May 2020 – Jim Butcher

Fan Film Spotlight

Peace Talks‘ release is less than 50 days away! Have you preordered your copies of both novels in this summer’s Dresden Duology? Snag them through our store.

Want your books autographed by Jim? You can order a signed copy of Peace Talks from Barnes & Noble!

A couple quick things before we jump into our feature story:

We have video of Pat Rothfuss’ interview with Jim from Thursday’s event, and it’s all kinds of fun!

Also, Badali Jewelry will be releasing their 20th Anniversary limited edition Demonreach pentacle on Monday, June 1st! The limited edition Molly pentacle sold out in a week, so you’ll want to act fast.

Fan Film Spotlight

You’ve seen the incredible creativity readers have brought to fanart and cosplay. Now, we want to celebrate some of the creators who have brought the Dresdenverse to life through fan films, including a fabulous new short that debuted THIS WEEK!

Industriosa Pictures

Jim-Butcher.com’s Priscilla Spencer helmed a Los Angeles-based crew largely composed of fans in the industry in this delicious-looking book trailer that includes moments from both Peace Talks and Battle Ground.

Dresden Files Fan Filming (or DF3)

This crew of fans based in Denver, led by director Christian Kennedy and actor Matt Merback, is best known for creating the book trailer for Skin Game. Though they dissolved shortly after it debuted, they leave behind an impressive collection of original Dresdenverse shorts. A couple standouts, selected by actress Mandie Lyons: The Other Guy and Hello Again.

Tower of Turtles

This Dallas-based fan filming crew led by Suzanne Solomon, Landon Solomon, Amy Gruss, and Bill Teel think big! They’ve created two original full-length Dresdenverse movies, Night Light and Red Sun, which are well worth a watch. Or if you’re in the mood for more bite-sized entertainment, we love A Carpenter Christmas and their 2014 April Fool’s gag. They’re now branching into original projects, so keep an eye out for High Gear!

Heath Harper

Angeleno Heath Harper directed and starred in a spectacular 10-minute fan film that debuted earlier this week, including a scene shot in quarantine! In this short, the past haunts Harry as he’s grilled by Chicago PD.

This Is War

This fanvid blows our minds. Editor frequentsmiler dug through dozens of movies to find the perfect clips of actors fancast to represent major and minor characters alike, going head to head against apocalyptic monsters representing millions of dollars’ worth of VFX. If only a Dresden TV show could have a budget like this! Jim says he watches it whenever he needs motivation to write.

Reminders

The Goodreads Read-Along continues this week with Changes! Join us as we discuss the explosive volume that upended the series’ status quo.

The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game is now available on Switch, Steam, the App Store for Mac and iOS, Google Play for Android, and the Amazon Appstore for Kindle. Scales smoothly from 1-5 players in multiple play modes, including Solitaire, local Pass-and-Play, and Online Multiplayer.

We’ve expanded our social media presence! Give us a follow on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and enjoy all the content that doesn’t make it into our Drops, like the Trailer Rewatch thread, the Quarantine House Game, and more!

Ebooks of Storm Front, Fool Moon, and Grave Peril are still on sale for fans in the US!

Storm Front at $2.99:

Fool Moon at $3.99:

Grave Peril at $5.99:

Visit Jim-Butcher.com every Tuesday this year for weekly Drops of never-before-seen artwork, microfiction, interviews, contests, sample chapters for Peace Talks and Battle Ground, or other tasty tidbits in our celebration of the 20th Anniversary of the Dresden Files. Join our new mailing list and follow @jimbutchernews on twitter to ensure you don’t miss a moment, and check the announcement post to catch up on prior Drops. See you next week!

Cosplay Contest Results, Book Club Thursday, An Exclusive Returns, and UK Megasale!

Our biggest story today is the results of our Cosplay Contest, but that’s not all we have in store. Keep scolling for details about a live interview between Jim and Pat Rothfuss, an exclusive edition of Storm Front, a sale on Dresden ebooks in the UK, a link to Jim’s appearance on The Great Fantasy Debate, and more!

