I think Jim has hinted that one option for the series is to just wrap things up, particularly if he becomes unable to continue via sickness, etc.  So in that case, Murphy's further story and his plans for her may just not make it into the series.

Jim didn't decide (until just beforehand) which of Denarius/Darkhallow/Mantle Harry would pursue when he needed to power-up to get Maggie back.

Well, Jim could have his cake and eat it too with alternate realities in which he does each of them.  And we may get to see one of those other options in Mirror Mirror or other alternate reality.

Might be a whisper thing there's a WOJ about Odin having to make deals with other religions in order to recruit einherjaar.

WOJ:"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.

Thank you so much. I knew there was something like that out there and was frustrated that I couldn't find it.  Perhaps I extrapolated that WOJ to the case for Murphy. 

Also Sibellis, your reference is what I had remembered and why  I posted this topic looking for that exact one.  I'm thinking there is good reason to think there actually is a WOJ about Murphy's catholic heritage and the afterlife.

Yeah we had big discussion on this before about parallel reality hopping vs time travel. 
It appears that there isn't a strict one to one clock for the two alternate realities.  It seemed to me that Harry would be jumping to a Mirror Mirror world that has a date greater than the one he is jumping from.  That said, it could be that events just played out faster cuz -Harry helped get "Bad guy plans a few years ahead.
I think proper time travel is going into past within one reality though your interactions could cause splits going forward due to that travel.  It seems parallel reality hopping has more wiggle room with relative clocks.

I don't know how Jim parses this vs his claim that the time travel book wont happen until the book prior to BAT.  My arguments were that reality hopping was another form of time travel.

Yeah I posted a bunch of reddit transcription as a new topic with summaries and some links.  Some might be redundant.

Has King Arthur made an unannounced appearance already. Yes. Dunn Dunn Dunn. What I will say is: He will return to Britain at its darkest hour. (Possibly freer here because of the earlier question this week about the scabbard?)

I wonder if Mac is King Arthur or the Brit in Demonreach.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dresdenfiles/comments/fo859p/live_qa_with_jim_butcher_and_priscilla_spencer/

https://www.reddit.com/r/dresdenfiles/comments/jvqepb/dragoncon_2019_qa_transcript_bits_from_2014/

https://www.reddit.com/r/dresdenfiles/comments/lyytw3/pensacon_2020_and_live_qa_with_priscilla_partial/

Posted by
u/TheCuriousFan
3 years ago

Pensacon 2020 and live Q&A with Priscilla partial transcripts
Spoilers All
Some transcripts with more questions skipped than not for a change because there's not that much in these two (most of it is acting stuff or questions answered by PT/BG) so they're only getting done partially but they're coming in batches of at least two interviews per set of partial transcripts to compensate.

Are you going to do anymore short stories with Molly Carpenter and are any of her siblings going to show up with some magical ability as well?

Am I going to do any short stories with Molly? I really hate writing short stories, I don't enjoy it at all. But apparently I don't hate it as much as I hate saying no to people who want me to write short stories for them.

laughter

So maybe. Though Molly's sort of... her story path is not... it's not towards being familiar and human so it might be a little bit more difficult. As far as the other siblings in the Carpenter family, by the time the other kids were coming along her mom had buried that stuff so deep it wasn't coming back so.

I know you pull from at least a few different cultures that I know of mythology unintelligible Are there any cultures or specific mythologies that you haven't utilised yet that you're interested in bringing in?

Haven't done a lot of Hindu, don't know much about it. Haven't done a lot of Middle Eastern stuff don't know much about it. The stuff that I do use is stuff that I've been able to find good solid research on for the most part, that's where I can do some reading and I can more or less justify myself, you know, within a fudge factor. If you just go writing about stuff you've got no idea what's going on then that's probably not a good thing for you as a writer. I've been approached very /very/ carefully by some Navajo since writing about skinwalkers.

laughter

They sent like the person who- they sent the person from the tribe who was half-white to come talk to me "maybe you speak his language I don't know but you need to be careful and evaluate him before you actually have a conversation with him or, you know, have a meal with him" so that's interesting, that sort of thing. That's serious stuff down there, you go to the south-west they take that seriously.

Okay so I know you said you had five cats and you've written cats so well-

I had zero cats before I wrote the book, I didn't actually get any cats until after the book.

-So in saying that, are there any cats like your physical cats that inspired the cats in your books?

