That castle that Marcone flew in to take place that clear has it's own history, it already has it's own spells, where was it from and what was it's name?

It's from Scotland.

And what was it's name?

I'm not telling you the name of the historical castle. I can't do that because then people show up places and again, I can't do that because it's guys like you that have ruined it, you know.

laughter

Does it have mythological significance? Could it have been something people would have thought "oh maybe this was Camelot once?"

No no it was just a little castle but there happened to be somebody there who wanted to make it nice and impregnable.

Someone whose name begins with M?

I'm not gonna tell you who.

Come on, that's like half the characters of the Dresden Files.

You're right, I should have just said M.

Because we know from Peace Talks that it was the Tuatha right? They at least enchanted it so.

They were the craftsmen who built it but anyway.

Well that was fun but switching gears again, or do you have a follow-up, director?

No.

Okay, so we wanted to ask about dragons because it's another one of the things where it's like if you go back in enough history that the story feels like it's changed or maybe we're just getting two pieces of the story right. So when Ebenezar says that he was responsible for Tunguska and Dresden says that the last dragon died there, was that the same event?

I don't think it was the last time a dragon was killed but it was one of the times a dragon was killed. Dragons getting killed is a big deal they're events like Tunguska.

And Eb was involved in that?

Yes.

Alright.

So was the resulting explosion, was it his power that's needed to take out the dragon or is that the result of the dragon essentially blowing up?

Well I'm not gonna tell you that. I mean we've got to have Harry worry about that when he's fighting his own dragon, don't we.

Of course.

What does Vadderung have on Ferrovax that kept Ferro from ratting out Dresden during Peace Talks?

The fact that Vadderung could have started a fight that killed Ferrovax. Yeah I mean they could have gone- that was all they were doing- they were sitting there waiting for one of them to pull the trigger. They were basically two gun fighters that were sitting there for the whole meeting with a hand on a pistol the whole time. And that was their dynamic. Ferrovax does not like Vadderung at all.

Is it more personal? Does he have any connection to being the world serpent or is that just because they're on the same powerlevel?

You'll have to see.

He's not gonna answer that one.

Nothing ventured.

Alright, are Hugin and Munin primarily bodyguards or do they function as spies as well?

Oh Hugin and Munin? Mostly bodyguards. They can go out and do stuff but they're not somebody that Odin sends out on a regular basis to do stuff. Odin sends them out on missions along the lines of "alright, Loki got Thor in trouble again, go arrange things so Thor can get out, don't let him know you're there," that's the kind of mission Hugin and Munin get. They do a lot of cleanup behind the scenes and they kind of resent the other gods, they don't have to do all the work.

They resent people like Harry.

Well, they just sort of dislike humans. Humans are complicated, they're always doing things, they're always changing, humans are the worst.

Nobody likes humans.

Really, I mean honestly.

Not even humans.

So the einherjar are revenants, they're people returned, how is that magic related to necromancy and the fact that the einherjar don't need a drum but they are dead and returned?

It's not necromancy it's something else (the soulfire + necromancy mystery remains)- it's one of those things that.... yeah I'll just tell you, I don't know if this is gonna come out anywhere, it's soulfire.

Holy fuck.

Where could that possibly come up? I mean, we don't know anybody who has that power, so.

Yeah that's kind of what Odin's got over the other gods and why the gods don't mess with him, Odin's got fuckin soulfire unintelligble but I heard "can be real".

That's handy. Is that something he got as essentially a result of staying mortal and active in all this? The kind of thing he couldn't have ever gotten if he had stayed what he once was?

That seems like a very clever theory.

I'm known for those. Alright so now we've got to go to the real stuff that you're never gonna answer.

We're coming up on time though so.

That's true, but we can skip if we want to get a couple in.

Let's get one or two more in, we'll do a couple more.

Alright, so, then as much as we can get about Nemesis now that we can see it's taken someone particularly close to Dresden and his brother. Is there really just one way that it spreads from person to person/being to being or are there particular requirements that have to be met?

Not terribly. The only limit it has is how many places it can be at once, it can only be in so many places at once.

But it's more than a couple because we've seen at least a few at the same time.

More than a couple but there's a limit.

Less than forty thousand starborn.

Less than forty thousand starborn, correct. The whole point of the starborn is that they don't have to put up with the nonsense from the outsiders, stuff like Nemesis taking them over.

Reality's white blood cells.

Yeah.

Nice. If we want to continue with the train of thought then for a little bit, so there have been some implications that Thorned Namshiel or at least his coin bearer at one point was infected. If a coin bearer is infected is it just the host or does the angel get some of it as well?

Really fascinating question.

It was worth a shot, alright.

I mean, given developments that could mean it could go south fast.

Exactly.

Well in Cold Days Justine was on the island, did Demonreach know she was infected? That she was a walker?

No, Justine was there, lemme think... yeah she actually got onto the island, that's right, she did. Yeah. That was in Cold Days, where was it in Cold Days I'm trying to remember now.

She made it to the end I think, wasn't she one of the ones inside the circle?

That's right, they rolled up inside it. Yeah, the thing about Nemesis is, you can't tell when Nemesis is there unless you figure it out. It's from the outside, there's no magic that helps you with that, there's no way to tell. It's why it's scary. But you can figure it out and also Nemesis is an outsider and while it probably knows humans and the mortal world better than any other outsider it's still this alien entity that sort of only learns things by looking at it and sort of puzzling it together. It doesn't really understand humans, it understands humans about as well as, if you had a really, really, really big huge block of code and then you had somebody start reading it to tell what it did. You could have somebody that read the code and figured it all out but I mean it's a /big/ thing to figure out and humanity is sort of the same way so when Nemesis is looking at them it can't duplicate human stuff all the time, it can't duplicate human reactions all the time, it's imperfect, it's this alien thing. It can be anywhere but it can't be right all the time. But you also don't get any favours fighting it either, you have to fight it with like logic and intuition.

So if there's no magical way to detect it does that count for Grigori and fallen angels as well then? Because Mac was dangerously close to her in that scene we're thinking about. She was tending to his wounds was the particulars of the scene I think so.

Oh yeah that's right she was. Oh goodness, wow.

laughter

Ooops, we were helping again.

And Uriel was looking at her too when showing Harry the ghost of right now with Thomas and Justine.

Right.

Uriel doesn't know? Or did he?

Jim shakes his head Stuff from the outside, man.

So the British guy that's in Demonreach, the one that told Harry to piss off in the beginning of Skin Game, when did he get put into Demonreach? What was the warden that interred him there?

The one that interred him there was the first one.

surprised looks

I told you.

That's interesting cross-talk because you said that it couldn't possibly be Merlin because we wouldn't understand him.

Because his British would be too out-there.

But he's as old as Merlin, presumably.

And is perfectly intelligible in British.

Merlin gets away with time travel, he could have done it twenty minutes ago for all we know.

This is Jim bamboozling us again.

Once we know we'll think back on this and be like "that son of a..."

The original Merlin did it because Dresden's the original Merlin, right? I'm just kidding.

Merlin was supposed to age backwards wasn't he?

Right. Alright, do we want to call time, we want to be conscientious.

I've gotta wrap things up for today.

Okay.

We'll have to see you next time.

We appreciate it, we've got through quite a bit but we could go forever if you let us so.

Oh yeah totally, lets have boundaries, lets be professional.

Alright.

We want you to come back so.

unintelligible in the future okay?

Yep definitely thank you so much for your time.

waves goodbye

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGgyJNMA4q8

Posted by
u/TheCuriousFan
3 years ago

Dresden Files Podcast Episode 77 Transcript
Battle Ground
starts midway through a story about Brutus and Fenris

...He'll just sneak up on him and jump on his tail, just jump on his tail, all the claws on his tail. Bru jumps up and runs away, Fenris takes his spot by the fire. That's just how it works around here, Fenris is the boss.

That's true love.

Alrighty, you want me to get started with all the spoilers and stuff?

Do it.

I'm on the official "we've got a script" today, so look at us, we've got our big podcast pants on so...

Nice.

So we are talking to the source of all knowledge about the Dresden Files, so if you are watching this and don't want to get spoiled, probably avert your eyes. We're also going to swear and shit because we're adults here so I hope that's okay with everybody.

We will be disappointed when we get told no.

So jumping in we've got a list of questions, we expect he's gonna answer about half of them but we wanted to get some of the bookkeeping stuff out of the way so the next project that we understand you're probably working on is The Olympian Affair, have you been making progress on it?

Yeah I'm working on it, it's one of those things where it's a very different kind of writing than the Dresden Files, there's a much different voice for the characters and they kind of have a non-standard dialect and so on that I'm trying to maintain and... It's a very different process than writing a Dresden Files book, writing a Dresden Files book is just like "okay what am I going to do to Harry today?", it breaks down to that simple, it's how do I make Harry's day worse today. When I'm doing stuff in multiple viewpoint books I've got lots of characters to juggle I've got lots of decisions to make about how I present things. Writing in third person is a very different process than writing in first person because you've got so many more choices to make. Another way of saying that is that you've got much more rope with which to hang yourself. But I ultimately I think third person books have more potential for- there's more ways, varying ways you can present your story. First person book, Dresden pretty much has to walk into the room and get punched in the nose in order to get anything done but when you're going third person you can show things so many more ways, it's both more fun and much more stressful.

You mentioned previously that there might be a novella between the Cinder Spires book we already have and The Olympian Affair, do you have a title for that yet?

No I don't really have a title yet I'm working on it. It's Benedict on a mission, Benedict gets sent out to go do cool Warriorborn stuff with a team of Warriorborn suicide squad guys and so off they go to manage things. But it's really just kind of a setup for the opening of a book but I kind of want to get the story going I had a great idea for how to get more cats into the story so I had to do a novella at that point.

Are you still sticking with the pattern for the Cinder Spires books where it's either three or six or nine?

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if I'm going to do three of them or six of them or nine of them. We'll kind of see how the second one does. Hopefully I'll be able to do something cool whichever way it turns out, I think if I can do six it'll be pretty great it'll be about how long Codex Alera was, if I can do nine it should come home to a pretty thundering epic end, that would be good.

So in terms of-we talked before we went live here you were thinking twenty two books plus the big trilogy, do you have a rough idea for the titles of the books between Battle Ground and the trilogy?

Not really. I know some of the titles, I know the next one's coming up-I'm not writing Mirror Mirror next I'm writing a different book next in the Dresden Files because I decided that after Battle Ground if we just jumped forward into an alternate reality rather than actually seeing what happened to this one that I really think it would undermine a lot of cool story stuff. As it is I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take a little bit of time and I'm gonna write something different than the normal Dresden. Normally Dresden is I write a book that's about his worst weekend of the year and that's what the Dresden Files is really about, Harry Dresden's worst weekend of the year. But the next one I think I'm gonna write is gonna take place over the course of a year and it's going to kind of show what it's like-

We'll follow him for a whole year?

Yeah, yeah. Essentially what I'm gonna do is write once a month I'm gonna be writing a book and it's like "this is how you recover when your world gets blown up" and that's what happened to Dresden whether you like it or not. That's what happened in the last book and you don't just take that and move along, just keep moving along with the themes you've got to stop and look at things once in a while, you've gotta stop and look at yourself once in a while. So I think that's what we're going to do in this next book there's g- I mean we will have the normal Dresden Files nonsense Brutus comes in with a toy here's Brutus everybody in case you wondered if you would get to see Brutus today. We'll be doing a lot of the normal Dresden Files nonsense but it'll be a little bit more spread out and he's got to survive twelve dates with Lara Raith and a bunch of stuff like that so it's gonna be busy.

Damn, that's a lot of dates with Lara Raith.

If the other book titles are still open to negotiation I still want to throw my two cents in to have Heel Turn be the wrestling book.

Heel Turn? Yeah not bad. I don't know I'm kind of going for more a pro wrestling vibe. I would probably-if I didn't already have the title structure going I would have called it Turnbuckle because that's such a great wrestling word and you don't really hear it anywhere else. But I think the wrestling book will probably be called Body Slam so.

Okay, I have to think about that. I liked Heel Turn for a really long time but-

It's just because EG advocates it every episode.

It's got the double meaning it's got people just instantly becoming a bad guy that you didn't realise were gonna be it's got that you know-

It's not bad.

I have methods to my madness.

Brutus walks in again Go on, go settle down. I gotta work, we'll play later.

So I think you said previously that the time travel book is probably going to be book number twenty two.

Yeah it should be the last one, I think.

So is that when we learn who fixed Little Chicago?

I mean gosh I just planned the time travel book to just go through and fix all the inconsistencies that are in the series that- I know there's some there and there'll probably be more. Honestly the whole reason to do a time travel story is just to do that. And then you get to play around with time travel.

Protip for any author out there, just make sure to say that's going to be time travel, any mistakes you make just fix up there.

Right. Gimme just one second I'm gonna let Bru out to chase the squirrels so he's not in here with us.

Squirrel chasing is important.

I mean if there's a squirrel moving in on his territory it's got to be put in it's place right?

Clearly the cat is more dangerous to it anyway.

Alright what's next?

So I'm assuming partial answer is going to be this next book that kinda manifested where we kind of follow Harry through the year but you added so much of the extra story stuff in Battle Ground is that kind of the intention where-I can't imagine you're kind of going to give us the answers to everything in this one book right we've got stuff with McCoy, we've got Lara, we've got the castle, Justine, Listens To Wind, we've got like River Shoulders-where's this all gonna-where do we get answers?

Oh eventually. laughter I'm not gonna tell you where you get the answers my gosh then you can skip all the other books and just buy the one with the good stuff.

Oh yeah, we would skip books. laughs.

Because those would be the books with more questions.

We're gonna get some answers in the next book we'll get some more answers in the one after that although fewer. I mean Mirror Mirror is basically we're gonna jump over into the next universe and see how things are going. And we'll sort of be able to see-that universe will be a few years ahead of where Harry's universe is now so you'll sort of be able to see the direction things are going and that should be a lot of fun. Things got worse faster in the mirror universe that we're going to-there's actually an entire spectrum of parallel realities that are existing in the Dresden Files universe and this is just going to be the nearest parallel reality that you can get to that's significantly different. Because there's always a cloud of parallel realities that are almost exactly the same but not quite.

Yeah it's kind of like, I don't know if you've ever seen Stargate or those other sci-fi shows where one new choice basically means one new reality. Wherever there's a fork they split in a row and there's a new reality.

Yeah which is interesting because if you look at that from you know, Uriel's point of view then suddenly the battle of good and evil is all about choices because every choice starts creating more and more different realities, more and more universes eternally branching universes and are they going to be places where good things happen or places where bad things happen? That's kind of an epic struggle if looked at that way.

That's actually interesting because we've talked about that on the podcast several times. I think we all agreed on that even if there's a lot of realities there's one Uriel above all realities, is that how you see it?

Sort of. Yeah I mean Uriel's an archangel so he's like-he's kinda omnipresent in the universe in many ways. He's one of God's deputies he kind of has enormous amounts of power, all the archangels do. But yeah that would be the case, is that when you get to the really high levels of power, beings like Uriel are the same everywhere they go. So poor Uriel has to deal with millions and millions of Harry Dresdens because they're always causing problems and they're always making choices and they're always creating new branches for the universe so poor Uriel just has to deal with so many copies of this guy.