Peace Talks‘ release is less than two months away! Have you preordered your copies of both novels in this summer’s Dresden Duology? Snag them through our store.

Want your books autographed by Jim? You can order a signed copy of Peace Talks from Barnes & Noble!

Cosplay Contest Results

Jim’s fans never fail to amaze us with their talent, dedication, and spectacular nerdery, and this contest was no exception! You made it incredibly difficult to choose our winners, and we offer our thanks and appreciation to everyone who submitted. We’ll be reaching out to the grand prize winners and runners up for their shipping information and prize preference this week.

BEST COSPLAYER/GROUP

Grand Prize: Congratulations to Nicol Thompson, who handmade a trio of Dead Beat costumes for her sons Steven (the Erkling) and William (Butters) and boyfriend Kyle (Harry)! Standout elements include the Erlking’s EVA foam helmet, cardstock Sue head, and One-Man Polka Band Suit from a dismantled drum set. Not to mention, y’know, the Wild Hunt of three horses (Lester, Ikaika, and Moose) and Zoey the Great Dane! Photographer: Nicol Thompson.

Runners-Up:

Andy and Becky Tripp have been creating hilarious and inspired costumes and mashups for the DragonCon Dresden Files Cosplay Meetups for years, and the addition of new daughter Josie has made their group cosplays a trillion percent more adorable. Costumes featured here include The Gatekeeper, Ivy, Masquerade Ball Harry, Mid-Transformation Deirdre, Small Favor-era Harry, and a Wizard of Oz mashup (including Jordan Walker Key as Thomas/the Tin Man and Katherine Ann Key as Lea/Glinda).

Photo: Andrea Gonzales
Photo: Becky Tripp
Photo: Andy Tripp
Photo: Andrea Gonzales
Photo: Andrea Gonzales
Photo: Andrea Gonzales

Jacob Womack is another regular of the DragonCon Cosplay Meetups, most frequently appearing as Lord Raith (both Blood Rites and White Night costumes by his fiancee Ayla Ocasio). He’s added other characters to his repertoire, crafting an Erlking costume from EVA foam and assembling a Ghost Story Bob outfit, which is a deep enough cut to earn our respect.

Appearing with him in these photos are Jordan Walker Key as Thomas, Allison McDaniel as Margaret LeFay, Andy Floyd as Malcolm Dresden, and Ayla Ocasio as Lara.

Photo: Ayla Ocasio
Photo: Andrea Gonzales
Photo: Ayla Ocasio
Photo: Ayla Ocasio
Photo: Andrea Gonzales
Photo: Andrea Gonzales

Kaja Bowman became the Rag Lady, reenacting a One-Woman Rave and the conversation at Denny’s. Photos taken by Zane Bowman.

Three Runner Up slots weren’t enough! Christine Sorrentino‘s sensational Toot-toot cosplay is better than pizza. Photos taken by Ryan Walton.

BEST COSPLAY PHOTOGRAPH OR PHOTOMANIPULATION

Grand Prize: Andrea Gonzales is a legend in the Dresden cosplay community, orchestrating the annual DragonCon Cosplay Meetup as well as themed and private shoots throughout the weekend. Her passion for the books and her fantastic sense of humor are readily apparent in her work.

Amelia Snow as Wild West Luccio
Jen Russell as Masquerade Mavra
Andy Floyd as Malcolm, Just Ducky Cosplay as Margaret, and Jacob Womack as Lord Raith
Kitty Krell as the Leanansidhe
Priscilla Spencer as Molly, Jo Solomon as Maggie
Melissa Koval as Club Zero Justine

Runners-Up:

Cosplayer Jack Flash by photographer Scott Terra created this gorgeous series of images with titles that made us snort out loud with laughter: “Does This Staff Make Me Look Deep?,” “Stay Down, It’s The Staff Police,” and “Maybe I Just Have An Annoying Smile.”

