Hey Robert,

A couple of spoileriffic questions here.

1. Is Justin actually supposed to be Harry's Uncle in this series?

That seems to be perfectly valid in the context of Maggie's evil witchery history in the books but it occurred to me that "uncle" is also what a 'too close' friend of the family relation might also be called.

Hell, if Maggie died without ever talking about her family then Justin could show up without ever having to do anything but pretend to be family.

And if its a story point, feel free to just answer with "That would be telling" or "Harry BELIEVES he's his Uncle or thinks of him as one"

2. Is Harry's bad reputation going to be build up slowly with the High Council?

Let's face it, tonight he's interfered with their "Magician Protection Program" for a kid (Justin seems to have a thing for young wizards) and he's peripherally related to a death of their librarian (I almost said Archivist)

I was curious if this was deliberate.

and one odd question.

3. Justin looks like a real wizard.  Are most of the older magicians going to be spooky in that respect?

Just curious.  Harry and the High Council girl were presumably born in the modern age.

Anyone got a list of good science fiction agents?

Thanks for the list Richelle.

If the DM agency doesn't accept my book, I'll check them out.

The other question is, what kind of people are going to be willing to take these risks? Madmen? Powermongers? Those with nothing to lose perhaps? Groups of people? Can more than one person be involved in the same spell, thus lessening the risk to the individuals? If so, then you'd likely see some sort of social structure, clans, guilds or the like pop up around magic use, making it safer and more accessible to those in the know. This would also inhibit it because these "insiders" wouldn't want to involve many more people than necessary because they could just become potential threats.

Anyways, I've probably made it more confusing than helpful. One could ask these kind of questions all day. One thing I would ask is, what are the parameters of your "style" of magic in the first place? What does it affect? Can it be used to do anything, or are there boundaries, immunities, shieldings, etc.? Knowing this often will help you narrow your focus and get a better idea of where a practitioner could go with it.

I always get the impression that a main motivator for magic in my world is that a lot of magic's continued use is cultural inertia.  Most people ended up using technology because it could do everything that magic could do far easier. 

But yeah, you describe exactly something that also happened in my books that I'm glad at least Jim paid attention to.  Magic users are definitely organized in my world and it's always good to see large groups of them operating together for shared purposes as opposed to seperately

I like secret societies and they show up a lot in my books.

In my world, magic takes place in the "real world" like Harry Dresden so there's a question as to why it's not more prominent.  Magic needs to be inhibited, in my opinion, because it's a deus es machine that can do whatever you want it to unless you really DETAIL out the ground rules for it.

I went for the idea in my campaign that magic is really, really, really difficult.  The idea that its exhausting and mentally taxing seemed like an excellent way to handle it.  The bigger the effect, the more you risked your life and sanity to do it.  Plus, it also gave me the excuse for a lot of extra plots solely by this limitation.  Stuff we see in other worlds like human sacrifice, ley lines, and pacts with demons are things that solely exist to provide someone more magical 'oomph' to draw upon.  Magic can also be done without spells and the like, which makes some scenes easier, but they're really needed to pull off more difficult effects and make the cost for the spells less cumbersome.

I think that gave a good excuse as to why someone would just go out and buy a gun as opposed to trying to kill someone with fire from above.

How do you think it should be handled?

While the project was a failure, I worked in a professional Shared Universe and actually started it.  Basically, I surrendered part of my control over characters and a world and let other people work with it.  Oddly, it didn't actually change that much.  The other authors just stuck to a vague theme from the world and worked with their own characters for the most part.

I'd love to write a Forgotten Realms or other D&D world novel someday.

Well, it was a bit slow in the beginning is just what I'm saying.  It was still an excellent podcast and I'm looking forward to three already. Not everything can be like the first one with a surprise interview from our object of devotion ;-)

I also think you don't need the interviews to succeed as a podcast either but I can understand how you want to keep the format. 

It's a pity you're the interviewer though since your involvement in the RPG makes you an excellent subject for the interview ;-)

Well I've sent off my author's query, synopsis, and first five pages to the Donald Maas Literary Agency.  Now it's just a matter of time for them to get back to in order to say whether they want to represent me or not.  It probably arrived about Thursday of Last Week and now it's just a waiting game until they get back to me with my self-addressed stamped envelope.

I'm confident that this is my best work yet.  I mentioned that I'd been published before and I have a second book in manuscript form waiting for them to look at if they're interested in it.  There's so little that can be told from just that initial letter though and they're a prestigious firm (in addition to Jim Butcher, they also have my other favorite author in Elaine Cunningham).

I haven't sent any other queries out just yet but I'll probably deluge out for others if I don't get this agency.  It's hard waiting for an answer. 

So who else is playing the waiting game?