Storm Front, the first Dresden Files novel, was published in April of 2000 and author Jim Butcher has taken the titular character, Harry Dresden, on a wild ride in the eighteen years,  fifteen novels, two short story collections, seven graphic novels, and RPG since (with a sixteenth novel and an eighth graphic novel forthcoming).

In the series’ the most recent installment, Brief Cases: More Stories From the Dresden Files, Butcher uses the opportunities provided by a short story collection not only to fill readers in on more of what Harry gets up to between books (helping the son of Bigfoot out, taking his kid to the zoo, exorcising demons from lovely suburban homes) but also to show us Dresden’s Chicago through different sets of eyes, including those of Baron of Chicago John Marcone; former apprentice, and now Winter Lady, Molly Carpenter; Harry’s daughter, Maggie; and their his trusty, steed-sized canine, Mouse. And of course, there’s the time now-distinguished Warden Anastasia Luccio teamed up with Wyatt Earp to punt some zombies out of town…

In Dresden’s world, the possibilities are endless, the mythology boundless, and the snark bottomless.

I had the opportunity to talk to Butcher about writing an epic series, playing in the world’s larger sandbox, the joy to be found in writing a good villain, and what’s next for Harry. Check it out:

RB: You’ve been writing Harry Dresden for a long time now. Tell us a little bit about what keeps him fresh and interesting for you.

JB: It’s what keeps any character interesting; the fact that he grows and changes as he goes along. There are core elements of his personality that are probably never going to change, like he’s always going to be “lipping off” to people when he shouldn’t, but at the same time, he’s also somebody who grows and who gets scars, and he finds out things he didn’t know before and things he didn’t know about himself before. At the end of the day, as long as the character is growing like that, and you know where he’s going and you you know where he’s headed and where he’s going to end up, there’s never a question of the character growing stale because you’re not writing just Harry Dresden over and over. You’re writing this book’s Harry Dresden and this book’s Harry Dresden has got to be different than the last book’s Harry Dresden.

RB: Do you know, ultimately, where he’s going to end up?

JB: I know where the overall world is going to end up. I’m not sure where Harry ends up. There are several different things that could wind up happening and I don’t know that he survives the story…

RB: Again.

JB: Well, technically he wasn’t dead dead; he was only mostly dead.

RB: Your short story collection Brief Cases came out last month (which I read and enjoyed and my friends are making grabby hands for my copy of). Some of the stories in this book and other short story collections have been not from Harry’s point of view but from other characters’ points of view. What does one of the other characters have to do to get their own story?

JB: It depends. For example, for the Straight Out of Tombstone anthology, I had to write a Wild West story. I wanted to do that, but obviously I couldn’t do it with Harry so I had to do it with somebody else. That was easy because there are a host of characters in the Dresden Files who were alive during the Wild West, so then it was just a matter of picking the right person and I thought, “Hey! That was about the age Luccio was when she was the young hot head, out doing things, and she was totally awesome. Why don’t we tell the story from her point of view, and I can go ahead and set it in Dodge City because I drive by that a couple of times month. I can stop by and pick up a couple of things and do some research and . . . we’ve got Wyatt Earp there! Okay, we can do a team-up with Wyatt Earp with one of my characters and that’s awesome.” And then I thought, “What are we going to have Wyatt Earp fight? I know, lets have him fight zombies!” You find things that seem to work out just right for you, and there are elements to know when you get to them . . . there’s a lot of story craft that goes behind that, but it becomes instinctual and I can just feel it’s going to work.

RB: Does doing that kind of location research, inhabiting a place even temporarily, help with that process as well?

JB: I don’t know that it helps, but I know it doesn’t hurt. You get things when you go on location that you don’t get elsewhere, that you can’t get elsewhere. You don’t know what Dodge City smells like until you’ve been there is kind of what it amounts to. You’ve got to know a location well enough that you can make the reader feel like they know what it smells like. Once you can do that, you’ll be able to get the reader dragged in and sucked along.

RB: There are a couple of stories I want to talk about more specifically because the character’s point of view was really interesting. One of my favorites in this collection was “Even Hand.” That was interesting because John Marcone, who’s been around since the beginning, has never been a point-of-view character before.

JB: And when it comes to John Marcone, Harry is not capable of being objective.

[Ed: John Marcone is a sort of an Al Capone figure, the robber baron of Chicago, and Baron of Chicago as a signatory of the Unseelie Accords.]

RB: What makes Marcone compelling to write when you’re used to writing a Harry Dresden?

