15
« on: June 09, 2011, 01:05:24 AM »
Notes:
-I couldn't quite hear the name of the Codex Alera book the audience member was talking about, but I assume it was the one before Captain's Fury.
-Also some muffling covers the audio when Jim is talking about Captain's Fury, can anyone make out what he said?
Audience: How did Harry come to Chicago?
Jim: My writing teacher told me I couldn't use Kansas City.
{audience laughs}
Jim: Yeah, she looked at me and she said "You know this is a good idea and all Jim, but really this is enough like Laura Hamilton's work as it is, you don't need to set it in Missouri.
{more laughter}
Jim: She says "Pick another city." What other city? She says "It doesn't matter, just another city somewhere." and there was a globe on her desk and there were three American cities on it, New York, Chicago and LA. And I said OK, Chicago, and she said that'll be fine.
{laughter}
Jim: It was a class project! You know, but it turns out like it was a really good choice, because now I've got contacts with a bunch of people there I'll be able to call up and say "Hey, I need you to drive by the east wall Of Graceland Cemetery and tell me what it looks like on your way to work today." "OK I can do that!" And when people call and say "You got this detail wrong in Chicago! I live there and I know!" or "I see this view out my front house, the front door of my house so I know you're wrong" I was like "Ahah! Can I put you on my list of people I can ask about?" "Oh yes!!"
{audience laughs}
Jim: So that's fun. And plus Chicago, its one of the older American cities, well, for Americans, what is it, people in America think 100 years is a long time, while people in Europe think 100 miles is a long drive?
{audience laughs}
Jim: But yeah, it's one of the older American cities, it's got a lot of history to it, it's got a lot of messed up things that have happened there, and much fodder to be used. I've still gotta have the Cubs coming to Dresden and have him explain to the cub "There's nothing I can do about the freaking billy goat! You should've let the goat in!"
{audience laughs}
Jim: But yeah, a wizard's death curse, the billy goat thing, it's a done deal, it's over. Anything else? Yes sir?
Audience: What was the writing class you started with?
Jim: It was the professional writing class called "Write a Genre Fiction Novel" at the University of Oklahoma at the School of Professional Writing in the Journalism department, and it was being taught by Debbie Chester, who thought that she was qualified to tell us how to write a novel, just because she had forty of her own published.
{audience laughs}
Jim: You know, but I had an English Lit degree.
{more laughter}
Jim: She was wrong! You at the back here, of course, yes sir?
Audience: When's the next Codex book coming out?
Jim: The next Codex book? Lets see, it was due February 1st, I finished it Monday-
{audience laughs}
Jim: Last Monday! And it's gonna be out in December, and the next one's due December 1st, I've got the next Dresden book due June 1st so I'm writing all through April, I'm touring all April and writing, so I've got to rush, you know, after I get done here I have to go back to the hotel room and work until two in the morning writing, and I've got the next one due in December, it's not gonna be here before the fith next year, so {muffling covers audio} but that's just a guess, so maybe they're just trying to tell me I can do it two months in advance so that it comes in on time.
{audience laughs}
Jim: I wouldn't put it past them, they're crafty in here
{more laughter}
Audience: {can't hear word} was really good, you know, you had to stop and re-read that last chapter, twice, to make sure I got it right.
Jim: Oh, yeah, yeah. That was a fun ending I did and I mean to start on from there and the Beta readers who read the Captain's Fury, they were quite happy. Yes?
Audience: How did you come up with the idea for Codex Alera?
Jim: On a bet.
{audience laughs}
Jim (indignantly): What? What did you expect?
{more laughter}
Jim: Oh, I'm sorry, I was supposed to tell you I'm brilliant and it came to me in a dream, and the angel Raphael came to me and said "You! I will grant you the fires of heaven for inspiration!" No, um, there was a bunch of us, I was an internet loudmouth, which sounds like the opening of, maybe a Disney movie or something, but, I was an aspiring writer, I was on several different writing lists and we were talking about stuff and I was an internet loudmouth, and I'm still an internet loudmouth, its just people sometimes give you a little more credit than they should because you have books published. Which they probably shouldn't.
So I try not to be too loud anymore. I say that... And there was this big discussion, on one side it was, all these folks over here were arguing that the idea was holy and sacred, and if you had a great idea nobody could possibly screw it up, no matter how bad they were, and they held up Jurassic Park as an example.
