Anyone else getting the "we're rescheduling it for maintenance, check back tomorrow for the new date" screen?

Yep. Someone quoted that message in the "Anyone else having a problem with BBB?" thread. That's not the literal title of the thread, though; I'm paraphrasing because I don't remember the exact wording. It's something like that, though.

Wait! The http address has changed to a different one, saying "www.bittenbybooks.com/58887/author-jim-butcher-qa-and-free-book-giveaway-1115-8-11pm-cst-live-here" !!

Still only the "500 Internal Server Error" message, however. But we've at least been forwarded to a new error page! Yay!

I'm going to the Q&A, but I have no idea how it actually works?  Are we called upon, or do we just throw our questions out willy nilly, and he decides what he wants to answer, or some combination?

From what I remember of the last one, you just wait until it's supposed to start, then a link to the right page shows up somewhere, and you go there and post messages. Last time they asked us not to ask more than three questions, though.

Questions for the upcoming Q&As:

From me:

1) Angels are apparently all soul. So:
   1a) Can angels be soulgazed?
   1b) Can the Fallen in the Denarii be soulgazed through the second pair of eyes which    sometimes show up on the foreheads of the Denarians? And, if so:
   1c) Will the soulgaze be different than the one you would see if you simply soulgazed the    Fallen's Denarian host?

2) Would you(Jim) please clarify exactly who the Faerie Queens can personally kill and who they can't? At various times in Summer Knight and in the rest of the series, we've been told or seen evidence that:

-- The Sidhe Knights are the only ones allowed to act in matters not directly related to the Faerie Courts. (SK, Ch. 10)
-- The Queens are not allowed to kill anyone who isn't a member of their own Court. (SK, Ch. 10)

And yet:

-- We've seen fae servants of the Faerie Queens kill and attempt to kill mortals many times.
-- Aurora was able to try to kill Harry just fine, but was unable to harm Murphy. (SK, Ch. 20-21)
-- When Harry is preparing to deal with Mab to become the Winter Knight, he thinks to himself that Mab can't kill a mortal, only make them wish they were dead. The implication seems to include the Winter Knight. (Changes, Ch. 30)

So which mortals can the Faerie Queens kill? Bob tells us one thing, but evidence in the books indicates something else.

3) Can Changelings be soulgazed?

4) Since Lash is apparently some sort of spirit-being, can she take on a physical-seeming form while she's in the spirit world, the way ghosts can?


Questions From Other People (from a more-or-less identical thread I made last year, which, alas, came too late):

Vairelome:

From one of the recent threads concerning Maggie, there was some discussion about her official last name right now (post GS, staying with the Carpenters).

So: "What is Maggie's official last name right now?" and if clarification is needed, "Under what last name is she registered at the local elementary school (assuming that's where she's placed)?"


Karley:

1) How and when did Harry and Michael meet? Would you consider writing a short story about their first encounter?
2) How long has Arthur Langtry been the Merlin?
3) How does one become the Merlin? [ Already answered. ]
4) Is the Winter Lady Maeve the same person as or was she some way involved with the old Irish Queen Maeve of Connacht?
5) If Harry ever does put his full effort into universe-hopping, can you make him go to Discworld?
6) What are the names of the other three minor vampire courts?
7) How did Justin DuMorne find out about Harry?
8 ) When did the old Mother Summer retire and why won't Mother Winter retire?
9) How old is the Gatekeeper?
10) How did the White Council annex the New World shamans and what were the reaction of the Natives?


Eleyctra:

Is it significant that the eyes of Lea changed from gold in the earlier books, to green in Changes? Is Mab controlling Lea more than we think?


neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:

I have a bunch of questions in the relevant thread, but only one of them got asked, I'd want it to be whether Talos is still alive after the end of SK, because that is one that for some reason irrationally nags at me and seems unlikely to connect to anything that would lead to an "I'm not going to tell you".

I'd also really like to know
1) When was Kemmler's last stand, 1961 as per DB or WWII as per GS ?
2) If Harry had known about Lea's bargain with Maggie, could he have just demanded her help against Justin instead of selling himself for it and:
2b) if the answer to 2) is yes, is Harry ever going to find/figure this out ?

but I suspect that 2) might well get an "I'm not going to tell you", and there have been rumblings that some of the apparent series inconsistencies are part of a larger plan so 1) might as well.  Indeed, I can see 2) being resolved in CD.


Second Aristh:

The question I'd enjoy having an answer to the most at the moment is

Do all faeries have a weakness to iron and if so, has it always been that way or is it more like wizards and murphyonic fields?  What is considered iron/cold iron (i.e. is it the amount of iron that matters or some sort of metahysical signifigance)?

These ones have already been answered.

This one was also answered, the senior council pick out a new Merlin from amongst themselves.

Okay, stricken from the record.

I have a bunch of questions in the relevant thread, but only one of them got asked, I'd want it to be whether Talos is still alive after the end of SK, because that is one that for some reason irrationally nags at me and seems unlikely to connect to anything that would lead to an "I'm not going to tell you".

You mean the Questions for Jim 2012 style 2 thread? Yeah, that'll work, too. The reason I started this thread, though, is because that one has 22 pages, and a whole lot of random questions in it that no one's going to care enough about to ask at a Q&A. I didn't think most people were likely to spend that much time on the subject. And one of the Q&As is tonight, so a short thread to put the questions we care about most into seems easier than sifting through the other thread looking for ideas. I guess I wanted a distilled version of the QfJ2012 thread.

Is Joe the janitor at the train station in Small Favor actually just a janitor, or is he, like Uriel, an angel in disguise?

I think he actually was Uriel in disguise, judging from the way Michael watched Joe, and then seemed to start talking to Harry again afterwards, breaking the general silence which had been hanging between them during the trip. I read it as Michael getting a subtle confirmation from his Bosses that Harry hadn't gone over to the Dark Side just yet.

Joe could've been any angel, of course, but Uriel's the one who seems to have taken a special interest in Harry, and he did show up at the hospital in an identical disguise later on in that same book.

What about the accepted theory that the Erlking was responsible somehow for the hexenwulfen belts? I haven't been able to find that post anywhere.

When is something considered an "accepted theory"? Myself, I've always thought the idea of the Erlking being responsible for the belts was a WAG with little or nothing to support it. To be a reference item, shouldn't a theory have some kind of structure of related facts in the books supporting the idea?

I'm not trying to start up a debate here about the belts and the Erlking, I'm just saying that the only supporting clue in favor of that theory is the fact that the Erlking is a hunter, and the belts turned people into insane werewolves. Given the fact that practically every major supernatural being is a predator of some kind, that's not a very strong connection.