WoJ transcription help needed + mention new WoJ's here

[knnn]

Hi everyone.  Here's several more of the quotable WoJ from the 2015 interviews.  There are a couple WoJ on Dresden along with some nice ones for Cinder Spires that I hadn't heard before.  I didn't transcribe most of the writing craft talk or the stories Jim tends to tell for frequently asked questions.

There's also a blurb (at the 20 minute mark) about a giant steam-power lumber mill on the surface that gets blown up.   This is something that didn't actually happen in the book, so either it got edited out or it's from the second book.

[TheCuriousFan]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Priscellie: Anything from the other character sheets?

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

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

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

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

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

Priscellie: *laughs* Warden Tiger King.

Jim: Exactly, Warden Joe Exotic.

Priscellie: The crossover no one wanted.

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

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

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

Priscellie: Algorithomancy.

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

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

Jim: Thanks guys.

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

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

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

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

Priscellie: Are there any famous folks in history?

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

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

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

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

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

Priscellie: Alright, how quickly will Bonnie mature?

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

*cat climbs up*

This is mister Fenris.

Priscellie: Oh my goodness. Okay take two.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Priscellie: Did Molly ever soulgaze her parents?

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

Priscellie: The feelings!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*more cat bits*

Priscellie: Who was the warden of Demonreach before Harry?

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

Priscellie: Oh god. *laughs*

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

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

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

Priscellie: Is that the only way out?

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

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

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

Priscellie: Pop goes the weasel for necromancers.

Jim: Exactly.

Priscellie: Joshua Salley asks "are we likely to meet the actual Merlin and Arthur as it seems with the situation we may need some backup".
 
Jim: That seems... are they still copyrighted or are they public domain now?

Priscellie: They're definitely public domain.

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

Priscellie: They're legend.

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

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

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

Priscellie: Are there any other crack theories you enjoy?

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

Priscellie: Which Hogwarts house would Dresden go into?

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

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

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

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

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

Priscillie: This is victim blaming.

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

Priscellie: It's a very dark mirror.

Jim: *laughs* Kind of a goofy mirror, really.

Priscellie: Like a funhouse mirror.

Jim: Basically.

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

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

Priscellie: Does he have a Soundcloud?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jim: Yes you have, congratulations sir.

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

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

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

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

Priscellie: That he'll admit to.

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

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

Jim: Okay fair enough.

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

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

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

Jim: True that was the first thing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Priscellie: oooh.

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

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

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

Priscellie: Maybe not even Molly assisting with that.

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

Priscelle: Oh god.

Jim: Right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Priscellie: Can you give us a new bit of backstory that likely won't make it into the books? Jason asks.

Jim: I have several times already along the way here. Lemme think if I can think of anything else, anything that's like small. *thinks* We'll come back to it I mean we've hit several things along the way so far tonight. Here's some we might get to in the future. There actually are gods and stuff around and functioning in our world but they're posing as mortals because they're getting way more play as professional wrestlers and rock stars than they ever did as deities. In our world there's a lot of like the old Greek and Roman deities that are still hanging around, they just look very very different and they're not really allowed to do anything except hang on and watch and observe, they're not allowed to get involved in mortal affairs. So they tend to be a lot of smoke and mirrors and thunder and not a lot of things happening, they're not like Odin who is actually involved in the world and there's something right there. That is sort of the limit that the deities have found themselves running into. Eventually at some point in the Dresden Files history there came a point where the Creator was like "okay guys, you were supposed to guide and protect humanity. You sort of did okay in some instances and some places but now it's time for the humans to be making their own way and everybody needs to step off and do it. And if you want to stay involved in the affairs of humanity you're going to have to play and be subject to death as a mortal just like everybody else." And can you really see Zeus going "oh I'm so enamoured with the mortals I'm going to risk myself to help them"? You can't really see that but of all the deities in sort of the major western pantheons that I was looking at the one that I really thought would stay involved, it had to be Odin. It had to be the guy who would go to people's homes and visit them to check up that they were maintaining their host rights properly and stuff like that you know. He was genuinely involved with humanity. So I made him that character who said "alright I'll set aside my deific immortality and I'll throw into the game like anybody else will" and then immediately started building himself to become someone cool and taking all these other mantles to maintain his immortality so he could continue doing what Odin always did which was defend and teach humanity. I wanted to have that character in the world doing that that was so much fun to get to write I can't get enough of it I love it.

Priscellie: Christine asks "how much of you is in Harry?"

Jim: Harry Dresden is the guy I would like to think I would be if I was handed his powers. I think in fact I would probably be much more one of the giggling villains. Not just one of the villains but one of the giggling villains, one of the guys who is really having a good time being a villain, I think that might be me if they handed me that kind of power but Harry's the kind of guy I would like to think I would be. The kind of guy who genuinely cares and who is genuinely good *Priscellie is silently holding up Jim's Slytherin mug* I don't know what you're talking about. But that's who I would like to think I would be. In real life perhaps not.

Priscellie: Charles asks "how much time do you spend choosing names for characters?"

Jim: Depends on the character some names just come to me and some names there's research that goes into them and there's actual.. most of the character names are puns on some level. About what their function is in the story or what they have to do, not all of them but a good many of them.

Priscellie: John Freeman asks "I've noticed that as Harry grows in his abilities he starts to use magic as a conduit to manipulate energy with a much better understand of classical physics. How do you think magic in the Dresdenverse would behave with respect to quantum mechanics?"

Jim: I would have to know more about quantum mechanics to give you an answer that makes sense. That said, it would interact with quantum mechanics first and foremost on the level of the human emotion that gets involved in going into it. I've known some folks who worked in quantum physics so I would say they would be the sort of wizard who would be like the frustration mages. That would be an excellent way to describe those guys because there just seems to be so much- they seem to be dealing with chaos and with unknowable forces that they keep running into over and over and that keep ruining their day on a regular basis over and over again. I would see those people being frustration mages but having them do things that /nobody/ else could do. They would be the kind of folks who could find the dispersed atoms of the bullet that shattered after it hit that wall, that kind of thing because they would actually be able to get through and dig into that. But they would also be just... loopy just loopy.

Priscellie: Kevin Nichols asks "is there a key difference between how air and water magic work in the Dresden Files?"

Jim: Yes. Water magic is, of the four major classical elements water magic is a very different one in the Dresden Files universe and it has a much more... what would typically be thought of as an eastern understanding of what is involved in water magic. Water magic is stuff that is involved in healing, the stuff that is involved in emotional connection, the stuff that is involved in empathy. It is your interaction with the natural physical world and being in harmony with that world. That's why the wizards who are water mages tend to be very very different from Dresden. Dresden is a very linear kind of guy, he is an a+b=c sort of fellow, the water mages in the Dresden Files universe though are are people like River Shoulders, people like Listens-To-Wind and because water magic acts so differently you see them as very different sorts of wizards and they sort of solve their problems very differently. They tend to be much more empathetic towards Dresden and towards other people who are misunderstood for example. That's why of all the wardens it's Carlos Ramirez who is the one who is close to Harry, he's the water mage, he's the one who can understand him and does have that empathy. He's the guy who is all about connections and about taking connections apart when he needs to. That's where the disintegration aspect of what he does- in water magic comes from is severing those connections now that he understands them. But yeah Ramirez, he is a much more spiritually and mentally alert guy than most of the wardens around, he's got a lot of depth to him. Also a lot of pain so he's a complex fellow.

Priscellie: Please write a story from Ramirez' pov because this sounds really compelling.

Jim: Maybe I will.

Priscellie: Excellent. Oh right five minutes to go uh, someone has a theory as to who fixed Little Chicago, we're not gonna tell you.

Jim: Right.

[TheCuriousFan]

Priscellie: Jonathan McGee asks "what would Thomas look like if he took Mab's offer to be her backup knight? And can the white court feed off of fae the same way they do humans?"

Jim: Oh my god they can and it would be such a nightmare. Here's the thing about being in faerie. And remember that we're talking about "you are what you eat" that's sort of one of those lines that goes all the way through the Dresden Files universe. So when you're in fae the reason you don't accept food from faeries is because the food you're getting isn't actually food it's the stuff of the Nevernever. The material of the Nevernever is basically an augur you can form into whatever you want and so the fae have formed it into food but your body will still take it and take it in but when you leave faerie it turns back into ectoplasm it goes away on whatever level it was so if you've been in faerie for a month eating food you're gonna have a month's worth of your body just slough off because even though you ate the food and processed it and made it part of your body it was never actual material it was just the stuff of the Nevernever.

Priscellie: So in all that time when Harry was getting rehab.

Jim: They were bringing in mortal food for him to keep him whole because otherwise he would have been bound and been unable to leave. That's why you don't eat food when you're in fae sort of the same rule that goes around for other realities like that as well. That was the first part of the answer but now I've forgot the first part of the question.

Priscellie: So even if Molly were to shed her current mantle one assumes she has probably had enough fae food at this point that that's an issue.

Jim: Unless she has protected herself from it which she could have done because her mantle comes with a bunch of intellectus about how the rules work because she has to have to have that because she's in charge of it. But at the same time if Thomas did that he'd be devouring essentially false emotions in the same sort of way and so he when he went back and all that stuff peeled off and he ate nothing but faerie food that would just leave him bonkers insane until he got back. It would turn him into a /monster/ if that happened and Mab would be in favour of that because that would be to her advantage in many ways so she would be into that. Because that way she could essentially get a Winter Soldier out of it that way, she gets to send him out and essentially as soon as he he leaves he's empty and just her terminator killing machine and when he comes back she can fill him up with whatever she needs for the next mission *Priscellie winces*. I know, it's awful, I'm bent to be thinking of these sorts of thing.

Priscellie: *laughs* You're not a nice human being.

Jim: I'm not a nice human being but I'm channeling it in as healthy a way as I possibly can so...

Priscellie: We are your therapy.

Jim: Yeah exactly. Wow I feel so bad to say that but it's true.

Priscellie: Joseph R asks "why didn't the Archive interact more with Dresden?"

Jim: There's character reasons for that which we might find out more later. But the Archive, well for one thing the Archive doesn't want to interact real hard with anybody, the Archive is there for everybody. The Archive is there to be the backup memory of humanity. It's not supposed to be involved with any one being or one cause or anything like that, it's got to be a pretty big cause before the Archive says "yes, that's acceptable for the Archive to pitch on because this is a cause that is in the interest of all humanity." Like fighting Ethniu, that was a cause that was somewhat worthy.

Priscellie: Trying to find which one will be the one to bring us out, let's see... How does it feel knowing that Mandalorians follow The Way from the Cinder Spires?

Jim: Oh, that's just the Way, the ideal. Oh my gosh, the Mandalorians would be welcome. Brother, the various brothers and sisters of the Way would be happy to get along with the Mandalorians. You'll see the Way get along well with the Pikers as we get to do more Cinder Spires stuff. I'm so looking forward to it.

Priscellie: Are there any being Demonreach is incapable of holding?

Jim: Demonreach is incapable of holding, at least forever, any being with free will. So Demonreach can't keep Thomas there forever.

Priscellie: Oooh. Does the Brit have free will?

Jim: That is the question then, isn't it? That is a fair question.

Priscellie: I think we'll end it there.

https://www.crowdcast.io/e/jim-butcher

If anyone wants the Mysterious Galaxy one done they can either pay for my ticket or post the password because that q&a is behind a paywall.

[Dina]

Priscellie: Algorithomancy.

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

TCF, Jim means the TV Show "Psych" were a man pretends to be psychic but it's "just" very observant. In the show some pieces of what he sees are suddenly highlighted, that in some videogames that use that effect to let you know what things you can interact with. The lead character of Psych can take note of those observations, order and connect them in his head and imagine what happened.

(Delete this post if you don't feel like it should be here. And again, thanks for your work)

[TheCuriousFan]

TCF, Jim means the TV Show "Psych" were a man pretends to be psychic but it's "just" very observant. In the show some pieces of what he sees are suddenly highlighted, that in some videogames that use that effect to let you know what things you can interact with. The lead character of Psych can take note of those observations, order and connect them in his head and imagine what happened.

(Delete this post if you don't feel like it should be here. And again, thanks for your work)

Thanks for the info.

And I mostly did this one because it was particularly dense with new info.

[TheCuriousFan]

Might as well do Muskogee just in case it gets deleted too. Didn't get their names so I'll just call them Muskogee for simplicity's sake.

Muskogee: You're always telling us stories but we don't know about your story. Could you tell us your story?

Jim: *gets muted*

*several minutes of audio problems ensue before the story begins*

Jim: Oh um, not much to it. Boring, grew up, went to school and the university of Oklahoma, learned about writing there, went to their graduate program of professional writing, got kicked out, sold my first book and after that just kind of selling more of them and it worked out.

Muskogee: One of the things I've read about you, and I'm curious as to if this is true, is that the Codex Alera series came about because you were given a challenge to write a good story about a couple of lame topics. Is that true?

Jim: Sort of. Originally the challenge was for me to use one bad idea but I thought that wasn't sufficient so I told him to pick two. Originally back in the day it was the Del Rey online writers workshop, it was like the first big online writing forum where you could show up and talk to a broad range of people about writing. Mostly it was a bunch of wannabe writers like me at the time and we would just be on there arguing about writing, sharing our stuff and critiquing one another's stuff and talking about the industry and stuff like that. There was a big discussion one day and the discussion was concerning the nature of writing and writing specifically. The question was "what is more important, to write with a good idea or to write with good presentation?" and that was the argument that was going on. And one side of the argument took up the holy idea that if you had a good enough idea that it doesn't matter how awful your writing is and used Jurassic Park as their example. And then for me I was on the side that was saying "it doesn't really matter what your idea is, if you're a creative enough writer the way you spin and present it can give you a really good story that people are gonna like reliably over and over again, how many versions of Romeo and Juliet have we seen?" And so that argument went back and forth for a while and was one of those discussions where you just hit reply, capslock and then you start talking. I was the loudmouth leading one side and there was another loudmouth leading the other side and I forget who it was but finally he says "Okay let's see you put your money where your mouth is. How about I give you a terrible idea and see you write it into a book that sells" and I said "No! Why don't you give me two terrible ideas and I'll use them both and that was how Codex Alera got started. Because his first terrible idea was "lost Roman legions, I'm so sick of lost Roman legions. All the Roman legions should have been found by now!" and I'm like "okay and what's your second terrible idea?" and he says Pokemon. And so I took those two things and I shook 'em up in a bag for a while and eventually made Codex Alera.

Muskogee: Yeah when I read that I was like "you know that makes sense" because it's very much Roman legion and Pokemon.

Jim: Yup, lost Roman legion meets Pokemon.

Muskogee: Because my son is a Pokemon fan, when you created your elementals did you have any certain Pokemon in mind when you created the different ones?

Jim: No particular ones in mind but I did take the name of the mountain Garados just straight off of Gyrados, just switched a letter out and that was all I needed to do. Just because that was the most impressive Pokemon I saw the first time when I watched Pokemon. Cuz my kid used to watch Pokemon every morning and I would have to sit with him and eat breakfast and watch Pokemon because as a parent that's what happens to you. So I was in a pretty good position to write a Pokemon based epic fantasy.

Muskogee: Yeah I think we could do, my son sits down and reads the Pokemon encyclopedia all the time. He knows everything about all the characters.

Jim: Yeah eventually there's going to be so many Pokemon the kids are going to have to have a doctorate to be able to play the game.

Muskogee: Yeah they will, there are ten of them. So I have some questions from our chat so I'm going to read these. So... where is Lucifer in all this? I am remembering he made a play in Small Favour with helping Nick power up the trap for Ivy.

Jim: He runs a pretty big corporation, it was probably a subsidiary.

Muskogee: If Harry used the Darkhallow at the Changes crossroad who would his frenemies have been like how Mab and the Winter court is now and presumably Nicodemus and the Denarians would be if he took up Lasciel's coin?

Jim: *laughs and shakes his head* He wouldn't be friends with Nicodemus it wouldn't matter if he had a coin or not. That's not gonna happen. But if he'd taken- I mean the whole thing about being a necromancer, if you go take up the path of the necromancer you don't need friends you can make your own. All you need is the spare parts and you're good to go. But it would have been a much different series and there would have been a lot more conflict with like, Odin, that would have been a big deal with him. Let me think what else, umm, Molly would have gotten a lot gothier, that would have happened.

Muskogee: And the next one is "as of Battle Ground where is Bonea? Was she purposely left out of even Dresden's thoughts?"

Jim: Yeah, there were buildings being destroyed and people being slaughtered by the tens of thousands there was a lot to think about that didn't involve somebody who was in a box at Michael's house.

Muskogee: So Peace Talks came out in July and Battle Ground now, did you originally plan for it to be two parts because it's almost like one book but there's so much that you had to split it into two?

Jim: It was one book and it was too big they were going to have to charge like fifty bucks for it or something like that and I'm not going to be the first author to go over that line, somebody else can do that that's braver than me. But yeah they came out and said "it's been so far outside the window it's gonna be really hard to publish, it's gonna be expensive" and so on. "Have you ever thought about splitting this up into a couple of books" and originally the idea was to write the book that kind of started off being a political heist book but then turned into a war movie in the middle when you weren't looking for it, kind of like From Dusk Till Dawn where it turned from a psycho killer movie into a vampire movie. So that was what I was trying to do, trying to build a better mouse trap but it didn't work out nearly as well as I wanted it to unfortunately because I really wasn't pleased with it even when it was done, it was kind of a lumpy Frankenstein of a book and when they said "hey maybe we can divide it into two books" I kind of stopped and looked at it and said "well it really is, it's about two thirds of one book and about two thirds of another book so if we split it into two books we'll have two books that are two thirds of a book" so it's like I've got to go back in and retool a little bit what this first story is about. The story of going out to save Thomas and only sort of doing it kind of is what Peace Talks wound up being all about and drawing out that conflict with Harry's grandfather. And then we were just getting out all the action figures and smashing them together for Battle Ground. That's kind of what it is and if that's not your kind of book that's cool I don't mind at all but for me it was fun since I got to smash action figures together.

Muskogee: I loved Battle Ground. From the first sentence it's like you hit the ground running pretty much. Battle Ground has been great. Just finished it this afternoon at about 3:30. So between work and kids I've just been listening because I didn't want to stop listening, it's really good.

Jim: Well that's all about James.

Muskogee: One of my questions and you sort of touched on it here with having to split the books. Has there been things in books you wish you had put in or things you wish you had left out or just things you wish you had elaborated a little bit more on?

Jim: That sounds like so much work, just wishing about things that are done. Once that book is done it's done it goes out there and there's tens or hundreds of thousands of copies running around and you've said what you had to say whether you like it or not. So I try not to waste too much time regretting it once it's out there. And it really seems... considering how well the books have done and how well my career has gone it seems a little bit churlish to say "oh I wish how it had been different" oh I know how /that/ wish is gonna go.

Muskogee: It worked out pretty well huh?

Jim: Yeah I'm not gonna complain about any of it. I'm very happy with it.

Muskogee: Is Harry getting a round table for the castle?

Jim: Oh I don't know. He probably should. *laughs a little* Golly that would really mess with the Merlin if he did. I have to think about that now.

Muskogee: It's an idea. What do you do when you're trying to brainstorm for whichever direction the story is going to be going?

Jim: Well I haven't done that since 1996 or something like that. When I'm doing it for a new story what I like to do is run a campaign in my story world, then I'll try to run the campaign that is in the story, I kind of know what I want the story to be more or less so I'll run the campaign there and players being players they won't play there. They'll go anywhere but where I want them to go, and that means they generally just go off in a random direction and I have to frantically build this world six inches in front of their toes as they frantically charge along. Anyway... that has been the most useful creative exercise that I've been able to do to make things cooler.

Muskogee: As a D&D player I can relate. I'm one of those players that tortures the GM.

Jim: Yeah, yeah.

Muskogee 2: My DM calls me "the hammer" because I hammer his game every chance I get.

Muskogee: I had wondered if you had played D&D before. Because some of the things, especially in your last couple of books... you talked about "oh he failed on his initiative".

Jim: Of course. At some point I realised I had allowed my son to become 21 years of age without actually having played Dungeons and Dragons. Every other game under the sun but not D&D because it was 4th edition and I didn't have the energy for it. So I wound up running him, we wound up playing Pathfinder and playing Keep on the Borderlands/Caves of Chaos as our first game because because darn it when you play Dungeons and Dragons that is your first dungeon, that's the way it works. You go play the Caves of Chaos. But I set it during a fantasy zombie apocalypse so there's a zombie apocalypse going on and the only way to survive, the last human holdout, is the keep on the borderlands but in order to be let in they had to promise that they would serve on the expeditionary force because there wasn't enough room for useless people, you could only be there if you could do something useful so. The expeditionary force got sent to the Caves of Chaos to talk to the greenskins so I was running the Caves of Chaos as a diplomatic mission and it is the most amazing diplomatic mission you've ever seen. D&D players, if you want to have some fun, go run Caves of Chaos as a diplomatic mission, it's awesome.

Muskogee: For the adversary, is there a difference between the infection versus the possession and if so is there a limit to the number it can possess at any one time?

Jim: Gosh it would be really handy if Harry knew that.

Muskogee: It would help him a lot.

Jim: It would be super useful if he knew things like that.

Muskogee 2: That almost sounds like on the level of the balefire question to Robert Jordan.

Muskogee: At some point will we be able to see Ferrovax in his natural form?

Jim: Yes, yeah yeah yeah. I'm not gonna put that gun on the wall and not pull it off. That's gonna happen.

Muskogee: That would be amazing. Where is Mister as of Battle Ground?

Jim: As of Battle Ground Mister was in his crate at the Carpenters.

Muskogee: I'm glad somebody asked that question because I was wondering about that too before I read.

Jim: When Harry took Maggie over Mister and Bonea went with them.

Muskogee: Would you consider a Codex Alera short story collection of the older characters' backstories? Like Septimus and his friend, Sextus as a young punk, the Valerian brothers etc

Jim: No I would probably leave that backstory as backstory. I mean, part of what makes it good is that you don't know much very much about it so if I go back and start writing it I'm inevitably going to disappoint people because you don't know what's in the backstory so you've been making up cool things yourselves and there's like a million of you guys and you're smarter than me all together like that so you're inevitably going to think of cooler stuff than I would come up with if I tried to write a backstory for it at this point. What I would do is write more stories going along with the next generation of young people looking back at the older people that we got to see falling through life and goofing everything up and trying to get things right. You know because when they look back at them they don't see those people that we know they see these icons and these incredible heroes of the land, they don't know that the first lord just upchucks all over himself the entire time he's on a boat, that's not something that would enter into their mind.

Muskogee: It'd be like going back in time with George Washington and-

Jim: And finding out he was actually kind of an arrogant doofus in a lot of ways. He certainly should have listened to his noncoms that's for sure.

Muskogee: You stated 20ish case books with a big apocalyptic trilogy at the end. Is it now safe to presume 22 case books given Peace Talks was split and prior comments about how romance might have slowed the overall pacing by a book?

Jim: I don't know if I would say it's safe to assume cuz I've never written a series this long before, I don't know what I'm doing. But yeah I just figured out today that I think I'm going to have to put another book into the series just to get everything done and it was annoying but also exciting because now I get another book to write so.

Muskogee: We're all terribly disappointed that there will be another one.

Jim: Well if I do 22 and then a 3 book trilogy at the end and that's like a 5 x 5 series that's super powerful. If you want to get into numerology that's very solid, 25 is excellent so.

Muskogee: What are the chances of any new unknown to us book titles?

Jim: Yeah I've got several in mind that I haven't used yet but I haven't told them to you for the past 20 years and I don't see why I will now so...

Muskogee: It's not a surprise if we know about it right now. I have really enjoyed the Dresden series and the way the characters have developed. When they first started out they weren't real in-depth, Good was good and bad was bad there didn't seem to be any in-between but as the series has progressed it seems like there's not as much clearcut good and evil now, there's a little bit of grey in everything and people's motivations... they might be a good person but the motivation might not be so good or they might be evil but with a good motivation. So what is your process on developing the characters? Have you had characters that have started out on what we would traditionally think of as the side of good and you've been writing them you've found yourself think "no they need to go a little more evil"

Jim: It's not that simple there are no characters that are just on the side of good except for maybe Michael and possibly Father Forthill. They're the ones who might be on the side of Good with a capital G, most people are doing pretty good if they're just not awful. That's sort of my metric "have you murdered anybody lately? No? Have you stolen from somebody and left them in poverty or a horrible mess? No? All right. You're not beating on your children? and so on, okay, I'm not going to complain too hard about you because I really don't know what your life is like and you seem to have the minimum requirements met and I'll be over here if you need anything". And so for people in the Dresden Files world, so many of them are decent people, like Murphy, Murphy's a decent human being but not really necessarily labouring on the side of Good, maybe on the side of Law just for the fact that she does it 40 hours a week or at least she did for the longest time. Yeah I don't see people like that, people in general tend to labour towards the things that they're interested in.

Muskogee: Everybody's doing the best they can with what they have.

