Author Topic: WoJ transcription help needed + mention new WoJ's here  (Read 162405 times)

Offline AcornArmy

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Q&A - Washington, D.C. August 1, 2011 - Part 3
« Reply #165 on: October 02, 2011, 09:03:28 PM »
Link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xigIxpGVcqc

Q: Are we going to have to wait a while until we find out what's going on on the island?

A: Yeah, you'll have to wait until at least the next book. We should actually be able to get some real stuff on Demonreach in the next book. You'll get an idea of why it's there and why Dresden is probably the worst possible person to be in charge of it. Yeah, really, Dresden is the worst possible person to be in charge of every story, that's just kind of how he rolls.

....
Why did you cut your hair?
....

Q: You're writing twenty books, how much of it did you have plotted?

A: The answer to that is I had twenty books plotted. [stuff about his writing class]

Q: Are we going to see more of Nicodemus or Mavra?

A: Nicodemus will show up on schedule(which you can figure out if you stop to look at things, I think). Mavra's not done yet either, but she eventually probably will be, and I'll leave it at that.

Q: Why did you end the Codex where you did, knowing that the threat was still viable?

A: The threat was viable, but it's not going to show up for a while. They had won the day, and much of the drama that was going to take place afterwards was going to be stuff like, you know, fighting over where the new Fury roads got built, and who got the contracts to do the projects that were going to have to happen in order to rebuild everything. And that struck me as a little bit less quickly-paced than I would be good at writing. I need to blow things up or everyone would be bored stiff with me. That said, if I do go back to the Alera books, which I may well do one day, it'll be a couple of generations in the future. After they've set up the universe, after Tavi's radically altered the way that people use their furies. It'll be a much steam-punkier Alera. That could still be fun, because there are still gonna be some characters that are still alive.

....
How do you fact check yourself with thirteen books? ~5:00, Part 3
....

Q: What was your motivation behind "Curses" and where does it fit into the Dresden universe?

A: I wanted to write a story about the billy-goat curse that the Cubs have labored under for more than a century, just because it was in the news that year. I think it falls just before Dead Beat. That's the story that's not in Side Jobs, it's in the Naked City anthology. I'm gonna put it in the next group of short stories, which I'll probably call, being as original as I am, "More Jobs." But there's gonna be more short stories, because there were a couple that got missed, and I want to have them all in anthologies, so someone can pick up one paperback and say, here, I've got them all.

Q: Is Mac ever going to speak more than ten words?

A: Not for a while. He's not a man of many words, as most truly dangerous people are.

....
How do you come up with names? ~7:45, Part 3
....
How you approach creating new characters? ~8:40, Part 3
....
« Last Edit: October 02, 2011, 10:45:51 PM by AcornArmy »
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Offline AcornArmy

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Q&A - Washington, D.C. August 1, 2011 - Part 4
« Reply #166 on: October 02, 2011, 09:17:03 PM »
Link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RegkZlLuXBQ

Q: Did you have Maggie and her name planned far in advance, or was she just thrown in?

A: No, I had her planned out, which is why the scene in which she was conceived was actually in the books instead of a fade-to-black. That, and someone had bet me that I couldn't write a plot-relevant bondage scene. But yeah, I planned the kid all along. It was just a matter of when I was going to get a chance to pull it out. [snickering in the audience] And I thought it would be a really great way to get Dresden-- oh come on, you people, grow up!-- I thought it would be a perfect motivation to get Dresden to do things he normally would not ever consider doing. Which is what is getting us into all the lovely trouble in Ghost Story, and will continue in Cold Days.

Q: Is he going to get a new Beetle or is he going to fix up the old one?

A: We'll see. There's no fixing up the old one, it got squished flat. It's possible he can get a new one, I don't know yet. He's not going to have nearly the material resources he had before-- assuming he comes back from Faerie at all.

....
How many of your best ideas came from bad bets? ~1:45, Part 4
....
Why Chicago? ~2:01, Part 4
....

Q: Will there ever be a spin-off series based on another character in the Dresden Files?

A:  Maybe. Could be I'll have to pay off my gambling debts or something someday. There's all kinds of different people I could use who could do their own series. I'd actually considered doing a kind of a side-project called "The Dresden Contracts," which I would set during the Dresden Files, only I would have these other people going out doing things. You know, where Dresden more or less subcontracts them to help. But I'm not sure yet at this point. I've never really written a 20-plus volume epic fantasy before, I'm sort of new to that, so I don't want to throw too much more clay on the spinny-thing for fear that it might fall off.

....
Do you have real-life inspirations for your characters? ~3:35, Part 4
....

Q: How much have you plotted out in advance the fates of the supporting cast?

A: I actually have not plotted out what's going to happen to them in the long run; they're vulnerable. And occasionally, writers get bored or frustrated and we kill somebody capriciously. Although, I probably will avoid doing capricious deaths, just because I don't like them, I don't like to read them, so why should I expect anybody else to like them? But, no, nobody's safe. Sorry, that's the best I can tell you.

Q: If we like a character and want to know more about them, could we email him and get more information or get another short story?

A: What you could do is you could send email to me or to the site on the forum I have at jim-butcher.com, and say, "Hey, I would love to see a short story like-- blank; I would like to see more on blank." Because I actually do stop when I'm putting books together, and say, occasionally I'll stop and say, hey, who do you guys want to see more of in the next book? And I'll say it on Twitter or on my webpage, and that's one of the ways that I determine which characters to pick up and stick into the various plots. I'm not promising it will be good for the characters to get them more involved, but I do like to have the people that-- I mean, you guys are essentially-- you know, artists have always had to have patrons in order to practice their art. You guys are my patrons, and I'd be a fool not to listen to your reactions and to what you want to see. And plus, I just, you know, I like doing that, because then your favorite character's there and I get to torture them. That's a good time.

....
If you couldn't be a writer what would you be? [Insane.] ~6:38, Part 4
....

Q: [Where did the name "Fitz" come from, does it have anything to do with the fact that the word means "bastard?"]

A: Yes, it means he's an illegitimate son, and we'll find out more about that later.

Q: Where was Marcone and what was he doing during Ghost Story?

A: Check out "Even Hand." He was doing that sort of thing, if not that specific thing.

Q: Ragged Angel Investingations, is there more to that than Harry ever caught on to?

A: No, Harry was pretty much onto all of it. But it was where he got started, and Nick Christian was a character who I wrote several short stories with when I was learning how to write short stories. Don't get worked up or anything; they were terrible short stories. Plus, they were set in Kansas City. So, I regarded Nick as a learning experience, and made him thirty years older, and I dropped him off as Harry's mentor. Because, you know, I had learned things from Nick, even if it hadn't been so good for him.

....
Have you ever considered a video game adaptation of the Dresden Files? [I have, but I thought it would just take too long to code.] ~9:05, Part 4
....
« Last Edit: October 02, 2011, 10:46:28 PM by AcornArmy »
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Offline AcornArmy

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Q&A - Washington, D.C. August 1, 2011 - Part 5
« Reply #167 on: October 02, 2011, 09:27:10 PM »
Link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x349JEPmgJo

Q: Could you tell us about a time where the character surprised you with where they went?

