Recorded Neutral Territory - A Dresden Files Podcast

Adam (00:00)
hey Brian, I have a great idea for the gym interview. We should tell him when Harry finally gets to see the inside of Arthur Langtree's office, he should look to the side and there should be a display of bottle caps.

Brian (00:14)
Adam, this isn't a pitch meeting. It's an interview. We don't tell him how to write the story.

Adam (00:22)
Yeah, I guess you're right.

Brian (00:25)
If he did have a collection of bottle caps in his office, it should totally have an empty space that has a placeholder thing that says Mac's Dark

Adam (00:35)
Yes, and then Harry should rummage around in his pocket and pull out a bottle cap and flick it over to the Merlin. Merlin's gonna look at it, scowl, and show it to Harry and it says, Mac's Pale

Adam (00:56)
Welcome one, welcome all, welcome to recorded neutral territory where the spoilers go all the way through 12 months. I'm Adam with me as always is the editor for the arcane, it's Brian O'Reilly.

Brian (01:08)
Christ, Susan, this isn't The New York Times. I don't care if the witness is lying. They're all lying.

Adam (01:13)
Chief, I am the witness! I didn't make this up!

Brian (01:15)
Yeah, yeah, I know, it really happened and you were really there. Wink.

Adam (01:20)
Brian, did you just say the word Wink?

Brian (01:23)
It's an audio medium, Adam. I can't imply a wink. I'm not a subtext professional.

Adam (01:29)
that's fair. But that brings us to our special guest today, the subtext professional himself. It's Mr. Jim Butcher. Welcome, sir.

Jim Butcher (01:36)
Hello, hello.

Adam (01:38)
So quick question at the very beginning here, we're thrilled to have you consider this a standing invitation to return any week you like. And it's really cool that you turned up on so many of these small shows, but we're just wondering, you're a busy husband, father, and bestselling author. We're a tiny year old podcast that only reaches folks that you've already got as diehard fans. How'd we get you?

Jim Butcher (01:58)
Mainly the name. I gotta respect your pun game, yeah.

Adam (02:00)
All right, let's,

I appreciate it. And to be fair, it wasn't my idea. I got to get credit where it was due. Somebody else came up with it, but I did run with it. we did solicit every fan knows that the Dresden Files began with this big 23 book outline that has slightly changed over the years, but we're curious. When it comes to outlining a single book, do your initial outlines look more like the finished product or less?

Brian (02:10)
We solicited suggestions. We're, yeah.

Adam (02:25)
than they did when you started the series. In other words, do you surprise yourself while writing more now than you did when you started?

Jim Butcher (02:33)
I do, but only because I don't outline nearly as much as I used to. So much of it has just become kind of ingrained routine. And I follow a very structured path of writing story. I mean, a lot of it, just kind of does it all by itself. I just have to get out of the way. That's mainly the most difficult thing is for me to just get out of the way and let the story write itself these days.

But yeah, it surprises me from time to time because things will happen that I hadn't quite expected or, ⁓ you know, I'll find myself needing to go back and add in a few details for some sort of kind of a guffin I need, later in the story. But other than that, it's the same process. I just kind of understand it better than I used to. ⁓ I mean, I used to get surprised when I would do lots of outlines to, you know, things would happen that I hadn't expected or that I hadn't really planned for. And then I have to adjust on the fly. So.

At this point, I just realized, that's just going to happen. ⁓

Adam (03:32)
Yeah, famously I believe the wedding to Lara was something that you kind of surprised yourself with. I heard on another interview.

Jim Butcher (03:36)
Yeah, I dropped

that in kind of out of nowhere. Yeah, I was like, mean, it's good story. I'm happy to work with it. But I hadn't really expected this to happen at the end of this. But ⁓ it turned out to be all right.

Adam (03:49)
Yeah, so speaking of Harry's sidekicks, after 12 months he seems to have a sort of permanent tag-along partner in Bear. From a writing perspective, how does Bear's presence affect the way that you construct an adventuring party while she's around?

Jim Butcher (04:03)
Oh, well, normally, you know, one of Harry's weaknesses is that he doesn't he doesn't really have the as much physical capability to confront somebody as as other people do. So normally he's you know, he's got a grog out there somewhere that he's got to you know, he's got a lineup to come along with him to help things out. And now he's kind of got a built in grog. So really, as far as far as that goes, it just means he's got some muscle around that he can work

But Bear herself is, you'll get to see more of her as we go on. You know, she was somebody who was chosen for a specific reason and purpose and, you know, there's a reason she is where she is and we'll see more of that as the story continues.

Adam (04:44)
Yeah, for such an important character, makes sense that she would have, you'd have plans for her already. Now, another thing you've done a wonderful job with is portraying powers like Mab and Lara as these extremely cunning 4D chess players over the long as a result, some readers presume their every action is pure manipulation. Do you enjoy that readers are constantly doubting the sincerity of Harry's allies in ways that they didn't for his older ones like Murphy, Carlos, and the Alphas?

Jim Butcher (05:10)
yes, yeah, that's fine. ⁓ That was actually going to be the biggest trick with writing Lara, ⁓ because there was so much stuff that I could have done with her in so many different ways I could have approached the story. And what I wanted was to write a story that would lead people genuinely wondering, is she really like a solid ally, or is she just setting Dresden up for a bigger fall in the future? And I think I've managed to do that, because the fans are currently, there's

There's considerable debate going on about about exactly what Larry is and what she needs to dress in, which was my goal. So.

Brian (05:46)
we figure that Lara's arc itself has been one of the things that's changed since you first conceptualized her. And we're wondering if part of that is you asking yourself how Harry or Thomas is influencing Lara. But we're just curious, is that sort of what changed her arc in your mind? Or was this the plan all along? Or are there other factors?

Jim Butcher (06:10)
well, the question is, has it changed in my mind or is she doing exactly what I had planned for her the whole the great thing about the Dresden Files is that it's all written from Dresden's point of view, right? ⁓ you know, let's face it, wisdom is Harry's dump stat. And that has been true from the beginning of the series in many ways. And, ⁓ you know, it's always the thing that he doesn't realize that's about to come by him.

Brian (06:19)
Mm-hmm.

Jim Butcher (06:35)
the thing that he doesn't know is in play. maybe Lara's arc has changed or maybe she's just changed it for the benefit of Harry's perception. Or perhaps there's more to it than what we've even seen from her so far. know the camera's gotten a bit closer to Lara than it has before, but we'll have to see how it changes things and

one of the cardinal rules of the Dresden files is you are what you eat. And that could also have a serious effect on Lara as we go forward.