There are actually multiple Uriels but they're all kind of copies of the same guy.

No, no. There's one Uriel and he's everywhere. He just exists through all of the bits of time, but for example if you go to an alternate reality there would be a parallel Mab and the two Mabs would be parallel and they probably would be able to like know about each other and talk to each other if they wanted to but they're just really fucking busy they've got a lot to do. But Mab next door would be like "you work for me next door? Well now you work for me, while you're here you work for me".

Why not take advantage?

Yeah exactly, I mean it's Mab, what other way could she react you know. But she's-Mab is tremendously powerful but she's not powerful on a scale like Uriel is where he's in the parallel realities next door and spreading out and so on.

How do the Mothers compare to Uriel? Are they in all realities or are they in parallel?

They're much closer to Uriel because-well I don't want to talk about that yet I'll put it in the books. But the Mothers are much closer to being Uriel they're essentially nigh-unto being gods on the level with you know like Zeus or the Native American gods or the Hindu gods or something like that, they're kind of on that same scale.

So all the big things that stayed immortal and godly and powerful and have to-

And kind of had to take a step back from all the mortal affairs that were going on as a result. Most of the gods did that they were just sort of "okay we're gonna take a step back, we're not really gonna be involved, we're gonna become professional wrestlers" you know that sort of thing.

As for a question that will get a "I'm not gonna tell you", when do we get Thomas back?

When do we get Thomas back? Bold of you to assume we do.

You can't say that.

Maybe Thomas is just stuck there forever. I don't know, I don't know exactly, that's one of those things where it might be a while before we get an answer to that question, I don't know the answer myself.

We'll see him in Mirror Mirror.

It's gonna be weird because Thomas has been one of the most consistent characters as of appearing in each book so we're gonna miss him.

Well you could say he's consistent or you could say that he just hasn't grown very much, I'm not sure which is the case. I suppose you'd have to date him to find out. unintelligible

He's probably the character who's been in most books since he was introduced I think he was-he's shown up in one way or another in every book, there was one he wasn't in and I don't remember which one but besides that he's been in every book so it's gonna be a little weird not having him.

He's the muscle, you know. He's Harry's go-to thug you know so..."I might need somebody beat up, better call Thomas".

So one of Mab's thugs, Cat Sith, when do we get to see him again?

Oh, I don't know if he survived that.

Because no one survives falling into Lake Michigan.

Well yeah, not everyone. Not everyone has queen Mab there to save them the way Dresden did. Lemme think, yeah I don't know if we'll see Cat Sith again or not, we'll have to see.

We miss the murder kitty.

unintelligible

I will say he was a great character.

Great because he treated Harry the way a cat ought to treat Harry, and that was really the only reason people liked him, because he's a cat, he's giving Dresden no respect, this is great. You know, so.

Well we already had a cat for that it's just that this one can articulate it.

Yeah exactly.

So on the other seasonal side of the spectrum, Eldest Gruff, who seems like he would have been a handy kind of guy to have around in a giant titanic battle, was he maybe off doing something with Lea, Summer helping in that respect at the gates a little more or?

Anybody who wasn't-the reason you didn't see Lea around was because she was doing stuff that Mab would normally be doing. Mab had to be in Chicago overseeing that so Lea was at the gates overseeing the defence of the outer gates. And basically anybody that didn't-most of the folks you that didn't see that are involved in the faerie courts, if they weren't involved in that fight they were at the outer gates fighting.

So Eldest Gruff, is it fair to say he's kind of like the counterpart to Lea for Titania even if their roles are a little different in terms of power and responsibility?

No, nowhere close. Eldest Gruff is- I guess he's-I guess it's /close/, he's an advisor to Titania the way that Lea is to Mab. Neither Mab nor Titania take advice very well I'll tell you that much.

Great job to have.

Yeah well I mean when you're grotesquely powerful and people are afraid of you the advice comes in a little tepid anyway.

Well it's saved Harry's life enough.

Yeah. But uh-anyway I'm sorry.

When you wander like this that's when we're getting the real information so please-

Oh I know, I know, that's why I'm shutting my mouth.

We've just got to send him out on a tangent and we'll get there.

Right, it's why you've got to ask these open ended questions. Let the faeries just talk, so. So speaking of which, just keeping up with the character theme have you squared if Maggie Dresden is going to have powers yet and if so when do we get a taste of that?

I don't know yet and it depends on when I do anymore stories with her. I've got several ideas for what I could do with her and I'm not sure which one I'm gonna go with yet. I don't think she's just gonna be daddy's little girl and just be a duplicate of Dresden I don't think that works at all.

That would be too easy for him too.

It would be simple but I think I would have more fun doing something else so we'll see which way I go. None of the plans that I have have her being wizard Maggie but we'll see what happens.

So what about our boy Kincaid? Is he gonna come back and are we gonna-is he looking for a job right now I guess?

Well I mean if you're good at killing people you can pretty much always get work unfortunately in this world. But that said, he's out doing low profile stuff which is to say working for mortals. He hasn't been doing much in the supernatural world lately he's all depressed.

Aww.

Well I mean he shot her only friend, she booted him.

Her best friend shot her other best friend right, so.

Well Kincaid wasn't her friend he was hired.

Poor Kincaid.

So in the battle with Drakul and the vampire nobles and everything we see several other high profile wardens, you know at least wardens we're used to seeing around that aren't usually pains in Harry's backside get vanished one way or another. When are we going to see what happens to Wild Bill and Yoshimo for example? They're presumably turned or going to be so.

Yeah we'll see a little bit of that in the next book I think.

Well that's rough.

As to follow up on that, where did Chandler go?

Right? laughter Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know yet. I wish I could tell you, I don't know yet.

I bet you wish you could tell us.

Well now I don't wish I could tell you, but I wish I knew.

You wish you could withhold willingly.

Yeah I wish I could willingly withhold it, as it is it's involuntary and not as much fun.

Exactly.

It just looked really cool so we went with that so yeah. So other characters that were notably missing from Peace Talks and Battle Ground were the likes of Cowl and Kumori and obvious people working for the Circle or the Black Council that we're aware of. What were they busy doing?

Not being around Ethniu that's for sure.

They didn't want to get stepped on?

Yeah exactly. What point is there in showing up to that? The Black Council is not a go out in their masses and do battle sort of organisation.

Probably wouldn't last very long if they were.

Yeah exactly. The White Council smashes people like that.

Was there anyone significant that was at the battle of the bean that you didn't get to namedrop?

Probably. I mean, essentially if you lived in Chicago you were involved in it somewhere. I was tempted for a while to do a bunch of short stories about just like the little things that were happening along the way. You know, what happened at Mac's during the battle for example, what happened elsewhere? You know what was Morty doing during that fight? That sort of thing. There's plenty of people who were involved and just, you know, Dresden didn't see them or he never ran across them or they stayed at home. But essentially the city just went crazy for a night and any of the supernatural folks who were doing stuff were probably doing something-were probably scrambling. And you know I'm gonna be honest with you Battle Ground was a really great place for me to just kill a bunch of people so I didn't have to remember them anymore (surprisingly low number of characters permanently removed here unless Cristos and Listen really did die) you know, so.

Good reason.

Yeah, yeah, I mean every once in a while you've gotta kinda sweep through with some kind of apocalypse and clean out the cast a little on these long books or else you're just gonna lose track of everyone.

Well speaking of sweeping through people, so... Ethniu has this superweapon, the Eye of Balor, now that Harry has it is that the kind of weapon that someone even of the level of Mother Winter would appreciate or would she just kind of find that thing quaint and be like "aw that's cute but"?

Oh no, no, that was a weapon of Balor, he was a titan. He was one of the big bads of-he was the big bad of Celtic mythology. But yeah Balor's weapon is something that was so formidable that /the gods/ had to be afraid of it, it was something that-there were multiple stories about it, yeah I mean they're all gonna be impressed. You know at the end of the day when somebody puts a .44 magnum in your face he's got a .44 magnum in your face and that's what Dresden has, the Eye of Balor is a .44 magnum to anybody, it's dangerous.

Is it even like dangerous to Uriel? Or his boss?

If Uriel just stood there in it, yeah, I mean he wouldn't, it could kill him I mean it's- again it's one of those- I mean Uriel is... he's so powerful that he's not even on the scale with everybody else. I mean yeah maybe the Eye of Balor could disintegrate Uriel if Uriel couldn't just immediately teleport anywhere or make the energy go somewhere else or basically do anything at all to defend himself. If he just stood there like a dummy, sure somebody could kill him with the Eye of Balor. He's not going to, freaking archangel.

Well as a quick follow-up then, is that-cause we know um the faerie courts and the queens and stuff they were kind of- they had to come into being for a reason, was that part of Mab's mantle's creation-to be able to stand up to kinds of things like that as like a failsafe?

I don't want to tell you too much about it just yet, but yeah I mean essentially you know Mab has a role and a purpose. So for her to be where she is, yeah is was kind of her duty to be able to stand up to threats like that. She wasn't really anticipated to /have to/ stand up to a titan because everybody was pretty sure they were all taken care of but you know Ethniu's been laying low, biding her time. But at the same time, they did what was appropriate they got everybody together to take on the threat, or at least everybody they could.

So I know I was speaking about- you're probably just gonna hit me with a- you're not gonna tell me now, but somewhere down the line will we know who Mab was?

Yeah, I guess. That'll be something that comes in a little bit more towards the end but she's- you know she's one of these people who- we don't really know what's gonna happen to humans when we start living a really long time. We don't really know what's gonna happen to us and so to create Mab I just sort of extrapolated what happens to people as they- kind of the psychology of people as they get older while subtracting everything that goes along with degenerating, she doesn't degenerate. And the way I look at it she's just become more and more and more and more just sort of rational and grounded in this function of what she's doing to where every part of her psychology, every part of who she is as a person has become subsumed by needing to pursue this necessary function which is defending the mortal world.

So as long as she's doing that I mean that is all she can think about that's all she does and something that she's been doing for so long that it's just routine at this point. I mean, for her it's like "alright yeah, get up, do exercises, have breakfast, kill some enemies, go over here- torment some enemies, threaten some enemies, alright good, work day done." And it never really stops to occur to her- she never really stops to think "should I really be doing this?" because that's never a part of her calculation, her calculation is always "what I'm doing is necessary for the survival of the world, so I could worry about whether this is good or evil, right or wrong, but you know what I think I'll just do my job and move along to the next step" you know. Yeah I don't know what's gonna happen to humans when we start living a really long time but I don't know if it's gonna be very good for us, we'll have to see.

So speaking of Mab and her defending the mortal world and the Eye of Balor, does Mab have any other famous weapons stashed away magically speaking?

Or in famous monuments.

Yeah, weapons, monuments, that sort of thing. Well I mean she's got- sort of? Mab is kind of- she's sort of an absolute value in many ways. Mab doesn't go and collect stuff, Mab makes herself more awesome. That's really kind of more of her philosophy it's like "go out and get things? Yeah you can go out and pick up, you know, the spear of destiny and sure that would be a handy thing but you know what would be even better? If I made myself that much cooler, as much cooler as if I had the spear of destiny", that would be more Mab's tactic. She's not very material, she's not attached to things.

I misread the question actually, like with the battle of the bean, the weapons stashes, does she have similar stashes?

OH, yeah, Mab is big on being prepared, that's kind of one of her things and sort of what she does I mean, when you're a professional guardian it's kind of your job to be prepared. So yeah she has stuff like that all over the place.

Statue of Liberty filled with guns?

I don't know if the Statue of Liberty is, I mean how are you going to get everybody out there to get the guns? You'd have to use some other statues that's in a park in Manhattan somewhere.

The bull on Wall Street or something?

Yeah, bull on Wall Street that'd be a good place.

Oh so that's why the guy who cut off the balls of the bull he just- we never heard from him again. Mab was like "not showing my stash to people, okay?"

Right.

Besides, everybody knows that the Statue of Liberty is a giant mech waiting to happen, come on now, so.

Yeah.

So switching gears off of Mab for just a little bit at least, so with the White Council and everything like that we've gotten some words of Jim and we've seen it play out in the books that each of the wizards have more of a specialty, right, so Ramirez seems to be entropy magic and water, Listens To Wind is water for healing, Yoshimo's an air mage, what does Cristos do?

Oh Cristos is an earth mage.

Okay.

You got to see him in Battle Ground I mean that's kind of what he does, he does earthmoving stuff. Cristos can... he can moderate earthquakes, if you've got like a stone or ground based problem Cristos is the guy on the White Council you go talk to.

Is he better than McCoy?

Yeah I mean, he's better at his specialty than McCoy is. You know, McCoy is the one who is good at /everything/ and if you go and fight him in a duel it doesn't matter if you are awesome at earth because because McCoy is going to be better at air than you are- he's going to counter you. It doesn't matter if you're awesome with water he's gonna be good with fire and he's gonna counter you. McCoy is the guy who has been in so many fights and has done- has gone up against so many other wizards he just ain't gonna- he's just not gonna have a bad day is what it really amounts to, and when you're fighting a professional the guy who never has a bad day is really dangerous.

I was actually going to ask if it was like where he was compared to Morgan because I feel like Morgan was definitely very specialised in earth magic and was very good at it. But I guess Cristos is pretty far past him.

Um, Morgan is a guy who you want to have earth magic on when there's a fight happening because Morgan's the guy who can just go boom pumps fist like that and just bury somebody. Cristos can manage stuff like that too but Morgan was a tactical combat specialist, that's what he did. Cristos is not as good at tactical combat as Morgan was, he might not win in a fight against somebody like Morgan even though he's more powerful but Cristos has a much longer reach and can do more stuff from back at home and doing his research, do contact with earth elementals and other creatures of earth and stuff like that. I mean, he's got a great big talent stack that he can use and it's all- it's mostly involved with earth stuff. But he's not a fighter, he's a politician. He can go out and do big things and help in big ways but um he's not a "go screw up a bunch of people in a fight" sort of thing, he's gotta coordinate with other guys to get stuff done. So when you see him doing stuff in a fight and he's doing something impressive in Battle Ground it's because he's working together with Ebenezar.

So in the same vein of enforcers and fighters like that we've seen on the faerie side malks and fetches and the gruffs, are there any other races like that that have like a patriarch, like an eldest mantle and someone at the top?

Probably yeah, I mean, there's probably an eldest goblin- there's definitely an eldest goblin that's the Erlking, that's kind of what he amounts to. Basically of anything there's gonna be an eldest mantle somewhere because that's really important to the fae, they respect things that have been around a while. And things that go by quickly, like most mortals, they're fairly meh.

So as a quick follow-up, is it- Bru is upset about squirrels stealing birdseed

There are squirrels that are trying to steal bird food from the bird feeder and-

How dare they.

And sheriff Bru gets very upset about this violation of the law. Because only the birds are supposed to have that.

He's a just and honourable sheriff.

Yes, yes. So he feels the need to run out onto the deck and chase the squirrels away whenever we see a squirrel out there so. As a mammal he needs to uphold the mammal law.

If he doesn't who will?

Exactly.

So was Cat Sith, would he have been considered the eldest malk? Or was that Grimalkin?