Rachel Hackett created this striking, minimalistic image of Murphy’s encounter with the bridge troll in Restoration of Faith while sheltering at home. Three cheers for creativity during lockdown!

Cosplayer Kelley Nymph and Vision Knights Photography collaborated on this breathtaking image of Queen Mab.

Honorable Mentions in Both Categories:

Meg Willsher as Molly
Brenda Wiebe as Lea
Zachary Blair as Toot
Jay Cohen as Butters
Shannon Sherrodd as Mother Summer
Eva Hellesto as Mab
Sarah/Aurora Blue Cosplay as Lea
Stephanie Thomas as Murphy
Mandy and Matt Haecker as Warden Molly and Morgan
Patrick Diamond as Harry and Christopher Michael as Thomas
RomulanSith as a Warden
Tama as Titania
Tama as Harry
Garrett King as Harry
Melissa Koval as Molly
Amelia Snow as Masquerade Bianca
Duval Guerino as Harry, Photomanipulation by Venice Turraine
Donovan Summers as Harry
Meg Willsher as Molly
Patrick Diamond as Harry

Kids Spotlight:

We can’t let the contest end without celebrating the awesome young people who submitted!

Suzanne and Jo Solomon as Sight Murphy and Maggie
Becky and Josie Tripp as Gender-Swapped Malcolm and Baby Harry
Warden Munchkin
Gabriel Garcia as Harry
Connor as Harry
William Thompson as Butters

Thanks again to everyone who entered, and congratulations to the winners!

Penguin Book Club this Thursday

Penguin’s inaugural Book Club event is in two days, and they’ve enlarged the audience capacity so everyone can join us! See Patrick Rothfuss interview Jim and celebrate the book that started it all, Storm Front. Thursday, May 21st, at 7pm Eastern. Free registration required to watch live. Registrants can also submit questions, which will be compiled and vetted before the event! Look for an email from Eventbrite.

Great Fantasy Debate

Last Tuesday evening, Penguin posted Jim’s first appearance on The Great Fantasy Debate! See him square off against Pierce Brown as they argue which fantasy world is the best place for a vacation?

Storm Front Exclusive Returns

It seems Jim’s publisher won’t be attending any cons this year, so they’ve dropped the “Con” from the “Con Exclusive Edition.” This anniversary edition of Storm Front includes a new cover by Leo Nickolls and a foreword from Jim. Order your copy here! You can use the code BOOKLOVER20 to get 20% off and free shipping. AVAILABLE THROUGH 10PM EASTERN THIS THURSDAY ONLY.

UK Ebook Mega-Sale

Fans in the UK, rejoice! The first five Dresden novels are available in ebook format for £0.99 each through May 24th! Fill in your back catalogue or hook all your friends. Get purchasing links through Little, Brown:

Reminders

The Goodreads Read-Along continues with Small Favor!

The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game came out on the Switch last week! It’s also available on Steam, the App Store for Mac and iOS, Google Play for Android, and the Amazon Appstore for Kindle. Scales smoothly from 1-5 players in multiple play modes, including Solitaire, local Pass-and-Play, and Online Multiplayer.

We’ve expanded our social media presence! You should already know about the JimButcherNews Twitter feed, but we’ve also added accounts on Facebook and Instagram as well. Give us a follow and enjoy all the content that doesn’t make it into our Drops, like the Trailer Rewatch thread, the Quarantine House Game, and more!

Ebooks of Storm Front, Fool Moon, and Grave Peril are still on sale for fans in the US!

Storm Front at $2.99:

Fool Moon at $3.99:

Grave Peril at $5.99:

Visit Jim-Butcher.com every Tuesday this year for weekly Drops of never-before-seen artwork, microfiction, interviews, contests, sample chapters for Peace Talks, or other tasty tidbits in our celebration of the 20th Anniversary of the Dresden Files. Join our new mailing list and follow @jimbutchernews on twitter to ensure you don’t miss a moment, and check the announcement post to catch up on prior Drops. See you next week!