A: Not so much, on account of, those people work for me. And if they start veering off track, all I have to do is go back in and provide them with good enough motivation to do what I need them to do. 'Cause, as far as the Dresden Files universe goes, I'm God there. I can go back and alter the past and everything, and I am a cruel and malicious God, at times. But there are characters who surprised me with how they developed after I created them. It wasn't that they didn't do their job, it's just that they did their job too well to get rid of. You know, I wanted to have the mouthy medical examiner, because I love that kind of figure. So I created Butters, and figured he'd be there once. But after I got done with him, I'm like, this guy's way too cool, I have to find an excuse to use him again. So, yeah, Dead Beat came along, and I'm thinking, oh, man, this character, the medical-- against all the necromancers who are going around animating corpses, who needs to be your side-kick? The medical examiner, who works with corpses! You know, how completely appropriate, yet useless to the hero. And so Butters jumped in, and now he's getting even more involved. Poor guy.

....
How much martial arts experience do you have, and where is it, and how much more do you look into it for the books? ~1:40, Part 5
....

Q: There's a lack of Mouse in this book. Are we going to have more of him, or is he going to be protecting Maggie from now on?

A: ...And the answer to that is: Yes. Yeah, Mouse was one of those characters that I wanted to create so that Dresden had kind of a home security system, 'cause otherwise, there are more and more of these bad guys coming that would just kill him in his sleep. It's like, Oh wait, there's a Foo dog there, that isn't going to work.

Q: Is he going to get Bob back or is he going to stay with Butters?

A: [sing-song]I'm not gonna tell you.[/sing-song]

....
How come you don't mind it when people play your characters on Twitter, and why aren't you savagely defending your intellectual property? ~4:04, Part 5
....

Q: How do you justify saying that the end of Changes is not a cliffhanger?

A: I will tell you this, sir, here is the story: Harry Dresden sets out to rescue his daughter, even if it costs him his life, and it does. The End. From the perspective of storytelling format, that is not a cliffhanger, because you know the end of it. Of course, I do sometimes forget that not everyone knows the whole rest of the story. Sorry.

Q: Did Mab lie?

A: Mab did not lie, Mab was wrong. There's a subtle difference to that, at the end of Ghost Story. As far as Mab is concerned, she's telling the truth, because she's telling the truth from her experience, as she knows it. Dresden, however, is getting an earful of truth on a more cosmic level. So we'll see how that plays out a little bit more in the next book.

Q: Are we going to find out why Jim likes the name "Maggie" so much?

A: If you do find out, let me know. 'Cause then, that way, maybe I'll have a better idea. I don't know, a lot of the names, I just name names.

[same Q'er: --I mean, are we gonna find out the correlation, why it's used more than once, the name Margaret?]

A: Maybe. It very well could be. I'm not sure.

Q: Can we expect a short story from Molly's point of view, ever?

A: Almost certainly. I would probably write it from some point while she was busy being the crazy lady who defended Chicago. Actually, she's still doing that, as of now.

Q: You've mentioned several times that if you use wizard's sight irresponsibly, it can drive you nuts. What happens to the people who are driven nuts, and have we ever seen that in the series?

A: [Jim laughs.] You've read Changes, right? I mean, yeah, too much truth in the face of somebody who is genuinely sincere about their beliefs often pushes them to do really extreme things, like wiping out entire races of vampires. So, yeah, you are seeing it to some degree, but at the same time, while the truth can be painful, it's also liberating. Unfortunately, sometimes it liberates you of your sanity. That's the best answer I can give you.
« Last Edit: October 02, 2011, 10:48:06 PM by AcornArmy »
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Offline AcornArmy

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Q&A - Washington, D.C. August 1, 2011 - Part 6
« Reply #168 on: October 02, 2011, 09:34:40 PM »
Link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRIo4orMrbQ

Q: Is it possible that Susan left a ghost that we might encounter later?

A: No, probably not, not with that much energy flying around when she died. I don't like to do the, "they're dead, they're not dead, they're dead, they're not dead" thing too often, because then it's no fun. So just assume Susan is dead and gone. Although this might not be the last time we see her, now that I think of it. [laughter] I'll have to check my notes.

Q: What was Ebenezar doing during that six month period in Ghost Story? Because we kind of expected him to be doing "something."

A: Yes, he was doing something. He was doing stuff, but since Dresden hasn't found out about it, none of you all can know about it either, 'cause it's all told from Dresden's point of view. That's one of the unfortunate limitations of writing in the first-person. If this was Alera, I'd be showing other things that were going on off on the sidelines, because then it's a third-person book.

Q: Is Ferrovax going to be back anytime soon?

A: Nah, not 'til the very end. Not in the actual trilogy-trilogy[the BAT], but probably the very last of the case books will feature him in it.

Q: Was Mac's beer modeled after any specific beer?

A: No, I don't drink. I had to go to my drinking friends and say, you have to tell me what good beer is like. And they would write me explanations of it.

Q: Ebenezar is the Blackstaff, and we found out that it's not a nickname, it's a title. [Jim: And it's also an object.] Is "the Gatekeeper" a nickname or a title?

A: It is a title. [Q'er: And an object?] Well, just... him.

Q: At what point do you decide that Harry's odds are stacked high enough against him?

A: I'll let you know when I get there.

Q: Harry's pentacle necklace. Thomas had one like it, why didn't he use it to try to find Harry's body?

A: Can't use magic through that much water. Unless you're a water mage, but nobody called Injun Joe.

Q: Out of all the Dresden Files novels, which was the most difficult one to write?

A: It's a toss-up between Death Masks, which I had to write while we were moving cross-country, and this most recent one, which I had to write where Harry couldn't just go around kicking down doors and blowing things up. It was very hard to make that character try and do things in a more indirect and subtle fashion, and yet still be himself. It took a while.

Q: Molly seems to be doing a lot of very-close-to-black-magic stuff. Is she getting, like, totally corrupted?

A: Well... what's "corrupted" mean? [laughter] Yeah, she's playing around with some nasty stuff and it's only a matter of time before that catches up to her. On the other hand, she's doing things she knew Dresden would've done if he could have done them, so it's all Harry's fault.
« Last Edit: October 02, 2011, 10:48:41 PM by AcornArmy »
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Offline LogicMouseLives

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Re: WoJ transcription help needed + mention new WoJ's here
« Reply #169 on: October 05, 2011, 12:25:07 AM »
Okay. It's my understanding (From the title) that this is where you want mention of new material as well, so I'll throw this in for someone to chew on. http://io9.com/5843677/ Posted September 30th, 2011. The interview with Jim is an hour and twenty minutes, and ranges over lots of previously trod ground, but there are a few interesting new tidbits in there, anyway.

BTW, are you interested in getting transcriptions of the interviews with Jim from Fred's "Butcher Block" podcast? There are several, and the last one in particular has some really cool stories, but they're mostly more personal and family related. The novel info is several years old. (I ask because I just got around to listening to the podcast for the first time this last couple of weeks while I'm doing cross-stitch, and really enjoyed that one.)