Brian (07:09)
Yeah, we didn't think we'd get a totally straight answer on that one, but we do appreciate that because, yeah, it's definitely a big question. Mm-hmm. No.

Jim Butcher (07:15)
yeah. No, no, I can't give you a straight answers. That's not my job. It's not my job to give you straight answers.

Adam (07:19)
Of course not.

Jim Butcher (07:21)
mean, even people, there's a whole page of people, you know, with the word of Jim that people have online somewhere. And it's like, okay. Yeah. And it's like, okay. And it's fine. So long as you understand that Jim's an unreliable narrator, you know, I'm going to say whatever's best for the story, not necessarily what's true.

Adam (07:28)
we've studied it. We have PhD in that now.

Brian (07:34)
Hmm

Adam (07:35)
Correct.

Yeah, when it comes to Lara, think Brian and I had a conversation and we ended up like 80 % she's probably reliable, 20 % this might be manipulation. I think 20 % is both of us want her to be the good guy, so who knows? Anyway, you've introduced a lot of characters over the years. Did you ever have a character that you knew you wanted to introduce but you struggled to figure out where and when to do it?

Jim Butcher (07:53)
Uh-huh.

I mean, yeah, there's always issues with characters like that.

I mean, and honestly, it's not so much that I struggled with where and when to do it, as long as I just kind of made choices. And you kind of always want to bring characters in on points where they're going to make a good impression, you know, when they first come in. That's kind of the big trick of introducing characters is having them show up and do something cool, and that way you know who they are. know, because the character gets to demonstrate it. And that's...

Adam (08:25)
Right, a strong first impression.

Jim Butcher (08:27)
Yeah,

and that's by far the best way to bring your character in is on that characteristic entry action. ⁓

Adam (08:33)
Yeah, I think

Michael's introduction is probably one of my favorites in any book, the way that he and Harry have that banter right away that indicates that they've had some kind of a long relationship that you're kind of jumping in the middle of, feels perfect to me. But Brian has some more questions deeper on the history of the series.

Jim Butcher (08:39)
thank you.

Brian (08:52)
Yeah, 12 months sparked a couple deep lore questions that we're hoping they won't spoil anything so you can answer them. here's the big one, the burning question. So we heard a lot about White Court history. Was Helen of Troy a White Court vampire?

Jim Butcher (08:59)
Okay.

⁓

Adam (09:10)
The face that launched a thousand ships.

Jim Butcher (09:12)
Wow, that would work really well if she was. ⁓ I'm trying to think about that. I'm trying to think. Yeah, exactly. I'm trying to think about the historical timing of that and whether it's doable or not. ⁓

Adam (09:15)
We kind of looked at the timeline and said, hmm.

Brian (09:16)
Ha ha ha!

We were also wondering

Adam (09:23)
Yeah, because I think

Troy was around 900 or 1000 BCE. And I think that was implied that the sort of history that Harry was learning about in 12 months was occurring about 12 or 13th century BCE.

Jim Butcher (09:36)
Yeah, round in there, yeah, early days of Rome. Early, early days of Rome, Yeah, actually, that would work out really well. And it would explain so much, you know.

Adam (09:44)
Yeah.

Brian (09:45)
And we were.

envision?

Jim Butcher (09:48)
Well,

I tell you what, I'll have to go back and look at my historical timeline and see. But if so, I it works perfectly. And then you guys can have made something canon. Yeah, yeah.

Brian (09:58)
Amazing. But

Adam (09:58)
⁓

Brian (10:00)
I was curious in your mind, like the Sorcerer Kings you're talking about, was that, did that like cause the Bronze Age collapse or like, are they responsible for some calamity in the past or, know, it? Okay.

Jim Butcher (10:12)
Almost certainly.

know, wizards are always what they are and they always meddle. They're always investigating things they ought not to be investigating if they knew what was good for them. the formation of the White Court happened because those wizards were investigating things that they shouldn't have been investigating.

But yeah, mean, just in terms of history, know, wizards have had a lot to do with things until the Middle Ages or so, you know, the White Council was formed. know, Merlin was kind of behind the forming of the White Council and ⁓ because he had sort of learned his lesson with Camelot and because things had gone horribly. ⁓ So, know, one of the tenets of the White Council is we don't get involved in politics. You know, that's kind of one of their, you know, one of their guiding baselines. ⁓ But if only because they, you know,

Merlin was like, okay, you know, I had the best of intentions and a lot of resources and really got to play this exactly the way I wanted to and it still didn't work out. Maybe we shouldn't be involved, you know, was sort of the history of the Dresden Files. But going back before that, yeah, they were involved in things over and over again. You know, they were a critical part of the fall of Rome. You know, they were, I would imagine that the end of the Bronze Age, you know, and the...

the Sea Peoples that came along and wrecked ⁓ European and Mediterranean cultures for a while ⁓ may well have been something that they were involved in also. It does sound like exactly the sort of thing they would be doing.

Brian (11:43)
So one of the other things you're curious about is, like you said, after the Middle Ages, wizards, you know, in some way learned to take a step back. Funnily enough, that kind of lines up with the sort of end of the Middle Ages period with one of the star-born cycles, like the one in the 1300s. Did that have anything to do with that? Or like with the start of the Renaissance, did that cycle have anything to do with that?

Jim Butcher (12:07)
The cyclical wizard apocalypse? Yeah, it kind of does. Yeah. That's a big one. It's just that, you know, most people are, most people are, you know, they die and forget all about it. You know, 600 years later, how much do we really know about things that happened 600 years ago? You know, we don't. We have, you know, we have records, we have some ideas, we have, you know, what was preserved by the winners.

Brian (12:11)
Okay, sure.

Adam (12:11)
Yeah.

Jim Butcher (12:31)
⁓ But how much do we really, really know about things that were happening in the 14th Certainly not like we know the world that we're moving through today. yeah, Wizard Apocalypse is one of those things that sets the world on its ear every time it happens.

Brian (12:47)
And you mentioned a Camelot before, so we caught something in Grave Peril that was just, I just have to ask. So in the flashback, Leia is doing her bloodletting thing with Harry in what you basically describe as a crystal cave. Is that the crystal cave?

Jim Butcher (13:09)
Well, I think it was a crystal cave. That's just sort of something that a lot of practitioners have. Crystals are well known to be attuned with magical energies, and if you've got yourself a nice crystal cave, you've essentially got a great big battery to draw upon to do fun things with with your magic. ⁓ So it's not like that was the only one. ⁓ So it's just a question of where are you gonna find them? The biggest one right now that we know of is in Mexico.