{audience laughs}
Jim: Genetically engineered dinosaurs! Look! It couldn't fail! It couldn't miss! And then I, mostly because I was being contrary, not because I necessarily thought they were right about Jurassic Park anyway my contension of it was that the idea is just the middle of it, you know, a good enough presentation can take even a lame idea and write an exceptional story out of it, it was all install of the writer, of how they presented it. And so it was one of those flame wars that goes on, and it was me against many, it was an epic battle, and the guy finally said; "You know what?" he said "Why don't you put your money where your mouth is. I'll give you a terrible idea, and you write it into a book and lets see what happens." I said "No! You give me TWO terrible ideas!"
{audience laughs}
Jim: Because I was an internet loudmouth!
And he says "Fine! First terrible idea: Lost Roman legion, I am so sick of the lost Roman legion, all the lost Roman legions should've been found by now, I'm tired of reading that story."
{audience laughs}
Jim: I'm like "OK, lost Roman legion, give me, what's the next one?" He says "Pokémon".
{more laughter}
Jim: When I tell people that, it kinda often changes their whole perspective of the whole Codex Alera affair. Brutus I choose you!
{more laughter}
Jim: And I said "Fine! I'll take those and I'll do it!" And I went and so I started looking at the ideas, and the lost roman legion was the ninth Iberian legion, which vanished, and I started looking them up historically, and I started, what's in this legion? And about half of it is the cosmopolitan Roman types who ran the legion, and this was long after the citizen soldier days, and then the other half were German mercenaries, and Ok, what kind of support stats did the legion have? And we think they had about this, and so there were this many people with them, and what kind of camp would they have? And I said Ok so we've got this amount of people, so I took all those people, I scooped the people up and I dropped them off in Alera, and I said Ok you're going to go over here in my fantasy world, boom. And I said OK now,I've gotta take my fantasy world, so I watched Pokémon.
{laughter}
Jim: And I didn't have to look real far, because I had a kid! He was like seven! And he had this whole thing about his Charmander deck and it would beat my Mr. Mime "NO! It defeats Mr. Mime!" {does mime hands} I used to do mornings for cards with my kid every morning, and opening of new Pokémon packages was a ceremony you know. "Specials! Wooh! Did you get a foil?"
But anyway, so you look at Pokémon. And what pokémon really is is, well, pokémon is also a marriage of two ideas, and the first one obviously is professional wrestling, and the second one is the literalisation of the Shinto religion! Shinto religion tells that there's a spirit of the devine in all natural things. And if you have a mountain there is a great big spirit inside it, and you'd better respect that! And if you've got a pebble, there's one in that too, and you should respect it 'cause it's the right thing to do, but if you don't it probably can't do anything about it.
{laughter}
Jim: And Pokémon is just kinda a literalisation of that, and you've got these spirits of the elements and they fly around and they look like plastic hawks for some reason. And then they fight.
So I decided, lets set up a world I said, well I've gotta have a good name for it because I don't have a good name to call them, I don't know what to call them. And what am I gonna call them? And Big Trouble in Little China's on, set on replay on my VCR, and we get to the part where the old Chinese guys are talking, and one of them says "All motion in the universe is caused by tension between positive and negative FURIES!" And I'm like "FURIES!" So, that's kinda sorta vaguely Roman, so, at least classical, so I took it! I said OK, so I'm gonna call them furies, and we have a literal Shinto kinda world, where we've got these natural spirits, we'll call them furies, we'll take our Romans, I threw them in there with them, I said, here, we'll give you about 2000 years to ferment, and form a society. And so I decided they'd form this basic original Roman legion, half Roman townies and half German mercenaries, kinda forming this bifurcated society, all based around, you know, they had these big cities, but then surrounding the cities were these small, kinda very dramatic freeholds of small clans, societies, and I put 'em all together like that and I said OK, you know, this is the Romans dream, they're gonna base their civilisation on who has the most personal power, you know, and so the guys that can actually do the most are the guys who are in charge, and have the most authority, and its just the 'we have power, we want to hold it' kind of personality's dream. And so I put the Aleran society together the way it was, and there's still a lot of things that I haven't told them about in the book because they don't know, but I went into a ridiculous amount of detail on it.
Audience: When you sold it did you split the Pokémon types into versions?
{audience laughs}
Jim: No, no, I never mentioned that, suprisingly they never picked up on it! Although I did read a review on Amazon the other day saying "So one of the books was really good but it really reminded me of pokémon"
{Jim raises his arms in celebration as the audience cheers}
Jim: My work here is done.
{laughter}
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