Jim Butcher Evening at Kiama Library - Part 4
Kiama Library, Kiama, New South Wales, Australia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHxy_9lR4kk

Just going back to your approach before, that when you hit sort of a block you can throw in some action or something unexpected. How much plotting do you do with your writing? Because I was reading Stephen King's comment where he said he just sticks a character in a situation and lets things unfold based on the character. So, how much of that do you do and how much do you try and structure and plot your books?

Did Stephen King really say that?

It did seem unbelievable.

That's the difference in people who are born with story telling talent and the predisposition toward doing the right thing in story telling, and so they do well like Stephen King, and somebody like me who had no clue whatsoever and had to be handed some tools to say, 'Ah ha. Here is how you shape the story.' For me, I always know where I'm going begin. I always know where I'm going to end. I always know a great big explody bit in the middle that has a high special effects budget that is going to sort of propel the story from the middle of the story to the end of the story. I generally know which characters I'm going to be using. Sometimes -- I mean, when I put the story together, I'll always know the characters I'm going to be using when I get started. Occasionally -- I have a lot of flexibility in which characters I'm going to choose to use and so I will sometimes put up a poll on my website and say, 'Hey, who do you want to see more of in the next book.' And, you know, Murphy. Okay, Murphy will be a sidekick. Fine, will do it like that and that will work out well. But I always know at least that much. And the way I do it is I draw -- because again, I'm not all that bright -- so when people started asking me how I outline my story arcs or story arches, I don't know, one of the two -- and I draw an arch and I start writing the points of the story. Here's where it begins, here's where it ends, then I start filling in bits along the way. Just sort of literally. The more I outline, the better off I am, especially writing under a deadline. Because when you're writing under a deadline, you've got to get those pages produced. That's just part of professionalism. So, yeah, I tend to outline and the more I outline, the smarter I am. I'm not always smart. All my advice on writing, if you go to http://jimbutcher.livejournal.com, it's nothing but articles for aspiring writers. And that's all it is is just articles that are written, that are meant for folk who are trying to get a handle on story.

I'm just curious. How fast do you write?

When I'm writing well, when I'm completely in the zone and writing, 2500 words an hour. When I'm just sort of writing out words and I'm not at all in the mood but I've got to write because it's my job and I need to be professional, about 500 words an hour. So, I do everything I can to do as much zone writing as possible because that's when my best stuff gets produced.

So on average, how long would (inaudible)

How what?

Would it take you to write a book?

To write a book? Between four and nine months. And a lot of that, it just depends on all kinds of things. You know, has the new Battlefield come out yet. That sort of thing. It averages out to about six months a book.

Will we get to learn any more about the Jade Court, possibly?

Probably not, at least not until the big trilogy because --

I think you said that, I just thought I'd ask.

They're -- yeah, well, they're isolationists and they're serious about it.

There's the power vacuums.

They really don't want anything to do with a gwai lo named Dresden, so.

Will we get to see more of the relationship with his daughter?

Yeah, we'll get to see more of that this book. I was actually very proud to see where Harry actually confronts Maggie seriously for the first time. Marsters was recording it and it took him like an extra two hours to record because he kept breaking down in tears. I'm like, 'Yes! I made James Marsters cry.' It made me happy all day long.

One of your more weirder scenes was the journey on the Chichen Itza, whatever, and like just that journey through the parallel universes and stuff like that but mixed in with the physical ones. Where did you get the ideas? I think there was like the upside triangles of light. Do you use like random things or how did you...?

Yeah. I mean, every time -- I would like to claim I have this amazing, awesome imagination and I just pulled them out of there. But every time I think I've done that, I realize that really it's just something I took from a Saturday morning cartoon that I just didn't remember until I saw it on reruns. Bob the Skull, I thought he was so awesome. It was such a great idea to add him. And then I would go and saw the rerun of the opening segment of the original Scooby-Doo cartoon, and that's the first thing you see is the skull with the flaming eyes giggling. And it's like, oh, I'm so original. Wow. So, there are probably bits and pieces taken from everywhere. The only question is whether I realize it or not. As far as going through the parallel universes, though, to get somewhere else, that's largely lifted from Zelazny's Amber books. I don't know if you guys read Amber but travelling through Shadow is much the same.