Brian (13:12)
Okay.

Okay.

Jim Butcher (13:38)
And that's the one that I used as the artist reference for the cover for what the crystals should look like, except green instead of white, because those are white crystals. So that would be like super powerful, know, good magic area, you know, from the white quartz crystals. But then there's other ones too, the ones that are closer to volcanoes, you can wind up with black crystals and so on. So there's all kinds of fun stuff we can do with that. I don't know if it's ever going to take place. It's part of the Dresden files.

It's more kind of a character-based thing than necessarily straight-up magical resource gathering. if we did a video game though, it would totally be a big part of it.

Brian (14:13)
to know that you think about this stuff. Like,

huh, yeah. I mean, just, and I just want to just take one shot in the dark here. And you know, I don't like, I don't want to put you on the spot too bad, but in cold days, Harry guesses some of mother, mother winter's names. And I don't want to guess any of mother winter's names. I don't want to get that heat, but I'd like to guess one of Mab's names.

Adam (14:17)
you

Hahaha.

Jim Butcher (14:36)
Right?

Brian (14:39)
because we picked up what we thought was sort some crow imagery in her black talent or black nailed black dress form that's either like battle or judgment. So would Mab potentially answer to Morrigan or Bav?

Jim Butcher (14:40)
Okay.

The Morrigan is a tripartite goddess. so in that she lines up with that in terms of that's the way all the queens are. ⁓ They were originally formed from essentially Hecate split herself apart into various pieces in order to get some balance struck up in the world.

Brian (14:59)
Yes.

Jim Butcher (15:23)
one of the last responsible deities that was running around, you know, who thought she needed to actually do her job of looking out for humanity and balancing certain primal forces and so on, especially as a Titan. She was one of the last Titans as well. ⁓ But ⁓ it wouldn't be that she would answer specifically to Morrigan, although that would be a name that would be kind of part of her portfolio. You know, the Morrigan's mantle is something that got passed on to the Queens of the Fae. ⁓

So they're the ones who are wielding it, although it's been split up into bits.

Brian (15:57)
Jim, that was an awesome answer. Thank you so much for that. That's incredible. Cool.

Adam (16:00)
you

Jim Butcher (16:01)
Sure.

Brian (16:03)
you mentioned the Triune goddess thing there, Jim. So when you're talking about Hecate, do you consider her to be the, like, er Triune goddess? Or are all of those in your mind different things? To what extent is the Triune goddess one figure that appears in a lot of religions? And to what extent are they distinct to you?

Jim Butcher (16:24)
⁓

For purposes of the Dresden Files story, yes, because it's set in the West and it's dominated by Western ⁓ folklore. I mean, as far as being the oldest tripartite goddess, no, don't think that's true at all. think that stuff goes back into antiquity farther than we can track via written record. That said though, I mean,

Again, when I'm writing the Dresden Files, I'm focused on the story that's happening here. And as a result, ⁓ this area has more influence from Western Europe than it does from anywhere else. That's just kind of the US. ⁓ so those are the powers that are most active here where the story's set. Not necessarily true elsewhere in the world. And the interesting thing is that even the deities themselves aren't quite sure.

Brian (17:11)
Adam actually.

Jim Butcher (17:17)
who is the strongest, they're not quite sure about their own history, that got scrambled up a while ago. So they each have their own origin stories that they know are true from their personal experience, but they also know that their memories have been messed with, and it might or might not be true, because the Almighty was just like, all right, it's time for you all to step back and to let humans kind of start forging their own destiny at this point. And some of them wanted to, some of them didn't, and that got routed.

Brian (17:45)
I really, if you're taking requests, I really hope we get a ton of that backstory because I think the way you've done that is fascinating. Adam actually had some questions about world building that are a little bit less like from prehistory. So I'll let him get get me out of the historical perspective here.

Adam (17:51)
Ha ha ha.

Yeah.

Yeah, so on the show, kind of speculated that Harry's chivalry complex, that's more obvious early in the series, stems in large part from a sort of deep illogical guilt about his mother's death and Elaine's death, or at least Elaine's apparent death. However, it also seems that despite the deaths of Murphy and Susan, which he also at least partially blames himself for, this inner sense that all women are made of glass is f-

faded or is fading, to what would you attribute that change in Harry? Like what parts of his experience have been eroding that chivalrous part of himself?

Jim Butcher (18:35)
⁓ mostly working with Mab. ⁓

Plus he just keeps running into incredibly dangerous people over and over who happen to be female. ⁓

Adam (18:45)
Yeah, Brian's

wife was thinking that might be the answer. So we wanted to ask that one.

Brian (18:49)
She's a lawyer, so she likes

Jim Butcher (18:49)
Yeah.

Brian (18:50)
your badass fairy chicks. She's a big fan of... yeah.

Jim Butcher (18:53)
well, thank you.

Yeah, but yeah, mean, you mean, once you've hung around with Mab for a little bit, you realize that that, know, the female aspect of her character is probably, you know, the least important one that's there.

And while that is kind of part of her portfolio, being the Queen of Winter and being the Mother of Winter, that's only tangential to the idea that she is this completely ruthless and implacable force and she will get things done. And that's all there is to it. And it doesn't really matter how many legs or backs she has to break to get

Now that I'm thinking about it, actually has broken backs before, you're even in the story.

Brian (19:35)
Hahaha

Adam (19:36)
⁓

Now, another thing that we've been, because we're still on the early books here, and one of our questions that we talk extensively about is whether Morgan's ⁓ depth that we see later in the series, especially revealed by the journal Microfiction, ⁓ is that something that you always had in mind for his character? Because in Stormfront, he's portrayed from Harry's perspective as a very one-dimensional antagonist.

Jim Butcher (20:02)
yeah, from Harry's perspective he is. I mean, I always wanted to do that with the character. I had no idea how when I was getting started, you know, to do that more complex stuff. That was stuff I had to learn as I kept going. But his backstory was always, okay, this is not who he is, but it's who Harry sees. And most of the characters in the story, Harry does not have a clear view of. You know, he has his view of.

I don't think there's really anybody in the Dresden files who actually is in my head the way Harry sees them in his, with the possible exception of Bob. Bob the Skull might be pretty accurate. ⁓ But you know, mean, Dresden is this guy who's, you know, he's kind of got a few of his own issues and you know, that colors things that as he sees them and you know, his life experience has been fairly extreme and that colors things and... ⁓

Brian (20:33)
Hmm.

Adam (20:36)
Hahaha!