Jim: Yeah more or less. The whole point of the Dresden Files in many ways is an examination of choices, what do you do with the free will you have? How do you choose to do the things you're doing? Because that means a lot for Harry. If you're on the side of Good or you're on the side of Evil you don't really have the free will as much- well you do but you've pretty much already chosen. You've already made that call. Just writing about the characters that are stable and stick to what they do and what they have always done, those are great characters to have. Characters like Michael are wonderful but if you made everybody like that it wouldn't work out so well because if everybody's the paladin there's no contrast for the paladin to actually look cool and neat. And besides in the real world there's not a lot of paladins.

Muskogee: No there's not. That's one of the things I like about your characters that you see them struggling even if they're generally a good person, you see them struggle with the dark side of themselves they have because everybody has that.

Jim: Yeah people are strange creatures we are very strange we aren't very good at this whole peaceful civilisation thing, we haven't been doing it very long.

Muskogee: Will we see any more Greek gods or others such as Egyptian or something in later books?

Jim: We will definitely see more in later books, that's when we get to the professional wrestling book there's going to be a lot of gods running around so...

Muskogee: Do you remember what the colors and sigils of Forcia Attica and Parcia were? They were the only ones not revealed in the series?

Jim: They're written down somewhere, I've got a file somewhere that has-where I wrote up briefs on all the major cities and all their major exports and what their economy was based on and all these things that absolutely never came into the books, ever, but then I kind of had to know myself before I could do it. So they will be in my notes somewhere but those are in storage in KC, I'm not exactly sure where they are. I'll see if I can dig them up and look.

Muskogee: Did Donald Morgan train with the brute squad at Archangel and who was the person he cared for there?

Jim: I'm not gonna talk about that right now because I might do a little more Morgan story later because he's just an interesting guy and Dresden's pov was not shall we say a very objective or generous one and as a result Morgan is a very different guy from the one he's been presented as in the books and you see that in bits and pieces when Harry looks at him and goes "huh, maybe he wasn't so bad" but he's not quite self aware enough to go "maybe it was me" which is one of those things humans wind up having to do a lot as you kind of study yourself in life. "Oh maybe I'm bringing a lot of stuff to this that I didn't realise I was bringing" you know.

Muskogee: That is very true, we don't often think about how we don't see things the way everybody else sees it and yeah

Jim: But Morgan was definitely in with the Archangel crowd. They're the kind of guys who spar at full speed, those kind of folks.

Muskogee: Was the White Council given the Blackstaff or did he take it?

Jim: Oh as far as the history of where he got it I'm not gonna talk about that yet because we'll still have to talk about that later. I can't give answers to questions where it's gonna ruin the fun, I won't do that, I'll give you all the answers I can but I won't ruin the story for later on.

Muskogee 2: I have a question. My personal headcanon is that all the people of the forest dress in Victorian clothing, please tell me this is true.

Jim: Oh my gosh, probably. They're kind of orderly within and among themselves so they so they would have kind of got- the forest people are sort of the ultimate introvert culture so they would have gotten together and been like "okay we have to figure this human thing out, somebody's gonna have to make contact, who?" "not it!", you know, like that. And it would have just gone around the circle until River Shoulders was the last one at the meeting and they made him do it. And then they would have relied on his research and then said "okay that's the human research we have the human research established" you know because that's the sort of folks that they are, they like things to be the same. They're very close to nature and nature's pretty much unchanging or it changes so slowly we can't really see it. So yeah they would have found out about the humans and been like "okay now we know enough".

Muskogee: Do you prefer writing in an urban fantasy world or in a high fantasy world, a swords and horses world?

Jim: There's different advantages to each. When I am writing in a completely alien world I can make it in any way I want and that's pretty cool, on the other hand, because I can make it any way I want it means I have to do absolutely all the work, I have to describe everything. I can't just say "they were in a restaurant" because what does a restaurant look like in a fantasy world where there's dragons and elves? You have to actually do all the work and be describing that whereas in the Dresden Files I can say "they were eating in the cafe of a Walmart" and everybody goes "I know that one, yeah I ate in that one once and I regretted it" you know, like that, where everybody knows it.

Muskogee: Are there any plans to put together a compilation of the graphic novels in much the same was as Side Jobs/Brief Cases?

Jim: I mean there are several graphic novel compilations already where they group the graphic novels into several. I know they did that for Storm Front and Fool Moon. And then when they were doing the original ones though- the originals are separate stories I don't think they've done big compilations of those yet. Oh they have? I'm told they have.

Priscellie: Yes Dynamite has two omnibus collections.

Jim: Oh okay Dynamite has two omnibus collections of the original Dresden Files stuff so you should be able to look those up. I didn't realise that, cool.

Priscellie: Go to the official jimbutcher.com store

Jim: Go to the official jimbutcher.com store, if you go to my site and go to the store you'll be able to find links to them there.

Muskogee: Followup to Harry the necromancer path. Why would he be fighting with Odin? Wouldn't he be fighting the White Council? How strong would he be if he performed the Darkhallow when it was not on Halloween?

Jim: Well for one he'd be fighting with Odin because Harry would be wanting /useful/ dead minions and useful dead minions, bringing folks back from the dead, that kind of starts walking towards Odin's territory. He would be a little concerned about that. And of course he'd be fighting the White Council /all the time/.

Muskogee: In Codex Alera how did you come up with the various cultures and races?

Jim: I was at work and it was boring. I was working 10PM to 6AM at a local internet provider at Norman Oklahoma in the mid 90s. After 1 in the morning you don't get so many calls there and you've got 5 hours to kill and you can only play so much Everquest.

Muskogee: Is there a reason Dresden stopped making potions as much?

Jim: Yeah because I was doing other stuff and I had done the potion thing over and over so I only do it occasionally now. I mean it was an entire dedicated chapter of just making potions and after a while I was like "I'm tired of the potion chapter, can't we just say he went to the lab and we'll have a 5 minutes later and he's done bit" because yeah I had been writing that scene over and over I got tired of it.

Muskogee: What happened to the rest of the dragons excluding the one Michael killed?

Jim: Various stuff happened to all the dragons over time. They just sort of got whittled down slowly over the years. By and large they were killed by mortals.

Muskogee: I think I read on Reddit you are planning on having a dragon book, is that correct?

Jim: Yeah, I don't have the teleport yet though I'm still working on it.

Muskogee: I can't wait it'll be great when that comes out. What's the most dangerous thing in Demonreach?

Jim: It's sort of hard to say because some of the stuff that doesn't seem as bad kind of has the horrible long term consequences whereas compared to the overt "this is the thing that will eat you and then divide into two parts and eat two more people and divide into four parts and eat more" like that. That's sort of a world killer thing right there whereas opposed to the thing that just makes everybody so sad that they eventually stop eating. That's not quite as bad but it'll also do the same thing, it'll get you there. So really it's not a question of what is the most dangerous thing it's just what flavour of awful do you want? It's there.

Muskogee: Do you think you'll ever expound anymore on what all is in Demonreach?

Jim: *smirks* Oh why would I do that?

Muskogee: Because inquiring minds want to know.

Jim: Oh yeah yeah that might be fun, we'll have to see.

Muskogee: I think it would be really interesting because we know there's all these big baddies out there but sometimes stuff we can make up in our own imagination is worse than what is actually there so...

Do you have any recommendations on programs or resources for organising your thoughts and stories?

Jim: For organising thoughts and stories? I know there's a lot of writing programs, Scrivener is the one I hear most often that people use. I tend to organise my books in the same way I organise my campaigns. I'll put a notebook together for them, put all my files in one place... Anything that you already do to organise thoughts and ideas, just port it over and apply it. If it's something you're already familiar with that's a good tool just go ahead and use that. For me I started organising my stories in the same way I organise my campaigns and it worked out well for me. Right down to doing character sheets for the characters.

Muskogee: That's actually a really good way to do that.

Jim: If it ain't broke don't fix it.

Muskogee: Was one of the big D Dragons named Hydrovax or Aquavax?

Jim: *laughs* No. All the water dragons- they tend to- they wound up over in Asia for the most part.

Muskogee: So in 2007 there was the Dresden Files TV series which is actually how I discovered the Dresden Files books.

Jim: Tons of people did, tons of people did.

Muskogee: Yeah flipping through the channels one day saw this show and was like "this is awesome and oh there's books". I understand it has been picked up again by Fox Studios, is that true?

Jim: That is true. It's in development. Development is a funny place.

Muskogee: Means they're working on it, might not happen but hopefully it does, I would love to see another TV series. I was sad it only lasted one season.

Jim: I'm not sure I'd say it was sad it only lasted one season. I kind of wish there had been more but at the same time it did kind of end before it blew up anything completely that I would have to deal with in the books later on. I like to think positive.

Muskogee: Are there still plans for a series about Maggie at her school?

Jim: I'm thinking about it, that's what plans mean to a writer, we're thinking about it. Until there's a contract and a cheque I don't know if I would give much more credit to plans than that.

Muskogee: Can we get a microfiction of Kincaid going hunting post-Battle Ground?

Jim: Huh. No I don't think so but we'll probably see more Kincaid before very long.

Muskogee: Will a certain Black Court leader that was shown in Battle Ground return before the BAT?

Jim: Before then? Maybe, maybe not, we'll see. Oh wait yeah absolutely will before then because there's some vengeance that needs meeting so.

Muskogee: Are we going to see any from the Jade Court before the end of the series?

Jim: I am iffy on that. I don't know if it'll happen in Dresden at all. They get by by staying home. That's what they do.

Muskogee: Do einherjar have to make a choice to be recruited?

Jim: No not really. They can get roped into it. I mean if they've already got a claim somewhere else that's different. In which case Odin has to make a deal of some kind, it's like "I know you had plans for this guy and all Anubis but I really need him for the rest of the mortals" and that's the kind of thing that can happen. Very confused people occasionally wake up in Valhalla.

Muskogee: What caused you to change styles or worlds? You had written urban fantasy, you had written swords and horses fantasy and then Cinder Spires is more of a steampunk so is there something that inspired you to go that direction instead of your usual?

Jim: It was just a matter of- I had done several projects at that point and I showed each of them to my beta readers and sort of got their reactions to them and by far the Cinder Spires got the strongest reactions so I decided to go with that. I'm pretty happy with the choice but I see it less as a steampunk series and more of a space opera but that's just me. At one point I called it a steam-opera and my editor was like "you're not allowed to make up new genres" so I'm like "darn it!".

Muskogee: You're not that powerful yet.

Jim: Apparently not.

Muskogee: Okay one more question. You've mentioned one of your influences is Roger Zelazny. My dad really wants to know who is your favourite character in the Amberverse.

Jim: I think Merlin is the most interesting because he has the most options, if I was writing I would want to be writing Merlin. But my favourite character is still Benedict. I mean to the point where I named a guy after him in the Cinder Spires so.

Muskogee: Oh there you go. I admit I have not read Cinder Spires so that went under my radar and somebody mentioned and I was like "how did I miss this?"

Jim: Yeah there's like talking cats and everything.

Muskogee: If it's got talking cats in it I have to check this out.

Jim: How can you not? It's a surefire winner, how could I not use talking cats?

Muskogee: Exactly you can't go wrong with that. How do you feel about the fact that some of your works are being used in college lit classes?

Jim: Really? *laughs* I feel that it was appropriate that I got kicked out of college, for crying out loud. Oh my gosh, using my stuff for lit.

Muskogee: Your professors would not believe it, would they?

Jim: Well my professors thought I wrote fine. My issue wasn't with them it was more with administration but that's a different story.

Muskogee: Alright we're at our time limit so I'm gonna let you go but I really appreciate you rescheduling and coming back to do this and sorry for all the technical issues we've had but you've got to admit that with Harry Dresden that's kind of ironic.

https://www.facebook.com/MuskogeePublicLibrary/videos/336641817608014

[TheCuriousFan]

Found money so time for the Mysterious Galaxy transcript.

Matt: How have you been doing this year? How has the covid pandemic life been for you?

Jim: For a writer it doesn't really change things too much you know I mean I'm basically a hermit anyway so you know the whole lockdown came down and was like "I could get work done" but you know, not really as it turns out.

Matt: I've definitely heard that from authors so I guess we have to turn the tables on you. What advice do you have for all of us who are now working from home and being more like authors?

Jim: Enjoy not wearing pants. You know I mean that's really kind of how it is.

Matt: That is great advice. I need to take you up on that, doing laundry way too often so.... Obviously we're all here not only to talk about Battle Ground but Peace Talks which is the first part of this duology. Just in case anyone hasn't heard about it or read them yet, do you want to give a little breakdown of what the duology is about?

Jim: Well it's about the great big peace talks that come into town where everyone's trying to settle all the world's problems and hold hands and sing kumbaya. It's basically just that. So yeah. But yeah Dresden has been assigned to the White Council as security liason for the White Council team and he's going to be off making sure things stay smooth between the White Council and the faerie courts, you know so that goes well. And Dresden runs into a few problems, his brother kind of causes some trouble, maybe it's less kumbaya than everybody intended as things go along.

Matt: So did you write these books together? They came out very close together obviously. What was the process like for that?

Jim: Originally they were written as a single book, the book came out like way way longer than I intended. And so as soon as I showed it to my editor she read it and was like "Jim" because honestly I wasn't trying to write like another Dresden Files book I was trying to invent a better mousetrap. My original plan was to take this book, and we were going to be riding along with this book and there was gonna be like this political setup and these scenes and then in the middle of it the book takes a hard right turn into an apocalyptic war movie, no one was expecting that (everybody was expecting it because the twist was something we were told before Skin Game even came out) so I mean originally that was the inspiration I got From Dusk Till Dawn which starts off as a serial killer movie and then turns into the vampire movie in the middle.

Matt: Nice. That's a good pitch for it. So, when did the announcement for Battle Ground go out? March? April?

Jim: Something like that. There was a great big plan and then there was this little problem with a disease from China. Kinda knocked all the publicity stuff we had ready to go. We had this huge tour lined up and everything was gonna be happening at hall 8 at Comic con. That was when we were gonna have the trailers and everything showing up. It was going to be a big deal and we didn't get to do it on account of nobody going to conventions this year.

Matt: I think people still freaked out enough based on the reactions to Battle Ground. Because people knew about Peace Talks but then we got the bonus book it felt like which was awesome it felt like. And I was gonna ask you about the trailers because they were amazing. How did those come about? That's not a normal things for most books.

Jim: I spent a whole bunch of money on them because I really wanted cool trailers. Well I spent a bunch of money on them and I worked together with Priscilla Spencer who you've seen running around in the background because she's part of this because of the book premiere and so on. But she was the writer, producer and director of the trailers, so she's the one who did like all the work, I didn't do anything on the trailers I didn't even write them I just wrote the books. And then I screwed up the books at the last minute and made edits that made the trailer, that kind of took things out of the trailer that should have been there but weren't or that were there and shouldn't have been and so. I still remember after I got those last few edits done and turned them in I was like "I'd better show them to Priscilla" and I did and she just kind of gives me this look. Because honestly doing something even like a trailer is so much more work than a book is because a book might take hours and hours and hours but it's just one guy. If you're gonna do a trailer, there's a hundred people on the crew, they're all working on stuff, they're all trying to get their act together and get the product done. So it was an intense process. I know that for her she's been working on it for like the past 18 months, she's been doing nothing else. Because she's been doing all the special effects and stuff like that as well, she's kind of a one person movie basically, the way she works.

Matt: So is she putting out the full length versions anytime soon.

Jim: *shaking his head* I don't make that much money man. I mean, I got about four minutes and it was a whole bunch of money to get those four minutes. And I really like it but I don't have that much money.

Matt: Definitely a worthwhile four minutes.

Jim: I enjoyed a lot of it. There's like 250,000 views and I'm like 200,000 of them.

Matt: I'm probably in the minority but my introduction to Harry Dresden was through the TV show.

Jim: Oh lot's of people were.

Matt: So it was really exciting to see it back on the screen. Just a big tease, that's basically what you're telling us.

Jim: Yeah. That's kind of the idea. I've seen so many book trailers where they don't actually do any movie-esque. They just sort of have things happening, they just have some cute people and maybe they have them kiss or something like that. And I wanted something that was a little more theatrical, a little more movieesque. Ideally it would've been like a Marvel trailer but you know how expensive stunts are? Oh my god stunts are so expensive. So yeah, if I do another trailer that's my big thing "do I splurge and go for stunts" because that would be awesome and I kind of want to. If only I made enough money to be a professional movie guy. Maybe I could go like Roger Corman and make cheap horror movies. That would be fun.

Matt: Well everyone here has bought your book that means everyone here needs to go and tell all of their friends to go buy your books so you have enough money to make these full length.

Jim: That'd be fun.

Matt: So the other big thing about this year is it's the 20th anniversary of the Dresden Files.

Jim: *scrambles* My drink keeps sliding down a flat table.

Matt: As we've heard there's ghosts in your house so we'll let them show up as they will... I know you had lot's of things planned for this year, just looking back over it. 20 years ago was 2000, the world has changed so much. Who do you think has changed more, you or Harry Dresden?

Jim: Probably me. Harry Dresden is... you know he has the advantage of he only gets to evolve when I'm paying attention. SO he doesn't really get to sneak up too much on me, it's probably me who's changed more. Just... life, stuff keeps happening to you.

Matt: I've read you're kind of a plotter. You do things in order, you know how this series is gonna end, right?

Jim: Mostly. I don't know if Harry's going to live yet or not.

Matt: You definitely don't have to tell us.

Jim: Good, I don't know. We're gonna have to get to the end to find out it's, there's several different endings for epic style heroes with lots of books behind them and so on, and one of them is "no he doesn't make it out", that is definitely one of the possible endings. I'm not exactly sure what's gonna happen yet. I'm gonna be at the end of the third book before I know.

Matt: Luckily that is in your hands and not ours.

Jim: I guess. I mean somebody else might be better at it than me I don't know.

Matt: Dustin just says "don't kill Toot" so...

Jim: No promises man, it's not a safe world. Not at all.

Matt: How do you keep all of this straight? I mean this is book 17 right? Battle Ground? How do you do it?

Jim: I use the fan wikis a lot. Because they're way more accurate than my notes, I mean for crying out loud. The difference between us is that the fans are having a good time when they do the wiki, they're having fun. For me it's still work, I have a good time at it but it's still work. So the people who are having fun are going to do it way harder than I ever will so I go and check the fan wikis when I need to. And then I have a crew of beta readers, Priscilla's been a beta reader for like forever, she's like indispensable. She's like my personal Molly in terms of being able to say "no Jim you killed that character two books ago" "okay better not write them in I guess or I better do a lot more writing before I do". But yeah she's got a real gift for continuity and I've got about 15 other people that are on the beta list and the beta readers read through and I get feedback from them and they will look up previous stuff. They tend to be highly intelligent nerds who love this series and read the books a lot so it's very hard to get anything past.

Matt: Any of you out there who are editors on the wikis just raise your hand and take some credit for these books. Let's get to some of these questions because we have a ton. So I'm just gonna go in order that you've voted for them. I take no responsibility whatsoever. This first one is from Charles. Have you ever set up a story arc or twist or significant detail and then forgot about it?

Jim: If I forgot about it I wouldn't remember it to talk about.

Matt: The second part is did you recover it and move on?

Jim: I don't normally just forget things. I'll often change my mind and find a better story and and take a look at it and say "I know I had something else in mind three books from not but can I take a look at this and change it around and maybe make it more interesting" yeah stuff like that. That's always as I go back and look at some scene and I'll be like "that's a nice scene and it's all done and everything but it doesn't give me anything for the future" and I'll go back in and add some detail. Something that'll come back to haunt Dresden in the future. Basically that's what it is, as a writer it's my job to come up with the details that'll haunt Dresden in the future. That's most of my job.

Matt: The Devil's in the details, right. So this next question is from Charles too. Harry is becoming a balance point of forces, summer fire and winter knight, hellfire and soulfire. Is this typical for wizards or has it given Harry capabilities beyond on the norm?

Jim: It depends on the wizard. Every wizard that is out there is like a professional athlete. But saying that there's a lots of different kinds of professional athletes and the flyweight boxer is a much different athlete than the sumo wrestler is a much different athlete than the pole vaulter is a much different athlete than the long distance runner. Wizards are like that and what you're good at as a wizard is something that tends to be based upon the talents you're born with. So like your really good specialties as a wizard, people who are really good at certain things, they were just that was their proclivity they were born with, it was their natural tendency. That sort of breaks the wizards down into general categories. This wizard is really good at finding information, this wizard is really good at working with energy and forces which means he can blow people up and burn them down really well, this wizard over here is really good at enchantment and making really cool items, this wizard does something else completely different, this wizard is brilliant at working with entities from different realms and so on. Again I use the professional athletes a lot because it's just so useful when you go back to "who is the more powerful athlete? Is it the PGA player who makes berjillions of dollars getting paid to play golf? Is it the NFL center who is the most powerful man in professional sports?" It's all a very different sort of thing, it's all very confusing.

Matt: That begs the question.

Jim: So Harry is not, what Harry's really good at, what Harry's really good at as an athlete he's a weightlifter. He is really good at moving big heavy things and getting things done. He's strong he's resilient he's extremely capable at things he does and if you just try to go head to head with him it's not going to go well for you. Which is why he gets defeated by people with more sqwab, more skill. The weightlifter doesn't do so well against the Olympic fencer in fencing. It doesn't go so well, so Harry's constantly trying to find ways to bring conflicts into his area of strength. Now he is /very/ strong as a wizard, if you just try and arm wrestle him magically he's gonna beat 99% of the wizard on planet Earth because that's who he is, that's the talent he was born with, he was born with lots of magical muscle. But that said, there's wizards that are more experienced than him, that are smarter than him and there's some that are stronger than him and there's lots and lots of them that are just better than him because they have more experience because they've been alive for centuries and he hasn't. So Dresden is formidable among wizards but he's always been a medium splash in the pond because even though he's as strong as, he's in Ebenezar's weight class for example but he can't beat Ebenezar in a straight up fight it's just not gonna happen. And as a result he is looked as a very powerful wizard by people who don't know a lot about what wizards do. So other people from outside the White Council look at him and go "wow he's a powerful wizard" while everybody in the White Council goes *puts palm on head* "oh god that kid is so strong and he doesn't know a goddamn thing". And that is kind of their perspective of Dresden, he's that one ten year old who accidentally got to be six foot five and two hundred pounds for whatever reason his genetics did that. I mean, he's that kid so everybody and so all the other kids are like "he's so great" and all the adults are like "I'm terrified of this individual" and that's sort of the way he lives. But you know he's like one of the most powerful wizards on planet Earth or anything, I mean he's strong, he's in a class where if you want to fight him you better bring friends but at the same time he's real limited in what he can do, that sort of backs him off in terms of the scale of beings of centuries and millennia he's interesting, he might become something cool one day.

Matt: That's a great way to explain it. The athlete analogy really helps.

Jim: Yeah it sort of makes it simple.

Matt: Um, so if you could pull one character from the Dresdenverse into the Cinder Spire or Codex Alera world, who would you pick and why?

Jim: Harry Dresden and he would go over there and be a mysterious stranger and probably be helping. I mean if I was going to do anything like that that's what I'd do.

Matt: Just like a background character who pops up occasionally, cryptically?

Jim: He'd be a wizard obviously. You always have wizard characters that show up and they're mysterious and they hand out quests and items and they're like this "here try it with the blast shield down this time", wizards do stuff like that. So Dresden would just show up in those other places and be doing weird wizard stuff. I mean that's probably not going to happen until the Dresden Files are over and I really want to write him some more but I don't want to write more Dresden books so.

Matt: Well we look forward to that possibility. Alright, in White Night Bob says that Harry gave Lash a bit of soul. When she died could she have gone to heaven or become an angel?

Jim: I'm not gonna tell you that.

Matt: Oho. I'm sorry I'm just asking the question.

Jim: Okay I'm just gonna say it, okay this is Charles, Charles I'm not gonna tell you, I'm not gonna tell you because you need to find out later. Okay.

Matt: So that means keep reading.

Jim: Yeah. There's lots of things... Partly this is a question that would be difficult to answer because it's really really deep, it's an extremely deep question that I would not throw myself into lightly. I would have to stop and think about that question for a while, probably a couple of weeks. But yeah, but Lash herself was... kind of a hybrid entity. She was half-human and half something else, honestly she was kind of a Nephilim in terms of how you would do the definition that would be it. But she's also this creature that doesn't really have a physical body and is sort of attached in a very loosely attached to the mortal world and so as a result so she probably wouldn't find herself coming down and being judged on the same scales as all the mortals are. Being as she's not necessarily a creature of free will and so on that's a very mortal thing. Judgement is very much tied in with free will generally speaking so... I think it would be a really complicated question to try and figure out what happened to Lash. We'll have to have Harry try and figure it out. I'm gonna have to think about it and talk to my Catholic friends they love talking religion.

Matt: The viewers are very happy that you gave more info on that. It is a fun theological discussion to have.

Jim: Yeah, I love the talk. I love the theological discussion.

Matt: I don't know if you've watched it, but Lucifcer is now on Netflix.

Jim: I need to watch it, I don't really care for Lucifer but I'm a Michael fan so Michael shows up in season 5 so now I have to watch the first 4 seasons as research.

Matt: Season 5 is excellent.

Jim: Okay cool.

Matt: Just sort of talking about these sorts of theological questions, it's research for that. Alright so what beer are you drinking tonight?

Jim: Tonight is Colorado Cola, which is a very fine cola. It's basically just a coke style cola except with a little bit of cinnamon in it I think and that makes it taste good.