With hindsight now, what are your thoughts on the TV series that was made.

My thoughts on the TV series? Could have been worse. You didn't see the first draft that I did. It could have been a lot worse. Although, you also did see the original pilot and I did. It's available, the original pilot is available on the internet for download somewhere. And it's actually the two hour version of the Storm Front episode. It just covers the events of Storm Front. It's not bad. I don't know if you guys know this or not, I'm going to share with you my conspiracy theory on what killed the Dresden Files on television. I don't have any proof but I have a bulletin board with pictures and note cards and bits of yarn strung out, which is almost as good as proof, because in conspiracy theory, proof actually burdens the conspiracy theory, makes it not work. But bear in mind that at the time the Dresden Files came out, there were a couple of powerful executives working at the SciFi Channel. The first was Bonnie Hammer who had given the SciFi Channel professional wrestling and Ghost Hunters, which were successful because they didn't cost very much and they generated revenue. And then there was -- oh, what was his name? I believe it was David Howe, who had just been responsible for bringing Battlestar Galactica to the SciFi Channel to worldwide critical acclaim and success, and David Howe was the one who was behind the Dresden Files. So, two weeks before the Dresden Files started airing, Bonnie Hammer took over and all of the sudden lots of things started happening to the Dresden Files two weeks before filming was about to start. They replaced the producer, Robert Wolfe. They told him, 'Okay, you're going to be second in command. You're going to be our on the spot commander. But the guy who is actually in charge is going to be so and so, who just got done doing Charmed, and he's going to be the boss from L.A. while you shoot in Toronto.' And the first thing the new boss said was skip all this serial nonsense, because actually the first season was originally supposed to cover the events of Storm Front and Fool Moon. And they said, 'Skip all that serial nonsense. We're just going to do individual episodes that aren't connected.' And they're like, 'We've only got two weeks until we start shooting and there's no time to rewrite for that.' 'Oh, never mind. Just disconnect the stories and change everybody's names and switch the order around.'

(inaudible)

Did you notice that too? I thought I was the only one. So, really, the folks that were there did the best they could with what they had but they were constantly being sandbagged by folks in L.A. For instance, they would write in scene changes -- this guy would write in scene changes that would change who was going to be in a scene that they were going to shoot the next day. He would send it out by 9:00 California time, which is considered acceptable in California, except that that's midnight in Toronto. And by the time the changes got out and people got alerted to it, it was 1:00 in the morning in Toronto before the bosses started giving orders to change the scene that was going to start shooting at 5:00 a.m. And so they wind up calling up Terrance Mann and saying, 'Hey, Terry. Sorry, we know you were supposed to go see your wife and kids tomorrow for the first time in five weeks but we need you on stage at 5:00 a.m. instead.' And so that led to many days of frustration and so on like that on the set, because there was such a disconnect between the guy who was in charge and the people who actually had to make it happen. So, there were many days on the set where people were grumpy and ugly and things were not going well. I saw it once when I was there. Heck, when I was there, I saw him change Harry Dresden killing Justin from Harry killing Justin to Harry accidentally killing Justin. You know, from making a choice to kill him, he drops the gun and it goes off and the bullet kills him. I think it was a voodoo doll and not a gun, but it amounts to the same thing. It was supposed to be an accident. I remember standing there reading it, with Robert Wolfe on one side and the director on the other and Paul Blackthorne right here, and we're sort of reading the script. Paul is the first one to speak. He's a little bit blunt and says, 'I cannot believe this bullshit.' To which I could not help but agree, but I didn't say anything. And Robert's like, 'Well, yeah, I don't like it either but if this is the rewrite, he's the guy who is actually in charge of this.' And the director is like, 'I can't believe it. I can't believe it. This is terrible. This is awful,' you know, writing this huge major character moment into an accident instead of a choice. And they're like, 'Jim, what do you think?' And it's like, I kind of looked at the page and looked up at them and said, 'Guys, I don't know what you're talking about. I can't read my copy. It's all blurry. Maybe there was a bad fax machine.' And they're like, 'Yeah, maybe it was a bad fax machine.' Like I said, I don't work well in that kind of structured situation.