Jim Butcher (20:52)
And it very much is a book that's being told from a point of view. And it's a point of view that is sort of slowly changing. I his view of the Wardens was as one-dimensional bad guys before. And now his view of them after having been one for a while and fought beside them for a while and worked with them and against them, you know, in both cases. ⁓ You know, his view now is like, wow, they've got a really unenviable job that is really, really difficult to do and is also necessary and also horrible.

And so he has sort of a different point of view on who they are, although he still doesn't want to chop people's heads off. But that's something that for the Wardens is a reasonable course of action. And he's getting to the point in his life now where he's kind of looking around going, oh, there's a reason all this horrible stuff exists that I was so furious about when I was younger. It's not to make it any less horrible, but I understand. I get it.

Adam (21:46)
Yeah, he's

starting to get a little jaded and he understands he's seen enough. rolls us right into another question about many fans have had a bitter reaction to Butters after skin game and peace talks. I'll start by saying I was not one of them and was fact, I was a little bit surprised to hear it. Was that something that you expected or was that also a surprise to you?

Jim Butcher (21:49)
Yeah, yeah, he really is,

I haven't heard about that. What are they bitter about?

Adam (22:10)
So in Skin Game, Butters obviously causes a bunch of the problems that eventually lead to everything turning out okay. But people were like, he should have trusted Harry, he should have known. But when we get to Skin Game, my argument, and my arguments when I've argued with people about them on Reddit is, of course, from Butters' perspective, he had no reason to know for sure that he could trust Harry, who had died and just came back and broke in. Like you've done a very good job of laying the groundwork for why Butters,

Jim Butcher (22:36)
Yeah.

Adam (22:38)
would have good reason to distrust Harry. And I think that maybe that...

Jim Butcher (22:41)
Plus, he's the

guy who better than anybody else in the story understands death. He understands the physical process of it and that you don't come back from it. I mean, that was, for Butters to have accepted Harry immediately as just kind of coming back from the grave would have been for him to abandon a huge chunk of what made his character what it was, which was the rational doctor.

Adam (22:46)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jim Butcher (23:05)
And so that was not gonna be something that was gonna happen easily for him. Plus, he was sort of a great little kind of mini antagonist to have on board for a while, which was a lot of fun. Plus, he's in this place where Butters is relying upon the magic that he's learning and kind of being facilitated by this skull that he's got going with him. And that's the only thing keeping him alive. And with Dresden back, he's gonna want his skull back.

You know, he had every reason to be wary about what was going on there. And a lot of that was the psychological underpinnings of his identity as well, which is a huge deal.

Brian (23:48)
think a lot of fans also sort of had trouble reconciling that after changes, it feels like everybody else who's in Harry's kind of posse, their life gets worse. know, like Molly, Karen, their lives get worse. Whereas Butters seems to be in a place where his actual personal day to day is better. He has stronger relationships. You know, he's got a new toy. You know, he ends up becoming a knight at the end of the book. He didn't have to sort of

Adam (23:48)
go ahead.

Brian (24:17)
pay in the same way some of the other characters did. And I think that's, I mean, I don't want to put words in your mouth. I think that's a little short-sighted because Butters has been through a lot. But in that moment, I think it seemed disparate to some people.

Jim Butcher (24:31)
well, yeah, ⁓ life often seems unfair. ⁓ Although that's not me writing it. That's just sort of the way it works out. ⁓ Yeah, yeah, mean, if everything turned out fair, what a boring story it would be.

Adam (24:40)
Can't blame you for that one. Yeah. ⁓

Brian (24:40)
Yeah.

Adam (24:50)
Yeah, the only other piece that I've seen people criticize with regards to Butters is, he's got these two beautiful women that he's in a throuple with and that's so convenient. He's like a Mary Sue. And again, that might just be the fact that Knights of the Sword have more conveniences and good things happening in their life because they're living the life that they are, they're walking the path, as Michael says. So.

That's always been my explanation to it. And we'll talk a lot more about that when we get to skin games. So.

Jim Butcher (25:20)
Well,

does tend to kind of, you know, the odds kind of tend to fall in your favor a little bit better when you're, when you happen to be, you know, working directly for the creator of reality, you know, so.

Brian (25:29)
You

Adam (25:30)
Exactly.

I have one other question for you before I pass it back to Brian. And this one is for me and for you and like four other people out there, Jim.

What is your favorite Babylon 5 episode and why is it Severed Dreams?

Jim Butcher (25:44)
⁓ yeah, that was definitely up there. ⁓ The Riders of Rohirrim arriving moment in that one is very, good. Yeah, that is a fantastic moment in that series. ⁓ Although I would say my favorite episode is the one where ⁓ the shadows come for Centauri Prime. ⁓

Adam (25:56)
Exactly, that's one of my favorite moments of the whole series.

oooo

Jim Butcher (26:12)
And Lando has dealt with Mr. Morton by that point and Veer's gotten to wave goodbye to him. then when Lando turns to, when Veer points out to him, there's one thing touched by the shadows left on the planet and points at Lando and Lando's like, here, take this sword and kill me and show them the evidence. It's like, damn, that is some straight up hero stuff right there. mean, Lando Molari is the best villain, I think, in modern sci-fi because...

Adam (26:17)
Mm hmm.

Yes!

Jim Butcher (26:40)
Most of the people I talk to will say, Lando's not a villain. Oh, he's absolutely a villain, structurally speaking. Everything bad that happens in Babylon 5 happens because Lando's behind it somewhere. Yeah, he is. He's making terrible choices. But yeah, that show at that moment, demonstrating who that character was, that was also very high up on my list of best episodes.

Adam (26:45)
You could call the whole series The Fall of Londo Malari.

Yeah, he's making the wrong choices in there.

Yeah, and for anybody out there who hasn't seen it, go watch it, it's so good. Mr. Morton, you mentioned, has always in my head been the face and voice of Nicodemus because he's just so slimy and self-assured. All right, Brian, that's enough of my own pet project. Why don't you talk to us a little more about the world building?

Jim Butcher (27:17)
yeah, very much so,

Yeah, yeah.

Brian (27:26)
Yeah,

I gotta drag us back to your work, Jim, I'm sorry. ⁓ So you did an AMA a few weeks ago that we participated in, and thank you for answering those questions. But one question was, what questions are people not asking you? And your answer was, why are people so closed-lipped about the outsiders? So that's a good question. And on a completely unrelated note, why are so people so closed-lipped about the outsiders?

Adam (27:29)
you

Jim Butcher (27:30)
Okay.

⁓ Because the more you know about them, the more connected they are to you.