Matt: Are all white court vampires bisexual? That is, are they omnivores feeding on different genders?

Jim: They can be, at the end of the day when you're a white court vampire and you're hungry enough you just don't care what the food is. Maybe tacos aren't you're favourite food but if you're hungry enough then yeah you'll scarf down some tacos, same thing.

Matt: That's me most times I'm hungry.

Jim: On a regular day I'll normally go "I don't want a taco, I think I'll have a hamburger" you know like that. But if I'm starving and somebody says all there is is tacos then give me some tacos. Yeah, I'll eat these.

Matt: Tacos do sound good right now. It's tough living in San Diego, there's so many good options. So... who said this... Shawn asks, spoilers for Battle Ground, given that there's such a long time between Skin Game and Peace Talks and Battle Ground should we prepare for another long wait? I'm assuming another Cinder Spires book will be coming out next.

Jim: It doesn't come out until tomorrow and you want to know when the next book is out Shawn? Really? Wow that's soon, normally I wait till after people have got a couple of the book, then they ask when the next one's coming.

Matt: I'm assuming Shawn got an ARC, read it already, his review's up already and he's done it all right.

Jim: I'm working on it. I've actually got to write a Cinder Spires novella first and I'm a solid chunk of the way through that. And that'll come out before too long and I'll release that online. Because I've got to figure out what happened between two books and I haven't been in that world in a while and I kind of had to write a warmup to get the rest of the world moving because everything had frozen in the meantime. So I'm working on that now. I'm gonna finish that before the end of the year. And then I'll start Cinder Spires probably in December at some point, I'll finish it by March and sort the next Dresden book in the spring and that'll be done some time in the fall so that'll be out either in the winter or in the following spring. Depends on Penguin, a lot of it does.

Matt: Hopefully it's on time and we can see you in person.

Jim: Yeah I hope so. Yeah we should be done with this stuff by then.

Matt: Hope so. Had this question over and skipped over it but I'm gonna ask it now. How do you approach or do you approach short stories and novellas differently or do you work on them the same way it's just you're telling a story it just happens to be a different length?

Jim: It's always the same, telling the story is the same activity regardless of how long the story is. The stories all have the same pieces and parts, the parts just get bigger as the story gets bigger. I'm sorry remind me of the question again?

Matt: Short stories, novels or novellas?

Jim: The difference is you've got to do every thing you do in a novel, in a short story except that you've got about a hundredth of the space to do it. So writing a short story is like having a knife fight in a telephone booth there's just not enough room to do everything you want to do and anything you do has to be much shorter and more direct than you'd prefer. But that is what you're dealing with when you're writing a short story. Novellas are a bit longer, they're like a short story except you can take deeper breaths and there's a little more room to swing the knife, but that's about the only difference. Novels are the ones that you- I mean, they're much easier. At least in my opinion novels are a much easier thing to do than a short story or a novella because you have more room, you can take more time. But at the same time they take a lot longer.

Matt: As someone who's not a writer, that seems so backwards. Like, a short story seems like it should be easier. Novels are so daunting.

Jim: Try to imagine putting together a ship in a bottle, that's writing a short story. Writing a novel is like building a ship outside of a bottle and then bringing the mast out. It's still difficult, just not as difficult as reaching tiny instruments in through the neck of the bottle and trying to put things together that way.

Matt: I love short stories. I love reading anthologies so I appreciate all these metaphors, these are very helpful ways to explain the difference. Chat is telling me that I have missed a question and I apologise. Here it is, how do you temper Goodman Grey, who is a skinwalker, who has an incredible amount of power without handicapping him or making him feel overpowered?

Jim: Goodman Grey isn't as powerful as Harry Dresden and certainly isn't harder to do than Dresden is. Dresden's the one who can wreck everything because he's got too much power. Grey is cool and all but he's got limits that he doesn't talk about because it's smart not to. And he's also well I mean you'll see more of him as we get into more of the stories. Goodman Grey is going to be the character that when I'm done writing Dresden I'm going to be writing Grey stories in the same world. That series will be called Monster LLC. Goodman Grey is a professional monster for hire, he's the scion of a naagloshi and is an incredibly talented shapeshifter like low level down shapeshifting (presumably low as in down to the retina) but at the same time he's also got all these issues and he lives in a very different part of the magical world than Dresden does. Dresden is very much one of the movers and shakers among the magical community, he's a member of the White Council, he's the 1%. And Grey lives in a very different world than Dresden does and he interacts with the magical community that doesn't exist inside cities which is a very different community when you don't have to worry about humans as much. Anybody who lives in a city's got humans around all the time, always has to be thinking about them, always has to be worrying about them. If you're out in the country, different story. And so the magical community out there tends to be very different and Dresden doesn't know a lot about that because he stays in town most of the time, he's not a country guy. So we'll get to see very different portions of the world that exist under very different circumstances when you don't have all these humans around that you have to worry about all the time.

Matt: I know you're not looking for real-time feedback but people are very excited about the prospect of a Grey series.

Jim: Yeah that'll be a lot of fun, that'll come along after we're all done with Dresden. I mean Dresden that'll probably one of the characters in it because he hires Grey all the time and causes him trouble and he'll probably be a villain actually. One of the antagonists in the series, good lord, while being Grey's ally because that's Harry Dresden for you.

Matt: Nice. So many questions. Jim, can you tell us about Toot's growth over the course of the series? He seems to grow mentally along with his size, some fans have theorised it is a result of the growth of his responsibility.

Jim: That is, hey, fans are smart, what cam I say? Yeah, as Toot has been given more responsibilities he has gained more power within the realm of the fae. He's a squire to the winter knight for all practical purposes which is a position inside the court which actually gives him some clout and some juice. He doesn't know it because he's a pixie, he's a jumped up pixie who is slowly growing into a sidhe. But at the same time, he's becoming a different creature than he was before and Dresden's making that happen. There's a lot of things Dresden is doing that he doesn't know he's doing, doesn't know that he's responsible for, he kind of has a vague idea about Toot Toot but he's not quite sure what's happening with him. He's never had a pixie hang out with him for a long time before so he doesn't know if this is unusual or not. But yeah, Toot Toot growing bigger and stronger is largely a measure of him getting increased responsibility because with great responsibility comes increased power.

Matt: Cool. Sounds like we can confirm that.

Jim: Yeah absolutely. Whoever figured that out is smart.

Matt: Before I get to the next question, I'm a big audiobook guy, the audio books are read by James Marsters. Did you have any influence over that? Because he's great.

Jim: My influence was mostly jumping up and down in excitement when they hired him. They hired him during season 3 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I think it was season 3, it was when Buffy went to college. That was the year when I sold Storm Front as an audio to a small company named Buzzy Multimedia who I still work with. But you know they were the first ones to believe in me so I kind of have a soft spot for them. But yeah, Marsters they called me up and said "hey we want to do an audiobook of Storm Front" and what I heard was "hey we want to pay your family's health insurance for six months" and I said yeah absolutely, that'd be great. And so we made that deal and they called me a week later to say "he we got Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to do the reading is that okay with you" and did a Snoopy dance and called up a bit more serious and was like "yeah I guess that's alright, he'll do." I knew, from where he was on the show, that he was gonna a lot of clout, he was gonna have a lot of fans. He was gonna have a fanbase of his own, which was just fantastic. I was so pleased with it the whole time but I can't claim credit for it because it's not like I went out and did it, that was somebody else completely.

Matt: Well it was a great addition.

Jim: Oh it worked out I'm so happy.

Matt: It was very jarring to me as a Buffy fan to hear him not having a British accent.

Jim: Oh I know, oh my got. He's /not/ British, wait, he's not? That was my reaction when I first heard him reading.

Matt: The British accent sounds so good on him.

Jim: Oh yeah he does it well.

Matt: Will Harry get another get another big spell in his repertoire besides forzare and ventas servitas?

Jim: Probably. I mean, he's always coming up with new ones or trying new things. Those are the ones that are like his basics, you know, spells that wizards learn to be able to do them fast enough and reliably enough to do them one some slobbering monster is coming to chew your face off. Most wizards only know three or four things that they can just do off the top of their head. The ones who are in combat a lot, the three or four things that they know are really useful and can be applied to a lot of things, like Dresden's stuff. Other people can throw a bolt of fire or something but that's all they really bothered to learn with combat, because honestly what more do you need to do besides set somebody on fire to win a fight most of the time?

Matt: It's effective most of the time.

Jim: Yeah if you can set somebody on fire you're pretty good. If you can just look at somebody and speak a word to set them on fire you're doing okay. As fights go, you're probably better off than 99%. But the heavy combat wizards, they'll go up to a dozen or even a couple of dozen spells and Dresden will get there eventually, it just takes time. You've got to learn, you've got to practice and you've got to have a superhuman amount of discipline to keep making yourself go when you've already been doing it for a century and a half. But that's something Dresden will learn but for the time being he's got his three or four things he can do off the top of his head. He can make things stop and he can make things go, that's really what he does.

Matt: That'll solve 99% of things right. Another question about magic from Kevin. Hi Jim, I've always enjoyed how you've used elemental magic in the Dresden Files, especially how the forest people and Ebenezar and Listens-To-Wind use earth and water magic. I was wondering what advanced air and fire magic would look like if it was used by the forest people or other powerful wizards? Thanks again hope you and Fenris and Brutus are doing well.

Jim: Fenris is doing great *camera pans to Fenris snoozing on Jim's lap*. He's not impressed with you guys though, he's just sleeping through this whole thing. Advanced air magic would look like what Yoshimo does, she's like really really good at air so she does like the wushu/wuxia fighting and that's what advanced air magic looks like, stuff like that. Plus meteorological stuff, weather stuff is almost all air magic, air and fire. Advanced fire magic, weather would be one of them because you need a lot of fire if you really want to change weather around and then actually Dresden is a pretty advanced fire guy, of all the things he does he does fire pretty good. Everyone in the council goes "yeah he can burn stuff" like that but, but yeah it's a different story, there's a very different mindset of magic if your main magic is water. Your mindset a very different one from all the rest of them, you can have basically the same attitude about air, about earth, about fire, but if you're working with water it's a much more complicated art and you can mess yourself up a lot worse so it takes a different attitude to really wade into it. And that's why Ramirez is so different from Dresden, Ramirez is a highly talented water mage and he is the guy to take Dresden apart if there's ever a need because he's the Olympic fencer that'd be going up against Dresden the weightlifter and if Dresden tries to fence with him it's not gonna go well.

Matt: The athlete comparison comes in so handy. How fun was it as a dad to start getting to write Harry's perspective on fatherhood and how it now factors in all his decisionmaking.

Jim: /Painful/. Yeah when you... when a kid comes into the picture it changes /everything/, everything. It's one of those things people get upset about because "oh people tell me all the time that you won't understand until you have a kid" but yeah, you won't understand until you have a kid. Or at least until you've been in a position where you're taking care of one and there's this tiny human who relies on you for absolutely everything, that is such a responsibility. But I don't know it was fun writing it in the Dresden Files but it was necessary. What's Harry gonna do, stand there and not be her dad? No it's not gonna happen. Maggie comes up and says "do you want to be my dad?" and Harry says no? That's not gonna happen. I didn't even realise that was going to be an issue until I wrote the scene with Maggie in it and that just took me by surprise when Maggie said "do you want to be my dad?" because of course that's what a kid is going to say. And then to have Dresden be hit with that all of a sudden, the problem was having /me/ be hit with that all of a sudden. Because you know, "Dresden what are you doing that was so irresponsible of you, going and having a child. Think of all the complications you're throwing in my life by having this child, I cannot believe you did this!". I kind of know what my parents must have felt like freshman year of college. But yeah, but Dresden working with Maggie, it needed to happen, it was one of the most important decisions of the series, I just didn't know I was going to be making it until I was in the middle of it.

Matt: That's a great answer and I can confirm that you don't realise until you have a kid what it means as I'm broadcasting from the baby's room.

Jim: Exactly.

Matt: Besides the forgotten sasquatch, is there another paranormal beastie you've remembered to include in Battle Ground for a future book?

Jim: I mean there's got to be new beasties, you can't just not write a book and not have some new monster show up and try and kill Dresden. So there the ones I've been looking forward to using were the Cornerhounds which came out in Peace Talks and then I just outright stole the Huntsmen from the Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander and from Welsh legend. They're from Welsh legend but I learned about them from Lloyd and I just stole them outright because they're so awesome.

Matt: It's like an honour at that point.

Jim: When you're putting together a group of bad guys who their whole things is they collected the survivors from the evil pantheons who lost their fights over the years, you can just find your favourite bad guys and put them all on the same team. That's so good, I'm constantly opening up my mental toychest and pulling out mental action figures and smashing them together and you guys will spend money on it. I don't know why but you do so I'll keep working on it.

Matt: It's worked out well so far.

Jim: Yeah I think we're having a good time it seems to be going well.

https://www.crowdcast.io/e/virtual-event---jim

*end at 40:30, pick up from there in the next post*

[TheCuriousFan]

Continued from the last post.

Matt: In Changes Lea says that if she were to dwell on the infection that it would resurface, can an infection be cured or does it simply go into remission? Thank you Jim for all you do to drive us crazy.

Jim: You're very welcome I love driving you guys crazy thank you very much for giving me the opportunity. I'm not gonna answer that question because it's a much better one to find out later. I love to answer questions and I will do that unless I think it's gonna ruin something that's gonna ruin something later on in which case I'll make fun of you and say I won't answer because that's my job, to write things that are fun so I'm not gonna undermine it by telling you stuff.

Matt: You've talked about this a little bit, where do you fall between I write instinctually vs I plan everything out? That spectrum.

Jim: When I write a book, I always know how it's going to start, how it's going to end, a big flashy bit in the middle and about a dozen one liners I want to use, jokes I want Dresden to use during the course of the story. So once I know that I get started and because I've written so many Dresden Files books they have a similar shape, most of them do, so it's--- I suppose I'm writing on the fly but I'm not really writing on the fly because I've done it a lot. Once you're one of those painters who paints the same picture over and over again and sells it over and over again you get pretty darn good quick at making that picture so you're not really freehanding it anymore, which is sort of where I am with Dresden Files books. But at the same time though, you can't... you've gotta make your plan, you've gotta stick to your plan generally but you've also gotta be sharp enough to whip your car over and pick up some flowers along the way if you see a nice opportunity as you're going along, because you never think of everything up front, you always have new ideas as you're proceeding and then the question becomes: Do I run with this good idea or do I ditch the good idea and stick with my outline? And that's the part where you kinda ditch craft and science and start thinking of art. Because you've got to figure out "this is gonna be a good portion of the story but if I change it around it's gonna undermine this facet and this facet and then I'll have to make other corrections on the other side" and so every time you make a change from a plan there's a ripple effect that spreads out through the rest of the book and the book that came before it as well and the story that came before it as well. So the more you dart off to one side or the other the more work you wind up handing yourself so it's a matter of striking a balance between doing the thing that is cool, because the rule of cool always applies, and doing the efficient thing for your story that's going to get your reader to the end of the story in the most enjoyable path possible. So yeah it's six of one half a dozen of the other and as a writer you make your choices and hope you guess.

Matt: Was there anything in Battle Ground or Peace Talks that you wrote yourself into and you were surprised by yourself that that's where you ended up at?

Jim: I don't think so. I mean, it all turned out pretty much how I thought it was going to go. There was some extra stuff with Marcone I didn't know if I was- if this was the right book for it or if I needed to wait a couple more but I decided "ehh I've been holding out so much on the readers, I've got to give them some nice juicy steak" so I started shoveling more stuff in.

Matt: Oh they appreciate it. Do you remember Fitz from Ghost Story? Whatever happened to him? I loved his development and would like to see what he became.

Jim: Okay, I'll do that. You're right, I'll go back in there and do a short story or I'll do a microfiction and we'll drop it on the website or something like that, that's a good idea. There's lots of times where as humans we don't- we'll help somebody who needs help but we don't follow up as well as we'd like to. So maybe Dresden should follow up on Fitz and see how he's doing. That would be good thing for Harry to do. *idea strikes* Oh I know what he's gonna do mmm okay, I got it.

Matt: And you can't tell us.

Jim: Well I'm not gonna tell you. But I will write it up and you'll be able to read it so.

Matt: How often has Harry had to buy beer for the game night?

Jim: About once a month. Because he is the wizard and he actually has a D&D sheet where he's a wizard and not a very intelligent one, he's got like a 16 intelligence. But he's got an 18 constitution from when I rolled the character up so I was like "I guess you're getting beat up a lot Harry" you know like that. That was sort of random stuff that happened when I was putting the character together as a college class exercise. But yeah so. But yeah as a wizard he's always questioning details especially about magic because he knows real magic so.... it's like taking an astrophysicist to a Star Trek movie, they're not gonna enjoy it and they're just gonna ruin it for everyone else and that's really what Dresden does most of the time. But because he doesn't really get too involved and he just wants to play the dumb barbarian who hits people with swords he can avoid it most of the time, just once in a while whoever is playing the wizard does something that is unrealistic as far as he's concerned that it just ruins his suspension of disbelief for the Dungeons and Dragons game, and that is when he winds up buying beer for everyone.

Matt: How do you write women so well? Who inspires you from life and fiction to create such amazing characters?

Jim: I was raised, my sisters were 12 and 14 years old when I was born so I essentially grew up with 3 moms. And they- I was very used to operating with them and working with them so that's probably part of it. I know a lot of people say "hey Jim you write such strong female characters" and it's like "no, I don't, I write female characters". Look around guys, it's not really all that tough.

Matt: Can you give us some teasers for The Olympian Affair, the next Cinder Spires novel?

Jim: I can do that. The Olympian Affair is the next Cinder Spires novel. Captain Grimm and company are set off on the Predator to go to Spire Olympia for the- there's essentially going to be a peace conference there but what it really is is everybody on Albion's team and everybody on Aurora's team is trying to figure out who's going to be their allies and who's going to be their enemies and that's gonna get sorted out. Because Albion and Aurora are getting set to go to war with one another and things are gonna happen, it'll probably go bad, there will probably be cats. There will probably be etherealists doing weird things. There's gonna be more cats in this one because I get to introduce more than three cats now. So I'll have to add the other household cats into the series so that I can write them off.

Matt: The cats make anything better.

Jim: I mean yeah, how can you not have a better story with talking cats if you do it right?

Matt: Just based off the reaction when people saw Fenris, people just freak out when a cat shows up.

Jim: Well Fenris is amazing, you should freak out over Fenris, he's adorable.

Matt: Are the Daoine sidhe still around or just another name for the sidhe?

Jim: They were kind of a previous generation of the sidhe, you know a better stronger faster version of the sidhe before humans started taking over that role. So like the advanced ones, you know people like Cu Chulainn and the folks who were essentially gods, they kind of stepped back from the scene and from getting involved with the mortal stuff when all the other ones that happened in the Dresden Files universe at some point where eventually the Creator went "okay guys, it's time for the humans to make their own way. You were supposed to guide and protect them, you did that with mixed results, but you know what, we're gonna step off and let the humans do their own thing now. And the only ones who can stay involved are the ones who are willing to go be mortal themselves and be subject to death." That was sort of the line where most of the gods went "ho ho ho, subject to death? Forget it I don't like the humans /that/ much" but some of them did, and some of them stuck around and some of them took the risk. Guys like Vadderung, like Odin, who went "you know what? I can play that game. Let's do this." and he went out and started out as a regular human and built himself into something cool. But most of the gods did not follow that path, most of them were a lot more like "okay no nope hang on" you can't see Zeus doing that, that's not Zeus' move, that just isn't going to happen.

Matt: Another question about your writing style. As you're developing the timeline do you use excel or any other tools? How do you track each individual novel as you go through it?

Jim: At this point I write the story question at the beginning of the novel and I get a big piece of paper and I draw. Because when I was learning about story arcs I was a little literal I draw a big arc on the piece of paper and then I put the beginning of the arc on one end of the arc and the end of the story on the other end of the arc and big flashy bit in the middle on the top of the arc then I start figuring out the logical steps I need to get from this side over to that side of it. And then as I figure out the logical steps I'll make a tick mark on the arc and I'll put them in there and then I'll figure what order they need to be in and then I'll start writing.

Matt: That makes sense, no reason to complicate it.

Jim: Don't make it complicated, writing is a simple thing but it's not the same as easy. Simple is not same as easy, like lifting the engine block out of a car is simple it's not easy, writing is much the same way. There's a lot of simple stuff to the craft there's a lot of simple stuff to the art but that doesn't mean it's easy. It takes a lot of practice to learn simple.

Matt: That's a very good way of thinking about it. What made you decide that technology and wizards don't mix.

Jim: I didn't want to be hassled with cellphones. I was going to be writing mysteries and cellphones are just death on mysteries they just ruin everything. Smartphones are even worse I mean my god it's like the Riddler, the Riddler's not even a thing anymore he can't be a thing because everyone has google. The Riddler can ask you a riddle and you can go to google and that's all you need. That's a supervillain being defeated by technology.

Matt: Since you brought up superheroes, you have written a Spiderman novel in the past, are there any other universes or IPs that you're like dying to be a part of and write a story for?

Jim: Correia wants me to write a story for his Monster Hunter International where the Denarians attack Cazador and it's the Denarians versus all of the monster hunters. And that would be a great time, I would love writing that. I've got an idea for a story set in David Weber's Honor Harrington universe where-I want to write a story about a marine and his treecat, and the treecat's got like three little chevrons on his forehead so they call him sarge but he's the scout for the platoon when you've got a cat as your scout you're doing well unless the cat doesn't like you.

Matt: Very capricious animals. Can you confirm or deny a fan theory of mine, and this is from Zack, we haven't seen the last of the Eebs if being in a safe warded someone from the bloodline curse I can't think of many places than the Erlking's domain.

Jim: There's probably not many places that have as many defences as the Erlking's kingdom. Also keep in mind that the Red Court vampires are the vampires that are the ones who are the quickest to reproduce, the swiftest to replenish themselves, to make new numbers. It's almost like they're kind of idealised supersoldiers, the question is against what? They're safely gone now, good job Dresden.

Matt: I cannot help with that question. Any characters that have started off as minor who have unexpectedly become more important to the series or are there any more you plan that you see becoming bigger?

Jim: I won't tell you if it's gonna ruin anything. Minor characters that get bigger? I don't know about that but there's lots of characters that are coming back because they haven't done their whole thing yet. I mean there's various characters that I look at with "oh yeah I'm gonna do that with them one day" and I'm trying to figure out when. That's the hard part, I've never written a series 18 books long before and now I'm writing book 18 of a series it's new for me, that's new. That's sort of the challenge of writing a series like the Dresden File, every book is like a new challenge "oh have you written the 18th book of a series before?" no I haven't, okay good luck.

Matt: Fair enough. It's about the ending of Buffy, a campaign set in QS in 1992, any ideas for an awesome bad guy or plot arc I can throw in? Feels like you should be paid for this.

Jim: Oh my good 92, good lord what was I doing in 92.

Matt: I can't remember what I did this morning.

Jim: That was when I wrote the first short story that was in the Dresden Files universe but it starred Nick Christian who then became Dresden's mentor as a private eye. Nick Christian was just a regular private eye and I was having him go up against Red Court vampires and stuff like that. And he was the central character of a series of short stories I did for a writing course and then eventually became Dresden's teacher because I had to use him because I'd done so much with him. But when I was designing the series I was like "oh I can't use you Nick I have to use a wizard, sorry buddy" so he became somebody who's just in the background somewhere.

Matt: That's a deep cut is what you're saying.

Jim: I'll have to figure out who I can bring back from earlier in the series, I'm essentially a very lazy person so I don't like writing characters and them just leaving them and sort of having them done not much, I like them to come back and do more. So you know if I can I would rather bring back a character I've already created than create a new one. But at the same time I've got so many characters in the Dresden Files series now I partly wrote Battle Ground just so I could reduce the cast.

Matt: Fair enough.

Jim: You know, sometimes you need to do that so.

Matt: I think Zack would take one of your characters off your hands off you let them go because he wants to use them for his campaign.

Jim: That's fine with me. 1992... I mean 1992 Dresden was about 21, something like that, wait how old was I I was 21 so Dresden was 26 (wait what) he's always been five years older than me, or five years younger than me so I could write somebody who isn't quite as dumb.

Priscellie: But he was 25 in Storm Front.

Jim: And I was 30 when it got published.

Matt: Someone check the wiki.

Jim: *laughs with Priscellie in the distance* But the point is Dresden would have been in his early twenties he would have been, wandering around trying to find a place in the world, he winds up in Chicago eventually but if you want to stick him there in 92 he was a /bad/ wizard at that point, just awful. As likely to set himself on fire as anybody else and would probably be more harm to any group he took up with than good, so feel free to use Dresden like that.

Matt: Oh that's fantastic. And that's the hour mark.

*minute and a half of talking mostly only notable for Priscellie nonverbally indicating that yes, they have to do trailers for every one going forward*

Might add a question or two from the James Marsters one to this post since it's not worth transcribing that whole one.

EDIT: Went ahead with it.


Marsters: After 20 years of writing Harry Dresden and spending so much time with him, how do you feel like you've gotten to know him over the years and how has he changed from when he started?