No it's the other way around. We bought three Maine Coons and named them- we named one Mirl and one Rowl because they matched. But the big one is the big white one, his name is Bowie but he's like a thirty pound long haired Maine Coon, pure white with a green eye and a blue eye. He'll be in the next book as the commodore, he'll be the ship's cat for Bayard's ship, yeah commodore Beauregard is what they call him, they call him Beau which is what we call Bowie as well we call him Beau. And he'll always be the cat that's just a little bit better than Rowl at everything without really trying and he's Mirl's older brother so Rowl hates him but has to put up with him you know, so.

But then we got two more cats, we got Zatanna, Zatanna was a feral cat who got born under our porch and Kitty went and rescued the feral kittens because they were dying, she managed to save two of them and one of them we got to in time to socialise and so he's with a family who spoils him outrageously now, he's a big Persian looking cat it's ridiculous. And then the other one was Zatanna she's a little tiny tuxedo four pound kitten sized cat and so we named her Zatanna because she has a tuxedo but she doesn't like people very much but she bonded to our cats though so we got our cat a cat.

laughter

And then we had three more kittens that were found abandoned and we found homes for two of them and we kept one of them and it turns out that they weren't actually kittens they were five years old and they're just tiny from being malnourished and they conned us into thinking they were kittens.

laughter

Now they all have a decent home so one of them his name is Fenris he's the one who stays with us, he's a foster cat we're gonna give him away someday (still there as of November 2020). I know he sleeps on everybody's lap and everything like that and rides around on my shoulder but we'll give him away. Damn cat he's a liar and a swindler.

Were you the one that named him Fenris?

No that was Kitty she named him that off of Dragon Age just because she likes Fenris (good taste). But yeah Fenris is the alpha cat in the house now, he's the smallest animal and he runs it. So when Bru comes up to mess with him Bru will come up and try to be a little bit friendly, Bru's my Pitbull, he's a ninety pound Pitbull and the Pitbull version of friendly is a little enthusiastic. So he'll come up to sniff Fenris and like knock him off the furniture by doing it and Fenris will just look at him and just the look on his face is "hey man, I'm not angry at you, but I'm disappointed".

laughter

And he does this to all the cats and he's the first one to eat, he gets to check out Bru's bowl before Bru gets to eat and all that but he's the one who's in charge of the house he might be in charge of us I'm not sure, which probably means that he is, geez. But he's very cool though we'll take him out on walks, put him on a harness and take him for walks because he can handle the outdoors he's very fine with it, just super chill. So pretty good cat as far as cats go. He'll make a nice cat for somebody someday.

Are we going to get more stuff from Mouse's POV?

More stuff from Mouse's point of view? Probably- yeah I got roped into this anthology- like I said I hate saying no to people. So some people came up with this anthology and said "we want to write an anthology that's all animal stories and we're gonna dedicate all the money to animal shelters" and to which I said "yeah okay and let me get you the email addresses of all these other big authors that I know. Here's Rothfuss, here's Sanderson", you know, like that. Going down the list of people to ask because that's the kind of thing- you get to my point in life and career and you like writing your stuff and everything and so on but you also look around and think "what am I actually doing? What am I-besides just writing stories and getting royalty cheques what am I doing with my life?" And for me it's like, I want to help animals so that's what I'm doing. It's- for a project like that as a charity project I think you're actually better off going to the bigtime writers because the folks who haven't got there yet are more like "you know I would love to but I want to eat", you know like that, so, kind of where we are now.

In the Dresden Files RPG there's little sticky notes and stuff in there, have they ever gotten too close to stuff that hasn't been published yet?

Yeah, I had to delete all kinds of stuff. I was really pleased that they had come up with all these potential story leads and so on but I was like "no you can't play with those I'm already playing with those go away".

laughter

But it pleased me very much that I had given them the background of the story universe and then they had logically put together the same things I had logically put together. So it was like "oooh this must work, it must be kind of sound if other people can take it and go to the same place," I was really pleased with how Evil Hat researched the stuff. I mean it was run by my gaming buddy from college, Fred, he ran the company but he wasn't necessarily actually working on the material the whole time that was other people but Fred was like "trust me they're nerdy enough" and coming from Fred that's a recommendation, so. But yeah it was a lot of fun I would have- we would get together about every three weeks and I would just talk for two or three hours about the world, try and answer questions as best I can that they had and a lot of times that's fun because I don't know the answer to the question until somebody asks me. Somebody askes me a question, "well what is the answer to that question oh obviously it's this now I know something cool about my world and it sounds like it was there the whole time", you know, so.

laughter

Just your intellectus coming in.

