Interview with Patricia Briggs
Posted by Goodreads on February 29, 2016
Over the last decade, Patricia Briggs's urban fantasy saga—featuring shape-shifting Volkswagen mechanic Mercy Thompson—has continued to thrill readers, even as the subgenre as a whole has been in a state of flux in recent years with the conclusion of landmark series like Kim Harrison's Hollows and Charlaine Harris's Southern Vampire saga. In a category replete with iconic heroines, Briggs's lovable, tattooed auto mechanic is arguably one of the most memorable.
With the ninth Mercy Thompson novel, Fire Touched—in which the entire Tri-Cities area of Washington is put in danger by encroaching monstrosities—about to hit the shelves, Goodreads caught up with Briggs and asked her a few questions about her love of werewolves, the continued appeal of Mercy & Co., her take on the spectacular Dan Dos Santos covers that have graced all of her Mercy Thompson novels, and the fae walking stick that keeps coming back!
Goodreads: Patty, first off, congrats on another fantastic installment in your Mercy Thompson saga. Not many urban fantasy series have had Mercy's staying power. I can recall only a handful of series that have made it as far—Charlaine's Southern Vampire mysteries, Hamilton's Anita Blake saga, Harrison's Hollows, Butcher's Dresden Files... Why do you think Mercy has resonated so powerfully with your readers for so long?
Patricia Briggs: Thank you! I'm so excited about this book—it was so much fun destroying my town. I just hope that the people of the Tri-Cities forgive me eventually.
I think the key to the series is Mercy. She's down-to-earth, funny, and resilient. She changes a lot throughout the series—there is no reset button on my characters at the end of the story—but the core of her remains the same. She is a fiercely loyal friend, tries her best to do the right thing, and never, ever lets anyone get the upper hand for long.
Like most of us, Mercy doesn't get to rely on an ever-increasing arsenal of superpowers. She has to use her wits to survive—and usually that means chaos ensues.
GR: Without spoiling anything for readers, I think it's safe to say that a major development in Fire Touched is Mercy's further acceptance (with the help of her Alpha husband, Adam) into the Columbia Basin werewolf pack. I love reading about these "pack dynamics"—there's an undeniable brutal honesty and simplicity in the way these werewolves live and love. I'm probably going way too deep with this question, but on some level are you subtly fusing existential enlightenment in your writing? Loyalty and having the courage to die for those you love, for example, are strong ideals throughout this entire saga.
PB: I love the werewolves. They are, by nature and by necessity, very straightforward beings at heart. I enjoy finding situations in which the nonhuman side of their natures comes out.
As far as existential enlightenment, what our purpose in life is, or should be...I try very hard to avoid soapboxes. It isn't that there isn't room for that sort of thing in fiction; it is just that I don't need everyone to think the same way I do about things. My characters have soapboxes upon which they stand to influence other characters, but when they are doing that, their soapboxes are rarely my own. I prefer to ask questions, present arguments, and then let the readers decide how they want to answer them. That's because in my version of the real world, big issues seldom have simple answers.
That said, a book that doesn't expose the raw nerves of its characters—and its writer—doesn't have much weight. It cannot affect the people reading it very deeply. Affecting our audience deeply is why we writers tell stories.
It is not so much that I am seeking a way to come to existential enlightenment in the novels, to finding the answers to the meaning of life. It is that my answers and my ongoing journey to why I'm here and what kind of person I want to be sneaks out here and there.
GR: Love that answer! Let's stay philosophical for a moment. At one point in Fire Touched, Bran Cornick (the most dominant werewolf in North America) says, "Let us be heroes as well as monsters..." That line struck me. It's the reason we read paranormal fantasy. From the relative safety of our comfy chairs, we can live vicariously through characters like Mercy, Adam, and Bran. Mercy lets us understand and, to some extent, embrace the monster inside us, but we also see the hero as well.
PB: I think that is, in many ways, the heart of urban fantasy. Why it is different from horror. Instead of the monsters destroying us, we explore them. We look in the mirror and see our reflection and see also the possibility that the monster might be redeemable. Because fundamentally, fantasy is the literature of hope.
I write stories about heroes because I find them interesting. Not just the Lancelots of the world, who wage war on evil with great fanfare and sacrifice, but also the father who goes to work for 30 years at a job he hates in order to support his family, the mother who stays up all night comforting her sick child, the child who stops a bully from tormenting his classmate.
GR: Kudos to you that in a novel filled with fantastical supernatural creatures—trolls, vampires, werewolves, Joel the "brimstone beast," etc.—one of my favorite characters was a walking stick! I loved that thing! Seriously, how much fun do you have coming up with these story lines and characters?
PB: Oh, that walking stick. It was supposed to be a minor...thing. Just a fun little something to provide some warmth in a book that had gone down some dark paths. And then...it just kept showing back up.
When I write, I tend to throw my characters into a room with their various motivations and a problem and see what happens. Each of the characters, but especially my main character, has a bag of tools to bring to the table.
When I create something for the series, whether a character or a magic object, I usually start with a few basic decisions about that object. As the story takes us (takes me and my imaginary friends) places, I refine those decisions with others in a semilogical pattern.
