
Summer: Yes. We have Jim Butcher here.
Michael M: That’s right! Hi, Jim!

Jim Butcher: Hi Guys.

Michael M: Awesome.
Brian: Welcome back again!
Michael M: Back again. You just can’t get enough of this place, can you?

Jim: It’s true. I get down here to the fair green land of Arizona and–

Michael M: That’s because we’ve got the best Scotch, that’s why.
Michael S: Plus the Farpoint Media implant that compels you to show up.
Michael M: {Stage Whispering} You’re not supposed to tell him about that. He’ll have it taken out!
{laughter}
Michael S: {Stage Whispering} He’ll only think to look for one!
{General laughing murmur of agreement} Nice!
Michael M: No, Jim was in town for a signing and that, evidently went really good, because you’re an hour late!

Jim: Yeah, there was a bunch of people there.

Michael M: They kinda like you, and what you’re doing. That’s a good thing.

Jim: Well, there’s– they kept laughing at the jokes so, you know you shouldn’t encourage me, even just, you know, by being polite, so.

{laughter}
Michael S: So you did an encore.

Jim: Mm hm.

Michael S: That’s right.
Michael M: So you’ve got a little book out.
Summer: A little one.
Michael M: Just a little book.

Jim: Yeah, the new Dresden book came out this week.

Brian: And so, yeah, Harry finally gets a little bit of closure on a few things.

Jim: Oh, well, I guess so. I think some of the readers felt that way. I kind of feel differently about it, ‘cause I know where the story’s going eventually.

Michael M: Uh oh!

Jim: So I know that some of the things that seem to be closure, weren’t necessarily that way and so on.

Brian: Well the last time you were here, you said that you planned on having this to be thirty books if you can make it that.

Jim: Nah, it was about twenty.

Brian: It’s gonna be twenty, okay. So obviously we’re only up to book–

Jim: Ten

Michael M: Ten.
Brian: Ten more books!

Jim: Yep.  

Summer: Is there such a thing as faux closure?
Brian: Oh! I dunno.

Jim: Well of course there is! I mean, at the end of every movie where, you know, you think the monster’s dead, but... Here the alien queen comes off of the bottom of the dropship and now things are started up again.

Summer: All right.
Michael M: Good analogy!
Brian: Wow, that was pretty key. I like that!
{laughter}
Michael M: Now you’re very well known for beating up poor Harry, and putting him through torture. You like torturing your characters.

Jim: It’s been a recipe for my success, yes. Pretty much I can look at any given situation and say, “Does this make Harry more miserable? Yeah, it does! Oh, I should really think about doing that then.”

Michael S: And it can get worse.

Jim: Yes, exactly.

Michael M: Is he ever gonna get anything? I mean are you going to give him a little crumb?

Jim: What are you talking about? He’s got his own maid service, doesn’t he?

{General murmur of “True, that’s true.”}

Jim: They shop for his groceries for him. I mean, sometimes they get all Fruit Loops, but
{laughter}
Jim: They do his shopping and so on, so you know he’s not without any positives. There’s not zero upside for Harry.

Brian: That’s true, actually.
Michael M: So you’re ten books into this series now and you’ve put him through a lot, like we’ve just been talking about. Are you finding a lot of ideas, or are you having trouble coming up with new ones?

Jim: Oh no, that’s not really been an issue. I knew I wanted to do about twenty books from the beginning and I had twenty different ideas outlined. At this point, occasionally, I get a better idea for a book and I discard one of the old ones, so.

Michael M: Really?

Jim: Yeah, at this point we’re swapping out, I’m able to just stick with the best ideas, rather than struggling to come up with something.

Michael S: Have you found things going much along the way you’d originally planned, or are there radical differences? I mean swapping things in and out, that I understand–

Jim: Right.

Michael S: But as the characters have developed were you seeing it going sort of North North-West and now it’s kind of swinging over North-East, or–?

Jim: Um. Everything that I had planned seems to be going fairly well. What I didn’t have any kind of outline or script for when I started off was Harry’s love life. So all that stuff kind of happens as I’m going along. So that’s as much a surprise to me as I write it as it is to the reader.

Michael S: But within the genre, or within where you were starting, almost having an unscripted love life is part of the script for characters like that.

Jim: Yeah, as it turns out, you know, the people you love and care about can sometimes have an effect on the rest of your life as well! So it was perhaps not the wisest thing for me to say “I just won’t script this huge part of what is going to affect you as a person.”

Michael S: Yeah, yeah.
Brian: I was going to talk about the book a little bit, because, after I read it I realized that it seemed like it was starting off and going one direction, and all of a sudden Wham! we take a right turn, and Gloom! we go somewhere completely different. And I wasn’t sure if you said “Oh yes, I’m definitely going to throw you the loop and you’re going to go to the right instead of the left.” Is that how you kind of envisioned the story?