I really like the choice of Paul Blackthorne for Harry. Do you what I do and watch Arrow and expect him to break out magic?

I haven't watched Arrow, so no. That's one of the shows that I'm still getting caught up on. It's next in line after I finish this season of Justified, which is just one of the best written shows on TV. Yeah, is Wayland awesome or what? And Crowder is the best villain ever. Boy, Crowder, he could play Nicodemus, just because he's done so well with (crosstalk). But anyway, yeah, I don't think that way. I think he did a good job. He didn't look anything like Harry in my head but he acted Harry well. Interestingly, the two finalists for that were Paul and Baldwin, Jayne from Firefly, was the other finalist to be Harry. And that would have been kind of cool. I would have loved to see have seen what he would have done with the role, because he could be humiliated well.

I'm given to understand that authors don't really get a lot of say in this, but it's been sixteen or so books. Why do they have the hat? Have you not had a chance to get rid of the hat from the front covers?

Authors don't have a whole lot of say in that. Although you will hear me making jokes about it more and more as the series goes on. Who knows, maybe by the end of it I'll have Dresden get Indy's hat from the Smithsonian or something like that, because it will have so much power and preserve him as an adventurer and lovable rogue.

You've done the Dresden Files RPG tabletop game. Would you consider doing that for Alera, as well, the Alera world, and do some rules for that?

It's okay with me. If somebody wants to do it -- actually, I think Evil Hat is looking at it. Although I think they may be more interested in focusing on Cinder Spires.

Jim Butcher Evening at Kiama Library - Part 2
Kiama Library, Kiama, New South Wales, Australia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHxy_9lR4kk

Okay, so when it comes to the Dresden Files -- because you've been writing for quite a few years -- have you ever looked at some of your earlier works and gone, 'I wish I made a different choice at that point.'

Oh, yes and no, because as soon as I can start playing with parallel universes, I'm going to get to show some of the things. Actually, one of the books that's going to be upcoming is -- I'm just going to go for total originality and call it Mirror Mirror and stick Harry in a parallel universe where he made one choice differently when he was much younger and show the fallout from that choice in that universe as it's going. That's going to be extremely fun story. I don't get to write it next. I think it's the story after this next one -- which is after Skin Game. There's Skin Game and then the next one the White Council is going to come to town and there's going to be a big brouhaha, and then I think I can do Mirror Mirror after that. And then maybe we'll do professional wrestling stories. Because I love professional wrestling. I watch it for the writing. And you can sort of pick out, well, wait, what's the inspiration for this show? And you can figure out what the book is the inspiration for this show, this particular segment of the wrestling. It's like, 'Ah ha! This is the Return of the King episode. Look! They've destroyed the evil guy and now the good king is back, and now he's the champion of the league, and so and so has been fired, and so and so has been re-hired, and he stretched forth his hand and cured a girl of cancer.' It's wonderful. I love watching wrestling. It's great fiction. But that's where the future is. As far as wondering about changing things in the past, nah, I'm pretty happy with it. I kind of use that Edna Mode quote. "I never live in the past, darling. It detracts from the now."

Having read your short stories (inaudible), will we either see a story about young Michael or Michael come back as a cyborg Michael and (inaudible)?

Cyborg Michael?

(inaudible)

Cyborg Michael? Really? (inaudible) cyborg paladin. I kind of love that idea. [crosstalk] Just read Skin Game. You'll be happy.

What made you decide to do Spider-Man?