Adam (27:55)
⁓ interesting.

Brian (27:57)
So is that the reason why if you know a lot about them, you might have like cornerhounds coming after you?

Jim Butcher (27:58)
⁓

You might have cornerhounds coming after you. might, you know, your dreams might be haunted by horrible visions. You know, you might be hardly ever sleeping and having other, you know, horrible psychic pressures being put upon you because these creatures are near you and close to you. ⁓ And just the fact of just sharing that they exist with people, ⁓ you know, put them at, strictly speaking, can put them at risk. You know, so there's a lot of...

Adam (28:30)
A lot of parallels

to the Venatori, like the Lara and Thomas ⁓ secret war. Yeah.

Jim Butcher (28:35)
Yeah, to the Oblivion War, yeah.

Because it works in a similar way, yeah. The Oblivion War is something that's happening in the Dresden Files where there are a number of these ancient beings who are incredibly destructive and terrible. They're kind of from our oldest stories and we barely remember them anymore. ⁓ And the idea is that as soon as everybody on Earth has forgotten one of these beings, ⁓ then they are deleted from the record so that nobody can remember them.

And once that's done, they've been kind of cut free from Earth and they can't come mess with us ever again. ⁓ And that's what the Archives' role in the Oblivion War is, is to be able to go, okay, I can make sure there's none of this in the written record anywhere? Right. Now I delete it from my memory and they're locked away, they're gone. Because she's always the last tie. ⁓ But yeah, and the outsiders work in much the same way. The more that you know about them,

the more, I mean, there was just extreme panic over Lovecraft writing, just out and out writing about the outsiders back in beginning of the 20th century. ⁓ The White Council completely flipped out about that one and he did not die a natural death in the story world.

Brian (29:53)
Okay.

Adam (29:53)
That's something I was always wondering. So the Lovecraftian old ones from that, from those stories, those are not outsiders? they are, okay.

Jim Butcher (29:58)
Yes.

Yeah, they are. They're for real.

Yeah, I mean, some of them have been bound up. Some of them are loose about the universe, but it's a big universe, so we're not the middle of it. So they might not be here. But yeah, they're for real. They're real deal of deities, and obviously, they're sort of dead set against the Creator and don't follow any of his rules. So it's...

It's sort of left up to mortals to fight them and mainly wizards.

Brian (30:32)
I mean, that's really actually provides an interesting reason why they keep delaying the starboard conversation with Harry. So that right.

Jim Butcher (30:40)
Yeah, he's under enough pressure already,

Adam (30:43)
Right, so if he learns

Jim Butcher (30:44)
you know.

Adam (30:44)
more about the outsiders, they might come for him. Wow.

Jim Butcher (30:48)
Well,

and yeah, and Mother Winter seemed to that so you know she's She's kind of made the call on that one despite what anybody on the White Council or Grey Council might have thought

Brian (30:59)
So ⁓ that is like incredible, but I have, we have a burning question we have to ask you, because Adam's wife is a dog trainer and ⁓ we've seen obviously temple dogs and we've seen Cerberus, but will we get any more big time best boys like Fenrir?

Jim Butcher (31:07)
Okay.

⁓ Possibly. ⁓ Although ⁓ Fenrir might not be the best example. ⁓ Yeah, yeah. mean there's more and there's more of the temple dogs around. They're not necessarily working for good guys because that was sort of the whole point of stealing the puppies. ⁓ But I don't know how many more of them we'll see. We'll probably see at least a couple more before we're done.

Brian (31:25)
Well, he's not a good dog.

Adam (31:26)
Ha ha.

Jim Butcher (31:48)
The mouse short story that I wrote, the one that's from Mouse's point of view, we got to additional temple dogs there. Because they're just fun. It's just fun to have him, to put him out against his... His magic is very different sort of thing, kind of a much broader, subtler sort of magic rather than just throwing fireballs into the room. And it's a great deal of fun to write it.

It's taken Dresden several books to realize, you know, when the dog's around, I've been a little bit luckier than I have at other times. But he's finally started to get there. Yeah, he's finally started to get it.

Adam (32:19)
Yes, I love like the domino, you know, magic power.

Brian (32:26)
And it seems like you also like writing from the dog perspective and you're really good at it. It really works. Like the fugitive, the different dog perspectives was just, that was awesome. I'm curious, because you think about like your background characters, it seems so much. Do you know like how Gard or Freitas like became a Valkyrie or like what?

made them get some of the important jobs that they get? Is that something you think about?

Jim Butcher (32:59)
⁓ Freytas became a Valkyrie. was in her village and the men were off a Viking and it was attacked by a different clan. ⁓ They were starving. They were besieged for a while and starving and she was one of the people leading the defense and died like a Viking. So it was picked up as a Valkyrie. served as a soldier.

⁓ She was working for her father, I guards from Sweden. ⁓ And ⁓ she was a shield maiden, ⁓ although her father didn't want her to be. But ⁓ when he died, she went on a vengeance trek, ⁓ know, slaughtering everybody who had betrayed her father. She hunted him down one at a time over the course of years and then died, slaying the last one. And Odin was like, that was appropriate, bring her on in.

There were different characters like that. then Bear, well, I'll let you all look up ⁓ Brunhilde's story yourselves.

Adam (34:00)
Well, that answers one of our other questions. So yeah, that answers the first question. Do you know more about your backstory? Let me give you the whole history. So yeah, that's really cool. ⁓

Jim Butcher (34:12)
Yeah, mean, yeah,

I it's all stuff that, you know, I just sort of take note of while I'm doing the characters and so on. And, you know, it's not terribly important as far as, the active story goes, but it's all stuff that I have to know as a writer so that I can have characters make informed and unique decisions, you know, that are, that make sense for them and are special to them.

Brian (34:33)
And I'm curious about another sort of backstory thing that I don't know if I'm just reading too much into it, but I was really interested that you picked the fellowship of St. Brigid specifically. Is that associated with the fairy courts at all, specifically summer?

Jim Butcher (34:53)
know, the various saints of the Catholic Church, the ones who were actually out doing saint things and performing miracles and so on were for real. And their power comes from a combination of magic and faith ⁓ united together. ⁓ Saint Brigid was, mean, Saint Brigid was ⁓ a ⁓ powerful sorceress and a figure of faith. And also a, you know, also a, you know,

Brian (34:58)
Mm-hmm.

