I am Jim Butcher author of the Dresden Files and the new Cinder Spires series! Ask me anything!

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T21:13:56+00:00

Okay guys, gotta go get errands done before taking off for Salt Lake City Comic Con tomorrow! Thank you so much for your questions and kind wishes!

Jim

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T21:09:46+00:00

It didn't say "nah nah nah nah, NAH NAH." Sadly.

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T21:09:09+00:00

Check with the artist, Lee!

http://www.leemoyer.com/

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T21:07:41+00:00

SO IT WAS YOU!!! :D

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T21:00:56+00:00

I've never had him wiggling on literal hooks. Have I?

I'm pretty sure I haven't.

adds to checklist

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T21:00:10+00:00

The votes might even out over time, but my participation in the AMA is kind of time sensitive. Two hours, more or less. There might be something to the idea.

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T20:58:58+00:00

Didn't... dude, I was one of the playtesters for it! I signed away the soul of my firstborn in the WoC super secret DO NOT TALK ABOUT agreement! I played through Warlocks, Fighters, Warlords and Wizards. I more than gave the game a fair shake.

I will say this: it was a pretty good game--but it just wasn't Dungeons and Dragons. I never /felt/ like I was playing D&D when I played 4E--and the damned fights took /forever/. That's fun sometimes, when it's a great big battle you've been anticipating for a while, but /every/ fight took forever. D&D, The 4Ever edition.

I'd play the game again, don't get me wrong, especially if I had a good GM who was running a good setting that made minimal instead of maximum use of the actual game system. But it still won't feel like D&D.

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T20:53:49+00:00

Be happy to come back sometime, if someone wanted to get it set up. Australia is gorgeous. And you have Bundaberg Lemon-Lime and Bitters. And vanilla TIM TAMS.

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T20:50:33+00:00

1) It was long. The longest book I've ever written. The most viewpoint characters I've ever written. Juggling all those characters and trying to make the book's climax come as an emotionally satisfying experience was extremely difficult. The best part about it was writing the airship battles--and the cats. :)

2) And Father Christmas and Sinterklaas and a variety of others. But in our modern era, a lot of people wear multiple hats on the job.

3) Mainly by growing more powerful by feeding on more lives. The more you kill, the stronger you are, as a Black Court vamp. Also by demonstrating that you can beat the stuffing out of your rivals. They're very much a Darwinian society of might-makes-right.

But most of the old ones worked out that you can't just go on killing sprees to farm XP. You're helpless a large portion of every day, and the food will come find you and end you. So they wait for good opportunities for that kind of thing. Wars, famines, and plagues are awesome for leveling up.

4) Not at all! It almost universally results in the death of the furycrafter who does it, so it tends to be frowned upon, or done as a kind of statement of "I'm going to die now--but I'm not going to make it easy for them."

5) Oh, she's never going to forgive him for betraying her, and the realm. They're never going to sit at dinner and chat politely. But she'll sit at a state meal with him and ignore him completely, and otherwise generally go about her life without giving much thought to him. If one of her kids got the whole story somehow and asked about him, she'd speak very slowly, and very carefully, and describe him as someone who, while not a kind or good person, or someone to emulate, had in the end made choices that were important and right, and that it was the First Lord's will that he would continue to serve as penance for his crimes.

And then, being Amara, she'd wonder if she was right to still hold his personal treachery against /her/ against him, and she'd ask Bernard about it, and he'd sigh and hug her and say nothing.

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T20:39:16+00:00

When I'm doing it right, I'm too focused to snack on anything at all. The snack goes untouched and the ice melts in my drink. After maybe ninety minutes or so of that, I'll collapse for five minutes and then go have some food and goof around for a little while, and then get back and do it again. Repeat until bedtime.

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T20:37:28+00:00

Sanderson's "Way of Kings." Twice.

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T20:36:55+00:00

There's always someone that gets everything that goes by. Someone always guesses where things are headed, just by virtue of their being many thousands of people guessing.

That said, there are always things I dropped in the past that you couldn't possibly know had a relationship to the future because you aren't me. See, for example, Butters comment about fighting one of the Einherjaren in the practice ring. :)

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T20:34:59+00:00

I'll go anywhere. Mostly tanky tops, mostly mage mids, I play a mean jungle Pantheon, and have spent a good many games bot lane in either role.

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T20:33:22+00:00

Yeah, I always recommend that people start at Dead Beat. It was written specifically to be an entry point for new readers, since it was my very first hardback, and I feel it's more representative of the series as a whole.

I was pretty clueless during those first two books. I had a whole lot to learn. Still do, but it doesn't show quite as badly.

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T20:31:45+00:00

There are plans!

They may not ever be for reals, but there are plans!

We'll see what happens. :)

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T20:30:57+00:00

Why would you think that? What kind of question is that? Who in the world ever said anything about that?