Oh, are you kidding? What made me decide to do a Spider-Man novel? They said, 'Jim, do you want to do a Spider-Man novel?' 'Yes, I want to do a Spider-Man novel! Let me go get a pen so I can sign a contract. Are you going to pay me anything?' As it turns out, no, they're really not. I made -- even when, the books weren't selling as well then as they are now, but even then I took about a 90% pay cut to write that Spider-Man novel. But I got to write Spider-Man. I got to have to Rhino drink tea on Aunt May's couch. That was too good a time to pass up. I just couldn't possibly pass that one up. Of course, it threw off my writing schedule to the point that it's still behind because I threw that extra book in, but that's okay. I'll deal with it.

(inaudible) Butters, why polka?

Why polka on Butters? Because my main writing -- okay, every time, I make basically a new mix tape every time I start writing a new Dresden novel. And the mix tape for Dead Beat -- or the mix tape for the book that had Butters originally in it, which I believe was, it was the fifth one, Death Masks, that one had a load of polka, Weird Al's polka music on it. And so, why not? I'll have him like polka. I can do that. So, in my head, basically Butters is being played by about a 1984 age or by a 1990 age Weird Al in my head. In my head, that's who plays him.

Can you see actors for all the characters?

Not always. Sometimes. It changes as time goes on. Right now, I think if I could cast anybody I wanted, I would get Michael Fastbender to play Dresden and I'd go get Hiddleston to play Thomas, because he's awfully popular with the ladies these days.

Who is playing Molly?

What was that?

Who is playing Molly?

Oh, I don't know. I haven't gotten that far, really. But whoever, provided she's cute and can pull off sass, that's what I really need. I'm trying to think of the actress who had sort of stuck in my head but now she's bounced out of it again.

You need a tall Molly, though. That's the thing.

What's that?

You need a tall Molly, remember? Because she's like similar in build to her mum.

Yeah. I know who I'd cast in Charity. I'd want Lucy Lawless to play Charity. She'd be dead perfect for that. But other than that. I actually got to meet Lucy this week. She walked -- (inaudible) and she walked through the door and I'm like, 'Oh, that's Lucy Lawless. I should go talk to her. No, I couldn't do that. I'm standing in the elevator next to Lucy Lawless. Oh, my gosh, it's Xena.' I'm such a huge nerd.

You write a lot of experience, at least in Dresden Files, about gamers and gaming, and there's of course the role playing games. Have you played many games and, if so, what is your favorite and what is your favorite gaming experience?

Okay, how to answer this one. I rolled up my first D&D character when I was 7 years old on the first day of first grade when I should have been listening to my spelling teacher. And I was instead rolling up my first D&D character, who was a Basic D&D character from that old, old red, blue, yellow primary colors D&D set. He was an elf named Spock. That's now nerdy I am, sir. As far as favorite games, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is my favorite system to run. It's got a lot of flavor. I can do all kinds of fun stuff in it.

Do you have an army?