Jim: Well, yeah, more or less. I mean, again, it’s one of the things, from a reader perspective you see things kind of differently, ‘cause the reader doesn’t know what’s going on. As the writer, I know I’m setting people up for something that’s gonna happen later. And yeah, the reader’s supposed to pick up the story and go, “Okay, we’re doing this, we’re doing this. Oh crud! I just opened–I mean this wasn’t a land mine, this was a box full of nuclear explosives.”

Brian: Heh, heh. What’s in the box?

Jim: Yeah, exactly. This just got a whole lot worse than I thought it was gonna be, and that was sort of the idea.

Brian: And really, you did a great job with it too, because I was reading it going, “Okay, yeah, yeah I think I know where we’re going, Ha ha!” Oo, hubris, hubris. I got smacked.
Michael M: Yeah, the first time you think you know where a character’s going, then something’s wrong, somewhere.
{General agreement}
Michael M: It should be a journey, you know? It’s supposed to be a surprise.
Michael S: Do you find yourself in doing the books– Well, I don’t know, me personally I tend not to read books more than once, but I run into a lot of readers that do, and when I’m writing one, I try and find things to put in that they’ll miss on the first pass but they get in the second pass. You do the same thing?

Jim: Yes. I like to do a lot of doubled conversation and stuff like that, where there’s more than one meaning to what somebody’s saying, but you can’t realize that until later.

Michael S: Right, yeah.
Brian: And I always have to ask. I love this question, because everybody asks me, you know, what’s up with the picture, Jim? It’s like the thinker from the front.

Jim: Oh, uh. Okay, the last one that I had given them, it was actually a family portrait from Wal-Mart, and I’d Photoshopped my wife and kid out of it.
{laughter}
Jim: So it was kind of this miscellaneous thing cause it was one of those cheek to cheek family portrait things. It was kind of shaped weirdly and everything, so they said, “Okay, you’ve got to go do another one,” and I’m like, “Okay.” And we had just moved, and we had no money in the bank account, so I had to go to the photographer I can afford, rather than the one I would like?

Michael M: Okay.

Jim: And he’s like in there, “Yeah, okay, I can do one picture for you today, if you want to do it today,” And so I got two pictures, and there’s one of me scowlly– scowling and in the Alera books it’s the other one of me smirking, so.

Brian: Right, I was gonna say there’s just a slight difference between ‘em, you’re like, “Oh-kay!”

Jim: They had a choice between scowly Jim and smirky Jim.

Michael M: I’ve just got this vision of Jim chasing down a photo booth, somewhere in a Piggly Wiggly somewhere down south going, “I need a new photo shot!”

Jim: It was actually this little studio, this little loft room that was over a barbershop.

Michael S: What, you went to Sweeny Todd?
{laughter}

Jim: Sweeny Todd the photographer. The demon photographer of Main Street!

{more laughter}
Brian: Aww, that’s good stuff. That’s very good stuff.

Continued below,
LML

LogicMouseLives:
Dictation by LogicMouseLives

2008 The Dragon Page article (audio podcast)

PART 2

Summer: It’s good to see that the jokes are carrying over from your signings. How many people actually showed up at the Poison Pen, today, ‘cause that’s a small kind of store?

Jim: Um, well, I don’t know exactly how many people were there. They sold ninety-five copies of the hardback. A bunch of people brought more than that. I think it was in the neighborhood of a hundred folks.

Brian: Wow. That’s a good turn-out.
Michael S: That packs that venue, yeah.
Michael M: Have you seen the turn-out increase because of the Dresden Files series?

Jim: Well, I didn’t really actually get to go on the tours like this before the Dresden Files series, so it’s kinda hard to say, but they do seem to be larger than they were last year. I think it’s probably been helped along by the show.

Michael M: Even though the show has been cancelled and so forth, people still know it.

Jim: Yeah, and it was shown over the summer, and it’s still occasionally on, usually about once a month they have one of those SciFi all-day schedules of nothing but episodes of the Dresden Files.

Michael M: Well we just finally caught the un-edited two-hour original, which–the way it’s supposed to be, dammit!–version of Storm Front.

Jim: See, I haven’t even seen that one yet.

Michael M: You haven’t?
Summer: They aired it at three a.m. on a Saturday, that’s why.
Michael M: It’s amazing. It’s amazing!

Jim: Oh!

Michael M: It really is. It’s better than anything else that was in the series.

Jim: Yeah, the only long version of the pilot that I saw was, where there was supposed to be a special effect, they didn’t have any actual special effect. It just had, literally, like a Ken doll getting hit by a truck, and it’d say “guy gets hit by truck”.

Michael M: Well, the interesting thing out of the pilot, the uncut pilot, was Bob never shows up. You never see Bob, he’s just in the skull.

Jim: Right.

Michael M: The way it is in the books.

Jim: Oh, I didn’t know how they’d done that out. Originally they had been planning on doing some sort of computer animated skull, and it looked like Nicholas Cage in Ghost Rider, only a little bit cheesier.