Jim: Harry is, he's kind of that roommate that you really like but they're just kind of a lot, that's what Dresden is for me. I mean for everybody else even for you you start reading for a couple days, and that's your Dresden time. But for me I've got to live with him every day I get so sick of the guy, it's why I have to write other books, so that I don't wind up just murdering him, which I've done once and I guess I could probably do again if I really wanted to but... But yeah he's been this character who has... he started off as this character who was just sort of the guy I think I'd like to think I'd be if I had that kind of power. I don't think I'd be that guy I think I'd be one of the giggling villains, not just one of the villains but one of the ones who's having a really good time, that's the kind of villain I would wind up as. But as he's gone on he's faced so much stuff, he's gone up against so much stuff, you know stuff that an actual human being would survive with their sanity intact probably because they just wouldn't make it through that many books. Your average person couldn't survive the events of most stories because most story protagonists have to be virtual cartoon characters to be able to get up again and keep going you know. But yeah at this point I think it's a good time, Dresden's faced a lot, it's time for him to face up to some of the consequences of the losses he's taken, the pain he's gone through. The next book we're gonna be coming up on a time where he's kinda looking around and going "hey look at my life, I've gotta start things together to where this is gonna be a little bit more survivable and livable, I'm a dad now, I've got a little girl to be thinking about for the next several years I've got this person to take care of".

Marsters: That was one of my questions because it seems like as Harry got more powerful through the books the world around him got more and more messed up and so he was always kind of in over his head. And so my question was, how long can Jim keep that going? How messed up can the world get because it goes like Dragonball and the Earth is just cracking? There was one book a couple of books back where you went more, you took the scope smaller and I thought that that was really smart and I think that's also really interesting that you would go to an internal conflict for him. You were just talking about the ramifications of what he's done and what he's become and becoming a father and tightening that scope again. Because after reading the last book I was like "oh more god, this is too much"

Jim: You should have seen it when it was all one book. Originally it was all one book and it was a little bit shorter than it is now because I expanded a few things when I went to two books but yeah originally it was the entire Peace Talks/Battle Ground was all one thing because the idea was to make it like the movie From Dusk Till Dawn where it's the Quentin Tarantino serial killer's movie for the first forty minutes and then suddenly it turns into a vampire movie without warning and so originally this book was going to be this political heist that was centered around Thomas and I was gonna turn it into a war movie without warning because politics can turn into war without warning, that kinda happens. It became so huge and ungainly and it was about it was going on 400000 words long and they were like "we're gonna have to charge like fifty bucks for this if we print this as a hardback" and I was like "I'm not gonna be the first guy to go over fifty bucks, that can be someone else".

*prior bit was talk about Back to the Future 2 segueing into talk about the time travel book*

Jim: Maybe I should have tried to pull that off in the time travel book, that would have been more appropriate.

Marsters: Oh my god.

Jim: We know we're gonna have to do a time travel book.

Marsters: Oh god please no.

Jim: Oh yes, one of the laws of magic is you can't mess around with time so Harry's gotta go do that obviously you know.

Marsters: You're gonna break me.

Jim: I think that'll be the last one in the series and then we'll do the big trilogy at the end so.

Marsters: I can never follow time travel movies, I always get confused and I swear to god when I'm reading this books I'm holding on by my fingernails trying to keep things together, you're gonna break me.

*a bit later*

Marsters: You alluded to it a little bit earlier but what is the future of the series?

Jim: Well the original plan was we were going to do 20 case books like we've had so far and then I was gonna write a big old doorstop trilogy to kind of capstone the whole thing. It's got a definite beginning, middle and end in mind when I'm writing it. At this point we've had to split one book into two and it looks like I'll have to do one extra book to do the character stuff I want to do and then we'll a three book capstone which'll give us 25 books which is a nice number. It goes well with the five pointed pentacle and everything, 25 is 5x5 and numerologically it's a very solid plans.

*following on from an excerpt and talk about reading the books out loud*

Jim: I'm thinking about writing some short stuff that is meant to be read, like writing it just for you. And meant to be read aloud, it'll roll of the tongue better.

Marsters: I have to ask you this before we move, I've wanted this all my life. So you use the word little a lot in your books, I don't know if you know. I never notice when I'm just reading them in preparation for doing the audio but I always do when I'm reading them out loud because I have a problem, my mouth doesn't want to say the word little, it's a hard word for my mouth. In frustration I stopped recording, this is a long time ago, I stopped recording "Okay, stop, we're not doing the book right now. This is a personal message for Jim Butcher. Jim you are an amazing writer, there are so many words, let's explore all of them. How about miniscule? How about tiny? How about diminutive? Let's use all of them. Okay now let's go back to the book." Next book there were twice as many littles in the book, there were like two a sentence sometimes there were four a page, and I thought "oh shit, James Butcher he heard that note and he was like "fu James how about you write the book and I read it" you know?" *laughs*

Jim: Okay I'm gonna have to write something for you that doesn't have that word in it then, we'll skip that. And you know what I'll do it in the story, I'm doing a story about Toot Toot and Mister going on a mission together. So I will use every word but that one to describe that quality in that one. And then you can curse me for that.

Marsters: *laughs* Don't change a thing man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPu4pfWTQu0

[TheCuriousFan]

This one is a few years older than the last few but it has some interesting things so let's do it. For sanity's sake I'm skipping the ones that have been answered a dozen times before.

I can't remember the name of... there was a con I've been to here, was it Armadillocon? Okay. So this is the first time I've been to Austin since Armadillocon 99. Which I showed up to, they had invited me to be there, but I hadn't actually had any books published yet, I'd gotten sale but it hadn't actually come out and I'd gotten the sail like three weeks before. They wanted me to come down. And so here I am at my first convention and they put me in a panel with Patrick Nielsen Hayden and the editor of Tor, with Glen Cook who writes the Black Company series and Garrett P.I novels and with Neil Gaiman and me. And the title of the panel was "books that needed a better editor." *audience laughs*

And I'm sitting there and I'm like in my late twenties maybe and there's all these other people who have been professionals in the industry with years and years of experience under their belts. I'm just keeping my mouth shut because that seems like the smart thing to do, but Neil's not having that. So we're about 45 minutes and Neil kind of leans over and says "you know, excuse me Jim you've been here this entire time and you haven't had a thing to say. I would really be interested in hearing what you have to say about this subject" and I was like "nah I'm the new guy, you guys aren't here for me" and he's like "no no, we really wanna hear from you, who do you think needed a better editor...." "The Lord of the Rings doesn't really start until page 202" (someone doesn't appreciate a slow start to introduce and endear characters) *audience laughs* And I had like a good two minutes of rant to explain my position and man, man, Patrick Nielsen Hayden who is like the most awarded editor in fantasy just blew up at me, he tore me apart as he started to argue with me. But anyways, so that was my last visit to Austin.

Hopefully it's a better one.

Yeah, so far so good. We've been on the right track so far. But anyway I don't usually show up and give speeches, I'm not really good at that. I like to talk to people so I'd like to just do a question and answer forum, I'll give you answers, I don't promise to give you true answers. Bear in mind that I am an unreliable narrator. But if you've got questions, somebody has to ask a question.

If it's not a spoiler, can you tell us the name of the new intellect spirit?

Her name is Bonea, it's Scottish for beautiful and also the first four letters spell bone and Harry's just not that sophisticated in his sense of humour. She's living in a skull, Bonea. He calls her Bonnie, she does a lot of hanging out with Maggie because Bonnie's like super smart but she doesn't know how anything relates to anything else. She has like zero real world experience at all, so she gets to have conversations like, Harry walks in and Bonnie and Maggie are cooking in the kitchen and Bonnie gets to say "pancakes are inanimate". Okay Bonnie good job, that was a good observation. It takes centuries to build up a Bob.

I've been waiting for a short story from the pov of Mouse, is it in the works?

(this is the brief cases release tour, she already got it, skipping)

In the reddit AMA on Friday, someone asked who the people who were trapped at Arctis Tor had to have ticked off to get trapped there and you said the better question is who had to have ticked off the Custodian. The question is, who is the Custodian?

That wasn't a question about Arctis Tor, that was a question about Demonreach.

Oh so that's the Warden then.

Right now it's Harry.

How soon are we going to see Harry's next encounter with John Marcone and what kind of role is he going to be playing considering John has been playing a big role in defending Chicago while Harry was gone?

We get more of him in the next book. Which I'm working on as soon as I'm not doing this. But there's more to it than that and Marcone has gotten a lot of respect from people. You know at this point Marcone took down Nicodemus Archleone, that's kind of something everybody goes "damn kid, alright" you know. That's been sort of the response from people. But still, he's not a very nice guy. But I really did enjoy reading the story about him, in the audiobook I'm the one who reads Marcone so...

(when is the next novel out, you have this novel already so skip)

When's the next time we're going to see Cowl and if it's not too much of a spoiler when is his birthday?

I don't know when his birthday is, he's cagey about that. When's the next time we're going to see Cowl? Last I remember, he was pretty much dead, he's probably gone, don't worry about it.

What's the condition of Lord Raith and the death curse he was under and has that changed since the events of Changes and would the bloodline curse have gone up to him?

It wouldn't have gone any farther than Thomas, monster blood doesn't as far as that spell is concerned because they were designing that spell to kill humans so. But basically nothing's really changed except he's worse and worse and worse and worse and Lara's just enjoying the hell out of it. Because she's just running more and more and basically telling him to go to his room and bringing him out for public events so..

Will we ever find out who Kincaid's father is?

Maybe. I don't know. We might get to it in a spinoff somewhere. It's not really a big enough part of the Dresden Files to spend a lot of time on Kincaid's heritage. Especially because we're getting towards the end of the series here and I've got a lot to do, we've got a lot of things to wrap up. But it's possible we'll get to it in a spinoff afterwards.

So if Harry hadn't taken the Winter Knight what would his second choice have been?

If he hadn't become the Winter Knight he could have done a couple of things, he could have picked up one of the coins because he could have summoned Lasciel to him if he wanted to, or he could have used the darkhallow from Kemmler's book to become an uber-necromancer. At that point in the series I didn't know what he was going to do but I knew it was going to change the theme of the series pretty significantly (and just like that I have my next AMA question). So yeah, Harry the necromancer would be... that'd be a hell of a series. But he'd probably do necromancy before he messed with the coins again so.

Are we going to see Austin from the short story in this book again? He seems like an interesting character.

I'm not going to spoil you or anything but maybe not, he could pop up as a minor character somewhere down the line but for the short story stuff, I try to get the new actors and give them a chance to do something. I can always grab some new characters and say "is there a character here who is going to take off? And if so I want to use them". But that's about it.

So if and when you get the books adapted what would the ideal medium be?

I think I'd want to do the Dresden Files as an animated series because in an animated series you can burn down Chicago and it costs you just as much as not burning down Chicago. You know, there is sort of a history with Chicago. I'm sorry, I laugh at myself sometimes.

What are you reading?

I'm doing a lot of reading of the stuff my apprentice is putting out, that would be my son James. He's getting pretty close, I think his next book will do it. He might even be able to sell the last one he wrote, he wrote a really good series and it's great because he's got a really good imagination better than mine. He's really good with the witty dialogue, better than me, because he's had training, you know. We've been like insulting each other for years and years. But yeah I've been reading a lot of him but when I'm not reading his stuff let's see, Robert B Parker is still a major influence on me. He's sort of my hero as a writer, he wrote the Spenser series of private eye novels, he wrote 80 or 85 novels, something like that, and he died here a couple of years ago, died at the keyboard writing his next novel, /like a man/. I wanna do that.

Finish your series first.

Yeah well, eventually. They'll get somebody to ghostwrite me.

So Butters pointed out that Harry can basically come back from anything given enough time, does the winter mantle enhance that? It seems like it's just upping his metabolism, removing all the governors essentially. Is that upping his actual metabolism, will we see him recover from like a bone fracture all the way or is it just an illusion to him? It just removes all the governors or not?

I'm not gonna tell you if it's an illusion or not because that'd ruin it but points for trying. But mainly yeah, the summer mantle is a lot better at putting you back together afterwards, the winter mantle is mostly concerned with making the other guy put himself back together, that's really what it's for. Harry is an all-offense champion, you don't put defensive items on him, that's my League of Legends addiction showing. But uh, he can heal from just about anything as long as it doesn't kill him, he can come back eventually. The mantle doesn't help him with that but it does help him with not knowing he's been hurt so...

You answered a couple of questions about the Jade court in the AMA, I had one other question about them. What do they feed on?

I'm debating because I'm not gonna tell you is such a great thing to say. No I'll just go ahead and tell you, they feed on breath. One of those guys can kill you from the hotel across the street and you'll never know what is happening.

Now that your house is built, what is your favourite part of it?

My Kitchen. I've gotten so territorial over My Kitchen, capital letters. My fiance will come in and I'll be like "okay Kitty I've got the kitchen set up, this is it's natural state, it's clean, if you do anything to disrupt the natural state, put it back, this is for the environment". She's very amused because I'm not a very organised or neat or kitcheney person but now that I've got this kitchen and everything in it works, and it's all within easy reach and I'm cooking things and yeah I'm more into cooking things now. But yeah my mom came up to visit and I was like "I'm gonna go make some dinner" and she said "oh I'll help" and I said "no you won't, get out of my kitchen, you're my guest you will sit down and enjoy yourself. I permit you to sit at the edge of the kitchen and have conversation if you wish, just don't distract me because these are really good steaks, okay?".

With the possible exception of Harry, who is your favourite character to write?

Who is my favourite character to write? It's sort of a tossup depending on what kind of mood I'm in and how badly I wish I could murder someone. But Mab is always a lot of fun to write, because she is just a villain and she literally doesn't care. She is just not concerned with whatever nonsense it is you are occupied with, she's doing important things and you need to get with the program, it's just so fun to write a person like that. Butters is always a lot of fun, any of the knights are a lot of fun to write, Bob the skull is my inner 14 year old without any filters, I love writing that.

I read Cold Case last Night, am I allowed to be mad at you?

I would be a little disappointed if you weren't.

Are you going to give us more of her point of view so we can get past that?

Get more of Molly's point of view? So she can get past it?

No, so I can get past it.

So you can get past it? When's the last time I wrote something that really just helped you recover? Compared to the last time I did something horrible to you.

It seems like loneliness is a pretty big thing in the Dresden Files, the more time Harry spends alone the more dark stuff gets, does that reflect on your experience as a writer?

No that reflects my experience as a human being. Too much alone time is no bueno and I'm somebody who loves my alone time and occasionally Kitty has to sometimes basically drag me by the collar kicking and screaming to socialise and have fun so...

The dragon in the 3rd book has never come back and it's really bothering me.

Dude, it's like this huge series of books man, I mean I, okay I'm just gonna say this. Have some faith in me, if not in my diabolical plotting at least in my innate sense of laziness that makes me want to use things I've already done the work for. So yeah there's all kinds of stuff, when I was writing the Dresden Files the major influence on plotting events in the Dresden Files was Babylon 5. Yeah I mean I watched Babylon 5 from start to finish by the week, had it on video tapes with the commercials not recorded, I mean I was hardcore about Babylon 5. But one of the things I liked most about it was, you got to the end of season 5 before- the last episode of season 5, before you tied off some of the plot hooks that got started back back in season 1. I was just like *gasp* I want to do that, that would be so cool, so yeah there's a dragon in book 3 and like book 20 maybe he should show up. I refuse to make dragons lightweights, dragons should be way more epic than that, I don't want there to be- not a sky full of dragons there's just a few dragons and when one of them shows up everyone craps their pants, that's the way it works. But I get to have him show up in the next one because he's gonna be at the peace talks so.

Other than Babylon 5 are there any other ones of those long running plots that you really admire?

Well, the first six seasons or so of Game of Thrones I guess, Altered Carbon was pretty good. Westworld, that is one of the most intricately plotted things I have ever seen. I thought it sucked when I was watching through it the first time until I got to rewatch and see how everything tied in and I was like "oh they didn't suck they were just better than me". You've gotta take those lessons so your head doesn't get too big.

Are we ever gonna get anymore of the Codex Alera universe?

I don't have anything on the drawing board right now, I've got a couple of points where I could go back into the story. One of them is to go back 150 years later so you see all the fallout from what the characters in the first series did and then because they spent the entire first series fighting the Zerg we have to have them fight the Protoss instead (will they be more heroic on average than the Alerans?).

Nerd.

I just rip things off man. I don't mean to I just don't realise it until after I'm done and I go "oh, that's what you did". And then the other place I can go back is to the next class of Cursors that are graduating from the academy that Ehren is running and Fidelias is the headmaster, he's Dumbeldore. And it would be like the new class of Cursors, the first Canim Cursor, the first Marat Cursor and like that and Ehren would have to ride herd on them and they would drive him insane, that would be a lot of fun as well.

So I was a really big fan of the Cinder Spires novel that you wrote.

Thank you.

I also loved the Dresden Files comic books. And I was just wondering, is there any chance we'll see a Codex Alera graphic novel and if you could write another novel based on any comic book character which would you choose?

If you could write another novel based on any comic book character what would I choose? Spiderman again. I could probably do Thor or Hulk, sorry Cap, Hulk's never really been my guy, I already have anger management issues I don't really need to get lessons from him. What were the other questions?

Codex Alera graphic novels.

Sounds like a good idea to me. Don't know if it could go anywhere though. If I was gonna do a graphic novel idea for Codex Alera I would probably want to do one of the other ones, so there would be new story material. That seems like a better idea.

Are you currently studying any martial arts and how long did you study aikido?

I studied aikido for like two weeks *audience laughs*. Aikido is a brilliant martial art, it's beautiful, but it's the martial art that is essentially "how stupid would you like to look? Come at me /that/ hard" and that's what aikido is kind of about. But it wasn't for me, I was too impatient to be an aikido guy, I could probably go back and do it now and be better at it. I wanted the dramatic stuff, the taekwondo stuff at that time. I started off with Ryūkyū Kempo and then Goju-Shorei-Ryu, I've done kung fu, I've done taekwondo, I've done aikido, I've done a little Judo, not enough, my ground game is real weak right now so...

Have you made any progress on the second Cinder Spires?

Oh god no. I'm still at Dresden with Peace Talks. Don't get me wrong I want to get it done but I'm gonna have to write the next book shorter or something because that was the longest thing I've ever written and it took so much time and so.

We've seen a lot with the Carpenter family from say Charity, Michael, Molly and Daniel in Ghost Story, how much if any are we going to see of the younger children as they grow up?

A bit here and there. They mostly don't want to go out and battle the forces of evil they mostly wanna go to work and come home and play with the dog. They're a pretty quiet family. And besides, mom and dad were all into the evil smiting and that makes it really seem uncool. You know, so...

I'm curious. When does Molly if ever, get over pining over Harry and when does her mental breakdown recover?

It would be so tough for her to disengage from that without taking extreme measures like just saying "I don't want to be human anymore" it's not gonna last for forever obviously because it doesn't. And when is she going to recover? So adorable, you think people are going to get better. No I mean she has actually recovered quite a bit as this story starts from her time as the Ragged Lady. She's been running business for Mab and there's a story in this collection about exactly what kind of business she's been running and it could have been something that could have something that would have really broken her but she's turned it around and said "okay I am rounding up these kids and taking them to war but these are /my/ kids and I'm going to teach them how to crush everyone in their path" so that's a little more, she is becoming more assertive and more confident as she goes. But yeah poor Molly, I pick on her so much. More than anybody but Harry himself.

If Harry hadn't encountered Lasciel's coin, which would have been your next pick for the coin he'd end up with?

Probably Thorned Namshiel who could have been like a teacher and tutor and so on. But Thorned Namshiel, he's a terrible demon, not all of the fallen are equal with everybody else and Thorned Namshiel is so busy with his nerdy research that he barely has time to torture anyone. *audience laughs*. So the other demons kind of look at him and go "well at least he can fight".

I'm curious about the writing process, all the way back to Storm Front. Harry meets the postman and we find out he's a wizard, the fourth book we meet the faeries and so on. How much of the plot is thought out, how much is scaffold and how much do you fill in as you go along?

*you know this story about the writing teacher so skip*

Have you ever given any thought to doing a short story and delving into Ivy as a person vs Ivy as the Archive?

I can't cover that in a short story. That'll have to be plot. But we'll see, the problem she doesn't have a lot of her own personality. Since she was an infant she's had access to the amassed knowledge of humanity, it's kind hard to grow up as your own person with that kind of weight on your shoulders. She's had a very rough life.

What character's death was most satisfying to write and which one tore you up the most?

Most satisfying death? It would have to be Harry. That was satisfying to me because I sent the manuscript in at about 4 in the morning and I went to bed and I woke up about 2 in the afternoon to about 5000 voicemails from my editor "oh my god, you killed him! you killed him! What are you doing" "yeah now we can do the fun stuff!"

In Skin Game Uriel becomes a mortal and gets to trade places with Michael, what would have happened if he died? What would happen to his power?

If Uriel had died /somebody/ was going to be holding his grace, well it looks like you've got the job. And that would just be confusing because then there would be two Michaels that are archangels. "Michael the warrior and Michael the carpenter" "Carpenter, you mean like Jesus?" "No not the same guy". So it's probably a good thing it worked out the way it did.

Will we be seeing more of Toot Toot?

Of course we'll be seeing more of Toot Toot. He just keeps getting bigger.

Perhaps it's the pizza.

I kind of had three questions I came up with.

I won't promise to answer them all but go ahead.

The first one is, how has the oblivion war progressed from how we last saw it in Backup?

The same way it always does, nothing happens for 30 years at a time and then something shows up and everybody goes crazy backstabbing one another until something's been destroyed or forgotten or the memory of something has been removed from somebody's brain by removing the brain. The oblivion war is something that goes on over time and if you really wanted to write about it you would have to make it one of those timeskipping series which would be a lot of fun but also a lot of research and I vanish down those rabbit holes way too easily.

We've seen more of the old gods come back in with the Aesir and the Olympians with Hades, with the rise of the Fomor are we going to see the gods of the Tuatha Dé Danann come back since they're ancient enemies?

The question is we've already seen a bunch of the old gods with Odin hanging around and with Hades, are we going to see the Celtic gods, the Tuatha Dé Danann show up because the Fomor are there? Definitely as we get into the BAT, we'll get into that a little more. No, no we'll see them in 19, well we'll see somebody from them in 19 I can't reveal whole pantheons I'm busy but we'll see somebody.

You lay a lot of groundwork for mantles of power throughout the series, but can somebody like Harry or Molly, with the permission of Mab or someone else more powerful, can they give up the mantle of power or can it be taken from them without them dying or must they die to give up the mantle of power?

*long pause* I'm not gonna tell you.

Hannah Ascher I had a quick question about her because obviously you explained that she focused more on fire magic offensively because of Lasciel but is she a full fledged wizard? Could she have done any other magic or was she a pure pyromancer?

She was a pure pyromancer but a really really strong one, like maybe better with fire than Harry (more like way better).

A werewolf but for wizards, knows one trick.

Basically yeah. I mean she's a little better than that, she can do a lot of different things with fire, but fire, that's kind of her thing.

Out of any of the series that you've done, what is the hardest thing that you've ever had to cut?

I've actually got a file folder that's just called cutting room and that's where I drop all the chapters I have to delete. I work really lean so I don't usually have a lot of cutting room material. I kind of frontload my writing process because I can't get a chapter written until I can think through it and see it all in my head and then I can write the chapter and get it done quickly and I usually don't have to do too many rewrites if I've got it all planned out ahead of time. Problem is sometimes it takes days for me to put that picture together before I can get the chapter written. That's kind of how it goes.

So the big word that gets tossed around in the fantasy fandom today is worldbuilding. You've got three universes under your hat. How do you tackle worldbuilding? With Dresden it seems like you built the world through the characters, with each new series how do you start to handle worldbuilding?

My basic rule of thumb for worldbuilding I lifted from Mark Twain. Mark Twain said that if you're writing fantasy you've got to have two elements that are familiar for every element that's weird, I think he said fantastic. So whenever I build the world I try to have a couple of things I know my audience is going to be familiar with for every one thing that's going to be cool and strange. Yeah Harry's a wizard and can throw around unlimited cosmic power and so on but at the same time he's got car problems and he's got to pay is rent, that's stuff the audience knows. That's how I establish that he's just a guy who is trying to figure out life, in order to make him a larger than human figure so...

I'm a big fan of Murphy, I love her.

Thank you.

Is she a Cubs fan or is she a White Sox fan?

Murphy is more of a hockey girl.

But she's worn a Cubs hat and a White Sox jacket, or vice versa. So she just has no preference?

Most of that stuff is stuff she's got from boyfriends and ex-husbands and so on. It's like a hat.

So obviously it takes a special kind of person to be a knight of the sword, you've alluded to perhaps royal bloodline kind of stuff, but a lot of the people who have the sword have this kind of pretty typical holders Sanya with the saber, Shiro with the katana, Murphy with the heavenly judgment and stuff so my question is, are there particular characteristics or quirks that the swords kind of use to pick their people that transcend beyond standard virtue.

