What we know

[OZ]

So Ive been wondering:   Legend has it that the Dresden Files began as an argument regarding formulaic plot elements in fiction, and that the Codex Alera had to do with a bet involving pokemon and roman legions.  I wonder if there was any similar trigger for the Cinder Spires

This is very fuzzy in my already bad memory so it will not be exact. Quite some time ago Jim talked about coming home from some event (I believe it may have been Larping but aforementioned fuzzy memory is still not working) while a storm was blowing in. He said something about seeing the heavy storm clouds rolling across the clear sky and how he almost instantly got an idea for a steampunk world or city or something similar. I have no idea where this quote is but I have wondered if it was the beginning of the Cinder Spires universe.

If any of you WOJ experts out there could find this I would appreciate it. I'm not even one hundred percent sure that it was on this site although I think it was.

[gospelmage]

I am wondering... has anyone gone on hand and knees begging Jim to give us even one chapter sample of this new world to get us drooling and raving for more.  Forget Pavlov's dog the chapter previews are my bell.

[Quantus]

I am wondering... has anyone gone on hand and knees begging Jim to give us even one chapter sample of this new world to get us drooling and raving for more.  Forget Pavlov's dog the chapter previews are my bell.

Possibly, but as he's still writing it I doubt we have a chance.  Good odds that we will see them in the last weeks before its released, as with his other works.  We do have a chance to get the first Line, he has been willing to share those well ahead of time.  But the first line of the first book of a new series will probably not mean a whole lot to us, having no contextual reference for it.

[Magnus]

Even if we have no contextual context for the sentence it will still be.something written by Jim Butcher so it is Well wort reading, due to that.

[Joefoe]

my first thought when I heard it was a steam punk series was that he went back to Alera.

He had made a comment about it becoming very steampunky 1000 years fromn where we left off

[Lanodantheon]

If I remember one of the interviews correctly(it was a Convention panel featured on the front of the JB site I remember) The Cinder Spires might have come from one day when Jim was driving a bunch of kids home from a LARP.  He mentioned that in his rear-view mirror he could see in the distance a tornado or something behind him and he thought, "What if that was chasing me?"


Wherever the series comes from, I'm sure it will be awesome.

[TheCuriousFan]

Audience member: What’s next?

Oh, steampunk series, right now it’s called The Cinder Spires, the first book is called The Aeronauts Windlass, for the time being, because, well, I like aeronauts and windlasses. It’s got airships and goggles, and it’s got talking cats who are perfect little monsters… Every time I write a point-of-view chapter from the point of view of one of these cats, I’m like, “Oh my god, someone needs to just field-goal kick this guy, just out through the wall”, because they are just so perfectly sure that they’re in control of everything that’s happening around them, and that all is proceeding according to their plans, if these humans would just stop messing it up. It’s a lot of fun as a writer. And they actually end up being much like the Mafia in our society, because, you know, they can talk, and they can use matches, you know.

**Audience laughter**

They can enforce their demands. “I noticed that you have no rodents in your warehouse. Perhaps you’d like to keep it that you have no rodents in your warehouse? Perhaps, there will be cream left outside for my associates and I…”. They're that kind of attitude, only you know, they're far more arrogant.

http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,36681.msg1825874.html#msg1825874

Another piece of information. The cats in this series are utter jerks.

[Quantus]

Another piece of information. The cats in this series are utter jerks.

Sooo, their cats then? 

[Margrave]

Jim read the Prologue and the first chapter to The Aeronaut's windlass at Ad-astra someone was recording so there's a chance it will go up online somewhere soon.

I don't know if discussing them in detail here would be too much so i'll wait for a decision from someone higher up

[whingnut]

Based on my personal experience with Ghost Story Readings a full YEAR in advance of release, yeah wait until you get the okay from JB's Camp. Have to clear it with his publisher ect. Priscilla is the goto on this I *think* but with her workload of late that may have changed. She's still a great person to poke though. I hope you enjoyed it as much as my beta friends have, I know I can't wait to read it myself! 

[aShorty21]

Jim read the Prologue and the first chapter to The Aeronaut's windlass at Ad-astra someone was recording so there's a chance it will go up online somewhere soon.

I don't know if discussing them in detail here would be too much so i'll wait for a decision from someone higher up

Argh, Knowing there is more info out there is killing me since I don't have it. But with not knowing the actual release date, that is probably for the best.

[Magnus]

I also remember Jim mentioning something about magic, and those who knew magic, were wrong in some way. For example there is one person who knows magic but he doesn't know how to handle a doorknob so he has someone to open doors from him. But the dangerous magicians are those who seems like normal humans, because there must be something seriously wrong with them. Something along those lines anyway.

I found the quote from Jim it sounds much better when he says it:

About your steampunk series, is there going to be magic in there, or technology, or is there going to be a magic vs. technology thing?