{laughter}
Michael M: No, it was just a regular skull and put a little glowing effect around it and it worked out very nice.

Jim: Oh, I wish I’d seen that.

Michael M: It’s still–I’m sure it’s available. I’ve got it on my DVR, we’ll go hang out for a bit!

Jim: Yeah, okay.

Summer: Is your tour this year bigger, because of the series?

Jim: It is, but it’s shorter, because I had pneumonia earlier this year, and you know I think my wife told the publicity people, “No, you can’t have him for longer than X amount of time because he’ll get sick and I’ll have to deal with it when he gets home!”

{laughter}
Michael S: Yeah, the people who schedule these tours tend not to think in real terms. I mean for them, going across the street in New York is an arduous journey, and they, they just have no conception of how the United States is set up.
{Knowing laughter}
Summer: Yes, you’ll be in San Diego on Sunday, you’ll be in Texas on Monday, you’ll come back to Phoenix on Tuesday.
Michael S: Well, the one tour I did, we got into Nashville at eleven-thirty and were scheduled to be in Tennessee six the next morning.
Brian: Oh, nice!
Michael S: And their solution was, “Just order room service.”
{laughter}
Brian: That’s insane!
Michael S: Absolutely.
Brian: Wow. And I thought you guys had such a rock-star life. Boy, I’m disillusioned now.  
Michael S: Well, Brian, this is actually what was so bad on that tour, is it was Mike McDowell and me, and a limo picked us up at the airport in Nashville, and the two of us were such rubes we didn’t know if we were supposed to pay the guy or not!
Brian: That’s a long time ago.
Michael S: Should we tip him, or not? I mean–
Michael M: And then you get to the hookers and blow and you’re just–no idea!
{laughter}

Jim: Oh, I dunno about you, on this tour I gotta go back to my hotel room and then start a full day’s work once I get back there.

Michael S: There you go.

Jim: Yeah, I’ve still got deadlines coming up, so–

Michael S: Well, my tour was long enough ago that laptops were not available.

Jim: Oh, okay.

Summer: What are you working on?

Jim: Oh, right now I’m writing the fourth issue of the comic book.

{General acclaim}
Michael M: Very nice! Great segue! Boy, this guy’s a natural!

Jim: I thought so.

Michael M: Talk about the comic book, because this is also very cool!

Jim: The comic book is coming out, they’re doing an adaptation of the novels of the Dresden Files, and to introduce it they asked me to write a four issue intro. So I put together a four issue intro of a story that happens a couple of days before the beginning of Storm Front, and they just asked me to write it, so I did, which was actually, writing comic books is a lot harder than I thought it was gonna be, it takes a lot more writing than I thought was gonna be involved.

Brian: Yeah.
Summer: This is the Dabel Brothers, right?

Jim: Yeah, this was the Dabel Brothers. I think it’s being distributed through Random House, so.

Michael S: Have you learned the secret? I did a bunch of Star Wars comics. Have you learned the secret of the two page spread?

Jim: Mm, uh, oh Oh! Where you–

Michael S: Yeah, cause a two page spread, you write about a paragraph, the artist works for a week.

Jim: Awesome!

Michael S: And it takes care of two pages, so you get paid for two pages for one paragraph.

Jim: I’m taking that home tonight, back to the hotel tonight!

Michael S: Oh yeah. That is it. Two page spread, pages eleven and twelve, right in the middle of the book, you’re good to go.

Jim: Awesome! Thank you!

Michael S: There you go!

Jim: I’m taking notes too!
{laughter}
Jim: But it’s cool because the comic book is actually coming out very close to what I see in my head when I’m writing. I’ve actually got editorial control of the characters and the art, and all this other stuff and they let me pick the artist.

Summer: Wow.
Michael S: Oh really, who’d you get?

Jim: The artist is named Ardian Syaf. He lives in Indonesia. He’s new. I got him because a friend of mine, Katie Murphy, C. E. Murphy, she writes books.
{general recognition}
Jim: She played in his City of Heroes supergroup, and they did a comic book for their City of Heroes supergroup and everybody was like, “Oh my gosh, this guy’s really good!” And then he did another comic book for one of her characters, and she said, “You’ve gotta check this guy out, Jim!” And I checked him out and I was like, “Wow, this guy does seem to be really good,” and I sent his stuff to the Dabel brothers and said, “Hey, what do you think about this artist?” and they thought that they should offer him a five year exclusive contract.

{laughter}
Michael M: Ho–ly cow!
Michael S: Well there you go!

Jim: And he’s just amazing, he’s really good at just everything you wanted to do I’ll be able to write something and he can convey it really well from the stuff that I give him. And very good at drawing Harry’s expressions while he’s in the middle of all these situations. He’s really good at–what I wanted Harry to be when I saw him on screen was  to have that kind of Harrison Ford quality of, you know, whatever was going on he would kind of have that one second of that particular expression on his face that just encapsulated the situation how he must be feeling, you know? And Ardian’s really good at drawing Dresden like that.

