Three decades ago, Jim Butcher put pen to paper and invented a wildly popular fictional universe. At the time, he was just trying to finish his homework.
Butcher, then a 25-year-old grad student at the University of Oklahoma, had days earlier turned in an unfinished novel for a writing class. The book was about a wisecracking Chicago gumshoe named Harry Dresden, a wizard whose miserable love life was occasionally interrupted by a grisly supernatural murder.
Butcher’s professor liked what she read. She told him to bring an outline for “the rest of it” to their next session. “She meant the rest of the novel,” Butcher recalled in an interview. “The next week, I rolled in with an outline for a 20-book series.”
On sketch pads and now-obsolete WordPerfect software, he planned out ways to put his poor hero through a gauntlet of indignities, poking his head out occasionally to watch Animal Planet with his son. Homemade posters in his cramped writing alcove cheered him on. (“The only way you fail is if you quit,” read one.)
That outline would lead to “The Dresden Files” series, which debuted with “Storm Front” five years later, with heroes and villains from just about every mythology — and some Butcher made up. Over the last 25 years, the series has sold 14 million copies in the United States, according to his publisher. For all the wizardry, the real magic in the books is the way that vampires, werewolves and even a zombie T. Rex feel completely at home alongside mobsters, attack helicopters and a reference to Regina George, the Queen Bee of “Mean Girls.”
Ushering me into his rustic Colorado home, a cabinlike fortress he jokingly called his “log castle,” Butcher, 53, resembles some of the wizards in his books, with a well-kept beard, long hair streaked with silver, a prominent brow and a piercing gaze underneath expressive eyebrows.
Like those wizards, Butcher has some superstitions of his own, particularly when it comes to following the early outline that catapulted him from a graveyard shift I.T. geek to a best-selling author. Anne Sowards, his editor at Ace, said she has never seen it, and only one other person knows how the series will end. That secret plan has (mostly) guided Butcher’s saga since 2000, almost as long as George R.R. Martin, the fantasy eminence who released “A Game of Thrones” in 1996, has been publishing his.
Over 17 volumes and dozens of short stories, Butcher has hammered his hero, a mouthy P.I. with a beat-up Volkswagen, into a supernatural heavyweight who can vanquish titans. Along the way, Butcher has become one of the world’s leading authors of urban fantasy, a genre that blends the wondrous elements of magical realism, its more literary cousin, with the pulp and plotting of page-turners. This week, the publisher is announcing that “Twelve Months,” the 18th book in the series, will be published in January, five years after the last installment.
But there was a period where it seemed like he might not finish the series at all.
In the final pages of his 2010 book, “Changes,” Butcher had written his hero into a tight corner: shot through the chest, falling from a boat, sinking into the icy waters of Lake Michigan.
Butcher was enthusiastically promoting the latest twist to fans, who alternated between glee and grief. Behind the scenes, however, he was suffering.
“I had just gotten to a point where I just didn’t see any hope for the future,” Butcher said. “Bear in mind, this is when ‘The Dresden Files’ was exploding.”
Depression, which he had struggled with for much of his life, was deadening his days. His marriage was fraying. The charming raconteur, telling jokes to hundreds of fans on the science fiction and fantasy convention circuit, belied a man in crisis. So, he made a decision to end things.
As the deadline for his next book loomed, Butcher took two bottles of pills that he’d been using to treat chronic migraines and braced for the worst. He recalled feeling terribly sick for 36 hours. But he survived.
“I am really lucky to be here,” Butcher said quietly, as his 7-year-old pit bull, Brutus — named for an earth spirit in one of his books — dozed next to him on the couch.
Afterward, he thought about what his death might have done to his two sons, James (a novelist himself) and Dylan. He felt he needed to “own up to the consequences of my choice, and what could have happened if I hadn’t just been very fortunate.”
The result was the next installment in the series, “Ghost Story.” The book followed Harry Dresden’s ghost as he tried to solve his own murder, observing the ripple effects of his death “It’s a Wonderful Life”-style. It was the first in the series that Butcher didn’t plan out chapter by chapter ahead of time.
