(Photo Credits: Gage Skidmore) --- Jim Butcher is an American author of contemporary fantasy series. Most notable of his series include The Dresden Files, Codex Alera and Cinder Spires book series. Born in Missouri, he is the youngest of three children, with two older sisters. As a child, his sisters introduced him to The Lord of the Rings and The Han Solo Adventure novels to pass time, igniting his fascination with fantasy and science fiction stories. He completed his first novel as a teenager, and after many unsuccessful attempts at traditional fantasy, he wrote the first book in the Dresden Files series about a professional wizard, named Harry Dresden, in modern-day Chicago. Butcher was finally successful in publishing the book after floating his manuscript among various publishers for around two years. The Codex Alera series has concluded after six novels and The Dresden Files are still ongoing. Jim goes by the moniker 'Longshot' in a number of online locales, a name he came by in the early 1990s when he decided he would become a published author.