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Offline thelordbeans

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Re: WoJ transcription help needed + mention new WoJ's here
« Reply #170 on: October 16, 2011, 01:02:42 AM »
I'll finally get around to finishing Kansas City soon, only part left is part 4, and then you can cross it out in your OP

Edit: I will, I will! I swear!
« Last Edit: November 06, 2011, 07:20:47 AM by thelordbeans »
<3 Butters+Andi / Molly+Carlos / Harry+Kumori
<3 Here's to hoping that Jim will name one of his novels "Free Rain" (Rein/Reign)
<3 Tiny... but FIERCE!
<3 I flexed the fingers of my still-scarred left hand and my mildly tingling right hand. “I’m more worried about all the things I’ll never be rid of.

Offline Serack

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Re: WoJ transcription help needed + mention new WoJ's here
« Reply #171 on: January 22, 2012, 12:39:09 AM »
Hi guys, I haven't been terribly active, but I've found some new content including the Io9 interview mentioned earlier

The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy phone interview
NY Times profile (focuses on Jim's time playing AmberMUSH)
Short Story Geeks phone interview

I'll see about adding AA's transcripts to the WoJ forum later.
DF WoJ Compilation
Green is my curator voice.
Name dropping "Serack" in a post /will/ draw my attention to it

*gnaws on the collar of his special issue Beta Foo long-sleeved jacket*

Offline cass

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Re: WoJ transcription help needed + mention new WoJ's here
« Reply #172 on: January 24, 2012, 07:31:40 AM »
I've been away from the boards for a bit, and I think the search function is still offline, so I apologize is someone's already done this and I missed it, but here's the transcription from the Cambridge/Boston, MA signing.

[Question Unknown]
….satisfying story possible. Otherwise, you get the stories that just kind of trail off, and nobody likes those.

How tough would it be on Michael to sit back and to perhaps watch one of his own children take up one of the swords, considering he knows exactly what that means, and then sit him back on the sidelines and make him worry about his family? 

I don’t know.  Michael is a really interesting character in terms of his strength, because a lot of the things that would really gnaw on somebody who was a little bit more rational, he’s prepared to take on faith, and he’s comfortable with that.  I don’t think he’d like having one of his kids running around out there, but he could hardly throw a stone, so to speak.  Yeah, let he who is without action movie credits throw the first stone, in that sort of situation.  It would be hard on him, but he is the kind of guy who would handle it well.

How is the liquidity (e.g. several different kinds each of werewolves and vampires) going to affect the story as we’re going forward? 

Gosh, I don’t know…that’s kind of a neat question.  I know what I’m planning to do in the future, I know when I’m planning to throw the rock, but I’m not necessarily sure how the glass is going to fall out of the window.  I know the rock and the window, but not where all the glass is going to fall.  I’ve studied a bit of history, and I try to use that, what I’ve learned from there as my model, and I try to approach it from that standpoint, once the events start happening.  I knew Harry was going to handle the Red Court the way he did, but the fallout from it was something that I said, “Ok, now I’m going to have to stop and actually figure through this, and I based it on the fall of the Soviet Union, the fallout from the Red Court buying it, so, we’ll have to see! A lot of this is fun for me to find out, and I wouldn’t want to spoil you about it anyway.


Have I ever had character who I’ve been surprised by, who has decided to jump up and to be more involved in the series that I originally planned? 

Yeah: Butters.  [unintelligible]…Butters off as a one shot.  I wanted him to be the smart-mouth morgue-guy/medical examiner, because I love that character in The Prophecy and The Relic..because they have wise-aleck morgue people who are just hilarious, and I love that, and I wanted to do that for the Dresden Files.  But when I got done writing him, I thought, “This guy is so cool, I need to use him somewhere else!” So when Dead Beat came up and I was trying to work out a good sidekick for Harry for this particular story, I’m like, oh, wait a minute, there’s necromancers running around animating dead bodies, and having the medical examiner be the one to be helping Harry along in the middle of this is just so appropriate, and yet, totally useless to him as a helper.  That’s perfect!”  But, yeah, Butters is one of those characters who did that.  It happens occasionally, there’ll be a character who I don’t mean to stick around quite as hard as they do, but, like I said, I’m lazy, so if someone shows signs of being proactive for me, it’s like, oh yeah, I might as well have you show up  and do the work, go head. Get me a Coke while you’re up.

Is there a particular source of inspiration for any of the villains I’ve had?

Well, to a large degree, yeah. I read a lot of folklore, I read a lot of mythology.  By the way, if you ever go to research folklore and mythology if you’re going to write a book of your own or research it for a game or something, just do yourself a favor and skip the “Adult” section of the library, that stuff there, because if you start reading mythology in the Adult section, you aren’t going to go five paragraphs before you bump into Freud and Jung.  It’s like those guys do not know how to have a good time, when it comes to this sort of story.  Go to the children’s section, and read those stories, because they just give you the stories, which is where I draw most of my information.  And I draw it from things that scared me when I was a little kid.  I was sure Bigfoot lived in the lilac bush behind our house when I was small.  I had two older sisters, they were twelve and fourteen years older than me, who just loved scaring me. They had a good sense of drama for that. But that’s ok, because I can exorcise those demons now, and put them in a book, and make a dollar out of them, and that’s the American way.

With all these plots that are going on, with Mab and Lea obviously playing games against one another, with archangels sticking there nose in, with vague supernatural entities that live on islands, how are all these conflicting interests, where Dresden’s getting pulled in different directions by all of them, how are they going to play out in the future? 

This is like heroin for writers. [singsong] I’m not gonna tell you! I’m going to write it, and we’ll have fun.  I know that a lot of the folks that are generally perceived as bad guys aren’t necessarily, there are several who are currently perceived as good guys who aren’t necessarily, and we’ll continue to have those fall out over the next several books. I got some outraged emails from people for the end of Changes, and I just didn’t understand it, okay, because first of all, that technically was not a cliffhanger.  Technically, I mean, in terms of story craft, not a cliffhanger, because Harry Dresden sets out to rescue his daughter from the Red Court, even if it kills him, and it does. But I sometimes forget that everybody else doesn’t know the rest of the story.  My reaction was that I thought everyone would be really excited, because now that he’s dead we get to start the good stuff!  But as it turns out, no, I guess you guys don’t know the rest of it like I do; that might have a slight effect on your perception.


Did I set out to make Harry a nerd?

Yeah, absolutely,  he’s a magic nerd instead of a computer nerd, but yeah, I set forth to make a guy that I would relate to and, really, all my friends are nerds and I’m a nerd, and it wasn’t a big deal to make Harry a nerd, too, for me, that was a no-brainer. He just can’t play video games, which really cripples his nerdness.


There’s a lot of characters in the story who have lifespans that have gone on over many generations, do I ever plan on having any backstory on them, stuff like “young Ebenezar” or “the Bob adventures”? 

Bob tales? The only thing I have in mind is where I might write the history of the French and Indian War in the Dresden Files universe, back when all the people who were on the Senior Council who can’t stand Harry because he’s a young hothead getting into trouble were young hotheads getting into trouble.  I think that would be a lot of fun to do, I just have to bone up on my French and Indian War stuff to be able to do it, and so far I haven’t had time yet. 

Is Lasciel going to make a comeback? The coin is still buried in the lab, right?

