I've never had it either.  It sounds like it would be good on icecream.

 

I'll do the dorkgasm 2008 interview.

Ok first part is done, I've done it in my own way so as long as it's understandable I don't care.I got most of the words but ones I put in [ ] I couldn't really make out, I think it's the accent. You all talk funny england.

Dorkgasm 2008 interview .  Dresden files. A conversation with Jim Butcher
Part 1
Interviewer: So what have you got going on here?
Jim: Uh. Stock signing I think
Interviewer: I’m not exactly sure what stock signing is.
Jim: That’s when you sign some books that like, I think these are presales.
Interviewer: OK
Jim: They’re already sold to somebody and they want to get it signed but they can’t be here to get it signed so...
Interviewer: Gotcha
Jim : It’s nice to get them out of the way ahead of time and then sometimes there’s a bunch of them, like I’ve been in stores where there’s been like a hundred of them and it’s good to let my wrist rest between then and afterwards because I can run my mouth for awhile , it’s easier on my hand. *opens can of coke*
Interviewer: there you go. So do you, um, you mentioned the hand cramping thing, do you write,um, longhand or do you type the stuff out usually?
Jim: Oh I type when I’m working; yeah it’s me on a couch with a laptop usually.
Interviewer: Well I think it was in this one (SmF) that you mentioned, uh, the thing in the thank you that, um, you finished writing the book while playing Nero.
Jim: *nods and makes approval sound with mouthful of coke*
Interviewer: So do you have a laptop out in the fields and...
Jim: No no, it was in the corner of a tavern where there was an outlet.
Interviewer: Ok
Jim: But yeah, I couldn’t play until I got a certain amount of stuff done and got the book finished. So I had to get the book finished. Got the book finished, put the laptop away. Got out the armour and entered the game and uh in time to catch all the serious political role-play session, no combat at all. I was like ‘ugh cheated!’.Yeah during those kinds of things, live role-play, I’ll be the guy who throws his shield on the ground, goes to sleep and says ‘Ok, wake me up when there’s something that needs to be broken.
Interviewer: So besides Nero, what else do you like to play?
Jim: Oh , uh, just every tabletop game you could think of ,uh, I’ve played almost all of them at one time or another.I’ve played a paranoia campaign . When you’ve played a paranoia campaign I think you’re pretty far gone, y’know?
Interviewer: I think [call of cthulu ?] is probably the epitome of pointless gaming but ...
Jim: Oh, oh yeah well yeah multiple [call of cthulu?] are. Well we have regular [call of cthulu] campaign , which I wouldn’t let my son play . He’s like “why not? You’re always laughing”. And I said “yeah, but they’re cannibalism jokes and that’s just kinda where it starts, so no no”. But, uh, Warhammer role-play is one of my favourites to play. And I play online stuff, I used to play Everquest and I was pretty serious on Everquest but uh...
Interviewer: So it was Ever-crack for you?
Jim:  Oh absolutely and I’ve stay awaaaaaaaay from World-of-Warcrack so...
Interviewer: Yeah World-of-Warcrack has a tendency to suck people in. My executive editor had a problem sometimes pulling herself away. Hey Charlton Heston died the other day, can you write an obituary for him ? Uh no? Uh, you doing a dungeon, uh OK, Yeah I understand that. Your kids, how old are your kids?
Jim: I’ve got the one , he’s 16.
Interviewer: 16,OK. Um now has He read your stuff or no?
Jim: Yeah, He likes the Alera stuff; He doesn’t care for the Dresden stuff so much.
Interviewer: Really?
Jim: Yeah
Interviewer: Um how long the uh Dresden books, there’s ten of them now obviously , Small Favour coming out just last week and the Alera, there’s four Alera books currently?
Jim: So far, I’m working on number five.
Interviewer: Gotcha. And are you flip-flopping, you’re writing Dresden, you’re writing Alera.
Jim: Yep. Yeah it’s usually how it works. Although this time it’s been write a Dresden , write a little bit of Alera, write a comic book , a little more Alera, some more comic book ,write some more Alera, short story, short story , then go back to some more Alera. So...
Interviewer: Got it. Got it. The comic book that’s coming out form Dable Brothers
Jim: *nods* Mmmmm *(mouth full of coke)*
Interviewer: How’s it working with those guys? They’ve got kind of a weird reputation in the comic book industry.
Jim: Oh as far as I’m concerned it seems to be going great. I’m writing the first four issues, uh that’s been fun. Though I didn’t realise how much work it was going to be when I signed on for it. Y’know, a pictures worth a thousand words , there’s between one and six pages on every comic book page and I’m the guy that’s got to write the thousand words and tell the author what I want, or tell the artist what I want . But I’m writing the first four issues and after that they’re adapting the novels to comics and those are supposed to be out and they said those will take between 14 and 18 issues each.I think.
Interviewer: Gotcha. So then the first four issue comic is going to be a side story?
Jim: Yeah , it’s a short story set just before the events of Storm Front.
Interviewer: Will it be the short story you have up on your website or will it be something new?