JB: Marcone is interesting because he doesn’t have limits like Harry Dresden does. Well, he does have them but they’re much further out than Harry’s are. There are things Harry just will not do. There are many fewer things that Marcone just will not do. And yet, I didn’t want Marcone to be a stereotypical gangster. As far as leadership types go, if he’d been alive several hundred years ago, he would have been considered a rather capable and admirable leader. If he’d been a baron in Medieval Europe, people would have moved to his lands because he was just. . . . He’s really hard on you when you crossed him, but he keeps his promises and that’s something you can’t replace. He is a character who runs crime. He does horrible things. He kills people. But at the same time, he’s got this code he won’t violate, and he shares that with Harry. He won’t break his code. It’s sort of who he is. I got to write that character and write the people around him who see him not as a distant icon but as a real person they work with every day. You got to see how his associates treat him, which changes your point of view of the guy. He’s still not all that nice or admirable a guy, but he is somebody who, if he gives you his word, will keep it.

RB: I found it interesting, especially since Black Panther came out in February, that we have more villains – and Marcone always was one but this story displays it even more – who have a moral ambiguity but it’s more than that. They have a depth and a code.

JB: Exactly. The villains in Black Panther were amazing – even Killmonger. You could understand that guy. You might not agree with what he wanted to do, with his view of the world, but you could certainly understand where he was coming from. He wasn’t wrong, and at the end of the day, T’Challa had to look at him and say, “You’re not wrong.” He managed to convince T’Challa to change his point of view to something that was closer to Killmonger’s. T’Challa did something different with it, but at the same time, you gotta love those villains, when you fight them, you just can’t be sure, “Am I the bad guy? Is that what’s happening here?” That’s really good storytelling. I love writing frenemies. It’s always important to be able to see people from different angles. It’s always important to be able to have the empathy, to be able to get into another person’s point of view, even if their point of view is a murderous one. It’s better to understand the people you’re going up against. It’s always important to be able to see someone else’s humanity, even when they’re your enemy

RB: Switching from moral ambiguity to gender, the Dresden Files have always had a lot of great female characters in them but because the novels are generally written from Harry’s point of view, they’re pretty dudely. How was it to write from Molly’s perspective for a couple of these stories?

JB: It’s very, very different because Molly thinks about things very differently. Dresden is this powerhouse who can kick down doors and push in faces when he has to, and he’s comfortable and kind of happy doing that most of the time, as long as he’s doing it for what he thinks is a good cause. Molly is a much twister person in general, she works with finesse as opposed to power. In Molly’s point of view, she’s much more one of those wizards who, if she has to throw a lightning bolt at somebody, she’s already failed. There’s got to be other ways to get there – and more effective ways. She also has a somewhat different morality than Dresden, though not totally since he was her teacher and he was an exemplar for her in terms of being a wizard and how you should use your power – why you use your power. There are parts of her voice that sound very familiar because she learned from Harry but at the same time, she’s a very different person and you’ve got to tell different stories from her point of view. In a lot of ways, at this point, Molly is more sophisticated than Dresden and more aware, more self-aware. She’s taken on a lot of responsibility and that’s changed her as a person.

RB:  She seems like she’s going to do better in Faerie Court politics than he does.

JB: Oh, she’s going to do so much better. Harry comes from a very specific viewpoint. He really does have a tendency to break people down into “good people” and “bad people.” He’s got a pretty low bar for what it takes to be a good person in general, but he suffers from that black-and-white thinking. Molly is someone who can look at someone and understand that there are strengths and weaknesses to their character, that there are good things and bad things that they do, but there’s a difference between who a person is and what choices they’re going to make depending on what’s driving them. I think she has a clearer view of people in many ways than Harry does. I think, ultimately, she’s going to be someone who, in the long run, is going to be more powerful because at the end of the day, Harry just wants to go home and have a beer and read a good book. Molly might have a little more ambition than that.

RB: I have one more question that’s book but not Dresden related: Any idea when the next Cinder Spires book is going to be ready?

JB: It will be about six months after Peace Talks [Ed: the next Dresden Files novel] is done. I’ve got to finish that up before September. I’ll finish Peace Talks in the next couple of months now that I have a workshop again and then I’ll work on Cinder Spires. I’m very excited about it. I have to do to more cats [Ed: Just read The Aeronauts Windlass; you’ll get it.] because we have four cats, and the cats who aren’t in the book are getting jealous of the famous cats. I’m really looking forward to it. It’s called The Olympian Affair, and it should be a lot of fun.

If you haven’t read any of the Dresden Files, Brief Cases is an excellent way to get a taste of Harry’s world, though these stories take place a ways down the storyline, so there may be details you’re missing and/or some spoilers for events in the early novels, but I don’t think those will affect your enjoyment if you decide to start at the beginning.

Enjoy. And make sure you bring your wizard’s staff and your D20.

Brief Cases: More Stories from the Dresden Files (ACE) is available now.

Also by Jim Butcher are: The Codex Alera (Furies of Calderon, Academ’s Fury, Cursor’s Fury, Captain’s Fury, Princep’s Fury, and First Lord’s Fury) and The Cinder Spires  (The Aeronaut’s Windlass and The Olympian Affair – forthcoming).