Oh, no. The fantasy roleplay is my favorite. I play fantasy battles, and I play undead and I will rock you with my undead. I've still got my painted undead army up at home in two rifle cases. The rifles don't go in there. My models go in there. Let's see, my favorite gaming experience, though, was -- okay, my favorite gaming experience was also the highlight of my parenting career -- which also tells you something about.... This is a good story. We were out LARPing. I don't know if you guys know what live action roleplay is. You go out in the woods, you dress up and you got out with boffers and you lay into people, and that's what you do. We were playing at a camp, kind of out in the middle of nowhere Illinois. It was a Boy Scout camp. It was way far out away from any city light or anything, so when it got dark, it got really dark. The camp was all on this peninsula that stuck out into the middle of this huge lake. The peninsula was covered in 150 year old pine forest. So, just these huge columns of trees that went up to about a 45 foot canopy overhead. So, basically, whenever the moon was out, the moon was on the water all around you and just kind of cast these long, evil reflections down through these huge columns of trees -- in which nested a flock of like thirty turkey vultures. So, every once in awhile you'd scare the turkey vultures and they'd all spook and start flying at the same time. It was just completely eerie out there, and you're going through all these paths in the trees. We were out there fighting Aliens, only they couldn't call them Aliens because that's copyrighted, so they just did what Marvel did and called them the brood. But the costumes were completely goofy, because if you saw them in the daytime, they didn't look like anything because it was just foam spiky bits that stuck out all over the place. But at night, all you could see was an outline. And so you would just sort of just see the outline, just kind of in the blackness, this black outline of things with foam spiky bits. And they had little chemical glowlights taped to their eyes in little evil red slits like this [transcriber note: \ / ]. So you would see the spiky bits, but before that, you saw the evil red eyes sort of slowly coming towards you. And instead of making noise -- they didn't actually make any noises or anything like that. Each of the NPCs playing the bad guys had a clicker, and they'd start clicking. So, you'd hear clicking, and then the evil red eyes, and then these spiky bits. And when they got to you, they didn't fight you and kill you, they would hit you just enough to paralyze you and then you'd be dragged off into the dark and never be seen again. That was how these bad guys operated. So, it was completely scary. And in response to this, the local group had developed a phalanx system of combat. So, it would be a wall of shields on the outside and big guys with spears in the middle and the spell casters in the middle throwing bean bags at people, saying 'Lightning bolt! Fireball!' and so on. And that was how you did it. You advanced in this slow step by step formation and that was how you got everybody out alive again. Well, we came from a chapter where the threats were very different, and so our fighting style was much more of a Native American hit and run, attack people in the dead of night and get away after you've ruined their evening style. So, we did a lot more fighting with weapons in each hand. And me and the kid are out playing our fighters. We've both got like the long black coats. We've both got the identical black war paint on. We're both armed the same way. We're playing the warrior and the warrior's apprentice. And so we're on this mission where we're fighting all these things, and we don't have a lot to do because we're pretty much stuck in the middle. We don't have long weapons and we don't have shields, so we're pretty much just walking along. And then the DMs come up to us and they tell us, 'All right. At this point, the trail from here onward, it's only wide enough for two people to go side by side. So, you can only go two by two down this trail.' And everybody's like, 'Oh, two by two. Whoever is in front is going to die. Oh, God.' And I look over at my son, who is about 16 at this point. He's a couple inches taller than I am and still growing. And I look at him like, 'You up for this?' And he goes, '(sniff) Yeah.' Because he's such a badass. And I'm like, 'Okay.' We go, 'All right. We'll go up front.' And everybody's like, 'Oo, yeah, the new guys. Send them up front. Let them do this.' So the Gamemaster says, 'All right, 3, 2, 1, game on,' and me and the kid take off at a sprint down the trail. We get to the first guy before he's quite done standing up and we maul him, because we're both fighting with two swords. So, brbrbrbrb, like that and jump over his corpse and sprint towards the next guy. And meanwhile, the rest of the group is like, 'Wait, wait, what's going on?' and trying to come after us. So, we get to the next guy. We engage him, tear him apart. Go past him, go to the next one. This guy is ready for us but it doesn't matter. We tear him to shreds. We're on guy five or six before we realize, wait a minute, the reason this is happening is because I taught the kid how to fight, so he fights in exactly the same rhythm that I do because that's what he learned from me. Only we were fighting on alternating beats, so as soon as I started sweeping down for a low line attack, he would pop up to a high line attack and vice versa, and we would trade off at exactly the right time without having to talk to each other about it because that was just the rhythm we were fighting in. If we'd planned it, it never would have worked. But we didn't and it was awesome. So, we did this section of dungeon that was supposed to take us three hours and we did it in seventeen minutes. Got to the end, we killed the last guy, went back to back, looked around us like this and we both put the swords away samurai style at the same time. And everybody behind us goes, 'Oh, that was cool.'  I turned to the kid and I'm like, 'Be cool. Be cool. We do this every day, right?' So, that's my favorite gaming experience and my best parenting moment. When my son came to me asked me to teach him to write, he was like, 'Well, I guess you were kind of right about teaching me how to boffer fight,' because before we first started boffer fighting, before we first started going out to LARP, I taught him his basic fencing. And when we got him there, they were like, 'Well, he's a little younger than most people who are here. We just want to put him up against the weapon marshal and make sure he'll be all right.' And I said, 'Yeah, okay. Sure.' So, the kid went up against the weapon marshal when he was 14, against this guy who was 25. The kid beat him ten touches to one and he comes running over to me, bouncing like this. He goes, 'Oh, I, I can do this! I can sword fight and I can beat people!' And I'm like, 'Yeah, kid. I told you. This is one of the things I can do well.' He's like, 'Yeah, but I figured you didn't know what you were talking about.' So, it's like credibility with the child. Credibility with your offspring, that's solid gold right there. Anyway, long answer to the question.