That's the thing you don't have to be special to pick up a sword and use it, you've got to be special to pick up a sword and use it right. Or at least one of the Swords which I assume will have a capital letter in Sword. What the sword looks for more than anything else is sort of the ultimate martial value, the ultimate martial value is love for the people in your life. Because if you love the people who are behind you, that's why you're willing to fight for them. So that's the first thing the sword always looks for, and if you don't have that you can't pick up a sword. Well you can pick it up but it won't do anything for you. That's the main thing, stuff like courage and athletic ability all that is secondary it's who are you and are you willing to die for someone else. That's really mostly what the swords care about, and then if someone uses them wrong they'll get shattered or whatever, you know, good job Murphy. But other than that.

Does that mean Butters is royalty?

Butters is Jewish, he's descended from the 12 tribes of Israel, he's going to have royalty in his bloodline somewhere. And not only that but really like- I think the number is at like 35 or 40 percent at this point of the people on the planet who have a king in their background somewhere. My family goes back to Charlemagne so you know.

*the last question is why Chicago*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDpvbX9eCK4

[TheCuriousFan]

For sanity's sake I will skip and "why Chicago" questions that come up every other interview.

Carol Malcolm: The first lines of your books, do you make an effort to make them so special, something that stands out or is it just something that kind of happens?

Jim: I can't start the book until I've got a good first line, it just won't go. I can have a great story idea but if I don't have the first line it won't happen.

Carol: So basically, yes you do plan it. I don't think that comes as a surprise to anyone but I was surprised and kind of curious about the process you had. Right there.

Did Mac heal himself from the shotgun or did Mab heal him and leave Harry with a debt?

I don't give the answer to those sorts of questions. No, Harry's debt to Mab is between the two of them, and as far as fae debts go I'm not going to make any comments and see how those play out.

So was Mab born fully human, was she a changeling or was she fae originally?

You'll have to ask her about that. Don't ask questions about story that's still coming, jeez.

I'm pretty sure you're not gonna answer this but have we met Cowl as his alternate ego?

Again, jeez Louise, don't ask me questions I'm gonna make you pay me to answer. Points for trying, I feel you, I have GMed many players over the years. I understand this.

Back in the 30s or 40s Coca Cola changed the way Santa is portrayed. How does Mab feel about him being kinda tubby now?

It's annoying, oh god. Because when you put it the way that Dresden puts it in the books then suddenly that makes sense, Odin as Santa Claus makes sense. But then you look at the Coca Cola and then not as much. But yeah, he rolls his eyes at that but what's he gonna do? He's Santa Claus.

The other part of that question is, Harry loves Coca Cola. Given the two convergences does that make Coca Cola a vassal of Winter?

*audience laughter*

Honestly I think it's more likely for Winter to be a subsidiary of Coca Cola.

So we know there's a link between Vadderung and Santa Claus, are there any other characters which we've met that might have a similar link?

Are there any other secret characters who I've done other things in the *unintelligible*, really?

It was worth a shot.

Yeah in my head, history is especially intertwined within the Dresden Files supernatural world. There's lots of other people who have done other things. There were knights of the sword fighting the American revolution. There's all kinds of stuff, oh my god the Seven Years War is such a mess Dresden Files style because that's the Merlin and Ebenezar were young hotheads that were out kicking butt and they did it in very different ways and on different sides of the war. Which neither one of them was supposed to be doing because the White Council's got this whole thing about "wizards do not do politics because we watched what happened to Camelot and it was awful". But I don't know if I'm ever going to get to write those or not, it'd be fun. I'd love to write the story of hunting down Kemmler, that would be cool. Cause it would be like sixty years long, it starts like, a little bit after the end of the Civil War and goes all the way through to World War One where he was out there operating but anyway. That's for future stuff, paying off my gambling debts and so on.

So in the early days of the books, you made a big deal that Harry was the only practicing wizard in the Chicago Yellow Pages, how does he advertise now that they're no longer a thing?

Oh he doesn't have to advertise anymore now he's the guy everybody knows. He likes to brag about the Yellow Pages but yeah that's a thing of the past.

What about Elaine Mallory since she stole his schtick?

She did but she's got like a whole different sales pitch for her stuff. She's much more of a life coach for "extreme circumstances".

I just reread Changes.

I'm sorry.

*audience laughter*

I was thinking, the Red Court vampires that were caught by the goblins, could they survive the curse?

Oh you would have had to have been in the equivalent of like, a NORAD style Cheyenne mountain shelter, which is not an answer.

You've mentioned in the past that you've outlined the series after being told the first book will sell. What's the biggest divergence we've had from that outline at the point we're at?

Butters probably. He was somebody who was supposed to be a one off character. He was supposed to be a- I was writing a particularly gruesome ME scene and I wanted somebody there to add a little levity to it so I created Butters. Actually I didn't create Butters I stole him from the movie The Prophecy, only I died his hair black instead of red and made him Jewish and said okay go. But yeah Butters is the biggest diversion I never really planned on him being a big character and then my editor got in the way so.

So what was your inspiration behind the Cinder Spires and did they not pan out?

Oh, the inspiration behind the Cinder Spires, I was driving home from a LARP on a Sunday morning. We'd killed a big bad guy at about two in the morning and then we were arguing over treasure until four and then the sun was coming up and I was like "you know what I'm not sleeping in a sleeping bag I'm getting in my car and going home to my bed". And so I was driving home and it was a real real heavy midwest overcast thunderstorm territory. Except I was driving north over here on the right side the sun was coming up. It was all clear and blue and starting about right here *gestures at about right shoulder height* in my field of vision it was just /black, black, black clouds over there/. And then a lightning storm started as this storm was coming towards me and it looked like this big thing on lightning legs walking towards you. And I was like "oh this is just awful" and I turned up Nine Inch Nails because I was listening to Downward Spiral, nice and clanky industrial sounds. And then I raced the thunderstorm to the junction with I-70 so I could turn east and get ahead. And so while I was doing that and listening to Nine Inch Nails the first scene from the first book just popped up in my head and it was like "okay I'm doing that next. So sleep deprivation + running around in the woods like a crazy person + driving too fast in dangerous weather, that's how I got it. Some lives, be a writer kids.

You mentioned that you're looking to write about 24 novels in total and I was wondering if you're expecting to write them in ten years or thirty years? *unintelligible plus audience laughter*

There's some things I'm not gonna share with you yet. I'm planning on 20 case books like we've had so far and then a big old apocalyptic trilogy at the end to finish things off. We might need 21, or 22, or 19, I've got to get everything setup for the end. And then the big old trilogy and we'll be done with it. That'd be a fun story. I don't know how long it'll take I've got things to do and there's like these steampunk books and people keep wanting me to show up to conventions and things. Normally I say things like "if I wasn't here with all of you the next book would be done by now" but at this point I'm waiting on the editor so.

So the agnostic knight of the cross, you could have done a Protestant knight of the cross, you could have done an Islamic knight of the cross, why agnostic?

Why not? My point is, that at least in the Dresden Files world and my own personal viewpoint, people are fickle and people fail, people fall aside. God doesn't need people to believe in him, God believes in people and will still be even if you're the agnostic guy, I think God cares about you. I mean I'm fundamentally Christian but if somebody else is Islamic? Yeah God cares about them. The Hindus? God cares about them. We can go down this list like this but I think you see the pattern. And so for the knights of the cross that's mainly what I was interested in showing it's that "God is real and God loves you and cares and sometimes sends people to kick the ass of monsters".

When Dresden threatened to use necromancy against the Black Court, was that something he learned directly from the Word of Kemmler that was part of the book or was it just that he learned more about how they worked with necromancy?

Oh no Kemmler had a recipe, "how to make a Black Court vampire your bitch", he had that. That was practically the name of the spell. Dresden's like "oh yeah I see how that works now yeah I can screw you up ". It'd do horrible things to him, roll 3D6 that's how many sanity points you lose. Like that.

So you have this entire room basically hanging on your every word, how on earth do you keep your ego in check?

That's easy, all of this stuff here happens to famous guy Jim. Famous guy Jim is on stage with you today, famous guy Jim can talk to people, he can make jokes, he can be charming, make eye contact, remember people's names and generally function like a human being. Real Jim would not be in this room, he would look around and be like "yeah there's too many people here" and turn around and go. Listen, at the end of the day, I play D&D with myself and write it down. I eavesdrop on my imaginary friends' conversations and transcribe them. I write ridiculous wizard books, I'm not contributing much, "here, have a good time, get away from things for a while, that'll be $7 please" (I wish they were $7 here). That's how it works, $10 or whatever it is now, they were $7 when I started okay.

Which do you find more satisfying when you run across it online when people are talking to each other, is it more fun to see someone with a theory that's right and everybody says they're out of their minds? Or is it more fun when someone goes off with a theory and everyone's behind it but you know they're dead wrong?

Man that's a good question, that's tough. I don't know. I mean I enjoy it when somebody's dead right and everybody's yelling at them, I just kind of want to look at that person and go "hang in there buddy! Just another book!". What really bugs me is when I read the crack theories that just break my brain. Because there are such incredible crack theories on the Dresden Files flying around out there, and some of them I don't even want to think about them, I get a skip in my head every time I hit the memory, that's my own personal version of the Naagloshii that I've seen with my true sight, crack theories, I think about them and just *neck twist*. And then the other thing that disturbs me is some of the fanfiction, there is some really unlikely slash fiction of Dresden out there. Putting it out there and leaving it at that.

Hi, so it's kind of interesting to hear you say you're not making an impact with your books. I'm actually a librarian for the New York state corrections department and let me tell you, the men at *unintelligible jail name* love your books *more stuff obscured by crowd cheering*. And my personal question is, is Mister ever going to get his own side story?

I could probably write a good one because I actually know cats now because there's enough of them. Because you know we have four cats, we have three maine coons and there was a little feral cat that got born under the porch, her and her brother did, well her and her brother survived so we trapped them and her brother was socialised so we got him out to a family and he's spoiled rotten all the time now. And he's like this Siamese looking cat, he's gorgeous. And then his sister is a little tuxedo cat who is this big full grown *holds hands indicating about as long as the distance between middle of neck and left shoulder* and so we named her Zantanna and she didn't like people but she bonded to our cats. And so we're like "okay you can hang with our cats and that'll be fine" and then eventually she started going "okay human, pet me". She kind of walks up to you and goes "MEOW" and then you're like "ok I've got to pay attention to you before you kill me". I probably could write a good cat story, but Mister's a cat man, he's taking naps. He's an elderly cat at this point, he's stretching out in the sun.

So I was wondering, you've kind up set up the morality system of the Dresden Files, in other settings they have laws of magic that the wizards council came up with and enforces, they're made by people. But in your universe, if you break the laws of magic it taints your very soul. It's inherent to the universe itself. And in other books monsters can redeem themselves and I know *unintelligible* kind of has that but with the Red Court vampires it's like once you're a vampire, you're just that.

Well you could potentially walk into the sun or something, but yeah.

So I was wondering why you made those choices when you were kind of setting up the world, with objective morality or something.

Well you just said it yourself, choices. Thomas didn't choose to be born a White Court vampire, he chooses what he's gonna be and as long as you are somebody who is making choices like that, there's always a chance at redemption. You can decide "you know what, I'm going to be a better person today than I was yesterday", that's possible. And every single Red Court vampire chose to kill someone so they could slake their thirst, every Red Court vampire said to himself "I'm more thirsty than that guy needs to be alive", that's a choice, it matters in the Dresden Files.

So does that mean you can break the laws of magic and come back from that?

What?

And choose to redeem yourself.

I mean the laws of magic are broken all the time. I mean the ones the White Council makes, those are pretty broad. There's only some of it that's going to start twisting you into a horrible something or other but the White Council is real thorough on trying to control wizards. They want to keep wizards from, you know, blinking reality out of existence, they have some concerns. They'd rather be more careful than less careful, that's sort of how they roll.

So in terms of writing advice, I hear a lot of talk about how they break pieces of themselves off and use them as the basis for characters. Is there any of this in Harry or any other characters of the Dresden Files?

That's not something I'm gonna talk to you about. That's some pretty deep stuff there, that's personal. Ultimately everything I put in the book is me because I was the one writing it. As far as pieces of my own personal self yeah they're all over it. You can't make art without putting a piece of yourself in it, that's how it works, you break off a piece of your soul and you put it someplace else and you look at people and you show it to people and you say "isn't it pretty?" and they go meh and you go "that's my soul, okay..." but yeah you have to. It's terrible because you read it and go "gee this is really tearing me up, all the stuff about Harry's dad", you know, stuff like that. But yeah you have to and you don't even get to pick when you do it or which bit of your soul to break it off you just suddenly realise "oh there it is in the book".

So I when I read the twelfth book I read that speech that Harry gave to Mab about the ability to attain power and I'm not going to ask you what he's going to do to get more power. I was wondering if the Darkhallow would work in the Nevernever.

Oh yeah, you can pull that off anywhere. The location is not important, Harry could go to the Nevernever and pull off a Darkhallow if he wanted.

I was just curious since immortality was a factor and I'm not sure.

Yeah I'm pretty sure he could pull it off there. He'd have to have a bunch of people to kill though.

Carol: Minor technical detail.

It came out of the book of the big bad necromancer guys, what do you want to do? They kill people.

Carol: The title kind of gives it away, doesn't it.

*question is if Marsters will do the Peace Talks audio book, the answer is yes*

Hello, well as an older woman I am interested in McCoy, Blackstaff McCoy. Just kind of sexy and *audience drowned her out* I don't know twenty years ago I was doing *audience drowned her out again*. So is there a way that you might write something about the old dude?

It's possible. Though if I wrote McCoy I would go back to where he was wrecking stuff and getting in trouble all the time and then write that guy, he was way worse than Dresden. *audience drowned her out yet again* Yeah I mean Dresden's the kind of guy who, yeah he gets into trouble and stuff but what he /really/ wants to do is be at home reading on the couch with his dog, that's really the kind of way he wants to spend his life. McCoy was the kind of guy who would just kind of look around after work one day and say "you wanna go get in a fight?" and then they would go do that, so it was much different.

If Bob ever found himself online in say, an online game such as Second Life, what would he choose his avatar?

Bob's avatar? He'd just be a penis with legs. He would do what like every fourteen year old boy would do and if he could pick something he'd take one of those.

So in terms of Gaius Sextus and John Marcone are described very similarly, what was the inspiration behind that?

I always wrote Marcone, the model I kind of had for him in my mind in the background was a medieval baron. By the standards of the medieval times Marcone would have been a highly respected, competent, just and fair baron if he ran his barony exactly like he runs the mob in Chicago. So when I was building him I used the model of a medieval feudal lord and what the ideal feudal lord what behave like and I extended that to Gaius Sextus only he didn't quite live up to many of them because he was kind of a weasel. But I wanted to write him as that weasel that you kind of admire a bit, it's like "man you caused all this trouble, but damn you did it with style" like that. But that's why.

Michael Carpenter is one of my favourite characters in all of fiction. I want to know what was your inspiration for creating such an awesome paladin of awesome.

From what I could tell of the fiction that was around me up to when I was writing Michael, there were only two kinds of Christians that appeared in fiction: They were either lunatics, hypocrites oh wait there's three, or happy dumb sheep. And that was the only way they were portrayed and I was tired of that and so I thought I'd do it my way. I didn't do it for you *gestures at cheering audience* but I'm glad you like it.

When you actually settle down to write and try to get into the mindset, do you have a particular playlist you use and how does that vary across the different series you write?

Oh, excellent question. I do, I used to make up a playlist for each book, now I generally have like theme songs for characters that I keep in mind. Harry's theme song is Gone Away by Offspring (fun fact, this used to be his pick for Elaine's theme song). And there's a bunch of other ones. What's the cover, of Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You? That is done in minor that is for another character that I really love that is- look for a minor version of I Will Always Love You, I forget the name of the guy who performs it but it's amazing. But it's like the most angsty "this is definitely my RP character's story" sort of song, I mean, everybody can say that about their RP character. Oh my gosh.

So Cinder Spires, you've got Albion, Aurora and you've got a third name coming up Olympus or something-

Olympia, yeah.

So how many spires are there and can you tell us their names?

Um there's dozens and dozens, they're scattered all over the world, not all of them have contact with all the others, some of them don't contact anybody, they stay isolated. It's a whole confusing thing but when I get to the next book, the next book's called The Olympian Affair, and essentially there is a meeting happening to try and head off a war that's coming between Albion and Aurora so that's what The Olympian Affair will be all about. Which is all it really is is everybody angling to get the best allies, everybody showing up to pick their team for dodgeball.

Oh no.

Hi.

Hi.

So I have a super serious question.

Oh god.

Now that Butters is a Jedi, do you think that we'll get a terrible prequel series with him? *audience laughter*

It's probably better than a terrible follow-up trilogy, I don't know. So. I'm sorry I'm not in favour of the new ones. If you like them great you're ahead of your time but I'm gonna go see the next Star Trek thing I guess, I don't know.

So you have fifteen books of history to reference-

Tell me about it.

How do you make a book accessible to someone who hasn't read the entire series without being weighed down by the massive weight of this character's history and that character's history and this event?

Every story has to be it's own story, even in the Dresden Files. The story needs to embrace the problems and the conflicts that you set up in that story. So I mean ideally anyone who comes into the Dresden Files at any point should be able to have an intelligible idea of what's going on. They should be able to go "okay I get this story and there's a bunch of parts I didn't get because you didn't reference it but the story I got it it was good" they should be able to go along for the ride and have a good time. And the best way to do that is to make sure your characters are consistent all the way through, they have to grow as well but you really have to do a lot of work to keep each character grounded in terms of what they are so that not only the reader is sure of what's going on when that character comes on stage but that /I/ know what's going on when that character comes on stage. It's like "Butters is coming onto the stage now and I need these six different things to happen to make the story go forward and so Butters is going to handle this one and that one" and I've gotta pick the right ones for Butters to handle or else he's not really Butters and it gets more and more confusing as we go along so. It's partly homework it's partly just being buried in it this is what I've been doing my whole life and it's partly Priscilla Spencer who has been a beta reader for me for a good long while, has a freakish knowledge of continuity that is highly annoying and extremely useful.

I'm one of the people who not only read the books but play the Dresden Files tabletop roleplaying game by Evil Hat, I figured they'd basically read your books and then tried to quantify the characters into NPC stats. Which ones did they get right off the bat and which ones did you say "oh you've got that all wrong because there's stuff you don't know" and then you told them your advice?

*another repetition of how they saw Jim's notes/writing process and how Jim can't play the RPG and how providing info let the team guess book plots*

First of all thanks for writing my family into the Dresden Files I'm a Carpenter.

Excellent.... Yeah, sorry about that.

As an aspiring novelist when I get stuck I sometimes use dice. When you get stuck do you ever just use D&D and dice "oh that was a horrible bluff check let's see how it goes if he fails that"?

Oh god no I could do that for some things but for the most part by the time I'm writing the action scene it's /scripted/ we've got stuff to do there's no time for randomness. And to a degree while I think it's possible to use it and it could be good if you're stuck and need inspiration of some kind then embracing ideas you normally wouldn't embrace but you randomly generate is a good way to knock ideas loose and get going. Gosh I don't remember where I was going with that. Oh yeah once I'm getting going things are pretty tight and I don't have time for that. Art is all about separating meaningful signals from noise, that's what art is and the more noise you throw into your own stuff the more you're kind of working against yourself so. I try to be very focused and purposeful with everything I'm doing in the books.

Quick yes or no question, are there cats in Spire Olympia?

Oh obviously yes, there's like different breeds in each spire so they can look different and be cool, but they're very separated ecosystems, right? And when you have the same animal in different ecosystems it goes in different directions. So yeah there's cats everywhere and they're different breeds so we get everybody's favourites.

Hey Jim, the Dresden Files has been around for twenty years now-

Well twenty years April 1st next year.

True, in that time they've been theorycrafted to death, in that time is there any Easter egg or plot point that has been totally missed?

I don't know. How do I know the answer to that? I don't track everything. I-actually no I don't wish I could, I don't track everything and I'm happy that way. I mean, I don't really follow that too much I'm too busy making it to look around and see what everybody else is talking about. But I'm sorry I wish I had a better answer. Even if-here's the right answer, no you've figured everything out the rest is just pro forma, might as well go home. Generally from what I can tell everybody's figured out some part of the big picture but nobody's figured out a significant part of the big picture, but somebody's picked up almost everything, it's just a matter of whether you've put it together the right way or not.

Greetings Jim, I know you're super busy with the Cinder Spires and the Dresden Files but is there any chance you'll pick up a continuation of the Codex Alera?

Codex Alera is a cool world I might go back to it one day. I've got a couple of points I can go back. One idea is to go back a hundred and fifty years into the future and see the fallout of the first series and how it changed the world and what's different then. I've got three ideas for it. That's the first one, second is to do the first class of the new Cursor academy which features Ehren as the teacher and *unintelligible* Batman is the teacher of all the new spies, and we have the first Canim Cursor and the first Marat Cursor and so on and that would be fun. And then the other one I can do is I already wrote the humans and the zerg so I can do the protoss coming in. Look man I'm a nerd.

Two part question, what kind of Scooby snacks does Bru like?

I get him, you know the bark boxes? They make ones specific to pitbulls with super tough toys it's called a bully box and it comes with lots of snacks but mostly he just likes bacon. I wake up for breakfast every morning and he comes in and he's my buddy. We start off the day with him just like laying his head on my shoulder and looking over my shoulder at my plate you know.

And second question, are Selkies and Owlbears existant in the Dresden Files?

Selkies and Owlbears? Yeah because you've got access to the Nevernever and you've got essentially range to whatever you can imagine. So yeah Harry could go to the Nevernever and bring back an Owlbear and be like "haha! mad wizard right there! Who's got two thumbs and just created an Owlbear!?"

So in the Dresdenverse you've got a wide variety of characters and side characters and backup characters so aside from Harry Dresden which character is your favourite to write and which is your least favourite to write?

Least favourite to write? Start with that because that one's easier for me. Charity's very difficult to write for me, I don't know if that's my least favourite but she's difficult because she's tough for me to understand. Don't know who else as far as least favourites go, if I didn't like them I wouldn't write them. But as far as favourite character other than Harry, it varies from day to day depending on what kind of mood I'm in. If I'm feeling particularly puerile and in need of inspiring chaos then it's Bob, if I need to get things done it's Marcone or Mab, you know one of those characters. I love writing Mab though, because in many ways she's kind of a mystery to me so a lot of things I find out about Mab I don't find out until I've written them and then I go "wow, that's deep" and "I should tell the author something" "you wrote that" "that's confusing".

*stopped at 39:45 continue from there in the next post*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byT-u7Q_UhI

[TheCuriousFan]

As you've read a lot of Dresden fan stuff online, has there ever been something that you've found on there that you've seen and thought to yourself "hey that was a really good idea" and incorporated it into the story?

Probably. I can't think of anything specific because once the book is written it's out of my head and gone, I've got the next one to think about. But yeah I'm pretty sure, I don't think it's from any of the online discussions but lots of times from talking to friends about it. I mean I've done stuff and been driving along in the car on a roadtrip and just nobody said anything for forty five minutes and suddenly I go "Justine's pregnant" and then I kind of get this *glance* "that's nice Jim". I do this stuff all the time I just start talking in the middle of a conversation that I've been having with myself with somebody else as though they've heard the conversation. I'm sorry Kitty but- where'd you go- stuff like that happens- oh there she is. But yeah chatting about stuff, it's normally not online discussions because by the time I'm going to online discussions I'm not really in a creative mindset, I'm in a famous guy talking to people mindset because I have to pretend to be somebody else to be able to talk to people. Rest of the time I'm just sort of at home, honestly if I could have just stayed home on the couch with the dog this weekend that would have been amazing. But also coming here is fun too, but in my heart of hearts that's what heaven looks like, it's a comfortable couch, a really good book and a dog and just waiting on Kitty to get home from work. That is a wonderful time. I'm a boring person really.

What do you read? *different person* Parks and Rec?

Oh Parks and Rec obviously. I think I've watched all the way through Parks and Rec like, eleven times now. That's our stress TV show when there's stress or depression Parks and Rec goes on because it's hard to be stressed and depressed with Parks and Rec on.

I have a question, Murphy is my favourite character, and finding out that she has a large family of cops and ex-husbands and-

Yeah big Irish cop families in Chicago, real weird.

I was just curious about if we're ever gonna see them again and what their opinion is on her new employment situation.

Okay I can talk about this because it's not really in the books and I doubt it's gonna come out anywhere anytime soon so I'll just come out and tell you. When she retired it was under a cloud, it was under a big cloud and that had to give her entire family pause and so that sort of thing tends to enhance and exaggerate existing relationships to whatever the next level of that relationship is. So if you're just sort of annoyed with somebody then you just don't like them anymore after something like that or if you like somebody and you decide you're going to keep liking somebody when they're under a cloud like that /you like them a lot, they're your brother/, like that, that's the kind of thing that happens. So she's become a big, not exactly a pariah but a point of contention in her family so she's been avoiding them a lot. Because people get in fights when she's there, they also get in fights when she's not there cause they're free to talk about her so... It's an Irish catholic family there's all kinds of conflicting things going on there.

So with the licensing quagmire no longer being such a tepid pit of despair, who would you picture for your ideal dream cast for a feature set of films?

*43:50 to 45:30 because I don't know any actor names so this answer might as well be unintelligible for me*

In the Cinder Spires, once the cats give a person a name, will they ever change it if it becomes inappropriate like Tiny is?