Her coin isn’t in the lab anymore. Her story is not yet over. However, both Lasciel and Lash appeared in Ghost Story, but not under those names. [Hums the “I’m not gonna tell you” tune]


With the publication of the Dresden Files RPG, what is it like to turn over my world to my fellow nerds to play with who love it so much? 

Awesome! It is awesome.  Sadly, I’m the one person who can’t play the RPG. I mean, try to imagine being my GM, really.  “Yes, it is that way, and if necessary, I’ll write it that way IN THE NEXT BOOK!!!  You give me that +2 [unintelligible]!” But then, if I’m GM, it’s too much like work! But everybody else has a good time, which makes me very happy, and was kind of the point of the books to begin with.


Given that I’ve planned out so many things, and there are so many stories and actions that have consequences that have to be played out in the course of the series, are there any seemingly insignificant actions that are going to be played out later on?
Yes, there are. A bunch of them. But we’ll see. I’m still working out how to get them all fit in, but the next six books are going to be very, very busy. Six or seven or eight or however many it takes.

Since you only get books once a year, do I have anything planned like Backup to help you…cope?

Normally, yeah, there’re story projects that are going on on the side, right now I’m writing a trilogy of short stories that I’m calling the Bigfoot trilogy; Bigfoot’s the client.  You know, there’s issues with the kid, and he can’t exactly walk into town and take care of them, so he’s got to find somebody to help him out. Yeah, I’m going to continue to do short story projects like that on the side, I’ve outlined a new graphic novel, which I’m going to be working on.  Also remember that I’ve got to get a break from that tall creepy loser once in awhile, or I’ll just kill him.  Oh. Wait.  I always love it when I get to start something else because I go, “Oh, I’m so sick of that loser Harry Dresden” at this point, and then I’ll start writing something else, and by the time I get done with that, I’ll go back to Harry and be like, “Oh, I’m glad to be back in the saddle with Harry, because this feels easy!”

How much time has passed, approximately, since Storm Front? 

Um. I could go check the Wikipedia? I’m trying to make it more or less real time. So I think it averages out to about a year between each.  Some are a little bit more, some are a little bit less. But I try to make it real time, sort of like Joss did with Buffy.

Who are my favorite writers?

This is a question I hate, because I’ll start on them, and I’ll remember half and hour later somebody I should have mentioned and didn’t. Robert B. Parker is probably my single favoritest writer. I’ll read anything he wrote. I’ve still got the last Spencer book he wrote, which I won’t read, because then there won’t be anymore Spencer books to read. And that’s sad. But I’ve got it. Robert B. Parker’s pretty good. Lately…there’s Rothfuss, that jerk. I just can’t stand Rothfuss, he can write such beautiful lyrical poetic lines in one, and then shift gears and be writing this short choppy pulp-action-style fiction, and just do it so smoothly you can’t even tell what’s going on.  Oooh, I hate that. Scalzi’s brilliant. John Scalzi…he’s amazing, he really is.   I’ve been reading Brandon Sanderson lately. Picked up Way of Kings, and was like, “Ohh, that is so cool!” Oh, I just love the fantasy world where either you’re a guy with a knife on the end of a stick and a leather jacket or you’ve got Iron Man armor and a lightsaber. That dichotomy is awesome. Lemme think who else I’ve been reading lately. Harry Connolly’s books, I don’t know if you’ve read Harry Connolly, his first book’s called Child of Fire, it’s really good. There’s a new guy coming out, he’s British, his name is Benedict Jacka, his first book is called Fated. It’s a wizard book, it’s really excellent, he’s got a great imagination.  I read the Temeraire books, I read the Honor Harrington series.  Pretty much anything Glen Cook does I like. But there’s

Are there any characters in particular who inform Harry’s voice?

He’s [the questioner] noticed characters like Gareth [?] are very similar in terms of their outlook on life and so on.  I would say yeah, and the characters that inform me are folks like Dashiell Hammett’s lead character Sam Spade (or is that Ray Chandler? I’m getting confused. I think Dashiell Hammett had Sam Spade.) Ray Chandler’s characters as well. Of course, Robert Spencer is [unintelligible] as far as I’m concerned; I wish I could have Harry be as snarky as Spencer. But, yeah, definitely, he’s informed by a lot of things, and also just by the hard-boiled genre in general.


What is the first line of Cold Days?


Mab, Queen of Air and Darkness, has unique ideas about physical therapy. See?  First sentence is done! The rest is just typing.

Now that Harry’s died, that whole “Die alone” death curse, is that over? 

Was he not dead enough? Yeah, he got out from underneath that one. Sort of. It remains to be seen if he’s going to get out from underneath the rest of it. Which I’m having a very good time plotting out.

Is Maggie going to start playing a bigger role?

She’s like seven! Seven year olds….seven year olds, you’re lucky if their big role isn’t falling off the monkey bars and getting a broken arm, like mine did when he was seven. But, on the other hand, if I’m ever done with the Dresden Files and I’ve got to pay off my gambling debts or something, I suppose I could always do Dresden: The Next Generation with Maggie, although she’d probably think Dad was a little soft.

When will we get to see Ferrovax again?

Fair question, it probably won’t be until one of the last of the case files. If not in the big, epic, epic trilogy.  No, because Ferrovax was on his best behavior at that party, and the next time he’s got an excuse to smack Dresden, somebody’s going to throw down, and we’ll have a good time with that.

Offline Serack

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Re: WoJ transcription help needed + mention new WoJ's here
« Reply #173 on: January 25, 2012, 08:13:10 PM »
OK, I think I'm caught up with transfering all the transcripts to the respective topics in the WoJ forum.  Next up, collating the rest of the 2011 signing tour WoJ's that are already transcribed, and updating the lists of what still needs transcription.

Thanks everybody that contributes to the transcription effort!!!  It helps in so many ways, and everbody here that likes to discuss theories based off of WoJ's has that much of an easier time because of your efforts!
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Re: WoJ transcription help needed + mention new WoJ's here
« Reply #174 on: February 07, 2012, 06:14:29 PM »
Here's Part 4 of the KC release party Q&A (as it seemed like parts 1-3 and 5 were already taken/done.)

Great and powerful wizards are stabled(? Stapled? Stable?), but his statement is that, generally speaking, by the time they get to the end, what they actually accomplish in terms of the big finale of the series is fairly small and is my plan something like that for Dresden? 

Yes and no. The problem with most of the wizrds that do that is simply that they weren’t the central character of the series.  Gandalf is not the central character of the series [Lord of the Rings], that was Sam. Not Frodo, Frodo was not a central character, Frodo was a junkie who was along for the ride. Sam was the man.  Similarly, with classical wizards, with characters like Merlin, Arthur’s the central character, in that story, for the most part. Oh, there’ve been Merlin stories [unintelligible].  But am I going to all the way to the end of this to have Dresden be the one who pushes the button that says, “Destroy the universe, Y/N”, it’s not going to be  anywhere near that simple.  Hopefully, if I do it right, which I don’t know, because I’ve never written a 20-book epic fantasy before, I’ll set it up to where if it had been anybody else, it would have ended in disaster.  But because it’s Dresden, we all get to keep getting along, is kind of what I’m trying to come up with.  If you’re doing your job as a writer, by the time you get to the end of your story, if any other individual other than that character is making things happen, if somebody else had been there is all would have ended horribly wrong, if you’re doing your job right. Hopefully I’ll be able to do the same thing, but like I said, it’s big, and I’ve never written a story like that before.

