[alansplace]

Guest Info

NAME: JIM BUTCHER
APPEARING: All Three Days
KNOWN FOR: Author of The Dresden Files series, The Codex Alera series, the Cinder Spires series
WEBSITE: Official Jim Butcher Website
Guest Bio

Jim Butcher is a New York Times best selling author best known for his contemporary fantasy book series The Dresden Files.

While he was sick with strep throat as a child, Butcher’s sisters introduced him to The Lord of the Rings and The Han Solo Adventures novels to pass the time, thus beginning his fascination with fantasy and science fiction. After many unsuccessful attempts to enter the traditional fantasy genre (he cites J. R. R. Tolkien, Lloyd Alexander, and C.S. Lewis, among others, as major influences), he wrote the first book in The Dresden Files—about a professional wizard, named Harry Dresden, in modern-day Chicago—as an exercise for a writing course in 1996 at the age of 25.

As of 2015, Butcher has written 15 novels set in the Dresden Files universe, plus a number of short stories (some of which are collected in the anthology Side Jobs). The series has also been released in audiobook format, with all but one audiobook read by FanX Alumnus James Marsters. Other works set in the same fictional universe include graphic novels (two new stories, plus adaptations of the first two novels), and The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game. In 2007, a television series based on the novels aired for one season on the American Sci-Fi Channel.

After the success of Dresden, Butcher returned to the traditional fantasy genre with his second series, Codex Alera, which has six total books to date. Butcher also recently began a new steampunk series called The Cinder Spires, which begins with the release of the first book, The Aeronaut’s Windlass, on September 29, 2015.