Jim: No no. It’s not that. Yeah it’s a new one, there’s some problems with the Lincoln Park Zoo and somebody needs to investigate it and Harry gets called in on the case. It’s going to be one of his earlier cases with Murphy where He produced results that made her inclined to use Him again in the future.
Interviewer:  So Lincoln Park, the Dresden Files set Primarily in Chicago, you’ve mentioned you’ve played most games I’m assuming you’ve played the Whitewolf stuff back in the mid-90s.
Jim: No actually. I missed it except for a couple of mushes.
Interviewer: It was part of Whitewolf’s thing in the mid-90s at least, that Chicago was the creepiest damned place. In fact, in the newer stuff it still is. There seems to be a propensity, beside the world of darkness, there’s a forthcoming film called “Death walks the streets” apparently that’s being set in Chicago. It’s some mob, vampire, and werewolf trilogy thing and then of course the Dresden Files. What is it about Chicago that screams to you “creepy Damned Place”?
Jim: Oh, well I hate to break up the romance of it but the fact of the matter is I had originally set the Dresden Files in Kansas City and my writing Teacher ,I was doing it as an assignment in my writing class, my writing teacher looked at it and said “Jim you’re already writing something that’s close enough to walk on Laurel Hamilton’s toes,  you don’t need to set it in Missouri too, you gotta set it somewhere else”.
“Where?”
“I don’t care, anywhere, just not Missouri”. And I’m like OK. And there’s a globe on her desk, there’s four American cities on the globe. One of them’s New York, which is already sewn up by Spiderman and Superman. One of them’s DC, which I don’t want to write a story there because it’d have to get political and then you lose at least forty eight percent of the audience. One was Los Angeles , which I didn’t want to do because then I’d have to research Los Angeles . So I said “Chicago!” and she’s like “Yeah Chicago’s fine”. And I said “Ok!” But as it turned out it was a good choice, just in terms of how much lore there is in the area, y’know the various stories and so on that surround the history of the town. It’s an old town for an American city and that helps a lot as well and just generally speaking it’s a good place to set about any kind of story but for my story it worked really well.
Interviewer: Now you mentioned that your creative writing teacher pointed out stepping on Hamilton’s toes. How much of Laurel Hamilton’s work influenced the Dresden stuff? Or is there any one author that influenced you work primarily?
Jim: I think the biggest influence was probably a movie out on HBO long, long ago called “cast a deadly spell”. It starred Fred Ward, it was Gail Anne Herd who was also a producer of “Aliens” and “Tremors” and some other fairly cool movies that were cooler than they had any right to be. And this was another movie that was cooler than it had any right to be. It was set in the 1940s, this whole noir thing you know? But magic was this part of the world and this detective was the only one who didn’t use magic. There was this whole case surrounding these [Cthulu/kudulu?] entities and so on that he was off investigating and I just loved the investigation. The whole tenor and atmosphere of it was great.
Interviewer: Your series has managed to avoid the ‘sex trap’ as it were. I mean Hamilton’s , I think beyond the last novel perhaps three or four novels  past were primarily almost harlequin romance , sex novels it seemed like. And her Faerie series seems to border on soft-core show-time kind of thing. You’ve managed to avoid that and keep him fairly well-grounded and not asexual. Is that something you keep in mind or is that something that happens because of the way you write.
Jim: I didn’t have Harry’s love life planned out. That was one of the things, I mean I’ve got most of the things, the general story arc scripted, where I know what’s going to be happening and so on. But Harry’s love life was not planned out. I’ve always wanted that to be something that would just kind of organically go with what we were doing. And Harry Himself is just, it’s not like that He’s actively bad with women or anything, He’s just sort of, He’s the magical equivalent of a computer nerd really. I mean He is just a little bit socially awkward in certain aspects of it, of getting on with the opposite sex.
Interviewer: Another thing that speaks really well to the audience with the people that I know that read the books identify with that aspect rather um...
Jim:  Yeah let me go all Mr.Monk on this, it’s not straight
*straightens pile of SmF novels*
There I’m happier.
Interviewer: So you mentioned you have parts of it planned out, not the love life. So does this mean you know where the story ends?
Jim: Yeah. I’m planning on writing about 20 casebooks like we’ve got so far and then at the end I’ll cap it off with a big old apocalyptic trilogy. You know? Because who doesn’t love big old apocalyptic trilogies? I was taken to see Starwars. It was the first movie I remember being taken to see and it’s warped me. It’s warped me.
End of part 1.

. this is my fav xmas present!

huh , I could've sworn I watched two different vids!well that's sad if I can't tell them apart.

ooooooooh there's a second one

No...my internet hiccuped and I had to start ALL over again

Gah No!!!!

yeah , I haven't really seen her act, but I'm just putting people out there who I think look like the characters. Everyone have different thoughts , or interpretations of the characters.