What things would I go back to the earlier novels to change to tell things now?

Oh. I don’t know.  I would probably scrap the first two books completely and re-write from the ground up everything about it, which would probably be a disaster. I’ve learned that going back and rewriting a novel doesn’t work anywhere near as well as you think it should.  So at this point, I’m happy to accept the flaws and imperfections from early on, because that just means, “Oh, wait a minute, now I have a good direction to go to keep things moving the way I want to go.  I probably would never have figured out that the whole thing about [wizards] recovering from injury has a lot to do with them living a long time, because they have far groovier telemeres than any of us have, that their DNA copier works better than ours does. I probably wouldn’t have figured that out if somebody hadn’t pointed out, “Hey! I’ve been keeping track of the folks, and physical therapists, and I just wanted to let you know that in the past five years, Dresden’s abrogated on about seven and half years of therapy, and you need to be aware that this injury would have required this kind of surgery, and this kind of recovery and another surgery to correct that and some more therapy and by the time we get to that, he’s already been busted up by the next book, which would have done this and this and that.”  Ok, ok, so obviously, wizards are cooler than that.  I figured out how. And that’s why, and that’s a good reason, and that’s why they live a long time, too. Awesome. This is working out great.  As long as I can stay on my mental toes, I guess we’ll be all right.

Have any of my characters surprised me or done something I wasn’t expecting them to do or developed in a way I didn’t want them to go. 

Those people all work for me.   Occasionally they are harassable and I have to make sure to give them good motivations to do things that I knew they would do.  And occasionally they just kind of come out cooler than I thought they would be.  Butters, which was going to be my off-the-wall, one-shot, I-wanted-an-ME-with-a-sense-of-humor-cause-I-always-liked-them character.  I’ve seen [unintelligible], I’ve seen Prophecy and those characters are fun.  Which, if you haven’t seen those movies in a while, go back, because those MEs really are hilarious.  But after I wrote it, I was like, “This guy is just so zany, I’ve got to use him again somewhere,” because I hadn’t really planned Butters out at all, just said, “oh, I need an ME.” Or “I need an ME with a sense of humor”, so I built this guy real quick in 20 minutes while I was watching the end of probably a Star Wars movie, and said, “Ok, let’s go” and wrote him.  But he came out so neat, I said “I gotta use him again, I gotta find a good place to have this guy,” and figured “What better sidekick for a wizard going up against a gang of necromancers who animate the dead than a medical examiner whose job it is to deal with them all the time.  The catch here is that he’s absolutely no real help in any professional sense, I always like to plan things out for Dresden like that—I guive him a sidekick that’s great company, thematically appropriate, yet not actually offer any true assistance.  But that’s just kind of how he rolls.

If I could take any actor to play Harry and Thomas, who would I pick?

Oh man. I’d probably pick a mid-1970’s Harrison ford for Harry because I’m happy to pick actors from other times that I can’t possibly get. It’s only a matter of time before technology makes that possible, when we can actually have 1970’s Carrie Fisher starring across from 1955 John Wayne. It will happen, one day. But if I had to pick someone who’s actually working now, I’d probably pick Captain Tightpants for Harry, because he’s got a great action [unintelligible] and he was declined in that role.  [Transcriber note for posterity: “Captain Tightpants” is a reference to Nathan Fillion in his role as Mal Reynolds in Firefly and Serenity].  As far as Thomas, that’s a harder call.  Thomas in my head is the older brother from Lost Boys. Jason what’s-his-name. Yeah. Jason Patrick. He doesn’t look that good anymore, but I might also go with the guy who played Bryce in the first couple of seasons of Chuck, was actually very close to Thomas in my head, except his hair is too short. But other than that he looked pretty close.  And now everyone’s going, “Huh, who?” and now it’s like, “Wow, I am now an obscure reference to this room.”

Audience member: The White Collar guy.

Jim: Is he in that?  I’m not a White Collar fan.

Audience member: Matt Bomer.

Jim: Ok, Matt Bomer. Now we know.

Did good Bob make it out?  Is bad Bob still around? 

Is spoilers for the end of this book, which a lot of people here haven’t got to read yet.  And even if it wasn’t totally inappropriate for me to go completely spoiler-happy on this audience, [singsong] I’m not gonna tell you.  That’s my job as a professional storyteller. I give you some resolution on some things, and leave other questions still hanging, and that way you buy the next book and they don’t take my house away! 

What took the extra time to finish this book [Ghost Story]
This one was really hard to write because Dresden spends a whole big chunk of time not really able to communicate with very many people.  Which means I can’t write a whole bunch of snappy dialogue, which is the easiest, funnest part of my job as a writer. It was a lot of description and so on, and that’s grindingly slow for me.  That was part of it, was getting Dresden out of that quandary. Part of it was actually figuring out, “Oh, wait a minute, the actual plot that I thought was happening is not exactly the plot that is happening.”  And that only came together in the last month or so. A lot of is was that this book is longer than most of the other ones. In fact, it’s longer than all of the previous Dresden Files books. And also, life happens.  I got my kid who [unintelligible] that all of a sudden I wasn’t a full-time dad anymore.  There was a rebalancing issue to be dealt with. So there were a bunch of different things, and finally I did get it done and I called up my editor and said, “This just isn’t going to happen” and my editor said, “Jim, you’re a creative person. You people are squirrely.”…..

Offline Serack

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Re: WoJ transcription help needed + mention new WoJ's here
« Reply #175 on: February 10, 2012, 12:54:52 AM »
Transferred, tyvm.  LML posted the last 20 min as parts six and seven.  I included them here in my playlist for the KC signing
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Offline cass

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Re: WoJ transcription help needed + mention new WoJ's here
« Reply #176 on: February 13, 2012, 02:09:37 AM »
Jim Butcher Atlanta, GA 2011 signing.

Part of Part 4 through the end of the Q and A.

Will there ever be a story about Kincaid and Murphy in Hawaii?

Yes. It’s gonna have to wait until I do a little research on Hawaiian gods.  There’s going to be issues with volcanoes and so…[unintelligible]

If it’s not a spoiler, what’s Murphy doing for a paycheck these days?

Well, if you stop and think about it, I’m sure it will occur to you. Of course, she didn’t talk about it with Dresden.

The three families of the White Court feed on different emotions, is that like knife, spoon, fork, or can they mix it up?

They can mix it up, and it’s one of the things they fight about a lot, about what they do.  There’s all this “you are what you eat” sort of thing in play, and the different houses have different aspects [unintelligible] divide things up by territory.  And you could feed on all sorts of stuff.  You could probably be a White Court vampire that fed on the warm happy feeling that people get when they’re holding a puppy.  Although you’d be a really….you’d probably sparkle if you did that.  [Unintelligible] it might actually be fun to show that in some future files.

Are we going to see short stories from Molly’s perspective in the next short story anthology?