Storm Front Anniversary, Part 2!

Today, we pick up where we left off in our celebration of the 20th anniversary of Storm Front! We also have a NEW VERSION of the Battle Ground cover that addresses a significant error. But first, a couple reminders for things happening TODAY:

Tonight, Tonight!

Dresden Files Cosplay Meetup at DragonCon 2019, Photographed by Andrea Gonzales

Tonight is your last chance to submit to the Cosplay Contest! Read the rules and submit before midnight Pacific.

Also, Jim’s first episode of The Great Fantasy Debate will be posted to Penguin Random House’s Facebook page this evening! Last week’s episode (featuring Naomi Novik and Tochi Onyebuchi) was uploaded at 7:15pm Eastern, so we’d expect them to follow a similar schedule today. Jim will also be appearing in an episode scheduled to air June 23rd.

Smiling always seems to annoy people more than actually insulting them. Or maybe I just have an annoying smile.

Battle Ground Recovered

Good News! Penguin has heard your concerns, and they’ve fixed the orientation of Harry’s pentacle on Chris McGrath’s Battle Ground cover! It’s now the correct way up. Click to display the full cover.

It’s too late to fix the equivalent error in the first printing of Peace Talks, but it will be corrected in reprints.

Magic. It can get a guy killed.

Art to the Rescue!

Adam Mathison-Sward is lending his artistic skill to help save Badali Jewelry, creators of officially licensed lines for some of your favorite fandoms.

He writes: “Hello everyone! Like a lot of people and small businesses, Badali Jewelry has taken a big financial hit from the closing/postponing of conventions across the country. […] So I’m giving away an original 11″x17” custom illustration to THREE donors to their GoFundMe campaign. Check out the link to see full details, and donate if you are in a position to! If not, please take a second to share the campaign!”

Storm Front Anniversary, Part 2

This week, we continue our celebration of the 20th Anniversary of Storm Front by sharing some seldom-seen artwork inspired by the book!

First, illustrations by Vincent Chong from Subterranean Press’ printing of Storm Front. This title is long since sold out from the publisher, but copies can be found secondhand.

It is the prerogative of wizards to be grumpy. It is not, however, the prerogative of freelance consultants who are late on their rent.

Next, Francis Tsai‘s concept sketches and completed illustration for the “noir” variant of the first issue of the Storm Front graphic novel, published by Dynamite Entertainment.

(We learned upon googling his name that Tsai was diagnosed with ALS the year after he created these illustrations. He refused to give up on his art and learned to draw with this feet, then taught himself to model in 3D using tech that tracked the movement of his eyes. He continued to create until he passed away in 2015. It’s an incredible story that you should read!)

There is no truer gauge of a man’s character than the way in which he employs his strength, his power.

And the Storm Front art we’re most familiar with, poster illustrations and pages by Ardian Syaf for Dynamite Entertainment’s graphic novel adaptation. Images 1 and 2: Colors by Jeremy Treece. Image 3: Inks by Rick Ketcham and Colors by Mohan.

I had to maintain a fine balance between going in ready for trouble and going in asking for trouble.

Also, we ran across some fun phone lockscreens using quotes from Storm Front. Thanks to Hydrilla of MyNerdyLockscreens for creating them. Find three more on their site!

Our celebration of Storm Front will continue in at least one future Drop. We’d love to dig into the titular episode of the 2007 SciFi Channel TV show, including material from the unaired two-hour pilot, and that kind of endeavor deserves a post of its own!

What else would you like to see in our Storm Front Anniversary Tributes? Do you have any favorite fanart for the book that deserves a spotlight? What else are we missing? Let us know on twitter at @jimbutchernews or emailing yearofdresden (at) gmail.com.