Yes. And Grimalkin is doing it now.

So if someone like for example the eldest fetch gets defeated someone next in line kind of gets that eldest mantle?

Yeah the mantle goes to the next eldest yeah.

So same as the queens basically, it's the same general idea.

Yep, the next one in line.

Well now we know the knight mantles don't work quite that way they're a little more hands-on so-

There's more discretion there.

And as far as discretion goes who was the last knight that Mother Winter picked? What would be her kind of standard?

Oh that Mother Winter picked. You mean Mother Winter and not Mab, right?

Yeah.

Mother Winter would have picked somebody like- I mean if she was going for historical figures she'd go for people like Vlad Țepeș except Vlad was actually somebody else, he was actually doing other stuff. But yeah I mean that's the kind of- she picks people who are completely relentless about whatever it is they're trying to get done and that's the only thing Mother Winter cares about so Joseph Stalin, she'd pick him yeah.

Genghis Khan.

Oh yeah, excellent, good choice. Real achiever there, he really works hard, that's a bright young boy.

He's a go-getter.

He's got potential.

He is, he is. That's who we need, right there.

So on the historical figures end, are there any particularly noteworthy or famous magical wizard types out there, someone like Aleister Crowley was he actually something or was he just a fraud?

Crowley was... Crowley in the Dresden Files universe was kind of a con man who was this wizard who- he specialised in illusion magic and putting on great shows and stuff like that. He was kind of running his own cult and everybody was like "what are you /doing/?" All the White Council was just like "you are just ruining everything what is going on here, we /just/ got through the burning times and here you are doing this?" But yeah folks like that, like doctor John Dee, for example, he was actually on the White Council. He was an advisor to Queen Elizabeth, he was well known for being a wizard historically speaking. And there were several folks like that who actually were on the council but mostly the White Council's kind of stayed... they've tried to stay low-key for the most part. Instead you'll find most of the historical figures are connected to like fraternal organisations that are connected to the supernatural world like the Thule Society or the Venatori Umbrorum. So mostly the historical figures get connected to stuff like that.

If you're a king or a queen it's different because there's actual magical stuff associated with being a king or a queen. For example Mab does not disrespect Elizabeth in England, period. She just does not. Because the queen of England is the /queen of England/ and she can do things. And we'll get to see more of that as we go.

But she doesn't care if she's like in Australia or Canada or any of those.

If it's in part of her realm, yeah, that's a big deal. You don't screw with her in her realm but if she comes to America she doesn't necessarily have access to all that stuff. She's not walking on the ground that her family's been ruling for hundreds of years so.

So what is Mab's perspective on democracy?

Mab looks at democracy and goes "democracy, oh" and that's really about as much as she thinks of it, okay the humans are doing this.

Just trying new things again.

She was more impressed with the humans when they killed each other with swords.

It's a fun little lie they like to tell themselves.

They've got more destruction now but she really feels like they've gone soft, you know. It's Disney, Disney is the problem as far as Mab is concerned. Disney's making things too soft, the fairy tales were there to get you ready for the real world.

She should have bought it when she had the chance.

Yeah.

So when do we get to see Lea again?

Probably next book is what I would anticipate. Yeah I mean she's gonna have to check in on Dresden, he's got wrecked and she's still his godmother and all... Actually yeah actually she might be the one who shows up and slaps him in the face to, you know "get up, get moving," that sort of thing.

How soon will we learn the details of her bargain with Margaret? You've said before that it would probably cause them to throw down but when do they actually fight?

When did they fight?

When do Harry and Lea fight over the bargain Lea had with Margaret?

Oh. I don't know if they will. At this point I don't know if they will, Dresden keeps growing up on me and lots of things that I've wanted to do and I didn't necessarily get to do them while I was going along, I'll have to see.

You're saying Harry's gonna be too mature to pick that fight? Damn, never thought I'd see the day. Harry not taking a fight.

I so want to know what that bargain fully was, what did Margaret pay?

Oh we will get to do the details of that before the end. That's necessary, you're right. That's a good question, thank you, I'll have to show that now.

Yay. I contributed.

We helped.

So um, her- slight tangent based on her role which is to be kind of like at the gates when Mab's busy and all that stuff, as far as the guardianship of the gates over time, has it kind of been a cycle where one pantheon falls, the next one picks it up because the other one lost worship and this one got stronger? Or has there always been kind of like a coalition of whichever was top dog at the time was the one in charge?

It's almost always been a bit of a coalition. The fae have always kind of been the foot-soldiers of what was going on, but it's been more recently that they've been given autonomy, which is to say Mab and Titania. And when I say recently I mean like within the past few thousand years. As far as the immortal things are concerned, recent events are, you know, human history.

And were they kind of- to circumvent that whole problem of a continual transition because it seems like if you're losing power based on faith you'd want something a little more permanent like a mantle that goes and stays empowered at all times.

It was less about that... less about the whole thing running on faith and more about the fact that occasionally things got bad and the fae needed backup and that would be when "okay we've got to cover this one, who's got this one? Uhh how about Asgard? Yeah Asgard gets this one, go guys" you know like that. And that was how it went for a long time, pre-history that was pretty much how it went. But as things have gone on, the past couple of thousand years has been mostly the fae in charge. Because essentially they got a sponsor and then they were able to get some actual leadership put in place so.

They got a sponsor?

Yeah I've actually told everybody about it already, it's in the books, you'll have to come up with it yourselves.

Reread!

I know right? That's the next year of our life.

I'll give you a hint, reread Skin Game.

Could you tell us a little bit about the Librarians?

No, I will tell you nothing about the Librarians, you can learn about them later.

In Twelve Months?

Uhhh.... will they start getting there by the end? Yeah they'll be there by the end of the next book.

I'm sure they're harmless.

Men in black. You can't just tell us about them, so.

Well no, no.

They can't even just tell us about them.

Is Tilly in the Librarians? I think I've read that somewhere but that might just be a rumour.

No he's straight FBI.

Can you confirm if... I'm just gonna get an I'm not gonna tell you... is Elaine a starborn?

I'm not going to confirm or deny.

I figured.

You had to try.

Yeah we get some more information in Battle Ground so the question then became... we've had for a while that she was born in the right time frame I think is as close as we got and so we're like "is there /a/ starborn or not?" and obviously in Battle Ground there are multiple now and they're concurrently operating so it opens up some more of those questions.

Yeah there were forty or fifty thousand at first.

What.

Starborn.

Since the beginning of time or right now?

No there were forty or fifty thousand starborn in this cycle at first.

And then they get whittled down.

Yeah it's been about close to forty years there ain't so many of them left.

So is being starborn a pre... do you have to have been mortal to be a starborn?

You just have to have been in the right place. Really you just have to have been unlucky.

Okay, I was just thinking of if Drakul, that's how you say it right? If he was a mortal once, it was like a side thought I just had.

Ooh I mean, you'll have to see as we go along we'll get more stuff as we get to the grand climactic bits and it'll be fun.

Even if he had been mortal I had a feeling it would be a "you'll have to see".

Yeah.

Well you mentioned before once that he was something unhuman and got put mortal so I guess we're not going to get to find out what he was once yet?

Well not today.

Posted by
u/TheCuriousFan
3 years ago

Dragon Con 2020 Q&A Transcript
Spoilers All
This was supposed to be finished back in January but between watching the US coup attempt aftermath and finally being able to play Hades, Ori and the Will of the Wisps and Valkyria Chronicles 4 I got a bit sidetracked for the month.

My first question is, did you read sci-fi or fantasy as a child or young adult?

(Oh god yes.)

Now something I'm always curious about, we spend a lot of time talking about your primary characters for obvious reasons, they are the most important, but which of the secondary characters that you've written in any of your series have been the most fun to write and which ones have been the ones that have given you the most trouble for whatever reason?

Most fun is probably... I have a lot of fun writing characters like Bob the skull because he can be totally inappropriate and that's a lot of fun to write. I really enjoy writing Mab, I enjoy writing John Marcone, those are both fun characters to play with. Although I kind of get to do more characters in the non-Dresden Files series because, you know, Dresden is always following Dresden around so you only see the other characters through his eyes and his viewpoint is a little limited. In the fantasy books, in the Alera books and the Cinder Spires books I actually get to go into viewpoints of other characters, you get to do a lot more shades of grey when you do that.

And something that you mentioned reminded me that you had a few of your short stories that were actually told from a secondary character's perspective and I imagine that's been both fun and kind of challenging because it's a different aspect from what you're used to. What are some of your favourite creatures that you have created in each of your series?

I've always liked the red court vampires, they've always been a lot of fun. Usually I mean, my favourite monsters are the ones I've just gotten, that I've just made up or just borrowed from folklore or other stories that I've read. Monsters are some of the best parts of getting to write the Dresden Files just because you get to come up with whatever you want. Yeah I can make up the wildest stuff out of nowhere and it works really well. I really liked the Vord in the Alera books, they were basically the Zerg from Starcraft but that's okay I had fun writing them anyway.

Well that's the blessings of fantasy right, to be able to create what you want.

Right.

Is there one of your books, it doesn't have to be in the Dresden Files, the one that you struggled with a little more in just the writing of it-things didn't flow quite as well you had to kind of knock it into shape sort of?

Peace Talks and Battle Ground was like that, it was supposed to be one story and it was only supposed to be Peace Talks and it was all going to be in one thing and it just got so huge and out of hand because I was just trying to do so much inside the story and evidently I tried for a little bit more of a story than I was actually capable of writing so we wound up having to split it into two stories to make it work, that was one time. Ghost Story was a very difficult book to write for me just because Dresden was in a position where he couldn't go kick down the door and save the girl, that was not gonna happen when your foot just goes through the door, so. That was a really interesting way to- it was an interesting challenge for me because Dresden couldn't be Dresden, he had to be kind of this different person for the course of that story, he had to be someone who worked through other people and had to be indirect about everything and Dresden's just the most direct guy for the most part so. But it was fun to have him change up but it was also very difficult.

That makes sense because as you said he's very direct, doesn't suffer fools gladly even when it's himself sometimes.

Oh especially then.

But yeah I can imagine that that would have been a particular challenge. Would you say that there is some sort of a common thread that runs throughout all of your series even though they're all very different from one another?

I deal a lot in themes of power and how it is used and abused. Kind of all of my books tend to revolve back to that at some point or another. I think it's just because I was bullied a lot when I was a kid so it was something that became an interest that was near and dear to my heart as I grew up and got older so I think if anything if you want to get thematic I talk about that more than anything so the nature of the moral and ethical use of power. So, you know, for the Dresden Files that's fun because Harry Dresden's got all kind of power and is probably really less aware of it than he should be because honestly he's a force of nature and he hangs out like he's just an average ordinary nerd and it's like "no dude, that's not you anymore, you've got more than that on your shoulders" and that's what he's sort of starting to realise as we get to the end of these books it's like "oh I've got a lot of responsibilities there's a lot of people looking up to me I've got a lot to do" that's where Dresden is going to be going next.

Gotta tap into that potential there.

Oh yeah.

I know that right now you're working on the next Cinder Spires book and how does it feel to be back immersed in that world again?

Good. We're going to different parts of the world so now I'm building fresh world again and that's something I haven't done for a while. I mean the Dresden Files universe I pretty much know where everything is at this point, we're like seventeen books in and it's busy, it's established. But for Cinder Spires it's a new setting and we're going off to new places so I've got to be making up fresh new world again and that's a lot of fun.

Hence the question, but I thought "wow it's been while" so it must have been interesting to go from all the fraught nature of Dresden into something else that's completely different. And as it's creator, which aspect of that whole Cinder Spires world most intrigues you personally?

Probably the cats honestly. I mean I'm writing the book with talking cats and it's coming up with a culture that I've got to make work not only for cats in the real world but but for cat owners because I'm not writing a book for cats I'm writing it for cat owners so I've gotta make the cats work in such a way that cat owners will be happy. But that's a lot of fun it's kind of coming up with a society that's based around cat psychology instead of human psychology its a very good time.

Right and I believe you said that when you wrote Aeronaut's Windlass that you had not actually had a personal cat of your own at the time and now you have so it's going to be different. And I would like to point out that I don't know if you can see it but as soon as you said the cats well there's Fenris oh hi Fenris. As soon as you mentioned cats Bru got up behind you and made sure he was in the shot.

Yeah, yeah. Bru's a little jealous of his new little brother so. Plus he likes to walk and make sure there's no squirrels stealing the birdseed, sheriff Brutus over here. That's about his speed, to chase squirrels. Anything else he'd be scared.

Well now just as an aside since we're already discussing him how old is Bru now?

(Bru is two and a half, Fenris is about six but small, continue at 12:00)

There is a quote in Aeronaut's Windlass that- it's a conversation between Grimm and Creedy where Grimm says "a ship is more than wood and crystals and ether silk Byron, some fixed gold vat counters have always said it was nonsense but the men on the ships know better. Airships aren't just vehicles and the men who treat them like more than that get more out of them." My question for you is do you feel as though that's a pretty good kind of indicator of what Grimm's whole personality is like is that kind of- as I recall that passage is like 145 pages into the book so- it's a long book so it's maybe a fifth of the way through or whatever but do you feel as though that gives you a good idea of where Grimm is coming from?

To a degree yeah but I think that's more a description of the world than anything else and we'll see more of that as we keep going.

That sounds good I know a lot of people are looking forward to that.

You talk to a lot of sailors even today and they will say similar things about they're ships, that they're more than machine.

And in fact if you're going to spend your whole life basically, maybe not 24 hours a day but in some cases yes on something then you certainly would want it to be more than just- it's like our cars.

Yeah more than just the thing that happens to float on water.

Right. Now moving onto Dresden Files, if Harry could make a guest appearance in another UF (urban fantasy) series which one do you think would be the most fun or the most challenging for him as a character?

Let's see, most challenging is going to be a tossup between Anita Blake's world where Anita Blake would beat him up and Larry Correia's Monster Hunter International where he would be worth so much puff that everybody would want to kill him. Those would probably be the most challenging, I think the one that he'd enjoy the most would be... let's send him to Temeraire's world and go hang out in Napoleonic England with dragons.

Ah yeah, I could see where he'd- yeah, okay, there we go.

Because then he could just have a pet dragon, they're basically just big cute dogs anyway.

That's right, that's all they are.

Yeah.

laughter At least- there's a children's book that I actually still have in my house that I read to my kids and have since read to my grandchildren and they get a kick out of it and it's called There's No Such Thing As A Dragon.

Right.

You're saying you're familiar with that one? Yeah, it's- that's a funny book, it keeps getting bigger if you don't acknowledge it. Who would you say so far in the series, who do you think has been Harry's greatest adversary? The one that has been the most difficult for him to beat or get the better of?

Oh gosh, I mean most of those people are on his side. People like Mab, like that. Let me think, it's probably Nicodemus, he's the one who's inflicted a bunch of loss on Dresden. Lemme think, you know, really incompetence has been more of a threat to him than anything else. He has had a lot of enemies who were like very competent, very much a threat to him but incompetent allies are almost more dangerous than competent adversaries, you know, so.

That's true because when you need them they don't necessarily come through the way that you need them to so. Now one thing I thought would be interesting to hear and just have directly from you is how would you describe the distinguishing features between the summer court and the winter court?