I don’t know. Maybe. That could be kind of fun.  Molly certainly has a unique perspective, especially after the events of the last book [GS]. 

Two questions, one: what is your favorite [unintelligible] them all, and two: are we ever going to see the Warden from Atlanta?

Is there a Warden in Atlanta? Probably somewhere, there’s really not all that many Wardens operating in North America, because it’s in far less trouble than the rest of the world, generally speaking.

As far as my favorite MMO, I Everquested for a really, really long time, but it’s really pointless to play a massively multiplayer online game when I do nothing but solo. I still play City of Heroes, on occasion, where I’m the only one who’s allowed to play Harry Dresden.  They keep changing my name to “generichero1234” or something like that, and I keep having to point out to them, “Hey, I’m actually the copyright holder, and I can use this name.” and so basically they’ve made a note on my online profile that says, “By the way, GMs, he’s allowed.”

On Twitter there’s a guy Harry Dresden [unintelligible]…I know you’re on Twitter, I was wondering if you’ve ever seen this [unintelligible]

Yeah, the folks who are roleplaying as Harry Dresden and [unintelligible] on Twitter…yeah, they’re fine. I could go be all dragon with his horde of treasure over copyright or something like that if I wanted to, but what would be the point?  The entire point of the service is for people to meet and have a good time, and they’re really having a good time. What’s the problem? But I don’t pay those guys or anything like that. But they’re goofing a lot of fun.

PART 5

May I suggest vampires who feed on schadenfreude (the feeling of happiness over someone else’s pain)?
 Oh, so that would be when I put out one of those cliffhanger endings, see, then they’re gonna get fed.

Are there any characters or scenes that strike you as being the most difficult to write?
The scenes when people are in a lot of pain are hard. I’m sort of kind of an empathetic person, and those are tough on me.  The scenes that are really, really violent are kind of hard. Stuff like when I turned the loup-garou loose in the police station.  I mena, admittedly, yeah, I totally stole that out of Terminator, that’s not the point, those are difficult.  The most difficult ones are the ones that have a whole lot of description and introspection in them, and there’s nobody for my characters to talk to and be a smartass with, because, really, that’s easy to write: easy and fun, its when there’s serious pondering going on that it gets difficult.

Speaking of Twitter, all the stuff that you were writing about a couple of weeks ago: does it make you mad that people are taking something you made and trying to twist it?  You seemed kind of upset.
There’s the folks on Twitter who got upset with me, that’ve got their own opinion, and it could be that they have a point, maybe they do, maybe they don’t, I don’t know.  It made me upset that they did so in a way that was so overtly and impersonally hostile.  But you know what?  It’s a big world and I don’t see any reason why they can’t do that kind of thing on Twitter.  I can kind of just go “Meh.” If I just turned around and started screaming at them, what’s the point?  That’s not going to accomplish anything good.

How about a short story from the perspective of Mouse or Mister? A day in the life?

I suppose it could be done.  Mister’s would be really freaky, because he’s a cat. [unintelligible]….he’s a cat.   I guess it could be fun writing that.  From Mouse’s perspective?  I don’t know, Mouse knows too much about what’s going on, he’d give it away. Mouse is actually far more clued in than Dresden.

[unintelligible question, Jim didn’t repeat it back, had something to do with the third eye, potential futures and the ThreeEye junkie in SF]
He was mostly just looking at Dresden and [unintelligible] out because he was on drugs.
[unintelligible follow on question] 
Yeah, but I hadn’t planned that far ahead. That was in Chapter 13 or 14, and I was still trying to prove my teacher wrong.

Are we ever going to see Sue again?
Yes. But it might be a while.

I was wondering if and when we were going to see the Jade Court vampires?
They might be a little bit involved in the big finale, but not in any serious way.  If it’s not happening in China, they just don’t care.  They’re a very insular, very isolated group, they know what’s important to them and stuff that’s outside of there is completely not  important.

I just got finished reading an author named Kevin Hearne, the Iron Druid Chronicles, have you read them?
No, I have not.
I was wondering.,,the main character is almost [unintelligible] in my mind.  And that would be really awesome.
I’ve got a copy at home, it’s on my to-read list. I met the guy at ComicCon, he seems like a nice guy.  We sat and watched somebody [unintelligible] video of Patrick Rothfuss writing [unintelligible] at one of the local bars.  And Pat is one of the nicest guys in person, he really is.  He’s one of those guys that doesn’t take himself seriously at all, he’s really happy to make fun of himself, and he good at it.
I asked because that was based on a lot of Norse/Celtic mythology which you said you enjoy…
I haven’t read any of it.

I’ve got the game, and I wanted to ask a couple questions about [unintelligible]
You can ask me my opinion about the game, but I’m not the guy who writes the game, I just write the stories.
The other White Vampire Courts, what are their virgins [at least, I think he said virgins, not versions. Given the reaction to the question, I went with the former] like?
I [unintelligible] directly about that one.  They’re all more or less the same. It just depends on what they start feeding on first and what intense encounter they have with what emotion first.

There is some mention of possible superhero connections at some point in time, do you have any plans for that?

What, to do actual superheroes in the Dresden universe?  No, it’s just that Dresden exists in a cosmos with alternate realities that just keep going and going and going and going, and eventually you get to somewhere where there’s an actual Spiderman in the Dresden universe, it’s just that getting there is a little difficult, since it’s really hard to [unintelligible] though apparently you can do it if you get the right [unintelligible].

PART 6

What do you think of Simon Greene’s Nightside series?

Cool.  Very stylistic, I pick up new ones whenever they come out. I kind of like the little James-Bond-shorts opening sequences at the beginning of every book.

Are we ever going to see Lash again?
She’s actually mentioned in Ghost Story although not by name. Her story isn’t over.

You mentioned that Harry isn’t a hat person.  Why does he have a hat on every cover then, you’d think you’d fix that!

The art department thought it was perfect visual shorthand for wizard detective. He’s got the wizard’s staff and a fedora, and that’s why they told him to do it that way.  And I’ve been giving them a little bit of a hard time about it ever since.

What does the Jade Court feed on?
All these questions about things that are never going to come in, [unintelligible, though a few people audible in the background indicate that he said “Chi”].

What’s the status of the Red Court and the Nickelheads?
[singsong] I’m not gonna tell you!  Red Court, mostly dead. Well, no.  Most of them are all the way dead. [unintelligible]

When you’re writing a fight sequence, do you block it out,  or is it all in your head, or do you miniaturize it?
When I write a fight sequence it’s all in my head.  I’ve done enough martial arts that I can usually picture everything without any help.  I used to occasionally borrow my son, “Hey, I’m doing a fight scene, you’re going to be Harry Dresden.” “NOOO!” That was when we were much younger.  Now he’d toss me around.

I noticed that a lot of characters, especially the minor characters, as the series develops, they’re nerds, but then as the story progresses, like Butters, they come into their own and become heroes, do you do that on purpose?

Do I write nerds that eventually grow up to be heroes on purpose?  Look around this room. [unintelligible] I will fly my nerd flag next to anybody in this room, proudly, I’ve got nerd stories in my closet at home along with all my nerdiest nerd costumes to go out on the weekend, comic books, anime books, everything, I’m awful, I’m hopeless. But I’m really happy.