Michael M: I want to back up for a second. You said that this was gonna be a prequel to Storm Front, so this actually follows in line with not the book series but the media series stuff?

Jim: Well no, it’s following the books, really.

Michael M: Oh, is it?

Jim: Yeah, this starts a few days before Storm Front starts, and I’ll segue it into Storm Front at the end of the first four issues. And then they’re gonna do Storm Front, which is gonna be, I think they said fourteen to eighteen issues to do all of Storm Front.

Michael M: Holy cow.

Jim: And then after that, I know at the beginning of Fool Moon, Harry doesn’t know some of the things that are going on ‘cause Murphy tried to call him earlier and didn’t get a hold of him, and Harry’s like, “Yeah, I was in Minnesota, somebody saw something in a lake,” so, after they get done with Storm Front, they’re probably gonna try to sucker me into writing another four issue thing of ‘somebody saw something in a lake’ and dropping that in there.

Michael M: Nice! So this could actually be a way to fill in all the gaps inside of the books, as well.

Jim: In a lot of ‘em, yeah. And it’s fun because you get to use the medium in different ways, to convey humor, to convey emotion. You know, there’s one issue where it starts off, the first page is Harry stumbling back out of the blue beetle with a black dog the size of a pony–you know this is the black dog in the Welsh/Celtic sense–coming after him and all you could see is like jaws and claws and fangs and muscle as he’s falling backwards, and then at the bottom, in the caption, I just get to write, “I’m a cat person.”

Part 3 to follow!
LML

LogicMouseLives:
Dictation by LogicMouseLives

2008 The Dragon Page article (audio podcast)

PART 3

{laughter}
Michael S: That is, I think, one of the fun things about comics is being able to do things, both also foreground–background.

Jim: Yes.

Michael S: You know when you’re writing a novel, you can’t describe what’s going on in the background without attracting too much attention to it.

Jim: Exactly, yeah.

Michael S: But you can have the artist do all sorts of weird stuff, and the reader’s sitting there going, “What? Wait a minute, hold it!”

Jim: Right.

Michael S: Yeah.
Michael M: Well, it’s interesting, this kind of brings up a topic that I’m not sure we’ve got time for right now, but–
Michael S: Oh sure we do, we’ll run long.
Summer: Yeah, sure! Come on. We got it.
Michael M: Oh, well okay. Is that, you’re so focused on writing the books as an author, when you start out. It’s like, “Oh I gotta get this book done, I gotta get this novel done.” But really, when you start thinking about it, there’s so many other avenues, and so many other cross-media that are out there, that as you write the books, as you write the novels, that leaving those little spots in there for other things like the comic books, “Where do I fill this in, where do I fill that in?” Do you think about that now, or have you ever thought about that?

Jim: Um. I haven’t ever really thought about it, but it’s worked out so well because I wanted to write the Dresden books, you know with the specific feeling of; you’re not getting to see everything Harry does all the time, you’re getting kind of the high point of his year, this is the worst spot of his year is right here, so we’ll do the story about that. But he’s meant to have other things that are going on, in the background, and to know that his world keeps spinning even when the books aren’t covering it.

Michael S: And I think with authors who are good, you do that on purpose, because that allows the readers to–gives them room to imagine stuff. I mean, with Conan-Doyle, you know there’s always the mysterious case of the giant rat of Sumatra. Doyle never wrote that story, but everybody who’s ever seen that case goes, “Wonder what the heck this was?”
Michael M: Exactly.
Michael S: You know, are they in Sumatra? Is the thing here? How does that break down.
Michael M: But we see that so often in authors where they end at page 399 on this book and start in right on page one in the next one there’s no gap, there’s no breaks, everything’s told. And it’s kind of nice to leave some of those gaps, and leave some of those holes.
Michael S: But it depends, now. When you said, when you were setting up these books, you had twenty different ideas, so you were viewing them as twenty episodes, as opposed to, necessarily that one long–
Michael M: Arc
Michael S: –every second tapestry.

Jim: Exactly, yeah, exactly.

Brian: Yeah, you have about a year pass between each book, pretty close to that, right?

Jim: It averages out to a year, yeah.

Brian: So you leave plenty of wiggle room for things in there.  

Jim: Yeah. Plus it’s way easier to keep track of, you know, how much time has gone by in the series, you know, and anything that makes it a little bit less work, I’m in favor of.

{laughter}
Michael S: Besides, when you kill Harry in book thirteen, you’ve got a couple of fill-in novels, you know, before you resurrect him again.
{laughter–the poor ignorant schmucks}

Jim: Yeah, there you go, right there.

{more laughter and general agreement}
Brian: Wait a minute, wasn’t that...Potter or something? I didn’t think that was Dresden.

Jim: That was a different Harry.