Oh absolutely they will. If you do something to distinguish yourself that is worthy of a name, whether it is something bold and brave or something really boneheaded, you get the name. That's the way how that works, you get named after the things you've done and the choices you've made and it's the same with the cats. If he acts like a jerk they'll roll their eyes and give him a stupid name, I mean he'll still be an honorary cat but they'll just be snide to him.

Hi, first of all I just want to say that your book series, the Dresden Files, is my favourite.

Thank you very much.

It's surpassed Harry Potter for me and I didn't think that was possible.

That makes me feel good. As I said thank you very much.

My question is, I saw a tweet from you about the possibility of a series coming out for television for the Dresden Files. Is there anything you have going on to make sure it doesn't end up like Season 8 Game of Thrones?

Absolutely nothing. The best you can do is say "listen, there's somebody that I know in Hollywood that has the appropriate skills and education to be doing this job and also happens to be somebody who's been a beta reader for me for a long time and I want them on" and they're like "that's okay and a reasonable thing" and I want to be an executive producer myself I want to have access to the writers room and say "yeah that's good" and that's about as far as I can go. I don't have the money to make even one episode of TV happen. I couldn't do a feature length- I could do a full feature length Hollywood trailer if I spent all the money I've ever earned. That's big stuff, you've got to have some serious juice behind you to get those things done. But I'm gonna do everything I can and that's going to amount to showing up and doing everything I can to make sure the writing is solid and then doing everything I can-trying to be the guy that helps think of ways around problems, hopefully I can do that in a useful fashion that would be great.

I just want to thank you for that because I really love the series.

Hello.

I love your hair it looks real cool.

Thank you *shakes hair*. You know I married into a fae court so it's just how it is.

*audience laughter*

So you swore fealty to Mab or something.

No I got married. I don't want to talk about any deals Kitty may or may not have with various supernatural entities, that's family business I'm not gonna bring it up with you all. Yeah. But I died it for the wedding and I thought "I like blue" and that was about my thought process.

Was the Spanish Flu a cover explanation or a side effect of the necromancy being done by Kemmler?

Oh you're clever, aren't you? I like you *nods his head*. That's my answer.

*audience laughter*

Does the White Court have any way to compensate for or make exceptions for wizards or any magic magic user with special needs?

What do you mean?

They physically can't move their bodies.

If a White Court vampire wants to get you all they have to do is get you alone for a bit and be able to touch you, that's all it really amounts to. But there's this whole issue with White Court vampires and wizards but we haven't gotten to that. Hahahaha, oh it's like heroin.

Are there characters who you built for the Dresden Files who didn't make it into the books who were *unintelligible*

Uh there's one character I wrote for the Dresden Files who didn't make it into the books and he- he made it in but only sort of in the background. In Grave Peril Harry and Carter LaChaise had this running thing where LaChaise kept jumping in the Blue Beetle and then various bits of Volkswagen architecture that were specific to Volkswagens kept saving Harry's life. But when my editor read it she said you've gotta cut it it makes the book too long. That was the book where the editor said "I love this book it's got this story and this story and this story and this story and I want you to expand on all four of these" and I'm like "great" "and cut it by fifty pages" "so make it longer and shorter?" and she goes "yes, and hurry." That's the writing business.

Throughout the Dresden Files were there any plot points that you wrote/that made it into the book that you personally wish you didn't have to write that way but knew you had to for the story?

No? But I've never wished I didn't have to do it that way for the story. It's /the story/, whatever needs to get done gets done and whoever needs to die dies for the story. That sounds psycho but it's absolutely true, but yeah I don't have much of a problem with that, the great thing about writing is, it's your world, you can do whatever you want, it's awesome. I don't understand why more people aren't doing it, it's amazing. Hey man.

So a mate of mine, he's in my Fate *unintelligible* give away plot points. So hypothetically speaking what effect would climate change have on the power dynamics of the summer and winter courts?

It's gonna depend. It's gonna depend on how much of it is due to choice. Free will and human choice has a lot of power in the Dresden Files and affects things very drastically. So how much of it is? How much of it isn't? These are huge questions and we're just people and not one of us lives long enough to get a really good answer because it would probably take a couple thousand years of observation of the Earth (about that), might give you a basic grasp of how it works, it's hard to say. It wouldn't be it's warmer so summer's stronger, it's colder so winter's stronger. Summer court and winter court are much more closely tied to human emotions on the planet. The winter court's a lot better because this planet's got a lot more bad stuff on it than good stuff, generally speaking, there's an awful lot of conflict, an awful lot of struggling to survive and that's all winter court stuff right there baby. When you're creating culture, when you're creating art, when you're creating beauty that feeds into the summer court. But they're there for people so they're more attached to people than they are to the natural world.

So theoretically if a winter court member were to kick off a nuclear winter, would that shift things?

Well that would get real winter real quick because suddenly life would be about nothing but survival and keeping your kids alive. And that's very much a winter court situation. Summer is when you have a little bit more time to do other things.

Do you have merchandise at your author signing later?

*no and even if he did you couldn't get it*

And a few ones I found interesting from Dragoncon 2014 that I hadn't found typed up anywhere.

I've got a question about how you've built your cosmology around the Outsiders being kind of extraplanar kind of extradimensional beings, I've noticed that the entirety of the Dresden seems very Earth-centric and I was wondering if you've given any thought to extraterrestrials, beings from another planet, and how they would fit into the Dresden universe and if you could elaborate on that at all?

It also seems very wizard-centric because the main character is a wizard on Earth. As far as extraterrestrials go, a lot of them are faeries having fun because you know, elves and little green men are kind of the same thing. But they can show up here, it would be a huge pain in the ass for aliens because if you think wizards disrupt primitive human technology you should see what happens to alien stuff. *audience laughter* Basically the aliens are like "man this place sucks, there's all these biological anomalies don't even get into orbit around that place man, that's just dangerous". You talk about crashed alien ships? Wizards. *audience laughter* Actually-okay we'll do that later but-We'll actually get to do some space stuff later but as far as the extradimensional stuff goes there's tons of extradimensional stuff, it just happens that some of them are a little bit more extradimensional or in this case non-dimensional. Because the establishment-the established canon of the Dresden Files is that the universe has been created and there are things that come in from outside of creation and don't like creation and want it gone because it's so disruptive and sucks, you know from their point of view. But that's a better story than writing the one from the outsider perspective because that's just dull, we've got to have one from home, from the human perspective. I think writing from an alien perspective would be odd, although my personal theory is that humans are nowhere near as unique and special as we like to think we are. Generally speaking, I think that humanity is a terribly terribly arrogant species, so you know it would be great to find out that people just look at us and go "yeah you're just intergalactics with bumps on your head, whatever." If we're just kind of the regular Star Trek alien-and we have eyebrows, and that's what makes you different, "yeah look at you humans, showing off your eyebrows."
---
So in Skin Game you kind of had a Greek god come into play for the big Dresden universe but no idea what *unintelligible*, my question would be, are we going to see any more of the big Greek gods get in the midst?

Yes. You got to meet the reasonable one first.

Cool. Do they have certain-not winter but do faerie queens owe any certain duties to the reasonable guy?

Do they owe anything to him?

Sure. But that's actually a good one.

The whole point of Skin Game is that Mab is clearing her books, she's clearing all the red out of her ledger as it were. And that was why she was doing what she was doing but you can bet that she took care of the debts to bigger players first and worked her way down to Nicodemus so...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR6RCDkmH1I

A lot different cultures handle magic in a very very different way, and in a lot of older stories they're kept very separate but in America at least and in a lot of other places too, all these cultures and consequently these different ideas of magic, blend together in a very very interesting way. How do you guys handle that in your stories?

For the Dresden Files, this whole America fusion thing, in a historical sense it just started this past-we're only on like our second season. We kind of had that cool first season and now we're kind of wandering around I think, in the second season. But a lot of the people who were alive and especially the people who were doing magic, they were there when America was getting started. Listens To Wind, you know, he got to see the entire decline of the way of life of the native Americans, he had to live through that. People like Ebenezar and the Merlin, they were involved in the French and Indian war, so this whole America thing is new to them, it might not last, a couple hundred years, whatever. It's one of those cultural differences we have, one of my favourite sayings is "in America a hundred years is a long time, in Europe a hundred miles is a long drive". We've got a very very different experience culturally and historically than a lot of the folks overseas.

That being said, you get a different sort of point of view of magic based on who you are. Listens to Wind has a very native American, a very shamanistic approach to magic, his magic is very much based in the natural world. The guys who are the White Council old school, who are from the old world, they've got an elemental tradition of magic that comes up from the Roman empire and developed in the Middle Ages, they're the inheritors of that school of thought. You get to somebody like Harry Dresden... Harry's got this very, I think for him I kind of think of him as more of a colonial craftsmen of magic. He's somebody more like a silversmith... he's putting together what's going to work-not a silversmith that's too highbrow, he's a blacksmith, he's a plumber of magic. He's working with magic, with these forces and he's gotta put them together to get the job done and he doesn't really have an ego about it, as long as it gets the job done it doesn't have to make him look good, it doesn't have to support the dignity of wizardry. He's got goals, he's trying to get things done. Someone who is brought up in one of the older schools will have teachers who say "but you've also gotta stop and think about all these other things", Harry had a teacher who was more like "you know what, let's teach you how to not be a psychotic killing machine first and after that we'll worry about the niceties" so there's all these niceties that he never got and Harry never went to finishing school like all these other wizards who will do stuff with style. Even younger wizards who are more his age like Chandler, who was brought up in a very British tradition and Chandler's the kind of guy who would say "but a gentleman wouldn't", that's his point of view. For Dresden, he has a much more American point of view and I think we're looking at different philosophies just based on the history they're brought up with. And poor Harry has my history so he has issues with bullies, so stuff like that.

I was gonna ask the next question. The cloud of perpetually bad luck that seems to follow Harry, if he were to have a stretch of good luck, would that affect his magic?

Okay, the cloud of bad luck that follows Harry, is really, its you. *audience laughter* Because like I said I only write about the worst weekend he has every year, so the rest of his life doesn’t look like that just the parts that you see, you are the cloud of bad luck following him. As far as if he had a stretch of good luck- he got like twenty pounds of diamonds (anyone feel like doing a calc?) at the end of the last book *evil laughter*, let me tell you suddenly having a lot of money does not make your problems go less.

The show came out and I started doing well and there was money and all of a sudden I learned it just got more complicated- oh god. So now we get to have Dresden finding the complications, which that will be fun as well because lets face it he’s the Charlie Brown of the urban fantasy world, that's the way it is and that's the way it will be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAi-gsut4Vc

[TheCuriousFan]

The person who uploaded this video was nice enough to include all the questions with timestamps in the descriptions. Once again skipping repeat questions. This one is Myths and Legends Conference 2016.

0:47 So for your audiobooks James Marsters did a fantastic job, I was wondering if you had any input on his characterisation or if it's all him?

*repeat that his input was mostly giving the green light and jumping for joy at hiring Spike*

1:50 Are you thinking of revisiting the Codex Alera, that world at all?

*repeat that we can go back to the Protoss showing up and there's no plans. Just the possibility that Jim has gambling debts*

2:40 The upcoming book is called Peace Talks. Back in White Night Lara told Harry she would destroy him with peace. Are they related?

*only says Lara is in Peace Talks*

3:14 Aeronauts Windlass I liked a lot and it seemed like you put a lot of detail into the ships and into the ship battles. Did you do a lot of research into that?

Sort of, I watched Master and Commander a lot. *audience laughter* I enjoy that kind of book, my favourite of the Trek movies is Trek 2 because it gets very Hornblower in Trek 2 in the ship to ship battle. And it's the Hornbloweriest of the Trek stories that we've seen so far. But yeah Horatio Hornblower's a favourite character of mine and then you get onto Captain Aubrey you follow up with that. And David Weber's Honor Harrington books have been a great deal of fun and it's like "I want to do nautical combat but I can't do it on ocean because you have too learn too much about it". It's /really/ specific on the ocean, like absolutely everything on a ship has it's own names and there's a phenomenal amount of learning to get it done and it is a universe unto itself, only one that actually existed. So I didn't want to go quite that deep, I just wanted broadsides and cool drama and sword fights. So I said "let's do it on airships and I can mix in some fighter plane stuff too," some World War II fighter plane stuff which is to say Star Wars dogfighting, so that was a lot of fun and I had a great time doing it.

4:50 Have you ever had characters that ended up very different to how you originally planned them? Can you have us some examples if so?

*Every character has a role but Butters is the main example of a character who ended up as more than they were intended.*

7:46 Speaking of characters, you left Cat Sith's fate sort of ambiguous. Was that intentional?

Cat Sith's fate? What? I mean obviously- off the ship and into the freezing water.

That's what happened to Harry and Harry's fine.

What's your point?

I was just wondering if Mab kidnapped him or something.

You're just trying to get more information out of me that I haven't given you yet. I see through your charade sir. I'm not gonna tell you the answer to that.

So he's alive.

8:32 Can you give us any information on the next Cinder Spires Book? Like anything at all?

The next Cinder Spires book is called the Olympian Affair. It's the two spires have begun the opening stages of a war, nobody is eager to commit all their forces yet, they're still trying to figure out who they can recruit to their team to help them. The next book is going to be especially concerned with figuring out where Spire Olympia is going to come down on the side of the war. And so we're going to be going off to Spire Olympia it's a diplomatic mission and we'll be peaceful, *audience laughter* because they always are. But we'll get to see a little bit more-we might get to go to the surface a little bit in this one and um, generally speaking we'll get to see more of the world, which is much bigger than Spire Albion. Spire Albion is very much the vanilla part of the world and so now I get to start doing more- you can't just start off in the wackiest part of the world, you've got to start off with the touchstone. And so we've started off there and now we get to start doing progressively more fun stuff, which is to say stuff the characters will not like, so.

9:55 What version of D&D is your preferred and is there a difference between being a DM and a player?

My preferred version of D&D is Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. That said, every version of D&D, except D&D 4, has it's own charm and it's own strengths to it and it's own kind of fun. D&D 4 also had it's own kind of fun it just wasn't the kind that I enjoyed. But I enjoy Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, I enjoy the fact that there's a little bit more personality written into the rules, there are are like skills for characters like Flee! with an exclamation point so it's not just Flee it's Flee! And things like that. I think it gives players a little bit more flexibility as to what they want to do with their characters and where they want to go. I like the world setting and how integrated it is with the rules, you can run D&D on anything in the world but I really enjoy Warhammer.

The difference between GMing and playing for me is I get bored with characters after two weeks and have to switch to a new one because "this character's boring, I've already done everything, I'm tired of that" as a DM I focus on-don't you come over and ask questions. *long sigh* Okay we're going to take lots of time for the rest of you so give everybody else a chance. As a DM I find that my writing has made my DMing worse so a lot of times so a lot of times I'll do my best to cliffhang the ends of sessions, I'll do things that are specifically designed to torment characters and give them a hard time. So it's- I do everything I can to troll my players that way, you know on the psychological level, and I usually have great success in doing so unless my son is playing because his counter-troll game is strong. But anyway so, there you go.

12:17 At what time did Ebenezer know that Harry existed, and does he know that Thomas is his grandson?

Not until it was too late.  Not till after Justin’s death that he was able to find out.  As far as Thomas, Stay Tuned. (copied from Serack)

12:44 Lots of the gods like Mab and Titania, it's implied that they used to be humans who achieved immortality through something like a Dark Hallow. Their immortal identities, are these people in fiction or fact that we would actually know who they are?

Some of them you would know who they are because some of them are historical people that have done things. Not all of them because a lot of times the people who get things done are not the people whose names you know. It's like some of the most critical events in the world-the guys who recovered the Enigma machine in WWII, do you know their names off-hand? You know Winston Churchill you know Eisenhower you know names like that, you know Patton's name. But the guys who turned the course of the war for the entire planet, they're not as well known. You could probably go find out but they're not the names that are on everybody's lips and in every textbook and it's the same thing with supernatural history the way I write it. Some of the people are famous some of them not so much, and not all of them were human at one time. Mab and Titania were but not everyone.

14:18 Within each of your novel series, writers put something of themselves in a lot of characters and they're all your children and you have a way of bringing them to where they are but which of the characters have you put most of yourself into? If you were to cast yourself in these universes, which character would you be?

Oh god, that's not even a fair question because if I was going to cast myself I'd be a White Court vampire that'd be fun. *audience laughter* As far as the characters that are most like me, I don't know, I just write these people. That's a deep question, I don't get into that, which is something that's well reflected in Dresden, he doesn't do that introspection thing a lot.

Yeah you have nothing in common with that guy.

*puts on accent* Shut up. Just shut up. *audience laughter*

I don't know I don't really think of that I try to build them and make them their own people and they're a lot like me and I can't help that because I'm the only person I know how to be and so, I just do my best to envision. The characters who are most like me... probably a lot of the little ones on the side, I like Lamar the EMT who knows that weird things are happening in Chicago and has shown up in a couple of books now and wants nothing to do with any of it. He's like "oh this is weird stuff? Nope, I'm outta here", that's me, that guy, right there, he's me.

16:13 So we talk a lot about humans but I actually have question about our favourite canine, so where did you get the idea for Mouse and why did you bring him in as such a major part of the story?

Okay, in the first place, the reason to give Harry some kind of guardian. His world was getting progressively more dangerous and I wanted it to be believable that he could survive the rest of the year when he wasn't on screen. So I wanted him to have this protector figure. And the second reason was because we got a dog, and it had been a long time since we had a dog in the family and I had forgotten how awesome it was, and Mouse is the dog my dog, who I lost last year, is the dog my dog thought he was. Now my dog was a Bichon Frise he was about this big but he was convinced he was a mighty warrior protector spirit. And to his credit, he saved my kid from a bear when he was a puppy, he fought a coyote when he was thirteen years old and broke a tooth off on it and got away. The dog was all but blind and deaf and I can only assume that somewhere out there there's a coyote limping and going "that bunny was completely unreasonable". But that's where Mouse came from and then basically because I had my dog, my dog was my patron writing spirit so whenever I was writing I'd be stretched out on the couch with a laptop and the dog would be right there between my ankles, that was his job. So yeah, I wrote my dog into that and that was the dog my dog thought he was, I never had the heart to tell him he was just a little French dog, I just didn't. I was pretty sure he was convinced he was a Rottweiler and it stayed that way. But he was able to pass on some of his dogging to my sister's dog, she got a Bichon Frise named Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is afraid of the dark. But my dog would boldly go out into the darkness where who knows what was and so Buffy would eventually learn "oh okay that's alright we can do that". And so he passed on his dog awesomeness to several other dogs so we're doing well.

18:38 Alright you.

So I have a two part question.

*sigh*

About Mirror Mirror.

Okay.

So is alternate universe Harry going to be like Pepsi, McDonalds, hockey stick, jeep.

Oh my god.

And obviously the hat. I mean the hat's canon anyway.

Thank you everyone. Panel's over.

Hey, that's only the first part.

Okay, you did say it was a two part question, please ask.

Are we going to get to see Susan wielding Amoracchius again?

Oh my gosh, that is such an inside joke, go away.

*recap of Mirror Mirror stuff from here*

20:22 So you put your characters through these absolutely torturous situations and it takes a really twisted GRRM kind of mind to really do these things to your characters.

Hey now hey now. Please continue.

How do you reconcile doing that to those characters with the fact that you are actually a nice guy?

I get no respect. I'm not actually a nice guy is the answer. I play one at conventions. That's what nobody understands, it's not that I enjoy torturing the characters, it's that I enjoy torturing all of you. But if I do it in real life they'll lock me away so this is the best I can do, I torture you guys in effigy. But yeah, I'm just gonna say it right now for anyone who wants to be a writer, you don't have to be a sadist to be a writer, I mean it's not required but... it helps a lot. Or at least an evangelical masochist, one of the two.

21:34 So at the end of Proven Guilty, when Molly became Harry's apprentice, she was under the Doom of Damocles. She's now the Winter Lady. Is she still under the Doom of Damocles?

*laughs* Yeah I'd like to see the White Council try and pull that. I'd like to see Mab's poker face on that one. You see the thing is, the White Council has all kinds of power, they really do, they can do all kinds of things in the world but at the end of the day, nobody wants to be the one to walk up to Mab and say "there's this little legal matter we need to clear up." Because nobody wants to be the one to cross Mab, they know she's dangerous and not only that she's /older/ than all the White Council and essentially it's a gerontocracy, the older you get, the more powerful you get as a wizard (ties in nicely with the Harry = 6 foot 5 10 year old one, good to have confirmation they also get stronger) and they all know she's been around longer than any of them. So nobody wants to be the one to say "well you know, I've been cruising along for three hundred and forty years here, maybe I'll just try my luck against Mab." *audience laughter* There isn't a wizard who thinks like that.

Except Harry.

Yeah Harry's stupid. He is-he has not got a rational perspective on the universe and that's just a fact.

22:59 You've opened up the Dresden world for an RPG, is there any thought of opening Codex Alera for one as well?

Yeah I'd be fine with that, I mean I'd be happy too if you want to go play there, if you just want your Codex Alera game and play it there please do. Have fun. That's kind of the whole point of the project, have fun, that's what we're doing.

23:22 Can you give some insights into when you're going to kill a character off? Do you make characters specifically knowing that I need someone to kill at this point and introduce them early on or does the story set something up and you realize it would make a lot of sense if this character died? What's your process for that?

Yes. Yeah there are characters that I've set up from the very beginning, it is not their fate to survive the story. There are characters who occasionally come along and I go "you know what? It's your time, look at this situation I've written, yeah, I didn't plan it either but there it is, you're outta here."

Are there characters that survived their original fate of getting killed off?

Yeah Butters did. I was gonna have Butters die horribly at one point. But as it was I was like "you know what I can find another use for you", polka will never die, not yet. You're welcome, see, I want to torture all of you.

24:37 So in regards to Molly and the process that she’s been going through and growing up and such and now she’s the winter lady… I’m kind of interested in… it’s kind of two fold.  How long has it been since a mortal has become that level of a farie and what kinds of repercussions or changes do you think that we are going to see?

Well it’s been a while since there was a pure mortal… I mean technically Maeve and Sarissa are pure mortals and are only influenced by the mantle so… they were first generation half fae, but… As far as Molly being pure mortal… is she really any more is sort of the question and sort of what we are dealing with.  I don’t know if you’ve read your short story yet.

It’s not out yet

It’s not out yet?  Oh, Oh, ok, Well you should read that, definitely. It’s called Cold Case and it's Molly off on her first mission as Winter Lady where she finds out what the Winter Lady and what her purpose in the cosmos is essentially, and Molly gets to find it out the hard way because that's how I do it to everybody. But that's the Molly and Ramirez teamup short story. That is in an anthology, I think that is in Shawn Speakman's Un-something anthology.

26:35 So wizards and technology don't get along well, have you destroyed many computers?

*laughs* Man I burn out a laptop in nine to ten months, that's about how long the average laptop lasts me. And that's not playing video games on it that's just working, browsing and researching. Yeah I've got big dumb think fingers and when I type I type like *thumpthumpthumpthump* like that. So I start wearing the keys out and then it starts overheating because it's always on my lap on a couch somewhere and just sort of generally speaking I go through those things fast. I'm really terrible with any kind of machinery that requires regular maintenance so I'm trying to get better about that because it seems like the adult thing to do. But I have destroyed so many lawnmowers by just not noticing that chain in the yard, that kind of thing. Me and machinery have been the best of friends, I had a chainsaw for a while, I survived that. And now I use axes because they're much more reliable.

Shadowed Souls (anthology with Cold Case).

That's the name of the one that I did, I thought it was the Butters story in that one, the Butters story went to Shawn. Yeah that's the Shadowed Souls anthology, it's about mixed people-the general idea is to have it be about people who are essentially not really pure heroes anymore so that's why I put Molly in there. And that will be out November 1st you'll get to see Molly on her first mission as Winter Lady and see what her job is, I wasn't entirely sure what her job was until I got done writing it and then I was like "golly I am a sadist" so.

28:56 Going back to that question about Molly and the Doom of Damocles, what was the White Council's reaction when they found out that Harry, the black sheep, and then his apprentice are now like the two most powerful people in the Winter Court?

And not only that, he's also in charge of the damned island full of monsters *said while pointing down*, he's also taken over monster island what do you think their reaction is? You look at Harry from the exterior, oh my gosh he's the new dark lord, that's the new Voldemort, he is on the way. And not only that but he's secured his position with Mab now so you can't cross him without crossing Mab as well, not only that but his apprentice is even more highly placed than that so he's trained the next person up from him in the chain of command over in Winter, not only that but he's obviously got some kind of relationship with the new Summer Lady and also the current Summer Knight, he's forming this group of people who share information over this internet that wizards can't access, so he's got this spy network forming, are you kidding, he's the most dangerous man on the planet.

So they're crapping their pants.

Yeah exactly. It's not as much that as "yeah okay we're going to have to bump him up as a threat, bump him up again, bump him up a-it doesn't go any higher? Okay we're going to have to start taking action on this one" so.

Is he still part of the White Council?

Technically. Technically because the White Council subscribes to the "keep your friends close and keep your enemies closer" theory of things. And Harry doesn't really realise any of that because he's just stumbling along through his life doing stuff, but anybody who's looking at it from the outside are you kidding they've got to be flipping out right now.