Jim Butcher (35:18)
She kind of segued from being a patron goddess of Ireland into being the patron saint, one of the patron saints of Ireland. ⁓ And so she is kind of one of the, she's one of the deities who was like, okay, you know what, I can get on board with this humanity stuff. ⁓ She was one of the ones who played along. Along with, Odin kind of did the same thing. He's like, I still want to continue helping humanity, but I also can't get involved. I don't want to play exactly by this guy's rules. I don't want to become a saint and I can't get involved.

in that way, so he had to kind of come up with his own way to continue being involved in protecting the human race while still following the rules, the guidelines for deities that got laid out sometime in the early centuries after

Brian (36:09)
command of your surrounding lore and history is just phenomenal. And it's part of the reason why we love the book so much, because you can just see how definitely you're weaving this stuff in. But we're curious. It sounds like a lot of this stuff probably comes from at least things you had a vague sort of notion of, like, you know, Arthurian lore when you were growing up. But what's the topic that you needed to do the most research on before you included it?

Jim Butcher (36:37)
Probably just magic itself. I to figure out how I was gonna do magic and make it distinct from, you know, magic I'd seen before in other series, from Dungeons and Dragons magic, from just sort of the random magic you see wizards using in, ⁓ you know, movies from the 80s, you know, the old sword and sorcery flicks. ⁓ I knew that I didn't want magic to be kind of its own semi-conscious force. I wanted it to be something that, ⁓ you know,

you weren't a shaman to use magic. You were more of an engineer ⁓ putting magic together of distinct forces that you could quantify and knew about. And that as long as you knew how the rules worked, you could do some really nifty things, much like engineers do. ⁓ So it was actually going and researching magic and finding various magical traditions that would support that kind of magic use that was...

Adam (37:19)
Yeah.

Jim Butcher (37:30)
you know, that was a big deal because a lot of it is, a lot of magic stuff is mixed in with faith, ⁓ just depending on who's practicing it. And I wanted something that was a little bit distinct from that. So it was a matter of researching different magical traditions and finding, you know, those points of engineering style magic that exists in all of them and ⁓ saying, okay, this is gonna be great for story. This is gonna be great for story. This is gonna be great for story. And just sort of picking, you know, from the various traditions, the aspects that I wanted to use.

Brian (38:00)
I mean, talking about the magic system is one of the things that I think our listeners are always most interested in whenever we ask questions about what they think about it. gets a ton of engagement. So I think you did an awesome job setting that up because it's created a really fertile ground for discussion of not just how that engineering process works, but also how that faith process plays a role in it. It really comes across for us. Yeah.

Jim Butcher (38:22)
Right, right. And

yeah, and I always wanted faith to have real power in the Dresden Files universe. Because if I was going to run around with all these supernatural horrors, I was like, okay, if there's all this bad guy stuff running around, there's got to be some good guy stuff too. And so, you know, and I decided to root that essentially in human belief and things that are beyond ourselves. And so faith was the obvious answer.

Brian (38:46)
And it's a great bit of writing. And Adam actually has a couple other questions we wanted to ask you about writing the series and sort of, you know, how you do it so effectively.

Adam (38:57)
Yeah, I've actually been reading a bunch of RPG books. I know that you've played, you know, tabletop RPGs in the past. And it occurred to me when I'm reading like the DM sections, the dungeon master or the game master sections of these books, that a lot of the advice that's in there is in part advice on how to tell a good story, how to craft a good story. Do you think being a game master of a tabletop RPG would improve somebody's writing or vice versa? Do you have any experience with that?

Jim Butcher (39:24)
If you started applying your lessons to what you learned about writing a good story to D &D games, then yeah, absolutely. And then if you, it goes a little bit less the other way, if only because when you're running a D &D game, ⁓ it's not a solo creative effort, it's a group creative effort. So you've got to make room for other people, ⁓ which means you're gonna wind up with a different kind of story than you would if you were to just do it all by yourself. But that said, mean, think being a storyteller makes you a very good GM. mean, whenever I...

games, I'm always cliffhanging sessions at the end of the session rather than finding out what happens next. I'm doing ⁓ summaries at the beginning of every session. This is what happened last session. Here's what that meant within the greater context of the story to get everybody oriented on what's going on. Yeah, I think if you're a writer, you could be a very, very good storyteller, although there's also limits because of taking writing to the gameplay because

those other people get involved. So no matter what you do, some player, no matter how great your plan is, some player is going to throw you off and completely derail the plan that you had. And then you're gonna find yourself frantically building story worlds six inches in front of the player's toes as they go in the wrong direction, because that's the way role-playing games work. But it's super, super useful for world building, because you never know what the players are gonna do.

Brian (40:32)
Ha ha

Yeah. Right.

Adam (40:43)
Yep, and there. Yeah, that happened.

Jim Butcher (40:52)
You know before it, know, whenever I'm starting a new series I almost always try and run at least one game in the story world and then that way You know when the players go off and start doing things I have to build things that I hadn't thought about and that I hadn't considered before ⁓ I mean it was like that for the Dresden Files to I ran a makeshift Dresden Files game out of out of Dungeons and Dragons third edition ⁓ But you know early on you know when I was just sort of getting started on the stories, you know, and it was

know, the characters were all these characters around Chicago. So it was like the guy who could see far enough, just far enough into the future to always read the Blitz. You know, that was the football player and he was the fighter and he was better at hitting things because he could just see a little bit into the future and so on. ⁓ You know, it was characters like that. You know, the ⁓ ER nurse who, when she was on triage, everybody, things seemed to go ideally for everyone. You know, that was the cleric who was the healer, you know.

And so we sort of went through, you know, and it was all characters like that. know, ⁓ the chemistry student who was one 16th Native American, but it was the important 16th. And so he could communicate with like spirits and stuff like that. And he just thought he'd been having too much LSD, you know.

Brian (42:02)
Yeah.

You

Adam (42:11)
That's brilliant. I never thought of using that to flesh out the world that way. ⁓

Jim Butcher (42:12)
Yeah, it was.

Yeah, yeah,

then when they start taking off through Chicago, they're doing things that I hadn't anticipated. Now I've got to go learn about new areas of the city and new portions of how it should function. It was ⁓ the Underdark that I've written in the Dresden files ⁓ for Undertown came from that game. And it's been like that for some of my other series as well. So I always try and run a game there so that

The players, they make weird choices and then I've got to figure out what are we doing now? ⁓ And that's always, it's a creative challenge and I think it adds a lot of energy for me personally, creatively to the stuff that I'm working

Adam (42:56)
That's super cool. I now wanna take you way back to the early 2000s because we're talking about grave peril right now in our podcast. And one of my favorite jokes is when the Red Court vampire, Kelly Hamilton is revealed to be on a diet and Harry says, make hers a blood light. So which came first, the narrative idea that Kyle would have a crazy sister on a diet or the joke about it?