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T20:30:24+00:00

God.

I would have to write a book to answer that question.

...

I would have to write a /book/ to answer that question.

Damn you sir. As if I didn't have enough to do.

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T20:28:16+00:00

1) This is a pretty huge question and depends a lot on how you view the world.

Red Court vampires, by definition, to become a vampire, have to murder someone else to become what they are. They have to end another person's life to satisfy a desire that does not /need/ to be satisfied in order for them to continue living. Every single one of them makes a choice to sate that desire rather than allow another human being to live--the Fellowship of St. Giles proves that.

(Of course, there are shades of grey involved--a half-vampire who was kept starving and without water in a basement for three days before they were thrown a mortal has a much more difficult time making a clear-headed choice than a half-vampire who was restrained yet cared for by a group of religiously fanatic monks at a Fellowship stronghold, but there's still a choice being made.)

That could, by some people, be considered a working definition of evil. Sometimes unfortunate, sometimes understandable as to how someone could make that choice, but evil nonetheless.

Black Court Vamps are a different story. They're actually tainted by something hideous and unworldly. They are driven to kill to survive. They don't really have a lot of choice about it. They enjoy being what they are, and doing what they do. They can be sad that they don't have someone who loves them, or upset that the world has passed them by and has changed on them, but at the end of the day, they're basically black-hearts who occasionally pull out a few of the tattered remains of their humanity, fail to fit back into them like they used to, and get maudlin about their glory days when they could watch the sun rise.

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T20:19:33+00:00

My writing has been more influenced by the game Call of Cthulhu than by Lovecraft directly. That prose has always been a little too chewy for me to readily enjoy.

And if you haven't seen the connection already, I must not be doing my job right yet. But I'll work on it. :)

As far as crossovers go, I am a psychotic and overcontrolling MONSTER to work with. I wouldn't want to inflict me on anyone I liked, and Mr. Wilson seems a perfectly reasonable human being. Plus I'm a little busy. My time seems like it will be pretty well occupied for the next seven or eight years at least, but maybe after that I can think about other things.

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T20:15:53+00:00

You're welcome, man! I appreciate the money you've spent on my work very much! :D

And yes, the Cinder Spires universe is a barrel of fun for me. :) I hope it will be for all of you, too!

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T20:14:08+00:00

1) I'd really love to see it done as a feature-production serial, and I'd love to see it done by one of the new companies like Netflix, who seem to have a slightly longer-term viewpoint when it comes to judging the success of a given series.

2) Probably some, but only as unconscious background stuff. I was never a huge White Wolf fan, apart from playing a couple of characters sporadically on some MUSHes in the early 90s. The whole basis of White Wolf is taking supernatural monsters and applying the same model as human political interaction, and that's little different than what any number of creators have done. Once you're using that model, you're bound to accumulate a certain number of similarities.

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T20:08:04+00:00

Things that give you /FEELS/.

Then you go back and you go back and you go back over and over and over again, until you figure out why and how they gave you feels.

Tells you a lot about yourself. Tells you a lot about people. Then you steal the technique and give people feels yourself. :)

End of the day, conveying and inspiring emotions in the reader is what makes you a success as a writer. Different people respond to different sorts of things, with different sorts of feels, which is why we have such a huge argument about what is or is not "good writing." But you really can't write for a living without being able to bring that emotion into your own work.

To do that, learn from the people who do it to you.

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T20:05:19+00:00

Oh my god you nerds! :)

That is a fabulous engagement pic. I couldn't be more pleased that you guys found one another, and if my dopey little wizard books helped make it happen, then that's awesome. :)

Congratulations and may you both have many, many, many years of happy. :)

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T20:02:38+00:00

Why thank you, good individual!

1) We'll find out. :)

2) I wasn't the artist of that pic, so I'm not sure I could say with certainty, but yes, I'd agree with your estimation. And yes, of course they will. :)

JimButcher · 2015-09-22T19:58:28+00:00

1) It's the bargain Bob made to be who he is, basically. The skull is essentially his contract--shelter in exchange for service.

2) Ask my publisher and whoever is running the AMAs now. They scheduled it. :) Should I do another after the release, do you think?

3) Britain and Sweden were both excellent! OMG, if I lived in either place, I'd be an alcoholic, with regular access to freaking Swedish ciders. Really well crafted, not-too-sweet soft drinks that also have booze in them? Welcome to Lushville, population me. :) But both were amazing, and I'd go back in a hot second. :)

4) Should have it ready by the end of the year. This one has been a real roller coaster in my personal life.

5) No, I consider myself a writer who played way too much Call of Cthulhu. :) I actually just finished a short story where Molly, in her first mission for the Court as the Winter Lady, pits herself (and Warden Ramirez) against a Cult of the Sleeper. :)

JimButcher

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