30:56 There are a couple of things from way back that I'm wondering if we'll ever see again, like for instance a mention of the Jade Court of vampires or in the very first story that little girl Faith Astor should be in her twenties by now (Harry better not be horny for her or it'll be a shitstorm), are we ever going to see her again?

Yes, I wrote her to be the femme fatale that walks in to kick off the big apocalyptic trilogy at the end.

I liked her.

I'm lazy man, I don't like to write things I'm not gonna use later. I don't know how much Jade Court we're gonna see because they're written to be this extreme isolationist faction, by which I mean they like staying isolated. So the Jade Court, they remain mostly in the Yangtze river valley in China, they don't even call it China because they aren't sure if this whole China thing is gonna work out yet, as far as they're concerned it's still Chin, this whole unified kingdoms thing? Maybe it was a good idea, there hasn't been enough time to tell, only four thousand years. We might see some of their agents later on but probably not them themselves they're busy being celestial over where they are so.

Thank you.

32:16 When are you planning to have Michael and Charity find out about Molly?

*You've probably read this scene so skip*

32:54 So more of your life, what brought you to the University of Oklahoma?

A girl. My ex, Shannon, was going to OU and I thought that was a fine idea being a teen at the time. At the time they were buying national merit scholars, that's the only word for it, they were buying national merit scholars if you went you got a full ride and two thousand dollars a semester, just throwing around money. So I showed up there and was in the honours dorm for a while and-cause they were giving me lots of money so, that seemed like a much better idea than paying other people lots of money to go to school, somebody paying me? Yeah I'll do that. Thank goodness for standardised tests I've always been good at those.

Boomer.

Boomer sooner *rolls eyes* I could never get behind boomer sooner because of the football players, actually dealing with football players on the campus was- they were the kind of guys who would stand so they'd take up three urinals and they didn't really think anything of it that was just kind of who there were. But ..

34:07 Michael has kind of been an interesting perspective into the world and I was wondering, what was your inspiration for Michael?

The Sheep Farmer’s Daughter Series by Elizabeth Moon.  It’s one of the better Paladin series I’ve ever read.  And I’m like, You know what?  I wanna do a paladin, I want to do somebody who is righteous, not self-righteous.  Someone who walks the walk instead of talking the talk.  And so I wanted to drop Michael in as someone who was very near a paragon of Christian and Catholic ideals… Not of Christian and Catholic Dogma, and that’s where that character came from.  Someone who was very close to being a really, really good human being, and I wanted him to be there, especially as a contrast to Dresden because Dresden is always messing around in these murky areas and I wanted somebody for whom that was not an issue.  Going into the murk has never been an issue for Michael because he’s a different person from where he stands and the way he looks at the universe that is not what he is going to do.  But he’s also never going to be the guy who has to make the hard horrible choices that Harry sometimes has to.  And the question is, is he avoiding responsibility, or does his belief allow him to create other options that aren’t horrible choices?  How does that work?  I don’t know.  I wanted to write a story about it, maybe I could figure something out.  But yah, Michael is the guy that I wish I was, the guy that I think a lot of people wish they were. (copied from Serack)

36:02 So you mentioned in one of the books that Molly has kind of an eight figure account in her bank account right now.

Yes.

Does Harry get paid for being the Winter Knight or is that not a thing?

Are you kidding? No no he can go ask for things. Harry already did get paid for being the Winter Knight by being given a bunch of power. The Sidhe are hyper-focused on obligation and keeping the sheets balanced, especially Winter. In Summer you can get a little bit more emotional and do some nice things and not hold anyone accountable for it but in Winter everyone accounts for everything. So sure they could pay Harry but he'd have to go live on - and be working shifts and doing things on their time and so on. As it is Mab's just made a deal "When I need you, you show up." He's kind of a consultant now and he's been paid in power. Plus he reaps a bunch of side indirect benefits of being Mab's strong guy; such as the White Council not just obliterating him. "That would be declaring a war, can't really do that, damn it, we should have killed this guy when we had the chance" that's what a lot of people on the White Council are thinking, even the people who kind of like him, "you know what, maybe we should have killed this guy when we had a chance", they've seen too many bad wizards come along. Everybody who is worried about Harry is looking at him and thinking "that's Kemmler again and it's just a matter of time before he starts digging into bad things, you saw what he did with the dinosaur" so. But yeah, they're not gonna pay him that would be too easy for Harry. Harry's the Charlie Brown of urban fantasy, he gets to open his treat bag and go "I got a rock".

38:00 Have you had a chance to play the Dresden Files Cooperative Card game yet?

*he hasn't had a chance to play and can't play DF RPG*

38:56 What do you think about writing dystopian futures?

Dystopian futures... I think if you really want to write a dystopian future try and write a utopian future and then you get a dystopian future, just that you may not realise that you have. Dystopian futures, they're fun. *shrugs* Really that's all about "we're human beings how can we screw up a perfectly good future?" because it's just a matter of how we're gonna do it, it's not a question of when or if. Things are getting better and we're doing pretty good overall and we're gonna screw things up as we go along the way, I guess we'll see what happens (said in 2016, a more innocent time).

As far as general dystopia goes, I can get behind it. Because there's always going to be things that need to be righted, need to be fixed. I'm not somebody who believes that the Federation is going to happen, I mean it sounds like a great idea but I think we could get there and find out what a terrible idea it was., it would come along to bite us later just because that's the nature of people. Really the best we can do is hopefully to leave each other alone a lot and as long as we're not walking on each other's toes then we just kind of go do our own thing without starting wars over it then we should be okay. That seems to be a reasonable goal "you know what leave me alone" "yeah okay" that would work out.

So you're not going to put anybody into a big Colosseum and make them battle.

Like I haven't done that already. I probably won't do it with children... oh god yes I will. Yeah one of the projects that is going to be coming out sometime in the future, in the mid-long term is going to be Maggie Dresden goes to school. She's gonna go to St Mark's Academy for the Gifted and Talented which Harry is gonna try and get them to rename Resourceful and Talented and they won't. But it's where a bunch of the supernatural kids go to school, kind of the scions of the area and there's an unspoken rule in place "we let the kids sort things out themselves, we don't get involved in the kids' problems as long as nobody dies the kids sort it out".

*just a general recap of the kid culture stuff from here*

42:42 A little while ago you were talking about Michael being a paladin and in one of the recent books you had Uriel bestow his power on Michael and Uriel said, “if you screw up with this, I will fall.”  Is that what happened to any of the Denarians?

The Denarians were all either angels who sided with Lucifer, or they were angels who did not get off the fence… or did not get off the fence in a timely enough fashion.  Lasciel was one of those angels who tried to play both sides off the middle and it did not work out for her after the angel war.  Which makes her more bitter because her schemes fell apart.  She was pretty confident about those schemes.  But yeah the Denarians are all angels who either sided with Lucifer during the rebellion or were sort of cast out after, there was this whole crew of angels who were like, “well you know what, you deserted from this combat or you fled this battle and you're gone as well.”  And they might not have been cast into the lake of fire but they wound up in other places. (copied from Serack)

43:55 What was your inspiration for Bob and was he always going to be into porn?

*you can probably recite this one off by heart if you're reading these transcripts*

45:36 Speaking of anxiety issues, given the number of huge furballs that Harry has been in that rival the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of the Bulge together in five minutes, will Harry ever suffer from PTSD?

Oh god he suffers terribly from it. It's just one of those things that he's denying and blocking out, I mean, he's had bad things happen to him. But he's also somebody who is very focused on other people so he keeps trying to soldier on and that's not something you can do indefinitely. We'll get to that as well but I mean, Dresden's got /issues/. *puts on French accent* He might have, as you Americans say, issues.*end accent* And that is stuff that he will have to confront eventually because you can't get away from that eventually you can't sustain it anymore.

46:32 So you said the fallen angels, they all followed Lucifer in this world too, so does does Lucifer have his own coin? And will he make an appearance?
No, are you kidding?  He’s the [British accent] prince of $%&#@ darkness.[/British accent] no that doesn’t happen.  No that was the deal, better to rule in hell than serve in heaven, and he does rule in hell, he’s not stuck in somebody's coin.  We will get to see him on stage later, that’s not until the big trilogy.  He’s freaking Satan, you can’t get any worse. (copied from Serack)

47:05 Will we see Billy or Jenny Sells again?

Let me think that’s way back… 

Victor and Monica Sells’ kids.

Oh those two, oh God.  Um.. Maybe… that could well be… Oh my gosh…  I'd forgotten them, they were on a page or notes somewhere and now you’ve reminded me… *expression of painful consideration* I’m going to have to think about this. Yeah, uh, thank you for that question.  I’ll work on it.  Oh my God we will… That has to happen now.  I mean they aren’t going to have a different view of Harry than the White Council does as far as they're concerned. (copied from Serack)

48:09 So we all remember the first Dresden Files television show and I'm wondering-

I like the way you phrase that. The "first" Dresden Files show, positive energy.

So, putting out positive energy, do you think there is a possibility of getting a better version of the Dresden Files tv show?

*just a recap of the maybes*

50:55 You've kind of introduced the Venatori and that side of and the thought process of gods and powerful beings going kind of extinct if they're not known, is there any chance we're going to see more of that side of-I know Harry can't be involved because of how it's written.

Oh the gods haven't gone extinct they're just doing other stuff that clears a better profit than being gods, because that's a pain. You've got to listen to worshippers all the time, you've got to answer prayers, make appearances, there's PR to think about... You can't hire other people to do it for you, it's not at all like being a rock star where you can hire other people to do that stuff for you and you can always be on the road and people scream and worship you and throw their daughters at you and all kinds of things like that. Sports stars, wrestlers, yeah like I've said we've still got the professional wrestling one to go so.

51:59 I know you probably can't give a very specific answer about this, but will we ever see what is inside Harry's soul that terrifies basically everyone that he meets when he soulgazes somebody?

I don't know can you see inside your own? How do you get the measure of your own soul except by looking at what's around you? And yeah other people do flip out when they see him but also look at the world around Harry and the people in his life, what does that reflection say about him? Harry's surrounded by people who used to be victims and  are now out protecting people. He's surrounded by folks who at some point in their life were scared and horrified and didn't know what to do and are now knowledgeable and working together and generally doing more positive things with their life, hopefully as a result of what he's been doing in some ways. Or they're dead. You know, some of them died bravely, others not so much. But how can you tell what's the state of your own soul? I guess excessive navel gazing can probably reveal something, I don't trust that though, people are very good at lying especially to themselves.

53:27 A much simpler question, what's your favorite line from each of your three series'?

Um, from the Dresden Files my favourite line is "the building was on fire and it wasn't my fault", that's been my strongest opening I'm very proud of that craftwise.  Running along through a burning building carrying a box of puppies with flying demon monkeys throwing burning poo at him, Harry Dresden ladies and gentlemen. From Alera, I don't know, I'd have to think about that one, I don't know. Probably some dialogue from the side characters, I enjoyed that stuff "look at Mandos he knows how to go out with style, who wants style? I'll strangle you with your best silk shirt" you know like. From the Cinder Spires, it's "If there are any problems I need you to over, around, under or through them" "I'm not sure I know how to do that" "I'm not sure you know how to do anything else", that's my favourite bit from that so far. Either that or some of the cat dialogue because they're so easy to steal scenes with. You know, Rowl lecturing Bridget about climbing a rope while he's riding on her shoulders all the way up. Rowl checks in at thirty pounds so.. him bitching at Bridget about climbing ropes is "it's perfectly simple how you climb a rope, just climb it" you know, like that. But cats get to be jerks and get away with it because they're adorable.

55:13 So I heard you wrote a short story for Larry Correia's Monster Hunter anthology, what was it like writing in a universe not your own?

Tremendous fun. I wrote a short story about the janitors at Monster Hunter International headquarters in Cazador. So there's all these epic monster-huntery Cthulhu gods and stuff, you know, werewolves and Frankenstein monsters and whatnot around, you know all these huge iconic and epic folks and I wrote about the janitor. So I like to think of it as the Xander episode of Monster Hunter International but it's great, it's called Small Problems and I had a tremendous amount of fun writing it, it's one of the better short stories I've written I think. I enjoyed it a lot and Larry got plenty of giggles out of it and I got to have lots of the stars of Avengers come in and make cameos in Agents of Shield, that was the story that I was doing so.

56:22 So I have trouble maintaining continuity in a thousand word short story, you're fifteen books in, do you find yourself going "oh crap I should have done something differently four books ago" and how do you deal with that?

When you should have done something differently four books ago and you need to change it? You get creative because you can't change it, the readers already have it it's already in the readers' head. And the readers only get the one story. And having continuity issues as a writer is understandable because as a writer you write something, you write another draft, you get somebody to read it, you write another draft, you write some more, an editor sees it, write it again, get a copy editor, write it again, and then here comes the final draft, you go through that. So by the time you're done with the book, by the time I'm done with the book I've got seven or eight slightly different versions of the same book in my head. And not only that but all that gets conflated with all the versions of the book that I could have written and didn't because I made different choices for whatever reason when I was telling the story. For example in the Dresden Files in Changes Harry could have gone one of three ways, he could have gone Darkhallow, he could have gone agent of Mab or he could have gone Lasciel's coin and it would have changed the story dramatically depending on which way he went and I wasn't sure which one he was going to choose until he got there. So in my head the Dresden Files is like this cloud of parallel realities that are going along which is why it's gonna be really easy to write Mirror Mirror because I already have all these parallel realities in my head anyway and this is just going to be one of them that is one choice different than the main line Dresden Files which I always love doing, changing one little thing and seeing-following the chain of consequence of that choice. Great fun if you're into that sort of thing.

Train of thought derailed, back to continuity, I employ beta readers and they help a lot, a couple of the beta readers have tremendous brains for continuity I mean unreal Hermione level brains for continuity that you just look at them and go "freak". And the wider fan communities help me out now, because for example the Dresden Files roleplaying game has now provided me with a reference that I can go look at when I need to refresh information I've forgotten, or "how many kids do the Carpenters have again? Let me go look up the Dresden Files wiki oh here they all are in order of ages, awesome, now I know it again." So I cheat a lot is how you do it. But if you're not fortunate enough to be able to cheat a lot or have access to people with freakish brains then you've got to take copious notes which I also have and you've got to be able to reference them to some degree and go "oh I remember this". So there you go that's how you handle continuity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N-5X2wf8JM

[TheCuriousFan]

Might as well go for the one that announced Twelve Months as well since the Barnes and Noble one is still in deleted limbo and the other podcast q&a hasn't materialised.

...Thank you Jim, for breaking the curse of the Billy Goat.

You're welcome.

It's the four year anniversary of the day the Cubs made the world series.

That's true, that's true. Yeah I mean, actually it was the Cubs that did it and the Dresden Files world had to honour it because there had to be an explanation for it in the Dresden Files world. Because it was the king of the Tylwyth Teg who had enacted the curse, so once it was destroyed it was like "oh well I wonder what happened to him? Ohhhhh."

Ohhhh. That curse did not end well for him.

No, no it didn't.

Ken is a long time Cubs fan from before the Dresden Files so...

So you're a masochist.

Oh yeah. I was very long suffering.

I see I see. Yeah the Cubbies are Harry's favourite team because he vibes with them.

A lot moreso than the White Sox that's for sure.

Yeah a lot more than the White Sox yep.

Well I wanted to start with a question that has nothing to do with the books at all but has everything to do with you.

Okay.

What is the weirdest place you have ever met a fan? And please tell me it wasn't in a bathroom in a bar.

It has been there. Not the weirdest place... I was like in a random store in Australia once and had the clerk behind the counter just get all of a sudden wide-eyed *puts on awful Australian accent* You're Jim Butcha, I read all your books, you're amazing *end accent*. That was a little unexpected in a 7-11. Normally I'm only famous at conventions and inside bookstores, which I think is like the perfect level of famous to have, it's famous enough that you can feel nice but not so famous you have to hide in your house because people recognise you. It's not Hollywood famous, it's just right.

Well in that case congratulations, and it sounds like even in Australia, at a 7-11 you said?

Yeah. Just a random D&D nerd working his shift, there you go.

So do you play a lot of D&D or did you when you were younger?

*7:00 to 8:50, he's getting into 5th ed, likes Warhammer Fantasy roleplaying game, Chill is a tabletop game with horror rules, game with it ended up Black Company-esque*

That's on Harry's bookshelf actually. On that note I'm gonna pretend that I just spun the wheel of tangents *does routine act*. Circlebreaker on Discord actually asked "the Black Company has been sighted among Harry's bookshelves in one of the short stories but what are some of Harry's other favourites that would line his shelves"?

Harry likes the Drizzt Do'urden books, any book with Drizzt in it he likes.

Really? Okay.

The guy who is like an outcast from his own society but is trying to do the best he can, making friends as best he can along the way, yeah Harry likes those books.

Makes sense. Being D&D books so...

Yeah they're D&D books but he's like "I don't care, I'm gonna enjoy this". Let's see, he likes Heinlein, Asimov, he's really kind of an intellectual reader in a lot of ways, his D&D books are his guilty pleasure. But he likes Heinlein and Asimov, he likes Rothfuss okay, Sanderson he likes but thinks he's a little bit naïve (fuck that ï)

*laughter*That's well put.

Oh I have tremendous respect for Brandon, when my son wanted to learn more about writing other than just from me I said "go listen to what Brandon Sanderson has to say". Let me think what else, he likes the Temeraire books because they're mixed with history and they also have magic and weird things so that appeals to him. Lemme think, oh and Nine Princes In Amber, the Amber series, he loves that.

I was just gonna ask because I know that's on your shelf.

Yeah it's what I'm reading right now. I'm rereading that and oh my god I had no idea how hard that series influenced my writing. I mean it shouldn't come as a surprise I was playing on Ambermush like 6-8 hours a day while I was writing the whole first book, but yeah it was really influential.

Very cool, that's one I want to get into, we need to get into more Zelazny books.

Yeah he was just a great sword and pistol writer, you know, his characters are the kind of guys to show up to a fight with a sword and pistol just in case. Not quite sure what fight this is, maybe it's science fiction, maybe it's fantasy, but I figure a sword and pistol will do me good, that's sort of how they wound up operating and that was a big influence on Dresden.

Sounds like something that we will have to pick up then, sounds like that'll be on the blue team list for the near future. The internet makes research easy today but I seem to remember you saying that when you wrote Storm Front that you had not spent much time in Chicago.

No time in Chicago. I didn't actually get to go to Chicago until Dead Beat. That was when I started selling my second series and actually started making enough money that we could have food and so at that point I thought "maybe I should go to Chicago and look around".

So since you've had the opportunity to do that, what do Chicagoans think of Harry as their professional wizard? Or are they mostly oblivious as they should be?

Mostly oblivious. The ones that do know about him seem to like him a lot. They're less sure about me because I get things like parking lots around stadiums wrong. Who builds a stadium without a parking lot? Chicago.

In fairness that stadium's been there since before cars, that ballpark.

I see no reason why I should cut them that slack, that's lame reasoning.

Fair enough.

Except for SWAT, I actually had a guy come up to me in Chicago and say "I'm a SWAT commander, I was reading this short story you did with the hostage situation on top of a specific building. And I'm just wondering who you talked to about that to set that up, because if they're local we kind of want to keep track of them so." I said "dude I used Google Maps and my knowledge of Call of Duty and worked it out", and the guy goes "Google Maps?" and I said "yeah it's three dimensional you can kind of zoom in and see things from different angles, see where the lights are, figure out where the cones are going to be" and the guy just goes "ugh, god I hate the internet". He was up on towards retirement you know and he seemed to be one of the coordinator guys back at the office, he'd come to talk to me.

Interesting. Seriously, your level of research in these books is off the charts. And I'm not just talking about the geography of Chicago, your knowledge, swordfighting, of hand to hand stuff, of different magical mythologies and so on, you have got to be a voracious researcher of this stuff.

I don't know if I research so much as I do a lot of reading and I kind of am addicted to stories and so I like picking up stories that I haven't seen before and that come from different places. It's so interesting when you start getting out among people who were not connected to European society, their idea of a story is a very different one. China has a very different idea of a story after five thousand years of telling stories than America does after two hundred years of telling stories. Especially the written ones, the traditional ones, the ones that are long term in the culture, you know. And it shows you- I think it's a very good lens to show you how different people are, how they think about things and how they-their experience and the experience of their culture and their ancestry has changed them. And also that stories serve a different purpose in other cultures than they do in Europe culture, our stories all came from the Greek tradition, the idea of this catharsis of emotion, that's not something that's attached to stories in other places.

So anyway I've done a lot of reading and by the time you've gone through "Wow Russians had very different ideas of faeries than Germans did and the Norse did and the French did etcetera. How am I gonna incorporate all of this?" And so you have to think about it and work on it. My head is just a place that's full of weird stories. Especially the Native American ones, Native American stories are awesome because they don't have to make any sense at all and most of them are about Coyote or Raven and he was never very reliable anyways so... the story doesn't have to go in a predictable or reasonable direction. Especially Coyote stories, they're like "Coyote had a great idea one day", it's like "everything's going to go wrong, keep going."

Does that-that kind of lends a little with some of the pop culture references that you make with Roadrunner and Wile Coyote, super genius and so on.

Gosh yeah. Well I watched way too many cartoons when I was a kid and I think cartoons have influenced us all way more than we realise. You guys have seen Fury Road, right? That's basically an hour and a half long Roadrunner cartoon. It's even flat, first they're going this way, then they're going that way.

Very true, very true. So one of the things that has always interested me when we talk about magic systems and the worlds that are created around them, are the limitations. Because our world is the world that you're writing in and you've created or accessed a magic system that has some pretty interesting limitations to it. I always find myself wondering what's the next limitation Harry's gonna run into? When we first met him it was "oh I can only do so much if I've got" I saw the smile. Can you tell us anything about what's coming?

Yeah okay. Originally the whole plan was for twenty books and a big old trilogy to kind of capstone things at the end. Because I've had to split this book into two books and because I've been looking back over the course of the history of the story I'm gonna have to add another book in. I've gotta write, it's gonna a take a novel to deal with the aftermath of what happened in Battle Ground. I think the next novel is gonna be called Twelve Months and it's just gonna be about Dresden-well it's gonna be about more than that because it's a Dresden Files book with the usual insanity but the actual story is Dresden coping with all the damage he's taken over the years. You know that as a writer I'm not a fade to black guy in the Dresden Files, it doesn't happen very often, but it has happened. And every time I've the fade to black and that has happened, for the most part, it fades because Harry's pulling the curtain, because he doesn't share the really bad things with anyone, not even the reader. There are /bad/ things that have happened to Dresden and when bad things happen to you it's cumulative, it adds up. If you don't face it and deal with it it keeps adding up and adding up until it starts causing you psychological problems and difficulties with your friends and issues with your family. If you're out there in the middle of it you've got to be dealing with it, and he hasn't been. And we're gonna have a book about why, and the effects of the things that have happened over the years and the cumulative effects and how you deal with them and get over them.

Especially now that he's a father, that makes it especially emotionally charged.

Yeah he can't afford to just sit somewhere and feel sorry for himself or to drive himself to the brink of exhaustion and starvation trying to find a solution to his problems. He can't do that anymore, he's a grown-up, he's got a lot of things he's handling. And yeah, Maggie's the big one, kids change everything. If you've got a kid there waiting for you you can't be the guy that's sitting on the floor wailing poor me, that's not gonna work.

It's something we've covered in several episodes, how Harry takes all the guilt on himself and how that's not healthy. To see you say that we need something to deal with it, is that something that's been in the works for a long time or is that something that's come across organically kind of as you've written through seventeen books?

No, I wasn't planning to do a book about trauma and dealing with it, on account of I was busy not dealing with any of my trauma. But yeah when you start learning about it it's like "hey, this is something people need to know." And the idea's gonna be "look, I'm gonna show Dresden coping" and coping isn't always a particularly pretty thing or a noble thing. Nobody's pretty when they're in pain but it happens to all of us at some time or another, horrible things come along. And you've gotta deal with it and how do you deal with it. So partly this next book is going to be showing Harry Dresden figuring out how to deal with things that are not slobbery monsters trying to chew his face off, those he can manage, he's really good with those, that's doable no problem. All these other issues are a different thing and..

And he has a wedding to prepare for.

Yeah, no kidding.

*listener wheel skit* This one goes to Math Nut, who asks "if you were able, Mr Butcher, which other writer would you do a collaboration with ala Pratchett and Gaiman?

It would have to be somebody I hated. I wouldn't wish me on the writers that I like as friends, I'm terrible in a group setting, it is not my forte.

So I guess that Jim Butcher/Larry Correia collaboration is out.

Probably yeah. Although Larry did say that I could do a crossover. One of these days I'm going to do a crossover story that's gonna be the Denarians attacking the headquarters at Cazador.

Please do that.

Yeah that'll be fun.

I have one more collaboration I watched to pitch-one more crossover. Harry Dresden/Anita Blake.

Why not? I like Laura Hamilton.

I know you and Laura are friends.