The answer to that is: the magic in the Dresden Files is technology, it’s just really, really advanced. It’s something that we don’t really understand with what we’ve got right now, but there’s actual rules to how it works, and so on.  Yeah, there’s stuff that looks like magic in steampunk, it’s not necessarily really magic, but there it is.  And there are characters who deal with it who kind of look like wizards, but not. But they might as well be, for story purposes, and none of them are sane.  They’re called aetherialists (sp?) and if you’re an aetherialist, you deal with aetheric energy and you know how to make it work.  And you’re not like an aetheric engineer, who can build a cook gizmo using it, you can just do it without the gizmo, and it tends to do funny things to your brain.  So one of them, kind of the master wizard of the entire place, can’t open doors because doorknobs defeat him.  They’re a highly advanced technology and he just can’t understand them.  So he’s got an apprentice who can open doors, but she can’t talk to anybody except for the little jar of crystals that she has with her.  So she’s sort of useless in other situations.  The really scary aetherialists are the ones who are absolutely sane, the ones who will pour you tea and say, “Would you like a biscuit with that?”—those are the ones you have to look out for, because they’re wrong in a bad way.

source: http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,34739.msg1706613.html#msg1706613

[Howl]

Thanks fro the quote Magnus, that sounds very interesting.

[Magnus]

and here we have more, J = Jim, R= Rebecca:
source: http://archeddoorway.com/2013/04/12/interview-with-jim-butcher/

R: Exactly!

Now, you did recently sign an agreement for a steampunk trilogy… Is there anything you can say about The Cinder Spires?

J: The Cinder Spires has gotten a better response from my readers than anything that I’ve done recently, just in terms of them thinking it’s something cool. These are my beta readers, from the beta asylum, which I call the asylum because you have to be a bit crazy to be there, because I’m just a bear for cliffhanging chapters, and sometimes they’ll have to wait a couple of weeks between them. So, there’s something wrong with those people, but there they are.

They think it’s pretty great, it’s kind of “Hornblower” meets “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”, it’s very focused on the characters, with very strong influence from Firefly I think.

R: Awesome.

J: Yeah, if you’re going to steal from somewhere, you know, pick a good spot. But yeah, we start off with a disaffected ship captain who used to be part of the navy buy got drummed out of it for being an up-right honourable guy, who’s now running his own ship. We’ve got some other characters who are scattered around who are being drawn together by the lord of the spire.

Everyone lives in these enormous spires that spire for miles above the ground below; the surface is this deadly place you don’t want to go. The lord of Spire Albion, which is where the story begins, is assembling what is essentially a team for critical missions. That’s what this first story is, it’s him drawing this team together, and dispatching them as this war is beginning with a neighbouring spire of jerks.

So that’s kind of where we get going. One of the team members is the daughter of one of the young noble houses, and one of them is her cousin who is warriorborn. They don’t know quite how it happened but a certain percentage of the popular seems to be born with what seems like genetic modification to be faster and stronger and better and cooler. As well, there are cats in the Spires who talk and who are just the most arrogant, annoying little bullies.

R: Well, yes… They’re cats.

J: They’re cats, exactly, but these cats can talk, and they have opposable thumbs and matches. So, these are cats who are along the lines of: “I see that you enjoy having no rodents in your warehouse. Perhaps you would continue to enjoy having no rodents in your warehouse. Perhaps there will be a bowl of cream sitting out for me… or it might all catch on fire.” You never know what’s going to happen, but one of the characters actually has a close relationship with a cat and can speak cat. The cats speak their own language, they probably could speak the human language, but why would they? They’re cats. Why would they stoop to that? They understand humans, perfectly, except for when they don’t… and that can all happen within the same morning. They can choose who to ignore and who not to. The cats are horrible.

Then we’ve got these wizard figures. All the technology is based around these crystals that can channel various forms of energy, steampower and a kind of Frankensteinian electricity. They’re engineers who can do all kinds of cool stuff, but they’re also these figures called etherealists who work with the crystals. The etherealists are all completely nuts, I mean, over-the-top hair on fire nuts. Except for the ones that aren’t, and those are the ones you really have to worry about, because there’s something really wrong with them.

You know, the guy who’s sort of dribbling and walking in circles in the corner, who’s an etherealist? Okay, he’s probably not a threat. The one who’s inviting you to high tea? Forget it, you don’t even want to go near that one.

R: Here be danger.

J: Exactly; you know they’re crazy, the question is: how? And if you can see they’re crazy, they’re less dangerous.

But yeah, that’s sort of them getting this team together and figuring out how they’re going to get things done. I’m having a great deal of fun with the book, it’s been a tremendous good time for me, so my beta readers have been tortured extra. Which I think is good for readers.

R: Of course, especially beta readers, they deserve it. This sounds like it’s going to have quite a bit of a different feel compared to Dresden.

J: Very much so. It’s going to be closer to Alera than anything else… Multiple character viewpoints, so it’ll have much more of that feel.

[Paladino]

Thanks for posting it Magnus!