Butcher hasn’t opened up publicly about his mental health difficulties until recently, and he’s still reluctant to discuss them. He has been divorced twice, separations that have taken a toll (though he is newly engaged). Sowards said that there was a period where she wasn’t sure when she was going to get another book from him.
“We were able to be patient, and we supported him,” she said.
For lunch, Butcher sears me a steak on the stovetop, not unlike the typical meal that McAnally, the taciturn bartender from his books, would serve up. As Butcher carefully glazes the meat with a heart-healthy balsamic, I suggest that talking to a reporter is probably not great for his blood pressure.
“I mean, I debated whether or not to do this interview,” Butcher said, after adding garlic powder.
Stepping outside into the brisk, pine-scented air, he tells me that talking about his mental health was motivated, in part, by an interaction he had with a fan. At a book signing, he met a young man carrying a printout of writing advice Butcher had published on his LiveJournal. He autographed it and offered the fan encouragement about his own writing.
Butcher thought little of it at the time. But afterward, he said, the fan got in touch to tell Butcher that he had been prepared to kill himself, and that the writer’s words of support helped him decide to keep going. Since then, the two have struck up a friendship.
“I’ve talked to other young men who’ve had the same issues,” Butcher said. “I say, ‘You’re feeling overwhelmed. You need to make your world a bit smaller for a while. Set out some reasonable goals for yourself, get up in the morning, get the bed made, get the kitchen cleaned up, make sure your house looks nice.’”
Butcher is similarly forthcoming about the ups-and-downs in his career. In 2004, the Sci-Fi Channel announced it was making a series based on the first book of “The Dresden Files,” produced by Nicolas Cage. Fans were elated by the prospect, even if there were some notable changes; Harry’s trademark magical staff, for instance, was transformed into a hockey stick.
Shortly before shooting, Butcher said, a new executive triggered a flurry of last-minute rewrites. (“They were filming it in Toronto, and he was going to be in charge of the project from L.A.,” Butcher said. “So you can imagine how well that worked out.”) The series was canceled after one season. The channel didn’t even comp Butcher a set of the DVDs, he said.
The experience did introduce his books to thousands of viewers, and changed Butcher’s approach to Hollywood. He is negotiating to be a producer on a plan to turn three “Dresden Files” books into a new series. The project, which has not yet been announced, would focus on Harry Dresden’s war against the vampires who infected his girlfriend, Susan Rodriguez. He hopes to do some of the screenwriting.
“There’s serious enough talks happening that I’ve had to share my tax I.D. number and so on,” Butcher said. “But we’ll see. I don’t know if anything’s going to happen or not.”
Butcher is taking a more active role in his career, too. In 2022, he put out a Dresden Files novella through Audible, doing all the voices himself. But he has not turned his back on the traditional publishing industry, as have other fantasy authors with large followings, who are selling books directly to readers. “I’m getting to make a really good living doing something that I really love,” he added. “I don’t need to be super rich. It seems like that might pose more problems than solutions.”
During nearly six hours talking about Butcher’s books, I have assiduously avoided asking how the “Dresden Files” series will end. Does Butcher ever feel constrained by the blueprint he made for himself some 30 years ago?
He demurs, but acknowledges that he has had to make changes along the way. Years ago, he reconsidered his approach to a villain after meeting a fan from the Navajo Nation. And he said he has “tried to learn more as he’s gone along” in response to criticism from readers who say his female characters lack complexity.
His experiences will be reflected in “Twelve Months,” the first “Dresden Files” tale that wasn’t in the original outline at all. Indeed, the novel is a significant departure for Butcher, whose books usually take place during one action-packed and miserable week in his P.I.’s life. This time, Dresden takes an entire year to come to grips with the emotional pain he’s endured over the course of the series.
“I write at the end of this book that peace and happiness are the same thing,” Butcher said. “Peace is happiness at rest, and happiness is peace in motion.”
“When I find myself working and writing and thinking, ‘Hey, this chapter’s going really well,’ that is happiness, you know?” he added. “And that happiness doesn’t have to be perfect to be real.”
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resourcesspeakingofsuicide.com for a list of additional resources.
Sheelagh McNeill contributed reporting.
Benjamin Mullin reports for The Times on the major companies behind news and entertainment. Contact him securely on Signal at +1 530-961-3223 or at [email protected].
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