Anita would beat Harry up, I mean Harry would just be like "okay, that's fine, alright, no that's okay no thank you I kinda have a fiancé" that would be Harry. You know, tripping through Anita Blake land. But the monsters are weirder there too. That would be the problem with the crossover with Larry, my god, how much puff would Harry Dresden be worth? Jesus Christ, he's an eight or nine figure target for puff based on the rules that Larry's world is running by.

I would buy that.

Well Larry's wizards are all "I made a deal with somebody" wizards, mostly you deal with warlocks in Larry's world, not with the straight-up spellcasters, I think that gives Harry a lot more-Harry's got a tremendous potential for destruction so as far as puff goes he's up there.

So when did you know you had something special in your hands with Harry Dresden? What was that moment like when you discovered it?

*23:45 to 25:45 is a repeat of the Summer Knight Dragoncon talk*

This leads into a question that, if it's alright Todd, I'd like to jump in and ask.

That's okay.

Something that I get a lot from our listeners and from other people that I talk to, they'll recommend the Dresden Files and they'll often say the first three books are good but wait until you get to Summer Knight, book for is when it really kicks off. How do you feel about those first three books that as you say, you kind of took off once book four hit, how do you feel now about those first three books? Do you feel they still hold up for you and do you enjoy them?

*25:45 to 28:50 repeat that they're the best he could have done at the time since they were written when he was new, Storm Front was literally a class project and that the plan is being stuck to religiously with the exception of adding BG and TM*

Has there been a book that has been particularly difficult for you to write in the Dresden series?

Ghost Story. Ghost Story was hard.

What made it hard for you?

It was mostly about my suicide attempt.

Oh.

Now we're getting somewhere, wow.

I tend to take my real life and use it with things, actually, all I'm doing is practicing therapy and I'm charging you all.

*laughter* Happy to pay for your therapy.

Yeah it was about, in the wake of it, thinking my way through all the various consequences that I hadn't been able to think of when I was in crisis. You know when you're in crisis you don't think so good, and so Ghost Story was in some ways a way for me to say "hey Clarence, this is what you would have given up, these are the things you would have lost and these are the people who would have been hurt and these are all the other things that would have happened at that point in the past if you'd been better at suiciding." And it's a reason for you to put things in order, to step back and look at your life and stack it in order, but yeah I mean, I wanted to write a book about the complications of death and what it does to the people around you, and you know, all of us, we're not replaceable. I mean Sanderson gets that one right, yeah Dresden might think he's a little naïve but he thinks Sanderson got that one right. Human lives are of infinite value to take any other stance is to start becoming a monster.

And I know that when we went through Ghost Story, I had taken my wife and daughter on a trip up to Idaho, one of the mountain areas of Idaho, and we were spending some time with family, and I would go on long with my-I listen to the books, I listened to James Marsters read your material. Which has been a very good fit for me otherwise I just run out of time in a day. I would leave and listen and then I would come back, my daughter attempted to take her life earlier this year and as I read through Ghost Story and heard some of the things that Harry was dealing with, about memories and the power memory has, I found myself thinking about new ways to talk to my daughter about those issues, I had no idea that that was where it came from for you, but I want to thank you for that because it has made a difference for us, it also caused me to cry a lot during that trip by the way.

And every episode that you recorded after that.

Yeah let's be honest, if there's one of us that is a little too in touch with his emotions in our team it's probably me.

Let's give Jim a little bit of credit for all of the punching and all of the action and all of the-Harry's a simple guy kind of writing which is fantastic, you managed to put really powerful emotions into every single story as evidenced by Todd who cries at every single discussion.

I do, I do. Especially when we're talking about the relationship between Michael and Harry. You said that a lot of the things that you write about come from you, do you have a Michael in your life?

No, I did. But he passed when I was about twenty one.

That relationship with Harry, that relationship that we have been able to watch as we've read through those books has been one that we in the Legendarium have continued to come back to to say "boy it's a good thing that Harry's got Michael otherwise what kind of a monster could he possibly be?" And it has caused all of at times to reflect upon the way that we influence other people so thank you for that, I know for me, as much as I'd love to say I try to be more like Harry I honestly try "gee what would Michael do in some of these situations?". Because Harry just blows stuff up but Michael seems like he might just take a little bit of time before he blows things up.

Oh sure, yeah. It's because of the difference of their personal philosophies. Harry Dresden is very focused on protecting the innocent because there's been times when he was innocent and had no one to protect him, that's something he focuses on and he doesn't worry himself too much about the people who are hurting innocent people, *laughs* he doesn't spend a whole lot of time thinking about what's fair to them and he's fine with that.

Michael is somebody who's different, he has answered a higher calling. It's something that has limited him, in many ways, but also something that gives him tremendous power wherever he is. Michael's philosophy is one that is greater than just defending the good against the evil, it's the "don't go forth and destroy evil, go forth and convert evil, go save it. Those are still-those people who've gone down that path, they need someone to save them, they need another chance, they need to be given a choice to- an opportunity to exercise free will and turn away from what they're doing" because ultimately that does more good for the world than just going up against somebody who is evil and slugging him out and taking him down. Because when you do that, you do horrible things to yourself as well, and that's all there is to it. If you go out there doing horrible things to people, even if they're bad people, it does bad things to you and you have to take it. And Michael has answered a different call, he goes out-his path is a lot more heartbreaking because he keeps trying to save people and most of them don't want to be saved. That's all there is to it and it breaks his heart when it happens but he has Charity, she's good with that kind of thing.

They've certainly been good foils for each other and really from a storytelling perspective, ways to embody different perspectives and make both of them very respectful, that's one of the things I've really appreciated about the way that you've approached things... is that, these characters are more real people than sometimes we get in the genre. Obviously we've got some really bad dudes and we've got some really good characters but most of the people that Harry deals with, they're human beings that are flawed themselves and are struggling with those flaws and it makes them really fascinating to read. When I read-or listened to Day One, and you indicated that Butters was supposed to be a throwaway character, I can't remember whether I gasped or laughed or did a little bit of both. Even with Butters and some of these side characters, wonderful examples of human beings trying to figure out how to deal with all the stuff they've got.

Those poor bastards.

*laughter*

They live in a universe ruled by an evil god and I feel sorry for them sometimes, not for very long, but you know, for a little.

*wheel skit again* This one comes from Iradandis "what question do you wish fans would stop asking you about your books?" I want you to answer this one carefully, and think back on all the things that we've asked you and don't say any of those things, that'd be great.

"Where do you get your ideas?" that's one of them. Because not only do they ask you you can't answer nobody knows where you get your ideas. Lemme think, I don't really get tired of questions because the ones that I've answered a lot I've usually come up with like a canned funny answer and then I can tell it and get a laugh. Plus you know I've already done that work so it's like kicking back, I believe in constructive laziness, it has done me great good in my writing career.

Working smarter not harder.

Yes exactly.

So your books have been filled with so many pop culture references, in fact, you probably aren't familiar with what we do here on the Legendarium, Ken does a recap of every one of your books and occasionally he tries to do them based on themes of some of the pop culture references you've done along the way.

Okay I'm gonna have to go back and look at some of these.

We've heard Star Wars, a lot of Star Trek, a lot of cartoons, D&D, The Office showed up one day as he was running through Demonreach and doing parkour and we got a laugh at that. Are there some pop culture references that you've been holding onto that you're just kinda ready to deal out that you can give us hints on or do they just- do you just say "yeah this one sounds funny I'll use this one now?"

I just use them. It's getting harder because it's so hard to find ways to get Harry to have seen The Mandalorian, you know. How does he see The Mandalorian (wait a few years for it to come out for a start)? Oh no that's not hard at all now he's got Bob back I forgot. Bob is a radio and he receives all EM waves so internet, cable, satellite, radio, whatever, he can receive all of those. So Bob can just- at this point Harry can just put Bob on a table and say "Bob, play Mandalorian" and then Bob can be a smartass and then not.

So we might have Harry looking at somebody at some point and saying "I have spoken, this is the way".

Yeah, this is the way, I have spoken.

It's been fun to watch your pop culture references evolve over twenty years I mean because you've had twenty years to go from pretty much always Star Wars to my favourite one about calling a titan Regina George.

Yeah, yeah that was fun. I'm gonna fill up the next one (not entirely sure here) with Gargoyles references.

Oooh yes.

Hey he's a wizard with a castle, Gargoyles.

Gotta have some Gargoyles. At least one Goliath reference.

Yeah I'm gonna have fun doing my gargoyles I'm basing them on Pitbulls so.

Nice. You mentioned Bob, Bob has been an interesting character bouncing back and forth between Harry and Butters and back to Harry, where did the idea for Bob come from? I know we're not supposed to ask where your ideas come from but that one seems so- the skull that everybody had on their tables during medieval times to remind them about their own life but then you've turned it into this palace for a being of thought, was he a nice plot device or did you find that someplace and say "boy I've gotta find a way to use this?"

*41:35 to 44:20 You remember that bit about canned answers? This one is about idiots in writing and talking heads*

...Between that and Bob saying "I'm going to Utah, nothing like this ever happens in Utah!" because all of us are based in Utah so we know, we're right there with you.

Case in point we could only get you over Skype you're not actually in Utah because nothing happens in Utah.

I stole that from my son actually, my son actually informed us of that when he was fourteen "I need some normal parents, I'm going to Utah, nothing weird ever happens in Utah."

*wheel skit again*

This question comes from Little Red Book and she asks "if you could have Bob for a day what would you ask him to help you do?"

I'd use him for investing.

This reminds me of our D&D episode when Todd had to keep reminding us that we are fun adventurers and we kept asking what the 401k plan was on this particular quest, whether we wanted to take the job.

You kept asking about healthcare.

That was an exceptionally fitting boring answer.

I played a horror D&D game that was set on a haunted house and it was like a demented haunted house like dolls would come to life and pull out their hairpins and stab you, that kind of haunted house. And then, wherever you got stabbed you would grow boils and you'd start being able to see a little doll inside the boil growing under your skin, that kind of horrible things. And I was playing a dark elf sorcerer who was going through the whole thing going "well yes obviously it's a little disturbing that there's a kettle of blood boiling on the kitchen counter but LOOK AT ALL THE STORAGE SPACE. *laughter* Once we've cleansed this house we must buy it." And he was just going through talking about how awesome the house was. So afterwards, you're not supposed to be able to cleanse the house you're just supposed to be able to make it safe for a generation, you know, but because my character had been talking about how good the house was and going shame on you to all the people talking about how horrible it was "shame on you, you're not grateful at all for what this place could be" but then the house turned around and liked my guy so we moved in. And then the rest of the adventure was based out of the haunted house, all these tax collectors were showing up trying to get the back taxes on the house, it would control them and animate their corpses and send them back. We were in the city of Dis so that was considered normal metropolitan business you know.

This is what happens when D&D adventurers grow up, we get stories like this. I had one more question, what other mythological realms-

Do you have a question? Do you actually have a question?

Yeah will you shut up Greg? That's my question.

Sorry go on, try again.

So what other realms of mythology that we haven't seen are on the way?

We're gonna get a lot more into Cthulhu, that's fun. We're gonna get a lot more of the other pantheons. we're gonna find out what all the gods have been up to for the past several thousand years. And the answer is professional wrestling, a lot of them, they get more worshippers that way than they ever did with temples.

Wow.

You ever gone to a WWF match? There's energy there, that's all I'm saying.

I cannot wait to see the Rock in the Dresden Files.

Exactly, right? Because you know what's Hercules been doing all this time (don't say a word about Greco-Buddhism)?

Appropriate.

Or he gets himself in films I suppose.

Yeah exactly. What else would he do? Thor's been more laidback. Thor's general plan is-he goes around to universities and is a walk-on on their football team and then he just plays on the line and has fun playing football and then he like joins up with the meteorological teams that go out and study tornadoes and stuff like that. He's like an intern for them he drives the car and- you know, into the middle of frantic hailstorms and tornadoes laughing like a madman. God of thunder doesn't care about that stuff, he thinks it's fun.

Right, that sounds delightful.

Alright Todd you got one more?

Yes, if this is a question that is too personal to answer you're more than welcome to say "that's too personal", but has there been something that a fan has said to you that really stuck with you as "yeah okay, I'm proud of what I'm doing?"

It didn't make me say I'm proud of what I'm doing, it made me very confused for a moment. It's been more than once that fans have come up to me and said "hey I would have lost my mind without your books, they kept me sane in Afghanistan, they kept me sane on a six month tour where the sub never surfaced, they kept me sane somewhere else" I get that a lot. And what can you say but "thank you, I'm really glad they helped?" But it's not like I set out to help those people when I wrote those, I just wanted to make enough money that my family could eat and not have to wear a tie. That was really my main goal as a writer, it wasn't my job to help those people but they come up thanking me. And I think to myself "if I say 'you're welcome' I'm taking credit for that." So normally what I say is "hey man if they helped you I'm really glad, and that's fantastic" and so I thought about it for a long time because I couldn't take credit for it so I couldn't say you're welcome and that didn't seem right either. And the conclusion I came to is a little bit longer- what it amounts to is "I was not trying to set out to help you, I was doing something that was genuinely good though, it wasn't like a huge bit of good though it's a little mustard seed bit of good". But that good was "I just want to write books that people will enjoy and talk to their friends about and have fun reading", that's been my goal as a writer. And because I did that and I did that with the idea of creating friendship and fun and things to talk about I put out a out a little seed of good and for some people that seed landed at the right spot and it got the right amount of light and water and it grew into something bigger. And the Dresden Files... for crying out loud they grew into something bigger, there's a lot of people taking shade under that tree. But all I did was put a seed in the ground, I didn't make the sun shine, I didn't make the rain fall, I didn't make the seed grow, but I put it in the ground I did that much. So what I tell people now is-what I tell people is "all I did was plant a seed, it was /you/ investing energy in it that made things happen and you walked yourself out of that dark, I just happened to give you a painkiller so you could get up and start walking, you walked yourself out of it. But if you really feel the need to pay me back, the way you pay me back is you go and plant some seeds of your own, go do small good things that help other people, that's how you pay me back, that's how you make the world better." It took me about ten years to get to that but eventually that's where I got to. I didn't really mean to do you good, I'm really glad if it did, if you want to pay me back go find some random person and do them good.

https://thelegendarium.podbean.com/e/a-conversation-with-jim-butcher/

[TheCuriousFan]

*starts midway through a story about Brutus and Fenris*

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

That's true love.

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

Do it.

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

Nice.

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

We will be disappointed when we get told no.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We'll follow him for a whole year?

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

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

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

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

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

It's just because EG advocates it every episode.

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

It's not bad.

I have methods to my madness.

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

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

Yeah it should be the last one, I think.

So is that when we learn who fixed Little Chicago?

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

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

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

Squirrel chasing is important.

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

Clearly the cat is more dangerous to it anyway.

Alright what's next?

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

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

Oh yeah, we would skip books. *laughs*

Because those would be the books with more questions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why not take advantage?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can't say that.

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

We'll see him in Mirror Mirror.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because no one survives falling into Lake Michigan.

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

We miss the murder kitty.

*unintelligible*

I will say he was a great character.

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

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

Yeah exactly.

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

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

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

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

Great job to have.

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

Well it's saved Harry's life enough.

Yeah. But uh-anyway I'm sorry.

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

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

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

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

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

That would be too easy for him too.

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

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

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

Aww.

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

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

Well Kincaid wasn't her friend he was hired.

Poor Kincaid.

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

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

Well that's rough.

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

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

I bet you wish you could tell us.

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

You wish you could withhold willingly.

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

Exactly.

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

Not being around Ethniu that's for sure.

They didn't want to get stepped on?

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

Probably wouldn't last very long if they were.

Yeah exactly. The White Council smashes people like that.

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

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

Good reason.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or in famous monuments.

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

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

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

Statue of Liberty filled with guns?

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

The bull on Wall Street or something?

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

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

Right.

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

Yeah.

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

Oh Cristos is an earth mage.

Okay.

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

Is he better than McCoy?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How dare they.

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

He's a just and honourable sheriff.

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

If he doesn't who will?

Exactly.

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

Yes. And Grimalkin is doing it now.

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

Yeah the mantle goes to the next eldest yeah.

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

Yep, the next one in line.

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

There's more discretion there.

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

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

Yeah.

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

Genghis Khan.

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

He's a go-getter.

He's got potential.

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what is Mab's perspective on democracy?

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

Just trying new things again.

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

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

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

She should have bought it when she had the chance.

Yeah.

So when do we get to see Lea again?

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

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

When did they fight?

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

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

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

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

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

Yay. I contributed.

We helped.

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

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

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

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

They got a sponsor?

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

Reread!

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

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

Could you tell us a little bit about the Librarians?

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

In Twelve Months?

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

I'm sure they're harmless.

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

Well no, no.

They can't even just tell us about them.

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

No he's straight FBI.

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

I'm not going to confirm or deny.

I figured.

You had to try.

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

Yeah there were forty or fifty thousand at first.

What.

Starborn.

Since the beginning of time or right now?

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

And then they get whittled down.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah.

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

Well not today.

So at least on his more historical timeframe um, I was wondering, there seems to be a slight discrepancy at least on how old the Black Court is because, is that just because Drakul and Drakula (go away book bot) I assume they're older than their historical personas?

Yes, Drakul especially. Drakul has been somebody that popped up in various places in history. I mean history's full of little monsters that aren't really particularly remembered and he's been several of them.

So kind of like Odin with his Beowulf and all that.

Yeah exactly. Once you're immortal and you're interacting with mortals and you know they're just a pain unless you deal with them Memento style, you know, by vanishing from their memory. It just makes life simpler for you when you're an immortal. Oh my gosh, the humans and their issues.

is his son old enough, how old essentially is the Black Court? Are they the oldest court or are they just...

Okay the Black Court itself is not too much older than Drakula cause has the one who really kind of went crazy making more vampires. His father didn't he just wanted a small handpicked crew of people who were awesome and that was his way of making supersoldiers, was Black Court vampires. But Drakula wanted more of that and sort of let it loose into the world and his father was very displeased.

So it was Drakul who made the Black Court vampires?

Yeah.

We were a little confused, we weren't sure if it was Drakula and Drakul was like "that's a neat thing you made there son, I'm taking it".

Drakul made them, Drakula was the one who made them popular I suppose is the way to think of it. But you've actually seen how Drakul operates, that's just how he's gone through his whole career. Is with this tight group of enforcers and then himself being awesome.

When we saw that scene in the graveyard and I saw that Mavra was the drummer I was like "who are these other guys if she's drumming?"

The old guard, the ones who are still alive, the ones who lived.

Kind of random question, in Peace Talks and Battle Ground Harry still talks like he's poor, what happened to his diamonds?

Oh he still has them he's just not spending them. Two million in diamonds is not nearly as much diamonds as you'd think it is (we need somebody to sit down and get the details on the size and quality of the diamonds to explain how twenty pounds of diamonds becomes two million). Especially when you've got to go trade, when you've got to go pawn so you can't drop too many of them in one place at one time.

That's when the police comes knocking.

Yeah, yeah. So his diamond wealth is sort of trickle wealth he's got to use a little bit carefully.

So we've now seen essentially all the accorded nations basically in one big fight. And you've put that in the books that the accords are something fairly recent and it seems like they stem from the kind of throwaway mention of the Unseelie Incursion in 1994 that comes up in Storm Front and is never talked about again.

That's right.

Are there any particular details or reasons for that event we could get?

I will tell you that it originated in a clash between the Summer and the Winter Knight and it just got out of hand and then things just got completely crazy and I kind of know the story of it in my head, I keep thinking that maybe I should write it up a bit eventually.

That would be cool. Was the Summer Knight the one from Summer Knight, the guy who dies in that book?

Yeah, Roland Reuel vs Lloyd Slate. It started with those two.

If you write it I'll give you a dollar, that's how this works right?

Awesome.

If you write it I will buy it, that's generally how it goes.

Okay.

That's more than one dollar.

I'm willing to do that contract.

In Cold Days Harry asked for help from Vadderung in exchange for a favour. When is Vadderung gonna call in his favour?

Ooh, when is he gonna call in his favour? *thinks to himself* The worst possible time, that's when. Okay yeah, that's the right answer. When will be the worst possible time? Oh god, okay.

*laughter*

You sent him down a path you shouldn't have sent him down.

I'd actually forgotten about that favour, geez.

He went down the path where Chandler went, we don't know yet.

Okay director you helped earlier, now stop helping. Now you're helping too much.

*laughter*

If at some point Harry can blame me for some of his problems I'm okay with this.

So I feel like I've read that you've already confirmed this but to be sure, Bob stays with Harry now?

Well Bob is with Harry now.

Will he stay with Harry now?

I'm not gonna tell you the future of the books, he's with Harry now.

I was gonna say "maybe Bob can be a good mentor to Bonnie" but then I thought about it for two more seconds.

No.

That's not a good idea.

Probably not.

Well now he's got a whole castle he can keep them apart in.

So you teased us with this in your last reddit AMA, you've said that you've already introduced Bob's parents so who exactly are Bob's parents?

I'm not telling you that you guys can figure it out.

So there are enough hints that we could figure it out already?

I have no idea. I've stopped trying to figure out what readers can figure out because there's some things that I drop that I think are just the most obvious thing ever and then people "oh my god I didn't see it coming" and then there's the other thing where I drop one freaking word in one book and somebody cross-references it and then goes to reddit and gets everybody on it and then they crowdsource whatever it is and come up with an answer for something that I was not gonna write for another two or three books and now you've already determined it and now you've ruined it for everyone, I hope you're happy with yourselves (people who manage that usually are).

Exceedingly.

That's who you guys are, these guys on the panel here, these guys are the fans who ruin things for other fans by thinking about it too hard.

Listen, the only fair thing is you just write the list of the things that were ruined and you set it out.

Okay, I'll do that.

That would actually be cool like, a Dresden compendium.

"This could have happened but some fan worked it out so I had to stop".

Here's the Mirror Mirror version of the series.

Nice.

When did Bob learn how to kill an immortal?

It's one of those things that he's known for a long time. I mean Bob was born knowing a lot of things based upon his parentage.

Mmm-hm.

Well speaking of the parentage I think you've mentioned once before something that... based on the way Athena was born she's basically a spirit of intellect but she also seemed to have had a body is there some- is that a godly thing or is there a mechanic by which a spirit could get a physical form more permanently?

Well let's just say that if Molly hadn't been around then Harry would be a much different person now and leave it at that. And when the spirit gets born of somebody like Zeus (and your mom is a titan/oceanid) he can do something about it more than Harry can. Zeus is able to go "yeah okay, you know what? Here's a body for you, there you go."

That takes care of that headache.

Yeah.

What equipment, if any, of Harry's survived the fire and will he ever get it back?

Very little. In fact, nothing really was magically useful after the fire at his place and there was very little left. Alcohol-based fires burn really hot and it's kind of an issue. As far as getting it back he has to build back and that'll be part of what he's doing, I mean that's part of why we're taking Twelve Months here Dresden hasn't had time to make good equipment I mean he's been making schlocky equipment for the past three books.

Yeah we were talking about it before.

Yeah he's just been- really he's just been throwing stuff together because he hasn't really had a base of operation or really much in the way of resources, that's gonna change now.

Well combined with Mab's training it has forced him to become a lot better without equipment so I'm looking forward to seeing how he will be with equipment again.

Well equipment is- generally speaking the White Council thinks of equipment as a crutch (not that it stops Eb, Langtry or Klaus). They're willing to allow that you can take a staff with you because it's so useful you can use it for so many things so a staff is considered fine but everybody else using equipment they must be a kid because that's kid stuff. Kids make toys because they can't really control their own power, they haven't learned how yet. Dresden makes toys to help him control his power because he hasn't learned how yet, he's gonna be looked at as kind of less than a full adult wizard until he starts doing things without using varous goo-gahs.

Like simply willing a shield into existence.

Yeah it's like you don't have a shield bracelet you just make a shield happen, that's what you're supposed to do as a wizard.

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

It's from Scotland.

And what was it's name?

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

*laughter*

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

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

Someone whose name begins with M?

I'm not gonna tell you who.

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

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

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

They were the craftsmen who built it but anyway.

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

[TheCuriousFan]

And the remaining ten minutes because character limit.

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

No.

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

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

And Eb was involved in that?

Yes.

Alright.

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

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

Of course.

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

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

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

You'll have to see.

He's not gonna answer that one.

Nothing ventured.

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

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

They resent people like Harry.

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

Nobody likes humans.

Really, I mean honestly.

Not even humans.

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

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

Holy fuck.

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

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

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

That seems like a very clever theory.

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

We're coming up on time though so.

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

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

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

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

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

More than a couple but there's a limit.

Less than forty thousand starborn.

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

Reality's white blood cells.

Yeah.

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

Really fascinating question.

It was worth a shot, alright.

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

Exactly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

*laughter*

Ooops, we were helping again.

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

Right.

Uriel doesn't know? Or did he?

*Jim shakes his head* Stuff from the outside, man.

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

The one that interred him there was the first one.

*surprised looks*

I told you.

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

Because his British would be too out-there.

But he's as old as Merlin, presumably.

And is perfectly intelligible in British.

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

This is Jim bamboozling us again.

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

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

Merlin was supposed to age backwards wasn't he?

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

I've gotta wrap things up for today.

Okay.

We'll have to see you next time.

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

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

Alright.

We want you to come back so.

*unintelligible in the future okay?*

Yep definitely thank you so much for your time.

*waves goodbye*