Um, they're fairly thematic to the seasons themselves. Summer embraces summer and spring, the winter court embraces fall and winter. They both have kind of different purposes in the Dresden Files universe with the winter court's purpose being to protect the mortal world from threats that might come from outside of it and the summer court's purpose being to protect the mortal world from the winter court because they just have attitude problems. But the winter court is very focused around sort of the darker aspects of life and while the summer court takes the sunnier aspects of life so the summer court you'll find them backing up the arts, you'll find them going out and doing good, you'll find them blessing crops and making sure they grow well for spring and summer, that sort of thing, that's the summer court's thing, that's their oeuvre, they're keepers of life. Whereas the winter court are craftsmen of death and that is sort of their job is to be dealing with sort of the darker aspects of what's going on, because they are protectors and it is their job to be rough and tough when they need to be so for them it's all about sex, it's all about violence, it's all about being ready for the next fight, it's all about being keyed up and ready to go at a moment's notice, the winter court does not plan things for the future because they know they're probably gonna die in a fight before too much longer, it sort of gives them a very different attitude a very different set of values than the summer court fae have.

This has been something I've wondered about for well for a while, probably since reading Changes. From your perspective, which shocked Harry more? Finding out that he had a brother or finding out he had a daughter?

Oh both were pretty rough but the daughter thing was specifically more rough because that hit him in the heart. Harry was in a situation where essentially he was responsible for the life of this little girl who had then been abandoned and he hadn't even known she existed so that he could make the choice not to abandon her the way he had been abandoned. He was abandoned because his parents died but at the same time when you're a kid you don't really understand the niceties of things you understand you're alone and you don't want to be alone, you know. So that brought up really really hard, painful childhood pain, the pain you get when you're a kid, that's the kind of stuff that sticks with you. It was a lot tougher to find out he had a daughter than to find out that he had a brother, finding out that he had a brother was just kind of cool, that would be neat. Finding out you had a daughter you didn't know about? Oh wow that's hell.

Oh yeah, certainly just the psychological impact of finding out about Maggie would certainly- that makes- that's gonna have a huger impact on his future but at the same time it was cool to read that those passages- or just his reaction to finding out that he had a brother when all these years he thought all his family was gone and he felt as though "oh wow I have somebody after all", and finding out about Maggie I guess was just a further step along that path but as you said it's tied in with his own history and that makes it different, kind of makes it more poignant too.

Yeah.

Now what do you feel has been Harry's greatest growth from kind of the beginning of the series up to now? What characteristics do you see in him that you would point to and say "okay that makes sense, he's actually getting older"?

Yeah he's getting older, he's starting to think beyond just his immediate reactions to things that happen around him, as he gets older he does more and more thinking. Which is kind of- Brutus please I'm doing an interview for probably thousands of people. Dog doesn't care, dog does not care.

laughter It does not.

I think he's starting to see- one of the things about reacting to various situations in ways that are kind of square white bread conventional morality, most of the choices that you make that conform to that sort of standard are simply the choices that are the best for you in the long run. Doing the right thing is almost always the smart thing in the long run and so in the long run one of the things that Harry has always done, it's always been part of his character is that he's always been somebody who was prepared to back up and boost and advance people who had less than he has. So the folks who were coming along behind him, you know he was always- Dresden was always there being the guy who was saying "okay let me teach you how to survive this situation better, let me show you how to handle your magic so you don't hurt people, let me help you with this" and as a result sort of all these people around him who started off as these little folks who couldn't really do a lot have grown up into these fairly formidable allies that are all around him now and that's something that he has seen, he's started to see the consequences of his actions in the long long term and as someone who's going to live for three hundred or four hundred years maybe, being able to think long term is kind of a big deal. And not only that, that's something that humanity is gonna have to learn too I mean my generation of humanity is probably- I can count on probably living to be a hundred years old. My son, he's gonna live to be a hundred and fifty or maybe even longer than that because by that point they might have developed actual biological immortality so /humans/ are going to have to start thinking in terms of hundreds of years before very long as well. That's gonna be an interesting thing but it's one of those things I've been thinking about for Dresden, if I was gonna be somebody who was planning to be around four hundred years from now how would that change the way I think about my problems and I think about solutions? How would it change the way I approach the world? And so Dresden's starting to face these problems and starting to think longer term because he's got a daughter now and he's gotta think "well what kind of world am I leaving to her?" You know, so, it's been a really fascinating thing for me to see this character start to start realising different stuff because he's getting older. I just wish I could live for four hundred years so I could continue writing him.

Oh yeah, so you could follow along in real time?

And so that I could learn myself, you know, have a wizard's knowledge myself I suppose.

Well I think one aspect of his character that you were talking about, he has kind of taken on that mentor role even though he might not necessarily see it that way in a formal respect, other than with Molly of course eventually, based upon what happened to him he's actually making a sincere effort to do completely the opposite so, good for Harry.

laughter

Now I have- when I was going through some passages that I had marked in the books over time when I read them- which I do in pencil I'm a former librarian I wrote in books in pen. I have some quotes from the last three books in the series that I think if you take all three of them and put them together you- I think they're kind of a good assessment of Harry's character and I want to get your response to that.

Okay.

Now in Skin Game when he is having this discussion with Hannah now he wasn't actually saying these words but this is what he was thinking "I loved magic for its own sake. She didn’t." and then it goes on to basically say in Hannah's case she was more interested in what it could do for her, not just for it's own sake. Now in Peace Talks, Maggie tells him, when she and Dresden are having a conversation and he was asking her "where did you hear this phrase "make things right?"" and she says from Mr Carpenter he says making things right is the first and last thing you should do every day and that is what you always try to do and then in Battle Ground we have Mab who says "you know what it is to sell pieces of your soul so that someone who will never know your name will have another chance at life". When I was looking through these things I thought for one thing these people seem to know him pretty well- well one of them is his own thought but what is your reaction to that? I mean do you agree with me that those seem to be pretty Harry characteristics?

I suppose. I don't know that's not something I spend a lot of time thinking about, you know, I've got a lot of monsters to write. But yeah, I'm always trying to pull out pieces of Dresden that I think are the most essential points of his character for whatever story we've got going at the moment and in this one yeah and in this one the part of his character that I think is essential is his willingness to sacrifice for the sake of others. That's kind of a characteristic of defenders of cultures or societies in general, their willingness to sacrifice, and that's one of the things that makes Dresden who he is. It's always important that you notice that Dresden is- he's generally the first one to put himself on the altar when it comes to sacrifices, he doesn't ask that of other people he asks it of himself. That's really the difference whether somebody's on the up and up, does the sacrifice come from them or do they take the sacrifice from somebody else to make something happen. And so that's one of the things I've always tried to be careful about with Dresden is trying to make sure he's always the guy who gives of himself and not the one who says "you, you're the one who needs to sacrifice to fix this problem".

And that's why people line up behind him or next to him, whichever the case may be. I think that that is something that is true when it comes to any good leader really and that's certainly what he is even if he doesn't necessarily see himself that way, he is that way. Now there's a place in Peace Talks where Harry talks about home and he says "Home, like love, hate, war and peace is one of those words that is so important that it doesn't need more than one syllable. Home is part of the fabric of who humans are it doesn't matter if you're a vampire or a wizard or a secretary or a school teacher you have to have a home, even if only in principle. There has to be a zero point from which you can make comparisons to everything else, home tends to be it." Do you think that this concept of home, do you think that this is something that Harry has always had and it's affected all of his decisions- well not all of his decisions but has affected a lot of decisions he's made throughout the series or do you think that this attitude is something that has kind of grown as the series has gone on?

No that's.... ask any orphan their thoughts on home and they will have some important thoughts about what home is and what it means. Because there is a need in humans for a place of safety, for some place that we can go to sleep and something's not gonna eat us while we're sleeping. You know, originally, and then... But even now we need places where we're safe, where we feel like we can relax, we can let our hair down, we can be ourselves, especially more and more in our society folks have to be so tense about what they say in public and it's like "okay, you know what you need a spot where you can go and relax" and home is it, it's something that is vital for humans. And the more your insecure that your life has been the more important home is going to be for you. In Dresden's case, I mean, he's had an insecure life, home is a big concept for him and that's the way he's gonna look at it he's gonna look at it as something that is vital and profound to everyone. Whether or not he's right, I mean, I imagine there's some people out there for whom- and folks who like to live life on the road and so on they don't have the same kind of value for it, they've got a different value on life and what's important and what makes them feel secure. But for Dresden, yeah, he longs for that place where he is stable and safe and people like him.

Right and now he essentially is without one and has been.

Yeah he has been for a good while since they burned his stuff down in Changes, he's been kind of floating from place to place and now it's time for him to put down some roots. Now he's got a castle and that should be fun.

Yeah, that should be fun, it's true, we'll see how that all works out. Now we'll move onto that elephant in the room. Regarding that event that occurs at the halfway point of Battle Ground, how long have you been planning that and how much hatemail have you received since? I'm joking about the last part.

Oh um, I've been planning that one for about fifteen years so I'd been looking forward to that. I only decided on it for sure about ten years ago but I've been toying with it for about fifteen so.

Okay, right, yeah I know I was not alone that when I read that passage it was just... it was such a shock that it happened I guess the way that it did, it had an impact that some of the other deaths maybe would not have had that same kind so well done I've gonna say if you're gonna write a death that was a nice job, I've gotta say.

You don't have to be a sadist to be a writer but it seems to help.

As I know, I've heard many of your fellow authors say that torturing readers is one of the joys of your job.

Joy is such a strong word.

Perks? Maybe it's just a side effect.

You know, it happens sometimes.

But now, that death, Murphy's death at the hand of a human seems to me to be very significant in terms of the series and had you always intended that that was going to be the case since you started thinking about it more seriously?

What I really thought about it was "what's the /worst/ way for Murphy to die?" Not like the most painful or the most dramatic but the one that would be the worst for the people who loved and supported her. What is going to make the reader suffer the most to read and so it's like she can't die in battle she has to die and it's got to be to this weasel, she can't be taken straight-up because it's not who her character is but to be killed by this weasel sort of by accident almost, you know death by incompetence seems to be even worse unintelligible. I had a lot of fun planning that out and I know there's a lot of people who are really angry at me and to them I can say "well keep reading we'll see what happens".

Right because it is the Dresdenverse after all right so...

Yeah there's a lot of stuff going on there so who knows?

Right. You know the part about the fact that the aspect of it that it was a human being, you know Harry's always tried to protect her even though she doesn't like him to say that he's always been cognisant of trying to protect her from the supernatural threats, which you know, that beating she took from Nicodemus was awful and all of that but you know I'm sure many of us were worried for her safety at that point in time but the fact this happened so suddenly and it was completely... it was just completely opposite of what you would expect to happen in what they face on a daily basis, I think it had more of an impact for that reason as well. Maybe even on him since it was something he didn't see coming, not for long anyway maybe a couple of minutes.

Right, that's gonna be one of those things that is gonna tend to... the reaction that most people would have in that situation- in the face of a situation like that would be to make themselves a lot more ready, a lot more serious. You know saying "there I was goofing around not taking this seriously and thinking properly" you know, if he'd been thinking properly- Dresden's going to be thinking to himself "well if I'd been thinking properly I would have made sure Rudolph didn't have a weapon to begin with, I would have made sure that didn't happen I would have made sure his hands were bound if we were really worried about him being dangerous to people".

Right but even so you would think that one of the last people he would be dangerous to it would be Murphy given that it was Rudolph.

Yeah that was an awful thing to do to Murphy and especially to Murphy fans and I would apologise but you guys keep buying the books, you're just encouraging me.

laughter Well, you know, the thing it's um... especially in- you knew, it wasn't as though you made a snap decision you just said that it first occurred to you fifteen years ago so you know I guess this was eventually going to be the case but people can look at this and say "well we had sixteen and a half books with her in them and be happy about that", because she was a great character, no argument there and we shall all miss her and maybe who knows next time we have an in-person Dragoncon maybe we should have a memorial service for Murphy or something.

That would be awesome, I'll propose that to the fan group and see if they want to do it.

Alright there you go.

Everybody who cosplays Murphy can be dead on the ground, we'll have a wake.

We might need a lot of space for that but that might be fun.

Yeah.

In Battle Ground there is a quote about that says "magic and emotion are intertwined so strongly that it can be hard to tell where one begins and the other ends" and you've alluded to this throughout the series that this is the case, that those things are tied together and certainly we can see it and we can see it really well in this book, do you think Harry is learning how to kind of get a handle on that and how- that kind of a situation do you think? Even though they're his thoughts do you feel he's coming to terms with it and unintelligible personally? St this point.

I think the next book that I'm gonna write we're gonna be seeing- I'm gonna spend some time- it's gonna be a different book than other books we've done before because it's gonna happen over the course of a year in Chicago. So we're gonna see what life looks like on a daily basis for Harry and not just on the terrible worst weekend of the year. Hopefully I can keep it just as interesting as the terrible worst weekend of the year but it'll be a little bit slower paced thing you know kinda gonna see a little bit more of what life is like for the wizard and what life is like in Chicago now that things are getting darker so we've got a lot of cool stuff to look at, that'll be a lot of fun.

So almost a dystopian-

Plus he's gotta survive all these dates with the vampire queen and stuff like that and- he's got a lot of stuff going on.

**Yes, that's going to be very interesting. **

(40:45 to 44:04 is a repeat of why Chicago so skipping)

That's great that you're talking about that we'll see a different side of the city or see the city as being even more- almost maybe it's own character in what's coming up.

Well I think the supernatural group... the community that Dresden moves in... the big power players are like those big sharks, you only see them sometimes, they come up when things are serious and you /know/ they're serious because there they are. Just during the weekdays of the Dresden Files universe though it's those people like the Alphas and the Ordo Lebes and so on who are going to be so much more important on a daily basis because they're the folks who have to work with you all the time because they don't have power, they do depend on the community for- to protect themselves. That's gonna be something- I think we'll see a lot of the smaller characters popping up in this next book, we'll see what happens.

Oh great, okay.

Plus I've just killed a bunch of people so that means I get to introduce new characters now, it'll be a lot of fun.

That's right, you have been picking them off here and there so yes, it does give you that chance.

I probably shouldn't smile when I say that but yeah.

That's okay we know that you love them all but they sometimes have worn out their welcome and they need to make way for the new people.

That's true.

Posted by
u/TheCuriousFan
3 years ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mslBvySOoU
Barbara's Bookstore Q&A transcript
Battle Groundspoiler
Since this Q&A answers a lot of questions I figured I might as well post it here too.

Question marks near words that aren't questions means that I'm guessing at names that are probably wrong. Please let me know about any typos or wrong words in this.

Priscellie: So this year saw not one but two Dresden Files novels released that had originally been created as one massive tome, split into a two part episode of awesomeness, what are some of the ways the books changed when you split them?