Michael M: Different Harry.
Summer: Zombie Harry!
{laughter}
Michael S: Hey, it worked for Sherlock Holmes. It worked for James Bond, so, you know, you might as well, {inaudible}
Brian: Hey that is a brilliant thing that’s happening inside of Torchwood! They’ve got the dead guy. We’ve got a zombie in Torchwood, that is so frickin’ cool. Are you a Torchwood fan, have you been watching that at all?

Jim: No, I haven’t watched it.

Brian: It was an interesting way to move that character forward!

Jim: Killing him and re-animating his corpse? Wow.

{General agreement}
Brian: Yeah, no, he’s pretty much, he’s the dead guy.
Michael S: But think about it from the actor’s point of view; “Oh, man, you know, you die in this script.” He’s thinking, “Uh oh, I better get my [resume?] out.” “No, no! It’s okay, you’re gonna be back!”
Brian: You’re in every show! Yeah, really other than just wandering around, you’ll look exactly the same!
Michael S: Parts of you’ll fall off as we go along, but–
Brian: No, no he’s not decaying.
Michael S: Oh okay. Well, that’s good.
Brian: Well, he’s got damage–er, anyway, we’re getting off on tangents here.
{laughter}

Jim: What? Us get off on tangents?

Summer: Not ever!
{General negation}
Michael M: Anyway–
Michael S: Though we should say something else about Harry dying just to start that rumor off, {inaudible} nuts.

Jim: Oh, by all means.  

Summer: How about this? Where are you appearing next, so people can try to catch up with you?
Michael S: And ask you about Harry dying and–
{laughter and general agreement}

Jim: Lemme think, lemme think. Tomorrow I’m going to Huston, the day after that is Chicago, then Saint Louis, and then Kansas City.

Michael M: M’kay.
Summer: All in a row?

Jim: Yeah, yeah. One city a day.

Summer: That’s crazy.
Michael S: It is, yeah.
Michael M: Wow.

Jim: It’s fun. You know, I can stagger around from place to place. I just have to try and look at things, you know, “Okay, where am I going next?” To the elevator. Okay, right. Now I’m in the elevator, where do I go? Well, let me get the paper out and look at it. Okay, I’m in room 518. Fifth floor. I just kind of have to go do one thing at a time until I get back home again.

Brian: You remember being here last time then, do you, Jim?

Jim: Oh, vaguely, yeah.

Summer: I hope so.

Jim: I remember the hotel I was staying in had one wall that was like bright chartreuse and one wall that was turquoise and then it had a three-color painting of John Wayne on the other wall, that was like–

Michael M: Nice!

Jim: It filled up the whole wall.

Michael M: So you went to the really nice hotel in Phoenix. Got it!

Jim: Apparently, I–
{laughter}
Jim: It had a fantastic TV though, I remember that much. I remember thinking, “I wish I had this TV at home!”

Michael S: You didn’t just slip it into your carry-on with you?

Jim: Nah, I would’ve, but I was carrying too many books.

Michael M: I was gonna say, “A pair of pliers and a screwdriver and it could be yours!”
Michael S: Well, you know, they give you those robes! They charge ‘em to your room, a hundred and fifty dollars. TV, same thing!
{general agreement}
Michael M: That’s right, listen to Dragon Page for all your larceny tips, folks!
{laughter, agreement}
Michael S? *Hick Voice*: Ah thought it was free, just like thuh soap!
{more laughter}

Jim: Oh man.

Summer: Train. Tracks. Off.
Brian: Yeah

Jim: Big time!

Michael M: I think we better shut this down quickly before we end up in Slice of SciFi or something. Thanks so much, Jim, for being here. It’s great having you any time you’re in town, obviously you’re welcome.

Jim: Well thanks for having me out.

Michael M: All right, we’ll be back with more of Dragon Page cover-to-cover—I almost said Slice—Dragon Page cover-to-cover right after this.

{exit music}

There ya go!
LML

Crawker:
Notes:
-Video says Jim Butcher in Washington, April 3 2007
-The beginning starts mid sentence, I think Jim is talking about correspondence about the TV show.
-Also, I couldn't quite catch the name of the comic book artist at the end of the video. Could someone double check it for me?
-And I'm not sure I got the name of the band he referenced in Proven Guilty right. Could someone check?
-I'll do the rest of the parts too, so reserve them for me. All four parts are now done.


Jim: {caught mid-sentence} And then the email comes in on Monday morning, well this is the first week I actually haven't had angry, ranty email on Monday morning-
{audience laugh covers what he says here}
Jim: I guess it led to be collected this week so...
{audience laughs}
Jim: But, yeah, it's cool, I'm cool with it, I like what they're doing, I wish that there was more explosions and kung fu.
{audience laughs}
Jim: But aparrently in the real world kung fu is dangerous, explosions are expensive. I'm like, what're you talking about, I animated a dinosaur and wrecked half the town!
{audience laughs and applause}
Jim: But you know, TV they have to sweat this stuff there, so... yes?
{points at member of audience}

Audience: Just how many obsolete skills are under Dresden?