You've been using a lot of different things coming back in the Dresden and stuff. There are elves, faeries, vampires, werewolves. Is there any sort of supernatural thing you've wanted to put in but haven't yet or just can't?

Supernatural things I've wanted to put in but haven't yet or just can't? Uh, I mean, no. I feel totally willing, as long as I feel I'm conversant enough with the mythology I'm dealing with. I'll put anything in. I haven't got to go with -- I haven't got to do any rakshasas yet. I haven't got to do any djinn really. I haven't gotten to do nearly enough gods or nearly enough Lovecraftian stuff. I've got to do some more of that. But no, everything is fair game, at least for as far as the story goes, as far as running into freaky monsters goes. So, if I haven't used it yet, I'm planning on using it, because we've still got to do the thing with the dragon and that's going to be awesome.

Is there any way that Joss Whedon (inaudible).

Is there any way that Joss Whedon would do that? I'm sure he doesn't have anything better to do. I can't think what else he'd be doing. What I would prefer to see, if it was going to be on TV again, I would prefer to see it produced as a feature production series like Game of Thrones or one of the other (inaudible) cable. And there is the potential for something like that to happen, but it's Hollywood so I'm not getting real excited about it yet. One of the rules of Hollywood is nothing's final until the check has cleared. And that's kind of the ground you're standing on out there. So, I'm not getting excited about it now. I did spend most of January writing up a series bible for a studio. We'll see if they do anything with it.

Are you still going to write more comics?

Am I still going to write more comics? Yes. I just got done writing an outline for War Crime, which is the new one. That's the one where Dresden takes a group -- it's set right after the events of Dead Beat. And Dresden, who is newly inducted into the Wardens, has to take a group of baby Wardens into a fight. So, it's Ramirez and Wild Bill Myers and Yoshimo and off they go. They're sent off to the middle of nowhere Iowa to find some people and get out again and it's terribly complicated by all the things that happened, because it's Harry Dresden's life. And nothing is simple when it's Harry Dresden. But it's great, because I get to have him, drive him out there in the Blue Beetle and have it break down on the outskirts of town. Dresden just sits there like, 'Ugh.' It's like, yes, that's where we start. And the artist is just amazing. Actually, the artist starts off with the fight with the White Council versus the Red Court in Sicily and in Africa. And it's horrible. I'm looking at these scenes of virtual genocide going on in these cities and going, 'Oh, my God, all those corpses, all that horror. It's perfect.' But that's one of the risks you run as a writer is finding yourself saying things like that. To do my job, I need a little more C-4.

(inaudible)

Oh, yeah, exactly.

Dictation by Derek - I will try to keep an eye on this thread and repost this when the first four are done so they are in order.

KC Q&A - part 5 (harle1229's version)



...extra time to finish this book?


JIM BUTCHER:  This one was really hard to write because Dresden spends a whole big chunk of it not really able to communicate with very many people, which means that I can't write a whole bunch of snappy dialogue which is the easiest, funnest part of my job as a writer.  There was a lot of description written and so on, and that's grindingly slow for me.  That was part of it, was getting Dresden kind of out of that quandary. 

Part of it was actually figuring out, 'Oh, wait a minute.  The actual plot that I thought was happening is not exactly the plot that I thought was happening.'  And that only came together in the last month or so. 

A lot of it was that this book is longer than most of the other ones.  In fact, it's longer than all the previous Dresden Files books. 