Jim: Primarily what I had to do was I had to expand several storylines in Peace Talks that had not existed before and I was able to bring a lot more focus onto them. And that was pretty much Harry's conflict with Ebenezar was something I was able to say "oh this is scheduled for a little bit further into the story but I can go ahead and do this now, this'll be nice". So I was able to play that out and it was great because it was an opportunity for Dresden to go up against somebody who was like him but in every way just more awesome and for Dresden to kind of have to confront that but fortunately he's run into that now often enough that it's not really a weakness for him in terms of his ego it's like "I know I can't win that fight I'll have to think of something else ". But that was the main thing and then I had to write a little bit more of an introduction into Battle Ground than existed before. So we wound up getting to say "release the kraken!" and that's always something you want to do as a writer, one of those boxes you want to tick, "has anyone ever said release the kraken in one of my stories? Yes? Good, moving on".

Priscellie: So this year also marks the 20th anniversary of the Dresden Files which we've been commemorating in the year of Dresden celebration on jimbutcher.com and every Tuesday we've been dropping never-before seen artwork, microfiction, interviews, contests, sample chapters and other... whatever amazingness we happen to come accross. With the microfiction, I feel like those have been the most popular events in the year of Dresden. You've taken us inside the heads of Donald Morgan, Kincaid, Bigfoot Irwin and even Mister the cat. Which was the most fun to write?

Jim: Mister the cat obviously. Anytime you write from an animal's point of view you're gonna have a good time doing that no matter what's going on, yeah probably that one. The microfictions were a lot of fun to... just kind of writing a little short snippet for characters we wouldn't really see a lot of otherwise in the story. Always a lot of fun so I'll do more of those. People keep asking questions about side characters that sort of did their part and moved along and to be able to just go back and write something from their point of view and turn it out real quick is often a lot of fun.

Priscellie: Are there any characters you wrote into microfictions that you now realise you want to write something longer for then?

Jim: I don't know about that, just because I've got so many ideas for things to write and there's only so much Dresden Files energy I can pour into something at a time and I think I probably want to get Harry's story done first of all.

Priscellie: People like more Harry stories, right? Just a mild interest that might bring us here today. The last time I got to interview you we were still pretending there was only going to be one trailer and now we have trailers for both Peace Talks and Battle Ground, the surprise is out. Did you have a favourite moment between the two trailers?

Jim: I actually loved the shot of Ethniu blowing the roof off and plunging Chicago into darkness, I thought that was awfully fun. I loved everything that has Dresden and Marcone on the screen at the same time, that was all quite excellent.

Priscellie: I liked those too if you may have noticed.

Jim: Yeah, the guys we had playing those characters were just so great together, so that was a lot of fun.

Priscellie: Yeah, Chris Showerman who played Marcone was just like, oozes menace.

Jim: Oh yeah, he does, he does. It's like he flips a switch and you want to back away from him, it's like "this is a dangerous man".

Priscellie: So many of the most dangerous and terrifying characters in the trailer were played by like, the most kindhearted, considerate actors.

Jim: Oh my god, I know. The girl playing Ethniu, she was so sweet I just wanted to pick her up and put her in my pocket she was such a cutie and then all of a sudden she gets to turn on "evil, frustrated demigoddess here to wreck everything". So it's always amazing when you run into people who can do that, it's a genuine gift.

Priscellie: One additional bit of housecleaning, Ian Hampson, from one of the Facebook communities, says: Can we preemptively call you an evil, evil man?

Jim: It's usually a good bet, Ian. So yeah, feel free. I mean I'm not gonna take it personal either way because it's kind of a compliment for me so.

Priscellie: So part of your writing process includes the use of beta readers. Spoilers. laughs And occasionally you'll have a beta reader point out a continuity check that forces you to rewrite things. Which continuity check has ruined your life the most?

Jim: Let's rewrite this question: "Which of Priscilla's beta continuity checks has ruined my life the most?"

Priscellie: laughs If that's the way you want to phrase it I don't mind.

Jim: I know that I tried to do something with a character that I actually killed at the beginning of one book, I forget which one but I think it was around 11 or 12. And you had to remind me of that and I had to be like "oh right, character dead. Can't really talk my way through this one I'm gonna have to take this serious and fix it". But it's never, even when the beta readers hand me something that causes me a lot of extra work they're never doing anything that is undoing anything good. They're making the book stronger and better. Sometimes in a very annoying fashion, a very frustrating fashion but then again if I had been smart and caught it myself it wouldn't have happened either so I can hardly blame the beta readers for it when I wasn't smart enough to see the problem.

Priscellie: You've mentioned when you started writing the series that you created D&D character sheets for the major players. Are there any major details that you remember from it that might be fun for fans to know about?

Jim: Harry Dresden does not have an 18 intelligence as a wizard on his D&D character sheet, he has a 16 intelligence. So he's just like, barely enough to be first-rank wizard. But he did have an 18 constitution so I'm like "okay buddy you're gonna get beat up a lot" and that was part of the randomness the dice gave me that actually went into the series itself as I went along.

Priscellie: Wow, I didn't think there was a dice roll aspect.

Jim: Yeah, I just rolled the character up and put his stats together and "oh intelligence 16? so he's kind of smart then all right, good he's a wizard he should be smart", yeah he had a high constitution, just sort of middling dexterity and strength and less wisdom and less charisma than he should have had so I'm just like "you're going to be saying the wrong thing to the wrong person all the time", again, a bit of dice randomness that created character for the series.

Priscellie: Anything from the other character sheets?

Jim: Murphy's has 15 strength and dexterity and 16 constitution, I think she was basically as smart as Dresden only she hadn't wasted all her time learning esoteric magic stuff, she'd learned all the practical things. There were several characters that were like that and I went through and I was like "you've gotta have a character sheet of some kind and I've got all these spare D&D character sheets lying around so I might as well use them".

Priscellie: So we know what Harry does for income, what do some other wizards do to make ends meet?

Jim: Most wizards are clever enough to start investing. And after a century or so their portfolio is usually pretty impressive and making a really nice return. So most of the older grey-headed, solid, been-around wizards that have kind of established themselves are usually independently wealthy by then as well. Because it's like take ten bucks, put it in the bank, wait a century. You know, like that.

Priscellie: But to first get that principal, what do some of the gen x/millennial wizards do?

Jim: Oh gosh, the gen x/millennial wizards are such outcasts because they have so much trouble interacting with technology so they really can't take part in online culture. So so many things leave them behind and and they don't want to be left behind so they keep trying to keep up with it and everything. And these are the kind of folks who are kind of like a good magic talent but not full time wizardy talent, not go make a living at it talent. Those folks want to keep up, they try to keep up but they can't really so they wind up doing all these jobs that are like exotic animal farm.

Priscellie: laughs Warden Tiger King.

Jim: Exactly, Warden Joe Exotic.

Priscellie: The crossover no one wanted.

Jim: They wind up in these places where they find themselves making a living where they do things where they don't actually intersect hugely with the online culture and technology culture. And yeah which is also... they generally don't interact well with technology in general either so they kind of wind up in shady businesses where you don't keep a lot of records on computers.

Priscellie: So most members of the Paranet have some minor magical talent, what is Paranoid Gary's talent?

Jim: Paranoid Gary's talent is that he's an oracle, his talent is analysis. His oracular gift expresses itself through him mucking around on the internet and finding out various information. Oracular stuff is a very very low wattage gift, magically speaking. So it runs on a tiny battery that rarely interferes with things that are around him because the more it interfered with the things around him the more it would obviate it's own ability to tell the future.

Priscellie: Algorithomancy.

Jim: Something like that. But Gary he can analyse things and put things together. His magic is essentially... he gets the powers from "Psych" where things get highlighted when he looks at them. He goes "aha!" and puts them together after that. He rarely puts them together in a coherent and logical and overall sane and human way because that's not really who he is but he's really good at putting them together.

Priscellie: Those questions were by Damian Walls and Sarah Beck, props to you guys for asking.

Jim: Thanks guys.

Priscellie: What would the Paranet have to do to be considered a big enough body to sign the accords? And this is from poly? granada?

Jim: Oh they'd have to win some fights, is what they'd have to do. At the end of the day, in the supernatural world, among the various political powers, what gets you respect is the ability to thrash them. And if you can do that then they have to take you seriously because if they don't then you can thrash them. So that would be what they would really have to do, it would be something, a very difficult thing for them to do. It'd take an awful lot of coordination and leadership so it would take an awful extreme situation for something like that to come together. And I can't imagine where in the Dresden Files universe an extreme situation like that might exist smirks and lifts mug while Priscellie laughs.

Priscellie: From Bidor24, the blackened denarii have apparently been around for 2000 years, in that time they must have gone through a lot of owners. Were any of them people we would recognise from history books?

Jim: Yeah probably. For the most part, Nicodemus himself didn't like grabbing overwhelming historically notable figures because he thought that was too obvious. He was always in favour of operating from the shadows and keeping as low a profile as possible in most cases. He didn't mind if his enemies knew what he was up to and what he was doing because that added to his reputation so that was fine. The original question?

Priscellie: Are there any famous folks in history?

Jim: His wife on the other hand /loved/ getting famous boys. So yeah you would be able to find a lot of folks who were briefly Denarians, especially musicians who got famous really fast, musicians who went crazy overnight.

Priscellie: So Nicky and the Nickelheads could genuinely be a band?

Jim: Yeah we could certainly have something like that at some point. I swear to god I want to do a battle of the bands episode in the graphic novels, it'd be a lot of fun. Because Harry can play guitar sort of and we can have Thomas on drums and Molly can do tambourine so...

Priscellie: How long have starborns been a thing? Is it recent millennia or much further back?

Jim: Oh for many many many many many moons, as long as anyone remembers, including among the supernatural memories. That's been going since creation got started, it's sort of a well you'll see what it is later when we talk about it more.

Priscellie: Alright, how quickly will Bonnie mature?

Jim: That's a more complicated question than it sounds like. Bonnie's already very very mature when it comes to things like information retention and perception and understanding what is happening out in the world. What she's not mature at is understanding how what she knows interacts with what's happening in the real world.

cat climbs up

This is mister Fenris.

Priscellie: Oh my goodness. Okay take two.

Jim: Okay this is Fenris he is my good friend but at the moment he's not hanging out. turns camera here we go, Fen weighs four pounds, he is the alpha animal of the house, the ninety pound pitbull will flee from him. Admittedly the ninety pound pitbull is a sucker, he's a big chicken, he flees from everything so...

Priscellie: He's very fierce camera turns to dozing pitbull I'm scared.

Jim: Ah yes Fenris and Brutus, they are quite the team. Occasionally Brutus will by lying there asleep next to me and Fenris will just come walking up and just sort of tap him and Brutus will open his eyes and get up and follow Fenris somewhere I don't even know where they go, they wander off someplace.

Priscellie: And the previous one was from Kimberly Sanco? Thank you again. Derek Burger asks "Since there are monsters that can only be seen by children, what happens if or when a wizard uses the sight when one is present?"

Jim: He would go right past it if he wasn't, if he didn't have a childlike mind. If he could not- if he was not in contact with his inner kid if he did not have a good conversational relationship with his own imagination he wouldn't see it at all. And there's really not a lot of wizards who would. There's relatively few who would still be connected enough to that childlike sense of adventure and mischief that they would be able to connect with kids on that level, that's a rare thing.

Priscellie: What percentage of the white council is aware of these creatures that can exist?

Jim: There might be a dozen people on the council who know that and probably most of them who know that have talked about it and been considered wackos by everybody else. Which is just the perfect way for wizards to react to something like that in the Dresden Files "oh that can't possibly be real!", like that. It's for me the proof that wizards are definitely human since it's the reaction they have in the face of something like that.

Priscellie: Excellent, okay um, I do not know how to pronounce these accents. It's Christian? Biorr? asks "are the children of wizards somehow shielded from a soulgaze from their parents? Also what would happen if an infant soulgazed an infant?"

Jim: The kid would not react to a soulgaze until some sort of moment where their personality coalesced. You know somewhere about the age of responsibility, the age of maturity where you become responsible for your own choices and your own actions. Because souls are all tied up with free will in the Dresden Files so the kid would probably be clear until that point. That point is different for everyone but you recognise it as a parent when you look at the kid and go "oh my goodness that's another person over there" and at some point in their life you look at them and go "this person has now become something that is not just an amalgamation of what he's run into on tv, in the classroom and here at home with me, he's becoming this whole person who is starting to lip off to me". Because that is the point at which for me I realised "oh my gosh my son is his own person" is when he started mouthing off to me, he was about nine when he first did it. And he was getting away with it behind my back and I wouldn't have known it was happening at all except his mother's face finally broke and she wasn't able to hide the smile anymore and I had to whip around and look at this nine year old behind me dancing around like a shirtless monkey, making fun of me while I was talking about the gym day I'd had that day you know so... Kids are very good for you, they keep you humble, it doesn't matter who you are?

Priscellie: So about the age of nine is where that sort of thing begins?

Jim: Yeah that would sort of be when it would start to begin and if you were a wizard parent you would begin to notice it happening and start to take steps about it like "okay you're growing up now so we're going to have to talk about the way of the world and the first thing is eye contact is going to be an issue so let's talk about how to do it without actually doing it and how we connect with each other without doing it still." I think in wizard families you'd find a lot more physical hand holding a lot of physical contact to compensate for that sort of thing.

Priscellie: Did Molly ever soulgaze her parents?

Jim: Oh um, no probably not- oh she probably did with her dad which is why she's so wrapped up with not wanting to disappoint him. I think that's probably what's behind that.

Priscellie: The feelings!

Jim: Right? Right? Poor kid oh my gosh.

Priscellie: R E A? on reddit asks "is there anything you can tell us about Elaine's parents? Were they minor talents or major players in the supernatural world?"

Jim: I'm not going to say anything about Elaine's parents, mostly because I haven't thought about it too much. Let me think about that one for a while and see where she came from. thinks Oh I can't say anything about that without giving too much away so I won't say anything else.

Priscellie: Alrighty. What has Kincaid been up to since the events of Changes?

Jim: Oh Kincaid. I will say this much, Kincaid and Ivy kind of had their falling out.

Priscellie: It's in one of the microfictions on jimbutcher.com

Jim: Oh yeah I actually did that on the website. Since then he's been feeling guilty a lot and drinking and sort of stalking Ivy about and still trying to protect her occasionally and to which she's just like "no, no, I cannot deal with this, no" but he's bad at boundaries and so is she so it's a very broken relationship between the two of them.

more cat bits

Priscellie: Who was the warden of Demonreach before Harry?

Jim: Lemme think, I know who it is, and who the guy before that was, but the guy before /that/ was Kemmler so...

Priscellie: Oh god. laughs

Jim: Yeah, I mean, half of that entire thing was just the white council trying to keep Kemmler from getting back to the island and opening it up. Which is why they had him being hounded by the wardens all through the wild west and so on. It was to stop him from being able to set things up even more. Kemmler is sort of in the Dresden Files universe he's sort of the Dresden Files version of WWI where it was actually the biggest most epic most incredible conflict the world has ever known but we're all used to seeing WWII because they got some of it on film but we didn't get nearly as much of the great war on film but when you actually go and study it and study all the troop numbers and resources involved WWI was really the great war and WWII was kind of a follow-up. A softer echo in many ways.

Priscellie: In terms of how long someone is a warden, I'm sure it varies from case to case but how long does wardenship typically last?

Jim: It depends on how quickly it gets you killed.