{Jim and audience laugh}

Jim: A lot. I'm adding leatherworking to it next now, and after leatherworking we're done. Let me think, aside from the martial arts stuff, which I regard most of it as obsolete because, you know I would really prefer to have a shotgun in situations like that.
{audience laughs}
Jim: But aside from the martial arts stuff, there's the fencing, the archery, horseback riding, a lot of campcraft which is kinda obselete because I don't go camping anymore, you know. I've actually done a lot of horsemanship stuff, I've done drill riding and exhibition riding and stunt riding, once you've done cartwheels off the back of a running horse, you know, the minibikes weren't nearly as cool at camp after that!
{audience laughs}
Jim: The horse man. And chicks dig horses!

Female member of audience: Its true!

Jim: Yeah, it is, it is. But, that's a lot of writing, storytelling. I play guitar, badly, I write songs, badly. But I'm not assaulting anyone here with songs so that's ok.
{audience laughs}
Jim: But, yeah I mean you know, besides from the horsemanship and the swordsman and the archery and the fencing and so on, you know that's obselete enough for most. God there's so many things I'm good at! And there's been not much call for it these days! But  what else, yeah?

Audience: How far in advance do you tend to plan out your series, like how many books do you know what's going to happen?

Jim: I know what's gonna happen at the end of book 23. I planned the whole thing in advance as a class project, and so far its working. I'm scared now, I'm just gonna stick to it!
{audience laughs}
Jim: You know, so far its gone real well, I'm right there with that. But yeah, I've got about 20 of the case books planned out, like the ones we've had so far, where each do a case, and at the end I'll do a big old apocalyptic trilogy, for {sing-song voice} I am a child of Star Wars!
{Audience laughs and claps}
Jim: And who doesn't love apocalyptic trilogies, why he might not do it? Yeah I'll do about 20 case books, it could be 19 it could be 21 depending on how long it takes me to do stuff. The only thing I don't have planned out is Dresden's love-life, 'cause I wanted that to be something that happened along the way, and what I found out was that; falling in love with people screws up everything.
{audience laughs}
Jim: So, you know, I've gotta adjust how on the fly as we go.
{guestures for next question}

Audience: I know that you listen to music when you write-

Jim: Yeah.

Audience: And Queens Right got a mention in Proven Guilty, which I found. What do you listen to now?

Jim: Oh, now, with the advent of I have my own MP3 player-
{audience laughs}
Jim: Now I just pool in everything, I'm trying to think of whats on the MP3 player that I've listened to recently... She Wants Revenge, Apocalyptica, I don't know if you've ever heard of them, they're like somewhere in Scandanavian area, they're an electric cello band-
{audience laughs}
Jim: It's kinda Metallica playing classic music and I've got their copy of Night on Bald Mountain, which, you know, electric guitar music is awesome. I'm kinda going blank here, I was listening to it just the other day, but lets see, there's Evanesence on there and a little bit of Linkin Park, hail Chicago, and a bunch of the old stuff too, I'm discovering Led Zeppelin for the first time now, so I've got the immigrant song on there.
{Jim squeals sings}
Jim: I love that, it's just so over the top. A whole bunch of mixed up stuff now, lots of righteously angry music is the kinda music I tend to listen to, you know, where it's furious young men singing, about things that matter to them, and so we've got a lot of Offspring in there, yeah they're furious. Oh and I've got every bit of Wierd Al polka I can find.
{audience laughs}
Jim: So yeah, polka will never die! But, so that's what I'm listening to now. Yes sir?

Audience: Any plans on writing a Michael book?

Jim: Well, it's gonna depend on whether I've had anymore children and if they're through college yet or not.
{audience laughs}
Jim: I've actually, I've had a notion of writing a bunch of books like, after I'm done with the Dresden books, so I've got grandkids that need to go to college or something, I can do a series of books called The Dresden Contracts, where I can go back in and write about a bunch of stories of people that happened between the books, but no plans on just a Michael, Michael book as it is, but he's in the next book though, so. I'm working on, the next book's called Small Favour, right now, 'cause Harry still owes to who, so that's what I'm working on. Yes?

Audience: If you could choose a fury for yourself, what would it be?

Jim: If I could choose a fury for myself? I'd want a caffeine fury-
{audience laughs}
Jim: I really would, caffiene fury right here? Ok, right, now I'm ready to go. Or alternately maybe a warm milk fury. It's the whole I have to go until I collapse, you know, if I could learn to sleep in, I think if I lived on a planet that had about a thirty-six or thirty-seven hour day, I'd be much better off than I am. But no, I checked around and we haven't been able to find any houses for sale there so, you know. But yeah, that would be it for me. Yeah?

Audience: Any more in your books, I just got the feel for, what, fourteen pages on what he did before he became Harry?

