Dictation by
LogicMouseLives2008 The Dragon Page article (audio podcast)
Came out to 3 parts, in the end.
Transcriptionist's note: This one was quite a pain, what with no less than four (4!) interviewers, plus Jim, made no easier by the fact that Michael R. Mennenga, Brian Brown, and-under the right circumstances-Jim have unfortunately similar sounding voices, especially when making a brief comment. I've done the best I can to sort them out correctly, but if anyone notices any errors in attribution on this one, please let me know and I'll fix it right up!
PART 1
Voice Over: Dragon Page cover to cover episode 307, show A.
{Intro music} Michael R. Mennenga: From the Dracovista studios in Phoenix, Arizona. Unlocking secrets of writing. Conversing with masters of the craft. And just having a lot of fun. It’s the Dragon Page, cover to cover.
{music and ‘dragon’ roar}Michael R. Mennenga: And welcome back to another Dragon Page cover to cover I’m Michael R. Mennenga
Michael Stackpole: And I’m Michael Stackpole.
Laurie Mennenga: And I’m Laurie Mennenga.
Michael M: Ooh, Laurie’s joins us as well!
Michael S: All right!
Michael M: Awesome! Uh, hey! We’ve got an awesome, awesome show for you, Jim Butcher is in the studio with us and we had an awesome interview, it was just great.
Michael S: It was a lot of fun. It’s a good long one, so we’re going to probably cut this front-end short–
Michael M: Yes we will.
Michael S: But we also want to remind you that in addition to having him in the studio here
{Brief fooferaw over who should tell the news}Michael M: You can actually see Jim for about three minutes on our YouTube video, which is our “Slice of SciFi” video news edition which you can find on our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com and slash farpoint media I do believe. Farpointmedia all one word. Just do a search on it. Search on “Slice of SciFi.” Search on Farpointmedia and you’ll find us. We have a channel on there. You will want to go check that out ‘cause it was a lot of fun.
Michael S: It was a lot of fun interview. I did direct it. This was take three.
Michael M: Stackpole’s trying to get his director’s credit in here!
Michael S: Absolutely! Don’t worry, when we win the Emmy for that, I’ll remember you.
Michael M: God knows we need it, that’s for sure!
{Laughter} So without further ado, we will dive into the interview with Jim Butcher ‘cause it was a lot of fun.
{Music}
{Advertisement for Parsec awards} Michael M: And welcome back to more of Dragon Page cover-to-cover, I’m Michael R. Mennenga.
Summer Brooks: I’m Summer Brooks.
Michael S: I’m Michael Stackpole
Brian Brown: And I’m Brian Brown.
Michael M: And we’ve got a ton of people in the studio today because–
Summer: There’s a reason!
Michael M: We’ve got a special guest.
Summer: Uh huh. A surprise guest, right here in studio with us, and everybody,
everybody in Farpoint Media-Land wanted to come here. So we had to beat them off at the door with a stick.
Michael M: On a Sunday, no doubt!
Summer: Yes. We have Jim Butcher here.
Michael M: That’s right! Hi, Jim!
Jim Butcher: Hi Guys.
Michael M: Awesome.
Brian: Welcome back again!
Michael M: Back again. You just can’t get enough of this place, can you?
Jim: It’s true. I get down here to the fair green land of Arizona and–
Michael M: That’s because we’ve got the best Scotch, that’s why.
Michael S: Plus the Farpoint Media implant that
compels you to show up.
Michael M: {Stage Whispering} You’re not supposed to tell him about that. He’ll have it taken out!
{laughter}Michael S: {Stage Whispering} He’ll only think to look for
one! {General laughing murmur of agreement} Nice!
Michael M: No, Jim was in town for a signing and that, evidently went really good, because you’re an hour late!
Jim: Yeah, there was a bunch of people there.
Michael M: They kinda like you, and what you’re doing. That’s a good thing.
Jim: Well, there’s– they kept laughing at the jokes so, you know you shouldn’t encourage me, even just, you know, by being polite, so.
{laughter}Michael S: So you did an encore.
Jim: Mm hm.
Michael S: That’s right.
Michael M: So you’ve got a little book out.
Summer: A little one.
Michael M: Just a little book.
Jim: Yeah, the new Dresden book came out this week.
Brian: And so, yeah, Harry finally gets a little bit of closure on a few things.
Jim: Oh, well, I guess so. I think some of the readers felt that way. I kind of feel differently about it, ‘cause I know where the story’s going eventually.
Michael M: Uh oh!
Jim: So I know that some of the things that seem to be closure, weren’t necessarily that way and so on.
Brian: Well the last time you were here, you said that you planned on having this to be thirty books if you can make it that.
Jim: Nah, it was about twenty.
Brian: It’s gonna be twenty, okay. So obviously we’re only up to book–
Jim: Ten
Michael M: Ten.
Brian: Ten more books!
Jim: Yep.
Summer: Is there such a thing as faux closure?
Brian: Oh! I dunno.
Jim: Well of course there is! I mean, at the end of every movie where, you know, you think the monster’s dead,
but... Here the alien queen comes off of the bottom of the dropship and now things are started up again.
Summer: All right.
Michael M: Good analogy!
Brian: Wow, that was pretty key. I like that!
{laughter} Michael M: Now you’re very well known for beating up poor Harry, and putting him through torture. You like torturing your characters.