Is Toot going to come back; is he going to be any more significant?

Book 14 we’ll see a lot more Faerie activity due. Book 14 is entitled Cold Days, I’ve only got the first sentence written, but that’s the hard part. Once you’ve got your first sentence, the rest of the book is just putting in more of it.

Are you planning on doing any more fantasy series like Codex Alera?

Yeah, the new fantasy trilogy that I’m writing is actually the prequel to my epicepicfantasyepic that I’m going to write one day when I grow up.  I figured, “It’s so epic it needs a prequel trilogy” so, that’s the one that I’m working on right now, which is the Black Company-based one.  And so far it’s a lot of fun, I’m able to make it quite a bit funnier than most fantasy novels, like most of the Alera books were.

You’ve done a lot of fencing; what styles have you studied?

I did epee and foil for the most part, I didn’t go saber fencing because those people were just crazy. “Let’s go out into the parking lot and hit each other with car antennas!” That’s saber fencing, baby!  Although I did learn a lot of saber style when we switched to LARP, because we had a lot of folks who were hardcore fencers who [unintelligible].






Offline cass

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Re: WoJ transcription help needed + mention new WoJ's here
« Reply #177 on: February 13, 2012, 03:50:19 AM »
Jim Butcher, KC signing, Parts 6 and 7 (video courtesy LogicMouseLives)

[unknown question]

….Dresden probably have a good time, wind up using their powers for a bunch of things that nobody ever really thought about before.  I’ve only seen that because I’ve been watching the Avengers on Netflix, the animated series of the Avengers on Netflix. It’s actually pretty cool.  I’ve been figuring out what everybody’s actual superpower is, on the show.  For example, the Wasp, where she can shrink down to fly and shoot stingers at people and so on, her actual superpower is not shrinking, flying and shooting the yellow [unintelligible] people, her actual superpower is “I am just annoying enough that you cannot ignore me no matter how mighty you are, I am just annoying enough that you can’t not pay attention to me, that’s my job. That’s my superpower in the story.”

You’ve put harry Dresden through so much, and he’s suffered through so much, after Changes, where can you possibly go from there?

[Jim lets out a maniacal/evil giggle]  You haven’t read the new one yet, have you? Get to the end of the new one, that’ll give you an idea. And we’ll see what happens after this. I just finally go the first sentence of the next book written, which is always the hardest part, after that, everything’s easy. By the time I got to the first sentence of Book 14, it was like, “Ah, that encapsulates the whole deal!”, and we’ll have a good time playing that out.

Do you figure out the end of the story before you start writing the beginning?

When I’m smart. When I’m smart, I do exactly that.  When I’m not smart, I sort of wonder what’s going to happen.  Normally, I know what the end is going to be, I usually know a big, flashy, high special effects budget sort of scene that’s going to be in the middle, I know about half-a-dozen one-liners that I want to use, and small bit scenes that I want to use, and then, that’s enough for me to get started.  I did not do as much pre-planning on Ghost Story, probably because I wanted it to have more of a nebulous feel to it, I wanted the story to have something that seemed kind of misty around the edges than a normal Dresden Files story would be because that was sort of the setting that we were in, and partly because I was an idiot, and just didn’t get it done, and maybe next time I’ll remember to shut up and listen to my writing teacher and write my outline before I start my story.  You would think I would get that by now.

Did Dresden lose domain over Demonreach when he died?

Have you gotten to the end of the book?  Ok. You read the book, I’ve already answered that one.

Does Harry…ok, Marvel or DC?


Marvel, and here’s why: I’ve never been a Superman fan. I’ve never liked that guy. Now, that said, I’ve been more impressed with how they’ve handled Supes lately, because it seems like they finally understand, “Wait a minute, not everybody likes Captain Perfect flying around over there!”  Did you ever see the Marvel-DC crossover of the Superman-Spiderman team up? Superman and Spiderman teamed up together, which makes sense because Peter Parker is a photographer and Clark Kent’s a reporter.  And the bad guys blew up some kind of computer, and Spiderman’s like, “Oh, man, they blew up the computer, we’re going to have to do all kids of legwork to try to figure out…” and Superman, before Spiderman is done with his sentence, reassembles the computer that’s been blasted into tiny pieces, puts it back together, and then starts accessing the information on it, and Spiderman actually looks at the computer, and looks at Superman, and then asks, “Why am I here?” and that’s actually written into the book, and I admire the Spiderman writers who were handling that. That was really interesting, that they were able to pick up on that at the time. Actually, DC sent me an email and said, “Hey, would you like to a guest stint on Batman or Superman, because we would love to have you.” And I said, “That would be fantastic, but I don’t know the story well enough for the people who love them.”  And I could show up and just sort of write a thing, but that wouldn’t be the same thing as someone who loves the story showing up to play with it, so I wouldn’t do that. Spiderman, though, yeah. This one more day stuff, no. We can do better than that for Spiderman.

How many books do you plan on writing?

The Dresden Files books’ll be about twenty-ish of the case books, like we’ve had so far, it could be a little bit more, it could be a little bit less, depending on whether my kid goes to graduate school, and then we’ll have a big, old apocalyptic trilogy to cap it all off.   Because who doesn’t love apocalyptic trilogies?! It’s my sisters’ fault.  The first movie I remember them taking me to see was Star Wars, and yeah. Blame them, not me.

Are there more short stories coming?

Yes, there are. Right now, I’m about two-thirds of the way done with the second of the Bigfoot trilogy of stories, which I’m having fun writing.  Bigfoot’s the client. He comes to Harry, he’s got some problems with his kid, he can’t exactly walk into town and help, so Dresden gets hired and is on the job.  The first one’s called B is for Bigfoot, and the kid’s in grade school. The next one is I Was a Teenage Bigfoot, and the kid’s in high school, and then Bigfoot On Campus, when he’s in college, so the three of those, and several of the short stories, and the one that didn’t make it into the anthology, Curses, will be in there, and any others that I write, because I still owe some short stories. I’ve got to start writing these things, man, they’re so hard. Writing a short story, you have to do everything in the short story that you’d do in a novel, except you have to do it in this much space.  It’s like trying to have a knife fight in a phone booth.

Have you decided in a title for the next book?


Book 14 is going to be titled Cold Days.  Which will make more sense after you’ve written Book 13.

Where does Curses fit in the timeline?


I’ll have to find it.  I think it’s between Dead Beat and Proven Guilty.   I’ll have to check my notes to be sure though.  I can never keep this stuff straight. I’ll go check on Wikipedia and…seriously! You people keep much better track of this stuff than I possibly could, because by the time you read it, you just have that one version of the book to be read, whereas to me, I’ve got eleven slightly different versions that strongly resemble the one version, that are all the drafts that I write, and then I’ve got all the versions that could have been, that I decided not to use for one reason or another, in my head, and it gets hard to keep them straight, after a while. We’re thirteen books in, I’ve got a couple of hundred slightly different Dresden Files in my head, it’s hard to keep mentally highlighting which one is the actual canon.  Which is why I go to Wikipedia.  For crying out loud, if I didn’t have that I don’t know what I’d do. How many children do Michael and Charity have again? Look it up. Oh, right, ok. What color were the different panels of Harry’s car, again?