Jim Butcher (43:06)
Okay?

⁓ you know, I don't even know. Back then when I was writing characters, that was when I working full-time and doing the writing ⁓ and going to school. ⁓ But I was working all night at an internet provider. I was the 10 PM to 6 AM guy. And they liked me there because I knew just enough code that I could cludge something together until morning. So the programmers never had to get out of bed at 3 in the morning when I was on job.

Adam (43:36)
Hmm.

Jim Butcher (43:52)
⁓ So they liked me. But I also got a lot of writing done while I was doing that. And I was just writing characters and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Babylon 5 on TV at the time. ⁓ most of that stuff was, I'd be writing after I would come home from work at six, I'd get the kid off to school. ⁓ And that would be, he'd be off to school by 7.30 or so. And then I would come home and work.

and then go to sleep for a few hours before he got back from school. And so a lot of that stuff, I mean, I was so exhausted when I was writing it. I was just making it all up as I went. I don't know if you guys know this, but I'm just making this stuff up as I go along. it was just, the characters that I was writing at that point, it was like, okay, I know how to create characters according to what my teacher says, so I'm just gonna put things together the way she told me to.

Brian (44:27)
Yeah.

Adam (44:27)
Hahaha!

Brian (44:32)
You

Jim Butcher (44:44)
trust that things will work out. it took me a good five years before I started understanding, okay, this is why this is all working and kind of gaining that instinctive knowledge of it as well as the intellectual understanding of mean, at that time, I mean, was just trying to get finished and get to bed. So a lot of those characters like, you know what, I'm gonna have a character here and I'm gonna throw.

I'm gonna throw just a little bit of crazy spin on them without going too much into detail. Now, know, doing research on actual ⁓ mental illness is, you know, it's like, okay, that's gonna change the way these characters behave because you can't just have them be randomly crazy. You know, kind of need to know what kind of crazy do they have and why are they there? And because that's going to have an effect on all of it. And do they have, you know, complicating things to go along with it? And that changes how you look at characters as well.

I was paying much less attention to all that sort of part of the process at the time. I was just there, so I gotta get this character, gotta get these pages written and get this done on a deadline.

Adam (45:47)
Yeah, Brian and I spent about 20 minutes going, do you think she's on a diet so that if she kills Harry, they can claim it's not really their fault? No, it's because of this. And Jim's like, I was just really tired actually, and I thought it was funny. ⁓ It's okay, it works. It works.

Brian (45:59)
You

Jim Butcher (46:01)
Yeah, basically, yeah. I mean, that's what so many things are like. Yeah, that's what so many

things are like. But yeah, I didn't particularly want to have those two very firmly connected to reality, so that wasn't too hard to make that happen. ⁓

Adam (46:14)
Yeah. Okay, so

tying back these two things together, we're still going back to one of the earlier books, but a little bit deeper into the history. So Chauncey suggests that St. Patrick was the one that cursed Macphin in full moon to turn him into the Lugaru. ⁓ Do you think that's true? Are you willing to say if that is true or it was Chauncey lying or was he just not sure?

Jim Butcher (46:37)
the one thing about getting your information from hell is that it is good. You know, it costs a lot, but it's good. So yeah, that was something that happened. ⁓

Adam (46:42)
⁓ okay.

Would you be willing to share

with us why St. Patrick cursed Macphin's ancestors?

Jim Butcher (46:52)
⁓ well, I imagine they were a bunch of, you know, a bunch of angry, you know, Irishmen broken up into small kingdoms. that, know, St. Patrick was trying to get some things done and the McPhins probably were just particularly in the way it needed to be made an example of. I mean, there's, because, mean, even the Saints aren't necessarily saintly, they're powerful. You know, they do incredible things for the faith, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're nice people.

Adam (47:22)
Okay, that makes sense. Now, this one's a little delicate, but if you had a time machine that could only let you travel back in time and make a small adjustment to your own work at some point before it was published, what would you change? okay. I thought it might go that way.

Jim Butcher (47:35)
Not a damn thing.

Brian (47:37)
Awesome. Great answer.

Jim Butcher (47:39)
Things

have gone so well, it seems kind of churlish to be thinking, well, how could I have gone and made things something somewhat better for myself? It's like, really? You get to make a living writing down the conversations of your imaginary friends and playing video games, just on alternate. not only that, you never have to wear a tie. You're able to take care of your family and extended family too. It's like, why would I want to change anything? It's gone so well. ⁓

Adam (47:53)
Ha ha ha ha ha!

Brian (47:53)
Ha ha

ha!

Jim Butcher (48:09)
Plus, know, it's one of those things that, plus I suspect it would be one of those butterfly wing things, you know? You go back 65 million years and kill a butterfly and it changes how everything happens. I would think that even if I thought I could make a change that would make things better, I think it would probably be a trap. So.

Adam (48:15)
Mmm.

That's

why you decided to do it with a time travel book in the future to retroactively fix everything.

Jim Butcher (48:31)
Yeah, well I mean,

Brian (48:32)
Yeah.

Jim Butcher (48:34)
well the time travel book in the future is for the stuff that I assumed that I would mess up along the way so that I would be able to find some way to clean it up later in the series. Just enough for the reader to go, okay here's some handwave, that's fine, we'll move along. ⁓ But yeah, but there's lots of stuff that's going on in the series that are the things that are still hanging ⁓ and a lot, some of them I planned for the time travel book and some of them I didn't but they're gonna fit there so you know that'll be fun.

Adam (48:38)
Right.

All right, excellent. I've got one last question here. One thing I've noticed is that sometimes there's an unusual word choice or just a rare word that's put in there. One example is incipient in skin game. That taught me the word incipient when Uriel calls Butters an incipient knight to deal with the former Denarion. And then another one that I really liked, even though I already knew what it was, was defenestration in 12 months.

Do you just like, hey, you know what? This is a really cool word. I wanna put this in here so I widen people's vocabularies.

Jim Butcher (49:33)
sometimes I just like words. You know, defenestrate, defenestrates one of my favorite words. That's a great one. It's a great verb. ⁓ but, ⁓

Adam (49:35)
Yeah.

I saw a lot of people

learning what murlons and krentles were for the first time as well in the subreddit. ⁓ Because that's what they called. That's what you gotta do.

Jim Butcher (49:46)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brian (49:46)
Yeah.