Yeah it's my intellectus, not my BS rolls eyes.

Just a quick follow up to that (microfiction and PT release date question) with the Morgan microfiction was that something that was just in the back of your head or was that actually part of your masterplan the entire time?

It's the plan. Morgan was always the guy who was really not all that bad a guy if you weren't Harry Dresden. I mean it's just that- circumstance and fate had arranged things for him to just be a nightmare for Dresden, that was his purpose in the world. And I had to stop and think "well how do you take- how do you get somebody who is more or less somebody with a code of honour and ethics and make him behave the way I need him to behave without just making him a jerk?" You see Morgan through Dresden's point of view so he's always a jerk except kind of at the very end- he's kind of a jerk at the very end. But yeah, the Dresden Files story from other people's points of view is a very different story. We get Harry's point of view because he's right in the middle of the furball so he has a very different take on things than everybody else but- I mean if I was writing the story from, you know, the Merlin's point of view Harry would essentially be Loki. I mean he's this agent of chaos who keeps causing problems. And from other people's points of view it's very different, I mean the further away you get from Dresden the weirder the world looks because it's a different world from what he sees.

I know that your foray into the heist subgenre went really well, are there any other subgenres that you're interested in bringing into Dresden in a future work that you haven't got to play with yet?

Dystopia, apocalypse, kaiju, professional wrestling and we gotta do a dragon book still.

cheer

Right? We'll have to break some laws of magic for that one, definitely.

Will we get to know more about the daughters as the books come out?

Yeah that's the idea they kind of have to be there a bit, you know, so. But at the same time they're gonna grow up at child speed so don't expect it to happen anytime soon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA6hcE5-YCA

prior talk was 22 books planned before BAT now

-that's nice and round yes, though will this completely throw off like the Denarians appearing in every book that's a multiple of five?

Nah it should be alright.

Excellent, cool, cool.

Who wins, Dresden or McGonagall? Like McGonagall from Harry Potter?

Oh god like Harry would hit an old lady, for crying out loud, McGonagall wins.

McGonagall survived cancer, she kicks butt.

Does the winter mantle make Harry more venerable to Lara Raith? I'm sorry it was written venerable.

Well it probably gives him a little more gravitas but it won't make him any older. I think you meant does it make him more vulnerable to Lara Raith and I would say anything that makes you more aggressive and horny probably does make you more vulnerable to Lara Raith.

Here's a good paranoid question, in Cold Days during the mind battle between Harry and Sharkface near Demonreach Sharkface says the following "I AM GATEBREAKER, HARBINGER! I AM FEARGIVER, HOPESLAYER! I AM HE-WHO-WALKS-BEFORE!". The commas between gatebreaker and harbinger and between feargiver and hopeslayer made me wonder, knowing how evil you are, is Sharkface naming /himself/ in all five of those instances or is he naming Dresden in the first and the second too, i.e. is he calling Dresden harbinger and hopeslayer?

I don't know I just write these books man, that's all I do, I just kind of write down what goes through my head. That's paranoid.

The insertion of a comma in the middle of a phrase that changes the meaning, did you intend it?

Did it change the meaning? It all depends on how it's being delivered doesn't it. I don't know we should listen to the audio and see what James thinks. Because he really does- he changes the story occasionally based on the inflections and emphasis that he puts on words and the way he delivers the lines, he occasionally changes things, couple of times he's just broken my heart doing that, it's like "James you're evil", that's me saying that.

Can we expect a Covid-19 inspired event in future Dresden adventures?

Probably not in future Dresden adventures although there's going to be a plague story because there's always a plague story whenever you're doing a long running story unintelligible. But I think I may well be writing up essentially a... AU fanfic of the Dresden files by myself and give it to you guys and we'll set that in a parallel Dresden universe that starts at the same place right after Skin Game and we'll see what we can do with that. See if we get get started on that over the next several weeks so people have something to think about other than ugly stuff. That's a good thing, now is a time when entertainers- this is a time where entertainers it's time for us to go to war, I think you're going to see a lot of us doing everything we can to provide stuff to our readers and our fans and viewers because there's a lot of folks just like me on this. You want to help, I can't make you any better but maybe I can make you not afraid for a little while while you're reading my stuff, that's worth doing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V9am4XyYz4

Posted by
u/TheCuriousFan
3 years ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/dresdenfiles/comments/jn6f0g/brief_cases_tour_austin_qa_transcript/
Brief Cases Tour, Austin Q&A transcript
Spoilers All
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 refusing to tell him not to do a 20 book series 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