Jim: It’s been a recipe for my success, yes. Pretty much I can look at any given situation and say, “Does this make Harry more miserable? Yeah, it does! Oh, I should really think about doing that then.”
Michael S: And it can get worse.
Jim: Yes, exactly.
Michael M: Is he ever gonna get anything? I mean are you going to give him a little crumb?
Jim: What are you talking about? He’s got his own maid service, doesn’t he?
{General murmur of “True, that’s true.”}Jim: They shop for his groceries for him. I mean, sometimes they get all Fruit Loops, but
{laughter} Jim: They do his shopping and so on, so you know he’s not without any positives. There’s not zero upside for Harry.
Brian: That’s true, actually.
Michael M: So you’re ten books into this series now and you’ve put him through a lot, like we’ve just been talking about. Are you finding a lot of ideas, or are you having trouble coming up with new ones?
Jim: Oh no, that’s not really been an issue. I knew I wanted to do about twenty books from the beginning and I had twenty different ideas outlined. At this point, occasionally, I get a better idea for a book and I discard one of the old ones, so.
Michael M: Really?
Jim: Yeah, at this point we’re swapping out, I’m able to just stick with the best ideas, rather than struggling to come up with something.
Michael S: Have you found things going much along the way you’d originally planned, or are there radical differences? I mean swapping things in and out, that I understand–
Jim: Right.
Michael S: But as the characters have developed were you seeing it going sort of North North-West and now it’s kind of swinging over North-East, or–?
Jim: Um. Everything that I had planned seems to be going fairly well. What I didn’t have any kind of outline or script for when I started off was Harry’s love life. So all that stuff kind of happens as I’m going along. So that’s as much a surprise to me as I write it as it is to the reader.
Michael S: But within the genre, or within where you were starting, almost having an unscripted love life is part of the script for characters like that.
Jim: Yeah, as it turns out, you know, the people you love and care about can sometimes have an effect on the rest of your life as well! So it was perhaps not the wisest thing for me to say “I just won’t script this huge part of what is going to affect you as a person.”
Michael S: Yeah, yeah.
Brian: I was going to talk about the book a little bit, because, after I read it I realized that it seemed like it was starting off and going one direction, and all of a sudden Wham! we take a right turn, and Gloom! we go somewhere completely different. And I wasn’t sure if you said “Oh yes, I’m definitely going to throw you the loop and you’re going to go to the right instead of the left.” Is that how you kind of envisioned the story?
Jim: Well, yeah, more or less. I mean, again, it’s one of the things, from a reader perspective you see things kind of differently, ‘cause the reader doesn’t know what’s going on. As the writer, I know I’m setting people up for something that’s gonna happen later. And yeah, the reader’s supposed to pick up the story and go, “Okay, we’re doing this, we’re doing this. Oh crud! I just opened–I mean this wasn’t a land mine, this was a box full of nuclear explosives.”
Brian: Heh, heh. What’s in the box?
Jim: Yeah, exactly. This just got a whole lot worse than I thought it was gonna be, and that was sort of the idea.
Brian: And really, you did a great job with it too, because I was reading it going, “Okay, yeah, yeah I think I know where we’re going, Ha ha!” Oo, hubris, hubris. I got smacked.
Michael M: Yeah, the first time you think you know where a character’s going, then something’s wrong, somewhere.
{General agreement}Michael M: It should be a journey, you know? It’s supposed to be a surprise.
Michael S: Do you find yourself in doing the books– Well, I don’t know, me personally I tend not to read books more than once, but I run into a lot of readers that do, and when I’m writing one, I try and find things to put in that they’ll miss on the first pass but they get in the second pass. You do the same thing?
Jim: Yes. I like to do a lot of doubled conversation and stuff like that, where there’s more than one meaning to what somebody’s saying, but you can’t realize that until later.
Michael S: Right, yeah.
Brian: And I always have to ask. I love this question, because everybody asks me, you know, what’s up with the picture, Jim? It’s like the thinker from the front.
Jim: Oh, uh. Okay, the last one that I had given them, it was actually a family portrait from Wal-Mart, and I’d Photoshopped my wife and kid out of it.
{laughter}Jim: So it was kind of this miscellaneous thing cause it was one of those cheek to cheek family portrait things. It was kind of shaped weirdly and everything, so they said, “Okay, you’ve got to go do another one,” and I’m like, “Okay.” And we had just moved, and we had no money in the bank account, so I had to go to the photographer I can afford, rather than the one I would like?
Michael M: Okay.
Jim: And he’s like in there, “Yeah, okay, I can do one picture for you today, if you want to do it today,” And so I got two pictures, and there’s one of me scowlly– scowling and in the Alera books it’s the other one of me smirking, so.
Brian: Right, I was gonna say there’s just a slight difference between ‘em, you’re like, “Oh-kay!”
Jim: They had a choice between scowly Jim and smirky Jim.
Michael M: I’ve just got this vision of Jim chasing down a photo booth, somewhere in a Piggly Wiggly somewhere down south going, “I need a new photo shot!”
Jim: It was actually this little studio, this little loft room that was over a barbershop.
Michael S: What, you went to Sweeny Todd?
{laughter}Jim: Sweeny Todd the photographer. The demon photographer of Main Street!
{more laughter} Brian: Aww, that’s good stuff. That’s very good stuff.
Continued below,
LML