Jim Butcher (49:50)
Yeah,

yeah. And yeah, so I had to go out and learn that stuff. ⁓ I started trying to learn ⁓ shipboard language for the Cinder Spires books, you know, for those. ⁓ But that is way too complex. I mean, that's something that you have to go immerse yourself in that environment for a while if you really want to learn everything you need to know about sailing ship jargon. Because, wow, it is so specific.

Brian (50:15)
Yeah, I sail and I don't even know half the vocabulary. that's I totally heartily agree

Jim Butcher (50:20)
Right.

Brian (50:22)
So ⁓ I'm curious about Castle Dresden. ⁓ It's a castle that Merlin built. There's kind of famously one of those, and there's a few versions of the Vordegerns trying to build a castle. There's dragons underneath its story. Is that that castle?

Jim Butcher (50:37)
Gosh, I don't know. mean, honestly, I'm not deep enough into Arthurian lore to know if Merlin actually had his own castle. I would just assume that if I was going to be writing Merlin and he was going to be around for a good long while, you know, 300, 400 years is pretty typical for a wizard, that he would probably have one at some point.

Brian (51:01)
Yeah, maybe even more than one. That's why I would, you know, could be any number of them that he put up all over the place, so...

Jim Butcher (51:03)
Yeah, Yeah, no, I'm not laying

any claim to any specific lore castle in that. I try not to do that too much, except with the very biggest lore things. Excalibur, for example.

Brian (51:16)
Right.

And one thing that we got from a reader that's a lore question on a totally different note is we learned so much about the White Court in 12 months. And the rules as far as we know them are when an incipient White Court vampire loses their virginity, they either kill their lover or they kill their demon. Except for Connie. So what's the status of Connie's hunger? Like, what's actually going on with that embedded outsider thing?

Jim Butcher (51:45)
dug in really hard, she might be able to get out. She might be able to get out of it if she wants to. ⁓

Brian (51:51)
Okay, so it is still

around for now at least.

Jim Butcher (51:55)
It is, but it's not blended with her quite the same way as is with other white-cord vampires, which is why her father was so upset about it. ⁓

Adam (52:01)
Ha!

And is that why

she can feed off of Irwin without any getting burned? Because they do appear to love each other very much. Hmm.

Jim Butcher (52:09)
Yes, and she has a lot more choice about things too. ⁓

So, you know, she never gets to a point where ⁓ the hunger just takes over. You know, it doesn't have that kind of control over her. ⁓ Although, you know, Irwin is a very unique case, you know, in terms of ⁓ what kind of food he provides for a white-cord vampire, you know, for a hunger.

but he's much more connected to the natural world than the average person. ⁓ So it's more, it's less that he's being fed on and more that everything around him as well as him is being fed on. ⁓ And so he doesn't really take nearly, he doesn't take the psychic damage from it that he would otherwise.

Brian (52:54)
Okay, that's really cool. ⁓ I'm sorry to be jumping so much, but we just had a few things that were just like burning questions for us and the readers. We did Fistful of Warlocks about a month ago to analyze it. We both loved it. Like, I think you kill the weird west setting. It's just awesome. Yeah.

Jim Butcher (53:02)
sure.

Adam (53:10)
Definitely one of the best short stories.

Jim Butcher (53:11)
That would be fun,

to write one of Lucio and Earp and Doc Holliday rolling around the Wild West fighting evil. That would be great.

Brian (53:17)
my God, please. But one question about it. So I loved when you brought up the Thula society and tying Kemmler to that. I was like, my God, that's genius. So in our history, the Thula society is like a little bit involved in Nazism eventually. Like there's a transitory way that that goes. So we know Kemmler was involved in World War I. Does that mean that he also kind of maybe started World War II?

Jim Butcher (53:47)
⁓ Yeah, they didn't finish him off until 1950-something, he kept coming back from the dead. Being a necromancer, you know, that's kind of what they do. ⁓ But he was involved in it, only in as much as, you know, he had a bunch of underlings ⁓ who were out meddling and doing things. You know, the Fool's Society was always kind of his own little court of useful idiots that he could push around to do things for him. ⁓

Brian (53:55)
Right.

Jim Butcher (54:14)
and by offering them tidbits of magic that wasn't really very impressive by his standards. But yeah, they got involved with the Nazis and the Nazis had, they had a considerable amount of magical power going for them. They had a number of demon summoners who were doing things. The very first Dresdenfiel short story I wrote was about the 83rd Airborne. I think it was 83rd, I think it's 83rd Airborne.

⁓ going up against this German castle where there's a demon summoner holed up and Klaus the Toymaker sides on with their unit. And that was the very first Dresden short story I wrote.

Brian (54:45)
Yeah.

I had no idea that was the first one. That's extremely cool. ⁓

Jim Butcher (54:52)
Yeah, was...

Unless you count the ones that were Nick Christian short stories. The original Dresden Files started Nick Christian, but it was set in Kansas City. ⁓ I wound up changing it, ⁓ changing that and making Nick Christian kind of my precursor character to Dresden, which is what he was in actual life. ⁓ But setting him up as a mentor for Harry because I'd learned some things by then about what I wanted to do with him.

Adam (55:22)
All right, I think that's all we've got time for here. Jim has gotta go, he's busy writing Mirror Mirror, people. But one last question for you, Jim. We did our best to come up with questions that you haven't been asked a dozen times in the last few months that you've been on this press tour. ⁓

How'd we do? Give us a letter grade.

Jim Butcher (55:39)
did great. Lots of cool questions. Some of this stuff I don't know the answer until I'm giving it, you know, so it's I always always enjoy taking questions because it makes me think about new things.

Adam (55:45)
Yeah.

All right, well, glad to be of assistance. Thank you again so much for joining us and we hope to see you again sometime.

Jim Butcher (55:54)
All right, take care y'all. Pleasure.

Brian (55:54)
Thank you very much,

You too.

Adam (55:56)
Bye

Brian (55:57)
God, Adam. I mean, he did say excellent, but he didn't give a letter grade. I hope we're getting him back for Mirror Mirror. That's like, that's gonna be the big test.

Adam (56:04)
He'll forget about us by then, don't worry about it.

Brian (56:08)
And then he'll

see the name again and laugh. So that's going to be the way we do it. But ⁓ we have to ask you guys, our audience, of all of the answers we got for Jim, Are there any of those answers that we should talk about more? And do you have any specific theories we should discuss based on things that Jim said?

you know, let us know and ⁓ we'd love to talk about it next time.

Adam (56:30)
Yeah, you can send those questions to macatrnt.fm and we'll see you next week for Grave Peril when we'll have more questions for Bob.