Jim: What, you mean the short story thats out there? Restoration of faith?

Audience: Yeah! Any more of that?

Jim: Class project also, I got a B.
{audience laughs}

Audience: Are you gonna bring in a book about that, anything from the early years, before he became all-mighty, powerful?

Jim: Yeah, we'll get some of that, but, well you'll have to wait for that to show up. I don't want to reveal too much about it. We'll get some more, and then it's always possible we might be able to hit on some more in one of the other mediums we're looking at. Right now we're talking to people about comic books and apparently somebody's talking to Sci-Fi about an animated series, and I had to swap email about a possible  massive multiplayer online role-playing game today, so..
{audience murmers}
Jim: This is all just talk, until it happens, you know, maybe it happens, maybe it doesn't. But it's fun to talk about! And I got some Anita Blake comic books from Ern Stobble 'cause I signed some books and gave them to him, turns out he's a Dresden fan, so that's cool, I get Anita Blake comic books!

Crawker:
Notes:
-I couldn't quite hear the name of the Codex Alera book the audience member was talking about, but I assume it was the one before Captain's Fury.
-Also some muffling covers the audio when Jim is talking about Captain's Fury, can anyone make out what he said?


Audience: How did Harry come to Chicago?

Jim: My writing teacher told me I couldn't use Kansas City.
{audience laughs}
Jim: Yeah, she looked at me and she said "You know this is a good idea and all Jim, but really this is enough like Laura Hamilton's work as it is, you don't need to set it in Missouri.
{more laughter}
Jim: She says "Pick another city." What other city? She says "It doesn't matter, just another city somewhere." and there was a globe on her desk and there were three American cities on it, New York, Chicago and LA. And I said OK, Chicago, and she said that'll be fine.
{laughter}
 Jim: It was a class project! You know, but it turns out like it was a really good choice, because now I've got contacts with a bunch of people there I'll be able to call up and say "Hey, I need you to drive by the east wall Of Graceland Cemetery and tell me what it looks like on your way to work today." "OK I can do that!" And when people call and say "You got this detail wrong in Chicago! I live there and I know!" or "I see this view out my front house, the front door of my house so I know you're wrong" I was like "Ahah! Can I put you on my list of people I can ask about?" "Oh yes!!"
{audience laughs}
Jim: So that's fun. And plus Chicago, its one of the older American cities, well, for Americans, what is it, people in America think 100 years is a long time, while people in Europe think 100 miles is a long drive?
{audience laughs}
Jim: But yeah, it's one of the older American cities, it's got a lot of history to it, it's got a lot of messed up things that have happened there, and much fodder to be used. I've still gotta have the Cubs coming to Dresden and have him explain to the cub "There's nothing I can do about the freaking billy goat! You should've let the goat in!"
{audience laughs}
Jim: But yeah, a wizard's death curse, the billy goat thing, it's a done deal, it's over. Anything else? Yes sir?

Audience: What was the writing class you started with?

Jim: It was the professional writing class called "Write a Genre Fiction Novel" at the University of Oklahoma at the School of Professional Writing in the Journalism department, and it was being taught by Debbie Chester, who thought that she was qualified to tell us how to write a novel, just because she had forty of her own published.
{audience laughs}
Jim: You know, but I had an English Lit degree.
{more laughter}
Jim: She was wrong! You at the back here, of course, yes sir?

Audience: When's the next Codex book coming out?

Jim: The next Codex book? Lets see, it was due February 1st, I finished it Monday-
{audience laughs}
Jim: Last Monday! And it's gonna be out in December, and the next one's due December 1st, I've got the next Dresden book due June 1st so I'm writing all through April, I'm touring all April and writing, so I've got to rush, you know, after I get done here I have to go back to the hotel room and work until two in the morning writing, and I've got the next one due in December, it's not gonna be here before the fith next year, so {muffling covers audio} but  that's just a guess, so maybe they're just trying to tell me I can do it two months in advance so that it comes in on time.
{audience laughs}
Jim: I wouldn't put it past them, they're crafty in here
{more laughter}

Audience: {can't hear word} was really good, you know, you had to stop and re-read that last chapter, twice, to make sure I got it right.

Jim: Oh, yeah, yeah. That was a fun ending I did and I mean to start on from there and the Beta readers who read the Captain's Fury, they were quite happy. Yes?

Audience: How did you come up with the idea for Codex Alera?