Priscellie: Is that the only way out?

Jim: I'd say it's not the only way out. You can definitely walk away from it or be dragged away from it or driven away from it. And then if somebody else comes along and challenges Demonreach then it's their island if your influence isn't there anymore. By the time Harry got there nobody had been there in a good long while because among the people who are in the know on the council it would be suicide to go try and do that. If one of the senior council guys got it all the other senior council guys would be like "yep he's the bad guy he's definitely corrupt and serving evil". And then Dresden walked into it and it was just such a stupid move they all kind of looked at him and went "I think he was he was being dumb? Do you think he was being dumb? Yeah it looks dumb. It looks like he was just being stupid, oh my god, we do need the firepower", you know, like that. The poor council, they find themselves so strapped for resources in so many ways that they keep having to tolerate Harry Dresden.

Priscellie: Did his (Kemmler) wardenship end when he was killed after WWII?

Jim: It ended during one of the times they killed him. Kemmler got killed a bunch of times. He was one of those fun villains who just kept getting back up again just kept Napoleoning his way back into being a problem for the white council.

Priscellie: Pop goes the weasel for necromancers.

Jim: Exactly.

Priscellie: Joshua Salley asks "are we likely to meet the actual Merlin and Arthur as it seems with the situation we may need some backup".

Jim: That seems... are they still copyrighted or are they public domain now?

Priscellie: They're definitely public domain.

Jim: Okay. Maybe so then. Public domain, I won't have to pay anybody to use them, perhaps so.

Priscellie: They're legends.

Jim: True, true. I think they're public domain then.

Priscellie: They're definitely older than the oldest Disney film so anything older than that is in the public domain.

Jim: One of my favourite crack theories I've heard is that Harry Dresden is Merlin and aging in reverse and getting closer to the beginning and that's what the Dresden Files is, Merlin's origin. That gives me way too much credit but I really like the idea.

Priscellie: Are there any other crack theories you enjoy?

Jim: Yeah there's always a lot of them but whenever somebody asks the question I immediately can't think of them. I did remember that one and brought it up so, when I do think of one I try and bring it up so people will know.

Priscellie: Which Hogwarts house would Dresden go into?

Jim: Uh... wow, good question. That's a really deep one. I can just see Dresden- the sorting hat going "Dresden in house... Gry-no, house Sly-no, house Hu-no, house R-no not that one either." "we've run out of houses" "I don't care, find something" Dresden would wind up in house janitor closet probably.

Priscellie: Steven Parlan? asks "Jim I know you're a D&D player, what's Harry's class and level?"

Jim: Oh at this point Harry is... he's not really doing like full on teleportation type stuff yet so that's gonna put him around 10th 11th 12th level wizard I forget exactly when you start collecting teleportation. It might be as early as 9, could be he just hasn't learned, it's within his capability he just hasn't learned that spell yet, I don't know. But yeah he's like a mid level-high level wizard though he's gonna be doing some respectable stuff, he's not gonna be throwing any Wishes around or anything but... At this point in D&D terms he'll be of that level 10+ of being a wizard, of being a magic user from first edition D&D.

Priscellie: So we're going to get our first question that is sourced from you guys. The top upvoted question is from Joshua Matthews "why Jim, why?" Whyyyyyy

Jim: You all love it, don't act like you don't. I do what I do and if you all didn't respond in the most sincere way possible with your dollars, I wouldn't do this. You're doing this to yourselves.

Priscillie: This is victim blaming.

Jim: Really all I'm doing is-I'm a mirror for the audience, that's all.

Priscellie: It's a very dark mirror.

Jim: laughs Kind of a goofy mirror, really.

Priscellie: Like a funhouse mirror.

Jim: Basically.

Priscellie: Alright, Jonathan McGee asks "what is the summer mantle like for Fix and has be basically become like Roland Reuel 2 at this point?

Jim: The Summer mantle is a much different experience for whoever's holding it. It too is fundamentally a force that is dedicated to creation but whereas the Winter mantle's creative output is essentially just in reproduction, go make more soldiers, the Summer mantle's output is much more attached to art and beauty. So Fix finds himself desperately painting things and fixing up cars and not just fixing them but making them beautiful and stuff like that and those are the sorts of pressures that he has to deal with. It's like "sorry I have to create today or I'm gonna lose my mind", like that, and that's what he's doing while Dresden is on the beach with the 225 pound weight vest.

Priscellie: Does he have a Soundcloud?

Jim: Fix? Probably. But yeah that's the sort of drive that Summer deals with, they have a different sort of creative force where they're creating light and beauty. That's sort of what is in their oeuvre They can also just go and get it on and get it out that way but it is a much different thing there over in Summer, they're much more concerned with nurturing the aspects of civilisation in mortals. That is part of what they're doing to protect them because for some of the same reasons that for instance British officers always insisted on having tea every day at the same time because it served as a ritual to remind them that they would not always be in the field and doing these things they would eventually be returning to civilisation and there were some trappings of civilisation that you did not surrender no matter the circumstances and one of those was tea. That was one of the things that helped people come back not just alive but sane and ready to go back to civilisation.

Priscellie: It reminds you of the Dead Poet's Society quote about how medicine and all these things are so important for extending life but the arts are what we live /for/.

Jim: Yes. That's /why/ to do it in the first place and that's really a lot of the balance of Winter and Summer. Winter is there to get the things that are on the bottom of Mazlov's pyramid and Summer is there for those things that are on the higher end and you need them all in order to be a whole person.

Priscellie: Jonathan also asks "can Harry's new blasting rod channel Winter ice in addition to fire?"

Jim: There's no reason it couldn't, the only reason it hasn't is that it's alien to his thinking. Because he does fire and so ice is something completely separate. Fire and ice are kind of the same thing as far as magical operations go and Harry's hit on that before, but it's not something he's made an emotional truth to the point he can whip out an ice blasting rod. That's not something it would occur to him to do. If it did he would probably make a device that would... ideas begin to appear get him in all kinds of trouble and probably flood places because he could switch between fire and ice but the middle's just wet. And... laughs there's so much havoc in that I have to do it now, damn you sir Priscellie starts laughing. Yeah I'm gonna have to play around with that now and see what happens.

Priscellie: So thank you Jonathan McGee you've been personally damned by Jim Butcher.

Jim: Yes you have, congratulations sir.

Priscellie: Seidmadr asks "how much time did the Merlin spend swearing when he learned Harry had returned?"

Jim: Oh um well, I'm not gonna answer that because you'll see later when we go on...um... Does anybody really think that whoever's in charge of the White Council is really what he looks like? So we'll see more about that as we move along.

Priscellie: Okay my brain is going places. Deserae? asks "do you ever lurk on the Dresden Files subreddit or other forums and maybe pose as someone else in order to drop misleading theories or gauge readers' reactions to your books?"

Jim: No I'll occasionally lurk and go by and just see what people are thinking or talking about and that's where I see occasional bits of crack theory. But no I don't go stir things up agent provocateur style.

Priscellie: That he'll admit to.

Jim: So far. But now that you're talking about it... I don't know, that could be fun. I mean, it's not like I don't like messing with you guys. I just normally leave it combined to the pages of the book because it seems more fair. On the other hand, there you all are talking about my stuff and having extra fun and it seems like I should get to have some fun too. Now I'm gonna be thinking about it, why do you do this to me Priscilla? Why do you admit questions like this that you know are going to corrupt my moral fiber?

Priscellie: laughing I don't think your moral fiber could get any more corrupt than it already is.

Jim: Okay fair enough.

Priscellie: One of my fun beta anecdotes that I like to recount is when he was writing the very last chapter of Changes. He waited until he saw me online to send it to the beta list so he could get my reaction live in person.

Jim: I'd been up for hours too, it was a Saturday morning I was waiting for you to wake up, it was something like 8:30 or 9, you were sleeping in late for you. But yeah I hadn't slept in a couple of days and been on a sprint to finish the book and I was like "okay just wrote the final chapter, I /have/ to see what this does to her, I have to, there's no way I can't, get some coffee and wait".

Priscellie: My exact words were "what the everloving crap was that??!"

Jim: True that was the first thing.

Priscellie: Jonathan Sheperd asks "I heard you mention in another video that one of your favourite writers was Robert Reid Parker. What's your favourite Spenser novel?

Jim: My favourite Spenser novel... maybe Looking for Rachel Wallace, it was a really really good one. Potshot was a really good one because it was just like the Avengers of the Spenser novels and I really enjoyed that concept. But yeah I love Spenser, depending on what kind of mood I'm in I've got a different favourite Spenser book as a fave. And I've actually enjoyed the hell out of Sunny Randall and his sheriff too I've forgot his name. But yeah anything Robert Parker's done is worth reading. Oh my goodness what an amazingly talented craftsman.

Priscellie: And what are some other authors readers might want to enjoy in between books to make a little bit more sense of the flavour text that went into creating Dresden?

Jim: Definitely go check out Roger Zelazny's Amber series, I'm rereading those right now and more and more I'm impressed at exactly how influential they were for the Dresden Files and for my writing style in general. If you haven't read Roger Zelazny go read him. Fritz Leiber I love reading his stuff, Harry Harrison, the Stainless Steel Rat. Lemme think, Lois Bujold, I think she's really in many ways the most talent writer alive right now that's working in science fiction and fantasy so she has my eternal respect. Let's see I always recommend the Temeraire novels by Naomi Novik, if you enjoy the Dresden Files kind of shoot-em-up action go check out go check out Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia, if you find yourself craving some science fiction epic look at David Weber's Honor Harrington books (ugh no). These are all folks who either had an influence on or have been influenced by the Dresden Files, they're working professionals who are telling great stories of their own, creating their own worlds out of imagination, they're the folks that I go to to read when I want to be inspired.

Priscellie: Daniel Wolfshadow asks "I've tried summoning Molly, why doesn't she answer?"

Jim: You'll have to take that up with Molly she doesn't share all her information with me and I won't presume to speak for her.

Priscellie: Valid. Chris Mullan? asks "if Uriel became mortal when he willingly gave up his grace how or why did the Fallen retain their immortality?"

Jim: The difference was that Uriel's grace was not something that was /taken/ from him, it was something he elected to give up and what was left behind when he did that was essentially this pure human who had not done anything and had not fallen from grace, this pure mortal who was left over after Uriel handed his grace off. So he could still act and walk around and maneuver as a mortal. When it comes to the Fallen though, their grace was taken from them and sort of all that was left was the /shadow/ of the angel that they had been, sort of the negative impression of that angel. They didn't have their own body, their own free will that they could exercise and lose because they already exercised their will and choose badly and lost it. The hard part of being a Fallen is being this creature who is written in indelible ink and who can't recover in many ways. That's sort of the great tragedy of them but that's who they are in the cosmos, they have to be who they are or the balance falls apart.

Priscellie: Charles asks "can you explain why Maeve kept trying to seduce Harry with the limits of the lady mantle? Was it an attempt at assassination?"

Jim: That would have been fun, yes. It might also have forced Mab into grabbing Dresden sooner which Maeve sort of liked the idea of. Maeve also felt enough towards Lloyd Slate that she wanted to get him killed as quickly as she could because she knew he was being tortured and eventually he might go crazy and be enough of a monster that Mab might turn him loose on her so Maeve wanted to get that taken care of and out of the way.

Priscellie: Maeve chose Lloyd Slate to be the Winter knight?

Jim: Yes she did. But after Mab had him, Maeve was worried that Mab was going to get him all roided up and send him back home. You know so that was like "okay I've got to get rid of him, plus he /was/ a pretty good dog". Maeve never really had a lot in the way of humanity going in her favour but she kind of had the ghosts and shreds of it hanging around and so she would- it would come out in the most horrible ways. She was really such a bent and broken character and I only showed the most over the top stuff on-screen. But it was just awful to be her and now Molly's getting to live it so I can walk her into that bit by bit it's so I've sort of been thinking my way through in Molly's head and saying "oh now how does that change and how much does Dresden actually /see/" and by the time we get through all the filters I'm feeling a little bit insane, by the time it actually gets written.

Priscellie: With regards to Maeve so she wasn't allowed on the Disneyland visits?

Jim: No no no no no... Maeve was not allowed around Sarissa that would not have been a good idea. That would be one of those things where Mab was just like "no, just not that, you know what we're going to keep Maeve and Sarissa apart even if /walls of ice/ have to appear to make it happen".

Priscellie: Joshua Matthews asks "if someone with multiple personalities or mantles like Kringle were imprisoned on the island, could only one part be released and other parts left in prison?"

Jim: Ooh that's a good question. Yeah I mean theoretically yeah you could. That would work really really well if the warden was using that to get specific services out of somebody without wanting to expose people to certain dangers. If Harry for example captured Kringle on the island for example he might want to send him out as Kringle or as anything /but/ Kringle so you can go forth and do whatever you're doing Odin but I'm keeping Kringle right here because I know he's the source of your immortality, you can come get him out on Christmas Eve.

Priscellie: oooh.

Jim: And then bring him back but meanwhile you can be free but I've got you. And that's the kind of thing you can get away with when you're the warden of Demonreach when you've got this prison that you can grab any of the big supernatural beings. That would be a way you could exercise control over a being like that. So in that way yeah that's /exactly/ the kind of being you want to entrap with Demonreach but at the same time to do it you've gotta go fight em and win. You don't wanna be the guy that tries to trap Odin and misses. You too will be honoured to learn of Tae Kwan Leap.

Priscellie: So is that a way that Harry could potentially shed the Winter knight mantle?

Jim: That's potentially a way but's it's also like "now walk off the island and leave that part of you here" and what does that do to you if you're just a person? And not one of these incredible supernatural spiritual slash energetic beings. When you're just a regular guy and at the end of the day Dresden has some great tricks but at the end of the day he's a regular guy, what will that do to you? I mean that's some pretty delicate psychic surgery there I don't think that's something you want Harry Dresden in charge of.

Priscellie: Maybe not even Molly assisting with that.

Jim: Yeah maybe not. I don't know who you want doing that, maybe Mab.

Priscelle: Oh god.

Jim: Right?

Priscellie: I also feel like that would be sort of cross purposes.

Jim: Yeah but do you /trust/ her to do it? Not that she can or can't but do you trust her to do it right?

Priscellie: Is killing the Winter knight the only way of getting that mantle? Could Mab withdraw the Winter knight mantle from Harry if she decided she'd prefer a different vessel?

Jim: Ooh I don't know if she could do it without hurting him.

Priscellie: If she didn't care about hurting him?

Jim: If she didn't care about hurting him yeah she could just rip it away that's easy she can just have him killed. But yeah I don't know, maybe she could. It's also one of those things though that I think that, power's one of those gifts where once you give it away you don't get it back. That's kind of the nature of what it is. You give somebody power then they have that power now and they can do things with it and it's sort of out of your hands. It could be one of those things where Mab could go get it back but it's really messy and then she'd have to clean the thing off and perhaps send it out to the spiritual dry cleaners to have the mantle fixed before she could pass it on to someone else.

Priscellie: Joshua Matthews also asks "did Butters ever get in the ring with the einherjar?"

