I’m sure you’ve heard a lot from fans over the years about all the trials you’ve subjected poor Harry Dresden to. What do fans complain about the most?

Oh, it varies from fan to fan. I try and make sure to hurt everybody equally.

Well, that’s the way to do it.

Yeah, it’s America, you know.

But it depends who they are as to what’s most upsetting to them. Some are upset by Susan, some by the whole relationship with Murphy, and some by other stuff.

The one I get the most is, “If anything ever happened to Mister [Harry’s cat], I will personally find you and do something horrible.” But I figure, why write escapist fiction about losing a pet? That’s a real world thing.

One thing I love about the Dresden universe is how intentional and sophisticated and fully formed the system of magic seems to be. Talk about how you created it.

The first thing I did when I sat down to start writing the story was figure out how the magic worked. Even if the audience isn’t entirely sure, when you’re creating it, you have to be aware of how it functions.

So I went and raided the local bookstore — I think it was a Borders at the time. I went down their metaphysics aisle and picked up a bunch of books on magic. I looked at others who incorporate magic in their work to see what they had to say about it. I looked at an Aristotelian theory of magic.

It was kind of a salad bar approach, where I picked all the things that I knew would be best for drama.

Does it become harder to keep up with the further you go?

Oh god, yeah. Having everything look and feel consistent all the way through is one of my major concerns, and it gets more difficult with every book.

That’s part of the unique joy of creating such a long story that people pay attention to. You kind of owe it to them to make sure it stacks up as well as you can make it.

At the same time, though, because I did take the time to set it up early, I know how all the basic structure works, and if you have a solid foundation underneath it, then as you build it, you’re gonna find that things just naturally fall together.

As I’ve gone along, I’ve learned more and more about the magic in the story, and sometimes I don’t realize that’s what I’ve put together until I’m in the middle of it. And then I go, “Oh, of course, that’s exactly how it had to work.”

It feels like cheating sometimes. I didn’t actually plan for certain things to come together. It just happened that way because I used a structured approach.

Or magic is real, and you are actually performing magic like Harry himself.

Listen, man, as far as I know, I’m just here talking to my imaginary friend, writing it all down, and people are paying me money for it.

Harry’s voice is one of my favorites in all of fiction. How have you developed it over the years?

I just wrote him like a lower-middle-class nerd, which was what I knew. I didn’t really set out to create a voice for Dresden. When I started the first book, my goal wasn’t to write a book; it was to prove to my writing teacher [Deborah Chester] how wrong she was about the stuff she was trying to teach me.

This book was just the way I chose to do it. It was a project in line with the things she suggested I try out, one of which was to write in the first person. And I’m like, “Well, how do I do that? How do I create a voice for a character?”

And she’s like, “You know what? The first time, don’t worry about it. Just write. Pretend it’s you talking.”

So that’s what I did.

So talking to you is like talking to Dresden?

In terms of the way he uses language and inflects his sentences, probably.

How did you come to write Spider-Man: The Darkest Hours?

My original editor, Jen Heddle at Roc, moved to Penguin, where she was put in charge of their licensed properties. One of the properties she got was Spider-Man.

She knew that I was a giant Spider-Man fan, so she met up with me at Dragon Con one year and asked if I wanted to write a Spider-Man novel through Marvel. I was like, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” Which undermined any bargaining power I might have had during the negotiation.

When I was done with the novel, I realized it was only about 45,000 words. I decided to add in another story line, and when I sent that in to my editor, she said, “Oh, we can’t do that. The Marvel committee has to approve this.”

And I’m like, “Well, when can the committee do that?”

She said, “They meet once a month, so not for another three weeks.”

I’m like, “The novel is due in three days.”

She’s like, “I know. You’re gonna have to figure something out.”

I thought, if this were a romance novel, and somebody told me I had to make the book longer but I couldn’t make the story longer, I’d just write more orgasms. This is a comic book novel, though, so I wrote more ka-pow. I added three or four more fight scenes to get the word count up.

What is your writing process like?

I’ll get up and get a little of my own alone time in the morning before the house gets rolling. Then my assistant gets here and we get all the animals fed. Then she mans the phone and handles other issues while I get to work.

I write until noon or 1:00, then go to the gym with my kid. We come back, get something to eat, and then I sit down and start writing again around 3:00 until 5:00 or 6:00.

If I’m behind the gun, then I’ll write again later on the evening before I go to bed.

A number of writers dislike fan fiction based on their work. What are your thoughts on that?

My official thought on fan fiction is that I’m not aware of any based on my work because if I were, then I might have to go vigorously defend my copyright, and it seems like that would be a foolish thing to do given that only the people who are most devoted to your work actually write fan fiction about it. I don’t want to get into a copyright fight with some kid who loves my work. I want that kid to be happy.

We’ll speak theoretically then. I once heard George R. R. Martin on a panel say that the reason he didn’t like fan fiction was because he didn’t think it was a good way for a young writer to learn to write. Would you agree or disagree with that?

I would say that anything that keeps you writing is a good way to learn to write. Breaking into the writing business takes a while. It’s a marathon. Anything that keeps you going, that keeps you putting one foot in front of the other, that is what is good for you as a writer.

Have you tried writing other stuff such as poetry, nonfiction, or literary fiction?

All of that. Except poetry. I don’t think I would ever find any joy in it, so probably that one isn’t for me.

I would really love to be more of an artist. I’ve actually got some materials now where I can start learning some things. I need to force myself to sit down and practice. I would love to be able to draw comic book-style art. It would be fun to do Harry Dresden that way.

How did you get started doing conventions?

My first convention was one in Austin, Texas. I got invited because it was connected to the school of professional writing at the University of Oklahoma, and I had been studying there with Debbie Chester.

When they asked me, I hadn’t even had anything published yet. I had gotten a sale, but the convention was in March, and the book didn’t come out till April [his first novel, Storm Front]. I didn’t feel like I had the chops to be giving any answers, but I wound up on this panel with Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Neil Gaiman, and Glen Cook.

The panel was on fantasy novels that needed a better editor, and it’s like, yeah, I want to argue with those guys about that!

Were you intimidated?

I almost made it all the way through the panel, but toward the end, Neil Gaiman leans over — I don’t know if you’ve ever met Neil Gaiman, but he’s a great guy — he leans over and is like, “Jim, you haven’t said a thing. I’m interested to hear what you have to say.”

I’m like, “You guys don’t want to know what I have to say. I’m the new guy.”

He’s like, “No, no, that’s exactly it. You’re a new author, just getting into the business, and I really want to hear what books you think needed a better editor.”

So I kinda took a deep breath, and I’m like, “Okay, the Lord of the Rings needed a better editor. It didn’t really get started until page 200, and here’s why.”

How did they respond?

The top of Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s head flipped back, and he started shooting me down, ripping me up one side and down the other. Glen Cook busted out laughing at me. But I earned it.

I knew you were a Lord of the Rings fan. What other books or authors do you like?

My number one author hero is Robert B. Parker. He wrote private eye novels that were the inspiration for Spenser: For Hire and other shows and TV movies. His writing is lean and beautiful. He can be poetic while still being very swift and to the point and very pulpy in his writing. His character work is outstanding.

His Spenser novels are kind of fantasy novels too because they are novels of the heroic American, the absolutely dauntless person. The world he creates is wonderful, and I keep going back to it because I keep getting more insight into what he thought about life. I’ve never read a thing he’s written that wasn’t really, really good.

On top of all that, he died at the keyboard working on a novel. Like a man. That’s how I want to go out. That’s not bad.