And also, life happened.  I had my kid move out on me and all of the sudden I wasn't a full time dad anymore.  That was weird.  That was a rebalancing issue to be dealt with. 

So, I mean, there were a bunch of different things and finally I did get it done.  I remember I called editor and said, "This just isn't gonna happen."  And my editor just said, "Jim, you're a creative person.  You people are squirrelly."  And I stopped and thought about that for a minute, and I thought to myself, 'You know what?  Professionally, what I do for a living is to wander around imaginary places that only exist in my head, eavesdropping on conversations between my imaginary friends and then writing it down.  Yeah, no wonder I'm not severely well attached.  There might be something to that.' 

Hopefully the next one will come out in much better order.  And then I'm working on another fantasy on the side now.  I'm taking a break from that jerk Harry Dresden.  I'm tired of him.  I'm always tired of him at the end of the book, so it's always great to go somewhere else, and play in somebody else's world and play with different imaginary friends.  And then eventually I won't be mad at Harry Dresden any more and I'll say, 'Okay, Harry, I'm not mad at you any more.  Let's put you through another book.' 

And...that doesn't seem very sincere, does it?

question inaudible


Okay, well, I hope you're reading more widely than me because there are so many people out there who are good.  Who I read for fun...and the answer to that is -- I'm going to give you a bunch of names right now and then later I'm going to go, 'Oh, I should have said this person,' somebody I completely forgot. 

The late Robert B. Parker.  I love his work.  I go back and reread Spencer and the Spencer series at least once a year, just because for his use of humor and his ability to turn the occasional really great phrase.  Let me think. 

There's a new guy named Harry Connolly who's got two books out.  I don't know if you've read his series yet.  The first one's called Child of Fire, and it's actually available for $0.99 if you get the electronic version.  So, you should go out and secure that because he's a good writer. 

There's a new guy named Benedict Jacka whose first book is coming out shortly, sometime I think late this year or early next year.  It's called Fated.  Keep an eye out for that guy.  He's good.  His name is Benedict Jacka.  He's coming out from Roc. And the editor sent me the book and gave me a synopsis of it.  I went, '*snort* Okay, synopsis.'  And started reading and was like, 'Oh, oh, oh! This is cool!'  And really, he's one of the best writers I've read in a awhile.  Let's see. 

I recently reread The Deed of Paksenarrion again, which is a twenty year old book from TOR.  I'm not even sure it's in print at the moment but she just went back to the world and started writing again as if she hadn't stopped.  And I went, 'Okay, three months is one thing.  A twenty year break between book three and book four seems a little extreme to me,' but I'm just happy she's back to writing in that world again now because it's alot of fun.  Let me think.  Who else? 

I've been reading a lot of Brandon Sanderson lately.  Brandon Sanderson and I have very similar ideas and kind of philosophy when it comes to putting together fantasy worlds that actually make sense and where things happen for a good reason and there's very little of just the pure mysticism happening in the background, the inexplicable things.  You can get it when it's all done.  You can see how it's all put together when it's finished and I really love Brandon's work for that. 

Pat Rothfuss's new book -- yeah, I did meet Pat at Comic-Con.  Pat is the nicest guy.  There's a video of him riding an electronic bull at one of the local clubs which is hilarious.  You should see it.  But Pat takes himself almost as seriously as I do, so we get got along great when we sat down and started talking.  But yeah, I read his first book and I've been saving his most recent book.  I've been holding it out as a carrot, saying you can read it in your spare time when you're on tour, you know, when you're in the airport or on air planes and stuff when you're touring, and that'll be your prize for getting all this work done.  Okay.  And then I was getting set to start the first leg of tour at Comic-Con and I pack up a bag and went, 'Great, I can take Wise Man's Fear with me.  Ow.  That thing's huge.'  So it was like, 'Okay, where's my iPad.  I'm getting this electronic,' because while I do own the low tech version, which I'll be happy that I have when EMP's go off and the zombie apocalypse begins because you'll be able to defend yourself with the books.  An iPad, that won't drop even a little zombie.  A copy of The Name of the Wind, somebody's gonna go down.  But Pat Rothfuss is another person I enjoy tremendously. 