Jim: Oh god I'm not gonna not let that go by. Just give it time though because I've got to set it up. I'm actually gonna be writing some short fiction of sort of what's going on over the course of the next year for Dresden and how his life is changing and it's gonna be framed around a number of political events that he has to attend. And after you've read the book you'll laugh at that it's so funny. And so I'll be able to show how things are changing and one of the things I'll definitely want to do is Butters and that einherjar I don't see how I can not do that.

Posted by
u/TheCuriousFan
2 years ago

Mike's Book Reviews Q&A with Jim Transcript
Spoilers All
Back to doing most of a regular interview instead of posting snippets from three different q&as that seem relevant.

What do you prefer Star Wars or Star Trek? For me it's funny because you answered this in one of your books.

For me it's Star Wars especially since The Mandalorian came out. Trek, I don't mind Trek but it's not like my spiritual home, I need swords and space wizards.

I'm right there with you and Mandalorian really almost feel like... people who grew up with the original trilogy it almost feels like coming home home a little bit don't it.

Oh I know, I know, I'm loving the heck out of it.

If you had to pick three favourite Dresden books which would they be?

Probably Changes, Peace Talks and Battle Ground, I mean I kind of see Peace Talks and Battle Ground as the same book because originally they were but it was just too big and clunky.

What is your favourite food and drink combo? And if it's not pizza and coke I'm gonna feel cheated.

Well you're gonna feel cheated then because it's burgers and fries.

Okay, I'm just saying when I read Dresden Files books every five minutes when Harry's getting a coke I'm like "good lord I can feel my teeth cracking".

Yeah.

Which character point of view would change our view on Dresden's world the most if we got a chapter or a novella from that point of view?

Ooooooh, the Merlin probably.

Oh nice.

Yeah the Merlin... he just has bottles of Pepto that Dresden causes him to drink, but he's the one who knows the whole story and exactly how dangerous Dresden is right now, so.

If you could collaborate with one author in any genre, living or dead, who would it be?

Robert B Parker.

What does Robert B Parker write?

He is the author of the Spenser private eye series, so all of the Spenser movies, all the tv shows, they all come from his books. He's kind of my hero as a writer, he didn't even start until he was in his 40s and then he just started writing and turning out these books on a regular basis, he actually died at the keyboard like a man, that I how I want to go out you know, doing something cool like that. But yeah he was my favourite writer and he passed five or six years ago.

So besides Robert B Parker if you had a chance to write any other author's universe, play in that sandbox, which one would it be and why?

his answer is still Honor Harrington cat scout and Monster Hunter International's denarians vs monster hunters

Now I've heard this story a lot in the comments of the videos I've made for your books, the story about the professor that basically inspired you to write the Dresden Files, did you stay in touch with this gentleman?

With her, Debbie Chester, we trade emails occasionally still. Most recently she published her book which is called "The Fantasy Fiction Formula" and it's- she's the one who taught me everything I needed to know to write so for you wannabe writers out there check out "The Fantasy Fiction Formula" by Debora Chester. But yeah she was the one who inspired me to do the Dresden Files. I'd been writing swords and horses fantasy in her class for years and she was like "when you're talking to me about story structure you're always talking Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you're always talking about Babylon 5, maybe you should try writing something that's kind of in that same kind of genre, maybe you would enjoy that". And I was like "I am a /fantasy/ author" excuse me so I resisted what she was trying to tell me to do for a very long time. Storm Front origin story from here

Do you ever think about writing a hard space science fiction series?

Oh I already have, or at least I started writing one. It's called US Marshals which I decided- I set it 200 years in the future and the Earth has colonies on the moon and Io and Mars and stations at the Lagrange Points and asteroid mining going on and the entire system got tired of dealing with all the people on Earth who have no idea what their problems are like when their problems are like "we need air". That's the kind of problem Earthers are not going to understand so eventually they took a power collection satellite, they wrote "don't tread on me" across the Gobi Desert in letters thirty feet high and they declared independence from the Earth and declared themselves the United System and I did that just so I could have US Marshals as the protagonists.

So they're the United System Marshals and they're the only ones who know about the aliens. Earth is sort of on the receiving end of the Prime Directive but instead of being in a nature preserve it's more like a hunting preserve because when contact is outlawed only the outlaws make contact so the only aliens who show up are guys doing illegal stuff, religious fanatics, political refugees, weird scientists doing weird experiments that are unauthorised by the Federation you know, that sort of thing. Those are the only aliens we see and the marshals are the ones that have to deal with them.

This is a book that I can get and read?

No no, the first one is like three quarters written, I stopped writing it to start the Alera series (the only polite thing I can say is thank fuck this never got off the ground). I left my protagonist floating in a decaying orbit over the moon with his ship about to go critical behind him and a solar flare coming on and he's been there for like ten years.

Wow, well I'd be interested in hearing if he gets out of that situation. What beer in our reality is most similar to Mac's ale?

I'm not a beer guy I don't know, I go to friends for research for beer.

Your favourite Metallica album?

S&M the one they did with the symphony.

Who is your favourite villain to write in the Dresden Files and why is it Nicodemus?

Nicodemus is a load of fun because he's the guy that will do anything, that's kind of his schtick so it's always fun to have him there because I'll sit down and brainstorm just the worst things he could possibly do that day and try and figure out how to work that into the book then after I do that, he's a lot of fun. Mab is a whole ton of fun I regard her as a villain. Marcone is probably the most fun to write because he's the guy who is- he has the limited resources and the naked will against all these creatures of incredible power everywhere.

You know Death Masks was the one where I really was like all in the series because I felt like Nicodemus could have been the big bad on a season of Buffy, I stick by that. Now Marcone is just like the coolest cat in the world, we all kind of want to be him.

I have so much fun with that character man, writing the end of Battle Ground was such a blast.

Yes that was a trip, at first I was like "god damn it no" and then it was like "oh yes...?" so what music do you listen to while writing and would you consider putting out a playlist on Spotify like Brandon Sanderson does?

I guess if I could figure out how. Depends what I'm writing, Dresden gets lots of heavy metal and the heavy metal that I like is often covers of other songs that are very not heavy metal songs but somebody did a heavy metal cover and that's something I enjoy, when I'm writing the steampunk I write almost exclusively to Lindsay Stirling, the violinist. I don't know if you've heard her albums but they're fun.

Who is your favourite not-Harry character you've created and how did you envision this character while you were creating them? Please be Marcone.

Marcone was an accident. He started off as kind of a throwaway gangster guy and then I decided well his opening was too cool to leave him like because we opened with a soulgaze on Marcone, it's like "okay no if I'm gonna make this guy a human predator then he's going to be a tiger and you will always have to be afraid of him, period. And that meant that he was going to have to grow in proportion to Dresden otherwise he would not be someone who is scary so Marcone as he's been going he's been gathering resources and various abilities to influence the world around him even though he can't do it Dresden's way, he has the advantage of he has no limits, or at least very few limits so off he goes to get things done. That's always terribly fun, writing Marcone because I can stop and think "okay if I was going up against this wizard how would I manage it?, alright now let me stop and think." I'll go and contact some of my sneaky friends and say "alright sneaky guys how do I do this?" and they tell me to have him operate this way.

As a comic book guy I always- the comparison I always make to those two is some of the best issues of Superman him and Lex Luthor had to work together so you've got Harry and Marcone having to work together, and they work really good together it just puts a smile on my face I love it.

Yeah that's a lot of fun to write, frenemies is the best.

Favourite season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

It's season 2

Angel or Spike? And I know that you've got James Marsters doing your audiobooks and you feel like you've got to answer this one way.

It's Spike even without James Marsters

Any advice for new writers based on your experiences is there anything you would advise new writers not to do, or avoid?

Avoid anything that keeps you from getting new writing done. I mean, no matter what you're doing you should be getting new material published so if you start getting into a place where you are continually revising and editing old stuff you're not learning anything new and you need to stop doing that and start writing new stuff as well. So always be generating new material that's how you learn and grow as a writer. Don't let anything get in the way of you making new stuff.

This is kind of a long one, let me make sure I'm reading this right, what have you found to be both and advantage and a disadvantage of telling a story the size of the Dresden Files from the first person point of view of Harry?

Well the great advantage is is that Dresden's point of view is so limited and kind of ignorant that I can sort of adjust things on the fly because things are happening behind the scenes that I know are happening but Dresden doesn't know are happening and if necessary I can look back on it and go "oh wait let me just pick this bad guy up and put him over here and that one over here because the audience can't see it yet anyway and this will be a nicer setup for later on in the story" so that's kind of the good part is that Dresden is so... he's kind of so blinkered that there's all kinds of things happening that he doesn't know about that I know about as a writer. So it's convenient for me so I can rearrange things along the way.

The problem of course is that Dresden is a character who is so limited and blinkered that I can only show the things that are right in front of him and I'm very limited in what I can present to the audience in terms of the various overstory that's going on because basically the only way for the audience to find out is for Dresden to wander into the middle of it and step on a landmine, that's how the audience finds out about it.

I know in Side Jobs you wrote some stories from some different characters' points of views, have you ever thought about writing one from like third person omniscient or anything like that? Just to see what it felt like?

For the Dresden Files? No I couldn't. I mean Dresden Files is very much, I mean it's funny because I have a different experience of it than everybody else because in my head I can see all these other characters and their stories and their viewpoints and their view of Dresden and the White Council and everything and it's all so different than Dresden's attitudes about things. And people are /afraid/ of Dresden it's not like they casually go up and challenge what he thinks about the world on a regular basis. I mean he's the guy who can melt you if he gets really upset, do you really want to go talk politics with him? No probably not, you can probably skip that and be just as happy.

Well yeah there's only one guy who can soulgaze with a kraken and the kraken's scared of him, right.

Well essentially yeah. That was more a starborn thing but anyway. There you go free one for the audience.

If you could finish ASOIAF for GRRM what would be the last sentence?

I don't know I haven't read it. The last sentence will be a lot better than D&D anyway, right?

I've got some- the real D&D which is Dungeons and Dragons I've got some of those questions here in a minute.

Nice.

What advice would you give to a new and struggling Dungeons and Dragons player who only knows how to be a Barbarian because he just wants to punch everyone in the face, what would be your advice to someone to get better at Dungeons and Dragons?

Play lots of characters, I'm the sort of person who gets bored and switches characters every month or so in a weekly D&D game chuckles. GMs just roll their eyes at me all the time but yeah play more characters and enjoy it, think your way through the character that you're playing you know, figure out if he's gonna be a dummy. Don't try and be the cool guy in the party, try and be the loser in the party it's so much fun. If you're the guy who's so dumb you're causing problems for everyone then that is a much more interesting game than if you're playing Captain White Bread.

I was told not to ask you about the fourth edition of Dungeons and Dragons, I think they said you believed it was like the new coke?

usual summary of grievances with 4E and some talk about D&D movie

I watched a panel a while back right when I'd first gotten into Dresden Files, I also like the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown a lot and you two were doing a panel together I think somewhere in like Arizona this was like back in 2016 I think and I noticed in that panel that you kept- when people would ask you about Dresden you'd be like "yeahyeahyeah" and you'd answer it and then they'd ask you a question about Dungeons and Dragons and you were real enthusiastic about it and it's like "I think this guy really wants to play some Dungeons and Dragons" so it got me thinking, what is your favourite D&D class and what class to you gravitate towards the most? I know you say you like to change it up a lot but which one do you find yourself falling back into easily?

I almost always play spellcasters. I like playing characters that can cause chaos and rearrange the battlefield a lot, lot of crowd control type characters are what I enjoy playing because the tactical effect is much larger with that character. So I enjoy playing anybody who's a spellcaster I enjoy playing clerics because I like playing characters with a southern accent and preaching to the monsters and stuff like that, that's always fun.

See I was new to it and I felt like right when I was starting to get the hang of it I went out and bought me some nice metal dice and a nice metal character and all that stuff and then covid happened and now we can't get together and play anymore so.

Yeah makes it much more difficult, lots of Zoom D&D.

Would you ever consider visiting the Codex Alera universe again?

the usual answer about potentially going back when the Protoss equivalents arrive a few centuries later or going back to a cursor academy right after the series ended and showing how the world changed

Will you be writing a redemption arc for officer Rudolph?

Writing a redemption arc for officer Rudol-starts laughing I don't know yet, we'll see what happens to Rudy. I could see Rudy winding up on a Stone Table at some point.

I don't think anybody would be mad about that really.

Yeah, yeah.

Why is the Furies of Calderon hardcover so goshdarned expensive?

I do not know. It's hardest to find because they printed fewer copies of that than any other hardback that I've ever had come out so that's probably why. Technically that was my very first hardback book was Furies of Calderon I think they only printed six or eight thousand of that first one so it's sort of hard to find.

Leaning onto that one, will there ever be a hardcover re-release or first release for some of the earlier books in the Dresden Files series?

Oh I'm sure there will be you know how corporations are, I mean Penguin's a corporation like everybody else I'm sure they'll want to do some kind of special release when we get to the end. Maybe I can talk them into doing some kind of release where they'll release two or three novels in a hardback omnibus edition, that might be kind of nice.

After I buckled and bought all the trade paperbacks I'm sure now they'll probably just go ahead and do that.

Yeah exactly "here all new hardbacks, matching covers, if you line them up they all- the art makes new art", like that.

As a book collector I can't say no to things like that.

Exactly, exactly. Preying on all the poor OCD kids.

Alright, do you find it hard to kill of your characters or do you really get joy out of making your readers cry? For example in Battle Ground, why Jim why?

Look, I torture my characters because I'm not legally allowed to torture any readers. So the only way I can get to them is through the characters, as long as I have the characters and do mean things to them I can get to you guys too and that's really what this is all about for me.

Well hearing how you described your favourite season of Buffy I think I got the answer to that, yeah I think he likes ripping your soul out just a little bit.

I do, that's what you're all paying me for.

Indifference I think, as a writer- the worst thing would be indifference if you killed a big character and everybody was kind of like shrugs

Oh yeah, I don't mind when people get upset about character deaths, that's the best thing ever. That's heroin for writers.

Battle Ground was kind of rough for me, got the advance reader copy and I was like- this sounds like complaining about having too much money to some people but I was like- you know how much it sucked having to be quiet about that for a month and not being able to react to this you guys.

Oh my god I had to wait a year after I wrote it before I finally started getting audience response from it.

And hatemail?

Well you know, some of that but it's to be expected.

What are some of the best books that you've read in the last five years?

Temeraire, Alex Verus, Larry Correia, Robert Parker, Zelazny, Prydain Chronicles, Lois McMaster Bujold.

What is your favourite candy?

Andy's Fruit snacks whatever those are

Will we be seeing more of Elaine in the future I think that's a very easy question.

Oh yeah obviously.

Is Pizza Express based on any specific pizza place?

Oh my gosh it is and I forgot the name of it but I had three or four friends of mine who were LARPers along with me back in the day- back in college and they all worked at the pizza place and the way travel would work out is we'd be traveling to a LARP, we'd be traveling from Oklahoma City to Dallas for three or four hours down there but we wouldn't be able to leave until like three thirty in the morning where everybody got off their shift and I would be like the one guy who was awake and we'd pile into a car and head somewhere. But man I can't remember the name of it, it was pizza something.

So it wasn't anywhere in Chicago?