Jim: On a bet.
{audience laughs}
Jim (indignantly): What? What did you expect?
{more laughter}
Jim: Oh, I'm sorry, I was supposed to tell you I'm brilliant and it came to me in a dream, and the angel Raphael came to me and said "You! I will grant you the fires of heaven for inspiration!" No, um, there was a bunch of us, I was an internet loudmouth, which sounds like the opening of, maybe a Disney movie or something, but, I was an aspiring writer, I was on several different writing lists and we were talking about stuff and I was an internet loudmouth, and I'm still an internet loudmouth, its just people sometimes give you a little more credit than they should because you have books published. Which they probably shouldn't.
So I try not to be too loud anymore. I say that... And there was this big discussion, on one side it was, all these folks over here were arguing that the idea was holy and sacred, and if you had a great idea nobody could possibly screw it up, no matter how bad they were, and they held up Jurassic Park as an example.
{audience laughs}
Jim: Genetically engineered dinosaurs! Look! It couldn't fail! It couldn't miss! And then I, mostly because I was being contrary, not because I necessarily thought they were right about Jurassic Park anyway my contension of it was that the idea is just the middle of it, you know, a good enough presentation can take even a lame idea and write an exceptional story out of it, it was all install of the writer, of how they presented it. And so it was one of those flame wars that goes on, and it was me against many, it was an epic battle, and the guy finally said; "You know what?" he said "Why don't you put your money where your mouth is. I'll give you a terrible idea, and you write it into a book and lets see what happens." I said "No! You give me TWO terrible ideas!"
{audience laughs}
Jim: Because I was an internet loudmouth!
And he says "Fine! First terrible idea: Lost Roman legion, I am so sick of the lost Roman legion, all the lost Roman legions should've been found by now, I'm tired of reading that story."
{audience laughs}
Jim: I'm like "OK, lost Roman legion, give me, what's the next one?" He says "Pokémon".
{more laughter}
Jim: When I tell people that, it kinda often changes their whole perspective of the whole Codex Alera affair. Brutus I choose you!
{more laughter}
Jim: And I said "Fine! I'll take those and I'll do it!" And I went and so I started looking at the ideas, and the lost roman legion was the ninth Iberian legion, which vanished, and I started looking them up historically, and I started, what's in this legion? And about half of it is the cosmopolitan Roman types who ran the legion, and this was long after the citizen soldier days, and then the other half were German mercenaries, and Ok, what kind of support stats did the legion have? And we think they had about this, and so there were this many people with them, and what kind of camp would they have? And I said Ok so we've got this amount of people, so I took all those people, I scooped the people up and I dropped them off in Alera, and I said Ok you're going to go over here in my fantasy world, boom. And I said OK now,I've gotta take my fantasy world, so I watched Pokémon.
{laughter}
Jim: And I didn't have to look real far, because I had a kid! He was like seven! And he had this whole thing about his Charmander deck and it would beat my Mr. Mime "NO! It defeats Mr. Mime!" {does mime hands} I used to do mornings for cards with my kid every morning, and opening of new Pokémon packages was a ceremony you know. "Specials! Wooh! Did you get a foil?"
But anyway, so you look at Pokémon. And what pokémon really is is, well, pokémon is also a marriage of two ideas, and the first one obviously is professional wrestling, and the second one is the literalisation of the Shinto religion! Shinto religion tells that there's a spirit of the devine in all natural things. And if you have a mountain there is a great big spirit inside it, and you'd better respect that! And if you've got a pebble, there's one in that too, and you should respect it 'cause it's the right thing to do, but if you don't it probably can't do anything about it.
{laughter}
Jim: And Pokémon is just kinda a literalisation of that, and you've got these spirits of the elements and they fly around and they look like plastic hawks for some reason. And then they fight.
So I decided, lets set up a world I said, well I've gotta have a good name for it because I don't have a good name to call them, I don't know what to call them. And what am I gonna call them? And Big Trouble in Little China's on, set on replay on my VCR, and we get to the part where the old Chinese guys are talking, and one of them says "All motion in the universe is caused by tension between positive and negative FURIES!" And I'm like "FURIES!" So, that's kinda sorta vaguely Roman, so, at least classical, so I took it! I said OK, so I'm gonna call them furies, and we have a literal Shinto kinda world, where we've got these natural spirits, we'll call them furies, we'll take our Romans, I threw them in there with them, I said, here, we'll give you about 2000 years to ferment, and form a society. And so I decided they'd form this basic original Roman legion, half Roman townies and half German mercenaries, kinda forming this bifurcated society, all based around, you know, they had these big cities, but then surrounding the cities were these small, kinda very dramatic freeholds of small clans, societies, and I put 'em all together like that and I said OK, you know, this is the Romans dream, they're gonna base their civilisation on who has the most personal power, you know, and so the guys that can actually do the most are the guys who are in charge, and have the most authority, and its just the 'we have power, we want to hold it' kind of personality's dream. And so I put the Aleran society together the way it was, and there's still a lot of things that I haven't told them about in the book because they don't know, but I went into a ridiculous amount of detail on it.

Audience: When you sold it did you split the Pokémon types into versions?
{audience laughs}

Jim: No, no, I never mentioned that, suprisingly they never picked up on it! Although I did read a review on Amazon the other day saying "So one of the books was really good but it really reminded me of pokémon"
{Jim raises his arms in celebration as the audience cheers}
Jim: My work here is done.
{laughter}

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