Dresden. Am I interrupting something?" "Well, I was going to settle down with a porn video and a bottle of baby oil, but I really don't have enough for two.

There should be a rule against your own inner monologue throwing around that much sarcasm.

I stared up at the Erlking, and with my typical pithy brilliance said, "Uh-oh.

You know the law, Dresden." "He who kills the cheer springs for beer," chanted the rest of the table.

Karrin Murphy led the charge, and Sanya and I tried to keep up. She went through that sea of foes like a little speedboat, her enemies spun and tossed and turned and disoriented in her wake. Sanya and I hacked our way through stunned foes, pushing and chopping with unsophisticated brutality-and that big Russian lunatic just kept laughing the whole time.

When I finally got tired of arguing with her and decided to write a novel as if I was 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.

I'm brilliant as well as skilled," he said modestly. "It's a great burden, all of that on top of my angelic good looks. But I try to soldier on as best I can.