No, no it wasn't, it was in Norman Oklahoma but they had a Street Fighter game there that if you won enough rounds of it you would get a free small pizza and so it was on my regular rotation of- you know when I was a young father, going around and getting our pizza dinner for less than a dollar because I could win the Street Fighter game and get a small pizza, then I could go to the next place and play a Simon game and get a free movie then go to the next place and play another Simon game and get a two liter and some breadsticks. Then I had the pizza, the two liter, the breadsticks and the movie, take it home and it only cost me a dollar and- it was a quarter to win each game.

And now I'm hungry. You talked about rereading some stuff, something I've been doing is- I read a lot of Steven King when I was a teenager and I've started rereading a lot of his stuff a couple years ago and I was amazed at how much it has different things that'll hit you from when you were a teenager and obviously kids and stuff like that. So my viewers know me and they would love to hear you answer this, do you have a favourite Steven King book?

For Steven King I'll probably take The Stand as far as that one goes, I mean it's a little long but and it sort of ends a little bit goofy but the character work is really enjoyable and once you read it you're a hypochondriac for like six weeks afterward, that's all there is to it.

Yeah I did my review for The Stand back in April right when lockdown happened and I was like "I did not plan this guys I swear to god".

Oh yeah, I watched it, I watched it.

Another Steven King one, was the name He Who Walks Behind influenced by Steven King's He Who Walks Behind The Rows from Children of the Corn?

No I actually stole that from Fritz Lieber in a book from the 50s or 60s, I forget the name of it but it was about a guy whose wife was an actual witch and that was her familiar demon, He Who Walks Behind. It was just such a cool thing that it was like "okay, I'm gonna borrow that."

Recommend a science fiction or fantasy series that not a lot of people talk about.

First two seasons of Andromeda and Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga

Harry's mechanic is named Mike, did you get this name from the rock group Mike and the Mechanics?

Maybe? I wouldn't put it past me. I mean at the time I just needed a mechanic and I've got to name him something, Mike, okay.

Mike's a good strong name, I'm a fan of that one. Let's talk about adaptation because I know this one's got to come up quite a bit for you, now we obviously had that one version that came out so, I know that the rights- I think Fox has said they were gonna do something and then I don't know if that was just because they didn't want to lose the rights, so basically is there ever gonna be a new version that's gonna happen and if it did would you prefer it to be animated?

We'll see. There may be a new version, we'll see what happens, it's one of those things that's in development and you know what that means in Hollywood.

It means they're holding on to it?

It means they're holding on to it. Hollywood is a place where nothing happens, nothing happens, nothing happens and then everything happens all at the same time. And that's why the folks who work in the business kind of have a reputation for being a little crazy because they /live/ in everything happening at the same time all the time. It's a tough way to live I don't know if I could do that business but it's in development now, we'll see if anything comes of it. I'm actually kind of on the development team at this point so I'm able to provide direct input to the scripts and being able to say "okay we need a joke here, we need something to lighten up the scene here" and that's been a lot of fun. I don't know if it's going to develop into anything because covid, otherwise something might have happened already I don't know but things have been shut down in California so hard that nothing new is getting done.

I'm thinking about that same panel I saw where you were with Pierce Brown and you said you had like zero contribution to the sci-fy series at all, right?

Yeah that's correct, they didn't even cop me a copy of the DVDs.

laughs

Wow I wonder why it failed. As far as animation I don't know if you ever watch any of the Netflix animation like Dragon Prince or something like that... Maybe I've been influenced so much by the very famous fanart for Dresden but that's just kind of what I picture in my head is just animation, and then maybe you can have James Marsters-

Oh it would be so good I would /love/ an animated Dresden Files show because in an animated show you can burn down the city or not burn down the city and it costs you just as much either way. So I would be able to write just the most ridiculous nonsense though in an animated series that you couldn't do on a live action and that would be a lot of fun.

So what is your current favourite tv show that is still airing and streaming counts?

Mandalorian. I really love the Orville? and I think they're clearly having a great time on that show and that usually sells a show for me.

Best Star Trek show on tv right now.

It really is it's the second best Star Trek show of all time but I'm not sure which one is number one but the Orville? is number two.

How do you find your beta readers and how do I become one? That wasn't me that was a viewer that asked that.

Well I've got a waiting list now that is like really long and usually there's only one or two new people a year although probably in the next few years people on the list are gonna start dying so that should make it go through faster.

Have you ever had a character that you planned to kill off but you changed your mind as you were writing?

No I don't think I've chickened out on killing anybody I needed to kill. I have killed some extra people I didn't need to kill only because I get tired of having so many characters, Battle Ground was basically an excuse to go "you know what let me just move a couple of these people aside and I won't have to deal with them anymore, this cast is too big".

Because I won't lie when I was reading Turn Coat I think it was with Michael I thought you'd done it and I was like "god damn it killed my favourite" so I thought you'd done it there and I was wondering if he'd actually intended to do it and just couldn't pull the trigger completely.

No no, that was always his retirement, that was his ticket out.

Do you intentionally write Buffy references in your books to troll James Marsters?

Not to troll Marsters, I write Buffy references 'cause I love Buffy. I don't mind trolling Marsters, that said. And now that I know he has issues saying the word "little" I'm gonna have to work it into like the worst possible times (this is the price he pays for the supposed Toot and Mister story not having the word little in it).

I heard him do the interview where you put like little on a page like twenty five times or something.

Yeah yeah, well I can be like that occasionally.

Not to be when does the next book come out guy, but do you have any plans on when Cinder Spires will continue?

the usual Olympian Affair summary, other spires are choosing teams

I only have one question about the cover art for your books here, obviously we know the joke by now about Harry always wearing a hat. Is it true that this character here points to Aeronaut's Windlass cover wears a hat and the artist intentionally didn't put a hat in?

Yeah he's a British naval captain for all practical purposes he won't be caught dead without his hat and so we get him drawn- I at least got him to add the hat in on the side eventually. That was a joke between- Chris was playing around with me a little and I appreciate that.

I don't know if this is a typo, like I said I haven't read Codex or Cinder Spires yet but it says "who would win in a fight of indifference? Cat Sith or Rowl?"

Oh Cat Sith or Rowl, I don't know Cat Sith has that magical advantage on his side where he's immortal and he doesn't have to eat or sleep or blink or anything like that so he could probably cheat by being immortal and Rowl would protest his cheating, probably walk away.

When Harry asked Cat Sith where his red lightsaber was I just thought I'd let you know that I laughed so loud that I woke my wife up and she didn't appreciate it but I had a good laugh out of it.

Well please apologise to her from me.

Well that's the thing I think that I've really endeared myself to this series because obviously we grew up in similar situations and similar pop culture references and I love that you put those pop culture reference in almost as like a Farscape kind of thing where John Crichton was always making these pop culture references and everybody's like "what are you talking about?" but I think it's- Lord of the Rings and Star Wars are the ones you do the most and that's two of my favourite things so please keep doing more of that because I enjoy them.

I have to, apparently I can't not do it so.

Yeah if you don't have at least one Star Wars reference per book, right?

Oh yeah definitely.

Did you have an outline for the series with a beginning, middle and end or did you wing it?

the usual story about coming up with a whole series outline instead of a Storm Front outline

Well here's the thing, one of the other questions was "it seems like we always get like a mixed answer, is it a twenty book series, is it a twenty three book series- it's a twenty book series with an apocalyptic trilogy at the end so is it twenty three counting the trilogy as three individual books?"

The original plan was for twenty case books and a three book trilogy at the end, a big doorstop trilogy like the big books.

And you're sticking to that?

Well no, because now there's going to be at least twenty two books and then the trilogy.

Twenty five is a great number.

Twenty five is a good solid number and it gets us more Denarians.

I'm always on board for that one.

Exactly, they show up for every five books they're pretty regular.

How do you feel about people seeing Harry and Molly's relationship as a potential romance?

It is a potential romance, they probably should see it that way. It's also potentially a disaster and also potentially a number of other things but at the moment it's one of those things that is not clearly defined.

I kind of think you answered this one already but one of Brandon Sanderson's lectures in his sci-fi and fantasy writing course he mentioned a challenge you received to come up with a story mixing Pokemon and Roman legions, I assume that that story was Codex Alera.

same story about ideas vs execution argument leading to bet

-Well I'd argue that his assignment was a little flawed because he said a second bad idea was Pokemon and judging by how I still see people outside on their cellphones looking for fucking Pokemon that it was probably a pretty good idea.

I know, that was the dumbest thing I'd ever seen because I'd been watching it with my kid in the morning and my kid was just /fascinated/.

Mine too.

And it was like "okay I need to jump on this Pokemon train".

Can white court vampires get sexually transmitted diseases? I'm asking for a friend.

They don't ever suffer from them, they can carry them.

When will we see Cowl again?

When it's time.

Well you kind of already answered this one I'll kind of add to it a little bit. Three of my five favourite books in the series are Death Masks, Turn Coat and Skin Game if you can't see what I'm doing here obviously I love the Denarians I love Nicodemus it's my favourite part of the whole series so I'm guessing that book twenty is going to be Nicodemus and the Denarians again, that's a pretty safe bet at this point right?

Well unintelligible Nicodemus anyway.

Okay. That's not an accident obviously, you didn't not plan to do this every five books right.

Oh exactly yeah, it's there for a reason.

Do you have any new series plans for your post-Dresden Files writing career?

Yeah, there's a Dresden Files spinoff series that I want to do, I'm calling it Monster LLC. It's centered around Goodman Grey because there are times when you need a hero to help you but some problems require a monster to solve and that's kind of what Grey's- what his schtick is. He's going to be kind of a darker character a little more vengeancey-based character but at the same time he's older and a little bit more sophisticated than Dresden and he interacts with the supernatural world in ways that Dresden just can't. So I think it'll be a lot of fun seeing the supernatural world from a different perspective.

segues to talking about GI Joe and about the power of nostalgia

-You'll like the next one, the next one's gonna be a little- we're not gonna do the frantic action thing on the next book.

I figure you've got to kind of take a breath after the last one.

Oh my gosh after Battle Ground I reread that and kind of went through all the emotional fallout of it that I was going to need to be writing in the next book and I was like "oh my god I'm gonna need a /book/ to do this" so you know. We're gonna see Dresden- I think the next one is gonna be called Twelve Months and we're gonna see Dresden have to survive a bunch of dates with Lara and kind of put his- he's putting his castle together and sort of building his life back up after Battle Ground knocked it all down.

So he's not wiggling out of this whole deal that Mab's made for him, this arranged marriage?

We're gonna have to look at it and see but I mean Dresden, it's basically- the next one is going to have to be a book about how do you put your life back together when it just gets blown up around you? And so I think that's what we'll be doing and instead of just being in the Dresden Files universe for two or three days like we usually are in a story, we're gonna be there over the course of a year. And so you'll be able to see what Dresden's life is like in the not frantically-worst-weekend-of-his-year period of story.

It's a good idea, so Mirror Mirror, is that off the table? It's no longer called Mirror Mirror or-

We're just delaying it because I've got to do some other stuff first. I mean if we went to Battle Ground and then the first thing we did was jump away to another universe I think that would be really disorienting and bad for the story. Jumping away to a parallel universe I don't think we want to do that right away but we're definitely gonna do it but I think I can set things up to be a lot more menacing if I have one more book to work with and I'm gonna do that.

I mean what more can Harry go through? I can't wait.

Exactly.

the rest is a story about Changes' editor reaction and the Ghost Story audio book drama, one of the three people who were available was Ray Romano

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-nYvuRDxpE

Posted by
u/SlouchyGuy
3 years ago

Recent Q&A and the list of the books Jim Butcher recommended
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mslBvySOoU
Peace Talksspoiler
In recent Q&A Jim answerd some questions including why Maeve was seducing Harry, how angels in fallen state differ from Grace-less Uriel, and if Harry could imprison some parts of multi-mantled immortals on Demonreach.

He was asked about books that influenced Dresden Files and books he likes, I thought I would post the list so that people didn't have to search for those books:

Spenser novels by Robert B. Parker - his favorite series, and also Sunny Randall.

Amber Chronicles by Roger Zelazny - Jim rereads then right now and is more and more impressed how influential they were on DF and his writing.

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser by Fritz Leiber.

Lois McMaster Bujold - "she's really in many ways one of the most talented writers alive right now,.. she has my eternal respect".

Temeraire by Naomi Novik - always recommends them.

Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia - "if you enjoy DF novels shoot them all action".

Honor Harrington by David Weber - "if you find yourself craving some science fiction epic".

Bonus: There will be a panel with Jim and James Marsters this week "Twenty Years of Harry Dresden"

I laugh because he's given dozens upon dozens upon dozens of Q and As over the last 20 years.

This website is Word of Jim. It has transcribed Q and As.

https://wordof.jim-butcher.com/

This youtube channel has a lot of them. They are done by Priscellie, who used to run his website. Also Priscellie wrote and directed trailers for Peace talks and Battlegrounds. They are pretty good.

https://www.youtube.com/c/Priscellie

Or just search Jim Butcher on youtube.

He is a pretty engaging speaker, but he does have a lot of 'canned' responses to common questions. He's pretty good at making them funny, but if you listen to a bunch of them back to back it can get repetitive.

Dispatch from DragonCon [2022]
Spoilers All
I'm just going to throw out my recollection of all the Butcher quotes from panels and questioning.

This is by no means a complete account, but instead what I remember and mostly paraphrased. I welcome others to add their bits or make their own posts. I'd love to have videos to pass around to friends as well, if anyone has any.

Cinder Spires is on pause as Jim misses his cats from the divorce and trying to write the talking cats tears him up emotionally,

He's broken ground on the next Dresden book, Twelve Months or Twelve Dates (I'm not sure how the latter fits the naming convention) and has written the first draft of the first chapter or 2.

In response to a question on 'what is the worst decision(mistake?) has your main character made?' Jim said 'we haven't seen the extended consequences play out quite yet, but' "rescuing a little girl".... I assume the vagueness is on purpose as it could mean Astor/Kumori, Maggie and that mess, or maybe saving Bradley's daughter leaving Harry alone with Murphy and Rudolf....

"When did Marcone take up the coin?" "I'm pretty sure Ride of the Valkyries was still playing..." 'I mean come on. I'm not saying Marcone is an opportunist exactly, but he takes advantage of giant opportunities thrown in his face.'

Lara told Shagnasty that she'd kill it, so will that be a date night? 'Oh god, that would be so sanity rending, just completely tearing all sanity to pieces.' (He didn't say no, but his tone very much was a no, lol.)

To a question about objects or ways to sidestep or break rules with the Blackstaff as an example. Jim made a distinction between the Laws of Magic of the White Council - which they'll break at the drop of a hat when convenient - and the laws of physics like rules of magic which are pretty much set in stone with maybe some minor wiggle room at the edges. And what The Blackstaff does for Ebenezer is that it lets him do black magic without corrupting him and twisting his brain into a complete lunatic "*for a time*". (Yeah, he just dropped an ominous time limit to the usefulness of The Blackstaff.)

Lots and lots of general talk about how the purpose of organizations are not their ostensible purposes, but instead the maintenance and collection of power. Rules are more like guidelines and only matter if you're caught.