PART 7

At what point did you realize that Charity had had her own experience with the magical world, and had been a practitioner in the past, and at what point did I know that Molly was going to be Harry’s apprentice? 

The answer to that is: when they appeared. I knew that Charity just couldn’t stand Dresden, and I had to have a good reason for her to really not stand him and really, the best reason that anyone could possibly have for not liking somebody is because they remind them of themselves, something they hate in themselves. So I thought that was just perfect. And then I gave her all kinds of good, rational reasons on top of that to not like him. “You get my husband arrested, and in trouble, and beat up!” Ok, well, good point. As far as Molly goes, I knew she was going to be Harry’s apprentice by the end of the first book she showed up in. No, not the end of that one. By the end of Death Masks.  By the time she was sitting there with the Knight of the Cross, prank-calling the grocery stores with him, just to play around with his head, you know, that was like, “She’s not going to get away from being Dresden’s apprentice at this point.”

Are you a Game of Thrones fan?

I like the TV show.  Because I like Tyrion effing Lannister. He’s a great character. But as far as the actual story goes, I’m upset with it, because for a fantasy novel, it has so little fantasy.  I can’t get involved in it, it’s all this politics and backstabbing and people, it’s like “I’ve got people like this that are running my country right now. [unintelligible]”  You get to the end of the first season of the HBO series, and it’s like, we’ve had one girl who didn’t burn her hands when she should have, and a zombie.  And that was it.  Give me a higher budget.  I need things getting to explode when you do something to them.  At least True Blood level of supernatural coolness.

Can you explain the significance of the dagger that Lea gets and is it the same dagger that Harry uses on Lloyd in Changes?
I’ll answer the second part of that first, which is: no, it was not the same dagger. He uses one of Medea’s knives in Changes.  And that dagger [transcriber note: I think the dagger he’s referring to here is Lea’s dagger, not the one that killed Slate—see the rest of his answer below, which implies that Lea’s dagger is younger.  Medea is ancient Greek and thus predates Morgan Le  Fay.]   That dagger--did this even go into the books?  Maybe not--originally belonged to Morgan Le Fay, like, the original Morgan Le Fay, that was her personal athame, her ritual knife. Which is a big deal.  As far as the significance of what it did, I’m still being coy about that.  It’s going to come into play later on.  Suffice to say that an older and wickeder dagger was needed by Mab for such things as she used in the last book.

Maggie LeFay, Morgan LeFay, is that a generational name, are they related? 

No, the “LeFay” is something that gets added as an honorific in the wizarding community, it’s one of those kind of mixed names that you give somebody that is sort of a name that she’s earned, so it’s a bit of status, and it also means you’re insane. Which everybody thought Harry’s mom was, being a big-time explorer of Ways and hanging out with Faeries and generally kind of doing things that most wizards considered to be pretty crazily, stupidly dangerous. When you’re somebody who can live for three or four hundred years as long as nothing goes wrong, you tend to be a little conservative, really, you get a lot of benefit from that. And certainly, in Maggie’s case, she was bucking the trend, and we’ll probably get into a little bit more of why she was doing that later in the books.

What happened in Minnesota?  You’ve got something…Harry went up to Minnesota because someone saw something in a lake. WHAT HAPPENED?! [transcriber note: HEAR, HEAR!]

Uh, I’ll get there.  That’ll probably be one of the short stories.   That was when I didn’t really plan for all those mentions of between book things, and things that had gone before, and so on. I had originally planned those out so that I could write short stores if I wanted, I had actually thought about doing that as a graphic novel, but they wanted something a little bit different, and to go after the Fool Moon graphic novels, so I write them all new story after them. Which is actually cool enough that I should have made it a novella or a book or something myself, I almost feel bad I’m giving this one to the graphic novel, but that’s ok. It’ll be a good story.

At the end of Dead Bead, Harry threatens Mavra, says that he understands how to use necromancy against the Black Court, and then the last thing that Harry says to Lash is that they need to talk about Outsiders and how they relate to the Black Court.  Are the Black Court more than just a court of vampires?  Do they have more metaphysical significance?

Long question, what it amounts to is do the Black Court of vampires have more significance that just being corpse-y vampires?  Are they tied in somehow with the over story of what’s going on.  And the answer to that is: I’m a really lazy writer. And if I could possibly use something more than once, or use it for more than one purpose, I will.  And I’ll leave it there.

Is Thomas going to be wielding Amoracchius?

I’m not sure, actually, where those are going to fall out.  There are several different places where I could put them. And all of them would be fun, and I’m just trying to figure out which ones are going to be the most fun.

You’ve mentioned several times that marriages are used to seal pacts and alliances, will Harry be forced into a marriage, and will it be with Lara [Raith]?


What makes you think that Harry hasn’t been forced into a marriage already?  I mean, the whole thing with Mab, come on. Read more book. Read the most recent one, and see if that doesn’t give you more answers. Certainly, he’s in it deep with Mab at the moment, because there’ll be none of this, “He’s going to get out of this because he was technically dead”—no, it’s too easy.

You mentioned you’re working on another fantasy/sci-fi project, can you tell us anything about it?

I’m having way too much fun with it. It is influenced by the Black Company novels by Glenn Cook, also excellent fantasy, if you’ve never read them.   It’s called the Fortress trilogy and I think it’s going to be the prequel trilogy to my epicepicfantasyepic, but it’s so epic, it’s a prequel trilogy. That’s always been my dream, to write a huge, huge swords-and-horses fantasy, and we’ll start off by writing a prequel trilogy for a warm-up and we’ll see what happens.

Offline Serack

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Re: WoJ transcription help needed + mention new WoJ's here
« Reply #178 on: February 13, 2012, 01:47:22 PM »
Thanks cass.

I'll get to this as soon as I can. 

I became a daddy last night

I've got Switchfoot's Dare You To Move in my head now.

Edit:  Just realized... if you want to post your thoughts on Kaden's birth, use the topic linked above :)
« Last Edit: February 13, 2012, 01:53:52 PM by Serack »
DF WoJ Compilation
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Name dropping "Serack" in a post /will/ draw my attention to it

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Offline Serack

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Re: WoJ transcription help needed + mention new WoJ's here
« Reply #179 on: February 21, 2012, 10:30:10 PM »
reposting this from a new topic so that it stays with the sticky.

I've gotten a lot of work done with the WoJ compilation done this weekend (thanks to everybody that has helped with the transcriptions).  I thought I had everything from the GS signing incorporated but then realized that the Bevercreek signing hadn't been transcribed yet.

I've had an extra long weekend, and my Inlaws have been helping a lot with taking care of the new baby, but now with all that work done, and the in laws going back down to Florida soon, I'm going to be taking a short brake from WoJ work methinks...  Anyone willing to voluntier to help transcribe it and post their transcriptions in the transcription sticky?
DF WoJ Compilation
Green is my curator voice.
Name dropping "Serack" in a post /will/ draw my attention to it

*gnaws on the collar of his special issue Beta Foo long-sleeved jacket*