Bob the Skull

Lore & Background

Bob is a spirit of intellect, not a ghost or a demon, who resides permanently within a human skull. He is bound by magical law to obey the commands of the skull's owner, currently Harry Dresden. While he can leave the skull when permitted, he is vulnerable to sunlight and requires a host body to survive exposure. Bob serves as Harry's primary source of magical research, offering knowledge and commentary from his perch in the lab.

The Supernatural Landscape of Chicago

The series takes place in a world where magic and the paranormal—including vampires, demons, spirits, faeries, werewolves, outsiders and other monsters—are real but widely discredited. Harry Dresden is based primarily in the city of Chicago and outlying suburbs. It also expands to large portions of the globe, including much of Central and South America, which are controlled by supernatural factions. These factions are loosely countered by the White Council, an organization of human wizards that wields significant economic power.

Each species has its own political and societal rules and organizations, acting to counter each other and maintain the masquerade. The human wizards depend on the White Council, while faeries either belong to one of two Faerie Courts or are unaffiliated, known as Wyldfae. Vampires generally belong to any of the four vampire courts. The series features other non-human creatures from a range of mythologies.

The Evolution of Harry Dresden

Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden is a self-employed supernatural private investigator and consultant for the Chicago Police Department. He is the only advertising wizard in the United States, living in Chicago and taking supernatural cases on behalf of both human and nonhuman clients. He serves as a consultant for the Special Investigations division of the Chicago Police Department, reviewing cases that appear to have a magical element. As the series progresses, Dresden takes on an increasingly important role in the supernatural world at large. As he works to protect the general public, he struggles to get by as a working wizard and private investigator.

Jim Butcher's Creative Journey

As a writing student, Butcher wrote several novels that he has since described as 'terrible', the majority being traditional high fantasy. At the suggestion of his writing teacher, author Deborah Chester, he attempted a novel in the style of the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series by Laurell K. Hamilton and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, media they had discussed because Butcher was a fan. Resistant to her systematic approach to writing fiction, he set out to prove her wrong by closely following her methods.

The result, which would require little editing, was Storm Front. Butcher has called the experience, 'a valuable lesson about humility.' When I finally got tired of arguing with her and decided to write a novel as if I [were] some kind of formulaic, genre-writing drone, just to prove to her how awful it would be, I wrote the first book of the Dresden Files. Butcher next sought an agent or editor, a process that took over two years.

During this period he completed the second novel, Fool Moon, and made significant progress on the third, Grave Peril. Deciding to focus on agents who had sold similar novels, Butcher submitted a copy of his manuscript to the literary agency of Ricia Mainhardt, who represented Laurell Hamilton. It was rejected. His break came when Butcher met Hamilton at a convention and was invited to a lunch including Mainhardt. Mainhardt agreed to represent him, and six months later, the first three books of The Dresden Files were sold to ROC.