There are many other authors.  I dug the Harry Potter books, I don't care what anybody says.  The Percy Jackson books were extremely well written.  I know those were young adult books.  I don't care.  They were cool.  But those are just some examples there.

What genre would you like to work in that I haven't yet just due to contracts or time?


I've still got a science fiction series that is sort of Men in Black meets X-Men on the moon.  I had to go through -- it was one of these things that I really researched, that I got inaudible for no good reason, and I had to go through two hundred years of future history just basically in order to be able to call my group of good guys U.S. Marshals.  You know, I had to figure out how we could get there and still able to call them that.  But that's an actual science fiction series, although it's really more space opera than science fiction. 

Actual science fiction at this point looks so weird in the future.  I've actually stopped and started researching for actual where we're going, reading some actual futurists and so on.  There's some spooky stuff coming along and it's...I don't know if I can have fun writing about that.  I mostly want to have a good time. 

The good part is though, the positive part, is that people are gonna be people.  I don't care what year we are.  We've been pretty solid in terms of what sorts of behaviours we'd expect, so I can have a good time with that no matter where we go.  But that would be fun. 

And I think some superhero books might be fun.  I think my superheroes would probably have a good time, wind up using their powers for a bunch of things that nobody ever really thought about before.

I'm a bit lost as far as what is and isn't currently being transcribed of the new GS Q&A's, but I can squeeze 15 or 20 minutes into my schedule if anyone needs help with any of it, just shoot me a link to the video/audio.

Thinking the main code you'd need would be something for the magic. Stuff like circles could just add to the difficulty, which you'd have to plug in manually in too many cases to be worth the headache of trying to automate a guessing system. Item code and rote spells would just be shortcuts that give the spell code values for you.

It's really not that bad. It'd just be a system or room/char flags that affect how much latent energy is available to work with and how effective a spell is. It's not trivial but it's not that bad to code, either.

There wouldn't be much point in it for purely roleplay purposes, though.

Scent would be a bit troublesome to really do right. Best you could get would be a generic system that works but doesn't tell you much or a more detailed, realistic system that was very patchy. Well sketched out in some places, virtually absent or extremely generic in others. Scent would also need to be on locations and would give you clues about some things if you go more realistic.

What I had planned to do (and should be simple enough in theory) is just adapt the introduction code that was already in the codebase I was working from to identify people by scent. That codebase already had a fairly extensive tracking system so it'd mostly just be a matter of tying it together than then deciding how you wanted it displayed on the map (assuming you were using one).

It would be fairly easy to apply a 'scent' description on rooms or objects if the builder wanted to use those for clues about an area.  Making that kinda dynamic would be an interesting problem but you might be able to hack something together with mob/room progs.

Yeah but it's often just easier to write your own code for something like this, though. It's nice when you can grab big chunks and drop them in but it's not always feasible. Just kind of depends on what you're trying to do.

That makes me wonder about some general questions.  What are some DresdenVerse features that one might consider essential to the theme? 

The main things I had on my high priority list were, in no particular order:
a fully functional circle system (to concentrate or isolate energy sources, etc.)
a 'mortal' world map with a nevernever analogue that would partially match up with the mortal world, but not tied directly to it, and various ways of crossing between the two. (i also planned for a third out of character realm)
firearms
tracking capabilities and a good map - tracking via scent, magic and also a 'mortal' tracking skill based upon environmental clues
burial sites with different age levels of bones for necromancy down the line
'focus items', things like harry's power rings and shield bracelet which are imbued with energy and abilities

without digging into my notes, those are things things i was most concerned about off the top of my head.

i think the idea of building a framework directly around the fate system might have definite benefits, although i have no idea how fred and co. would feel about it. once that framework was finished, it could then be fairly easily converted for any particular system based on FATE.

if you set it up with DM and player tools, it'd be different from what i think of as a mud/mush but it'd be great to play in.