Reminders

Ebooks of Storm Front, Fool Moon, and Grave Peril are still on sale!

Storm Front at $2.99:

Fool Moon at $3.99:

Grave Peril at $5.99:

Microfiction #4, Costume Contest Reminder, Dresden Card Game on Switch, and Trailer Milestone

The big draw this week is our fourth Microfiction, but there’s plenty more to get excited about! We’ve got the Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game’s debut on switch, an upcoming Trailer Rewatch event, a $1.99 ebook deal on Death Masks, and more. It’s also the last week to submit your costumes for our contest. Read on!

Microfiction #4: Job Placement

Given how fraught the outside world is (murder hornets? MURDER HORNETS?!?!), we thought it was perfect timing for some domestic cuteness with everyone’s favorite Scion of Sasquatch, Irwin Pounder. This microfiction contains spoilers for the short story “Bigfoot on Campus” which appears in the Brief Cases anthology. It’s set between Skin Game and Peace Talks, but doesn’t require knowledge of either.

Read Job Placement!

Also, Jim feels like writing more short Dresdenverse stories, and he wants to know who you want to read about. Vote in our poll! You can pick as many characters as you like, including suggesting Dresden characters not in the poll using the “Other” box. Or you can vote for Jim to create all new characters!

Costume Contest Entries Due Next Tuesday

We’ve seen some fabulous entries for the Dresden Files Costume Contest so far, but we know they barely scratch the surface of all the awesome cosplay passion the fanbase has produced.

To inspire you to enter, we offer a bribe of some photos of Jim cosplaying with his wife Kitty Krell and friends. Photos by WeNeals and Andrea Gonzales.

Read all the rules, then submit your cosplay, cosplay photography, and cosplay image manipulations to yearofdresden@gmail.com by May 12th.

DFCO Now on Switch

Need more stay-at-home fun/distraction? The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game was released yesterday for the Switch! Snag your copy now.

What is the DFCO? It’s a surprisingly challenging strategy game, where you play Harry Dresden and his friends as they take on the cases from the bestselling Dresden Files novels in the ultimate what-if scenario: what if Harry was on the scene with allies who weren’t there in the original story? Fans will appreciate the characters and references, but knowledge of the series is not required.

This digital version of the game was created by Hidden Achievement based on the tabletop version by Evil Hat Productions, featuring art by Tyler Walpole. In addition to the Switch, you can download it from the App Store for iOS, Google Play, or Steam! The game supports single player mode and both cross-plaform multi-player gaming and local pass-and-play, for all your quarantine and post-lockdown needs.

Milestone Approaching for Trailer

We had so much fun celebrating 150k views on the trailer that we thought we’d host another rewatch leading up to 175k. Daily view counts have been a little unpredictable as states begin to reopen and people’s schedules change, but we expect to hit this milestone on Thursday. Follow JimButcherNews on Twitter and the #DresdenTrailerRewatch hashtag for fun facts about the making of trailer, resuming Thursday morning!

Great Fantasy Debate Coming Soon

Penguin’s new online game show The Great Fantasy Debate premieres today, and Jim’s guest appearances are scheduled for May 12th and June 23rd! Tune in next week as Jim, Pierce Brown, and comedians Sean Donnelly and Jay Jurden debate “Which is the best fantasy world to go to for vacation?”

Watch new episodes as they air on Penguin’s Facebook Page.

Reminders

We’ve expanded out social media presence! You should already know about the JimButcherNews Twitter feed, but we’ve also added accounts on Facebook and Instagram as well. Give us a follow and enjoy all the content that doesn’t make it into our Drops, like the Trailer Rewatch thread, the Quarantine House Game, and more!

The electronic edition of Death Masks is discounted at $1.99 through May 10th! Support independent bookstores by ordering through Bookshop.org, Books-A-Million, or Kobo (here’s how to support your favorite local shop!), or from the following vendors: Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes and Noble, Google Play.