In Iron Kissed one of the things I was trying to establish in Mercy's world was that nothing was truly black or white. She had been put into a very bad place with the help of fae artifacts; it only was fair to give her one that could help her. It maintained balance. And though the walking stick was, at its heart, a very small fae artifact, it had been created by the greatest of the fae builders a very long time ago as a reward to a human for helping a fae. To the fae, Mercy has so little magic of her own and is so fragile, she counts as human. I thought, "Let the walking stick come to her hand. What would be the harm?"
And it wouldn't leave me alone. Though my own logic trees and my weakness for interesting ideas, it haunted me even more doggedly than it ever had haunted Mercy. Worrying that it might destroy the story balance, might make Mercy dependent upon it, I let it be corrupted and then sent it away. It stayed away one whole book. Even Coyote couldn't contain it.
It isn't that I can't control my characters, it is that I am always seeking interesting twists—and the walking stick managed to be both interesting and twisted.
GR: The sequences set in Underhill (a magic realm that the power of the faeries is tied to) in Fire Touched were simply breathtaking. Do writing those surreal and enigmatic scenes present any particular problems?
PB: Oh, thank goodness they worked for you. I worried (still worry) over those scenes a lot. I've known a lot about Underhill ever since Mercy first crossed into her in Iron Kissed, but I needed the proper time and place to use the setting.
Putting something otherworldly into urban fantasy, where so much of the genre's appeal is in the juxtaposition of the real world with the fantastic, is risky. Essentially, for those scenes I am using my supernatural characters as the anchor of reality in Underhill, when usually they are the fantastical element.
I fussed and fussed over those scenes, trying to make Underhill, which can be pretty amorphous, not feel like a bad acid trip, trying to strike the Lewis Carroll balance between odd and indecipherable. I think I caught it—but that you enjoyed those scenes is a big relief.
GR: I've been a genre fiction reviewer for more than 20 years and have reviewed more than 8,000 titles, but I remember distinctly the day Moon Called landed on my doorstep back in 2006. The first thing that struck me was the stunning cover art by Dan Dos Santos—and now, eight novels and ten years later, the cover art is still spectacular. The covers are archetypal urban fantasy and, with the Dos Santos covers to complement your story lines, Mercy Thompson has become an iconic character, arguably the most fully realized and recognizable heroine to ever grace the pages of an urban fantasy. Do you recall your reaction the first time you saw the cover art for Moon Called? And what have those covers meant to you over the years?
PB: Oh, you bet your booties I do.
I was about halfway through Moon Called when I saw the first sketch—and I'm not dumb, I recognize genius when I saw it. It wasn't just that it was such a stupendous piece of work, which it is. It was that it was such a good cover.
The job of a cover is to tell readers what kind of book it is—not just genre, but also tone and a dozen more subtle things—and this cover did all of that and was beautiful, too. I took one look at the cover, turned to my husband, and told him that Daniel Dos Santos had just doubled the sales of the book. I think now that I was wrong. It did a lot more than that.
When I think of Mercy now, I picture the woman on Dan's covers. When I'm floundering with a scene, I've been known to stare into Mercy's face and try to work out what such a woman would do to create the most havoc.
My favorite cover is Bone Crossed, not just because it was my first hardcover, but because you know the woman on the cover of that book has been hit hard by life—but she hasn't been beaten, not by a long shot. I've had a number of people say that they started the series with that book because that image touched them, made them feel empowered.
GR: Agreed. I love that cover, too.
PB: Dan's covers, I think, have become irrevocably tied to Mercy's characters. I am not aware of any other fantasy series that isn't a graphic novel in which the story and the artwork are so tied together. Dan understands not just art, not just cover art, but how to combine the visual art with the story in a way that pulls readers into the story. I consider Dan's covers to be the opening scene in any Mercy or Alpha and Omega book.
GR: Mercy is known for her tattoos, particularly the coyote paw print just below her navel. During book signings and conventions, have you seen many Mercy-inspired tattoos, and if so, what was the most memorable?
PB: I've seen a lot of Mercy-inspired tattoos. The majority of them have been paw prints—which I think makes a terrific tattoo. But I've seen beautiful wolves, coyotes, and tribal art. People have tattooed names of their favorite characters.
Two of the tattoos stand out for me, though. There was a man at a book signing who had a werewolf tattoo in progress on his arm—it was drawn on in marker, not yet inked. He asked me if I would sign his arm so that his tattoo artist could make that part of the whole. (I did.) There was also a man who had (with permission) the cover of Bone Crossed on his arm. It was beautifully done.
That my imaginary friends have become so important to so many people is amazing and wonderful. It also reminds me to be careful of what I write. If words have the power to inspire people to permanently alter their skin, then words have the power to do more than that. I cannot soften the impact of my stories without betraying the truth of what I do. But it solidifies my determination that when any reader finishes the last line of one of my stories, no matter what hell I've put Mercy and that poor reader through, that reader will find themselves in a little better place than they were when they started the book.
GR: Two Goodreads members, Jamie H. and Stormy, asked essentially the same question: "When creating your world's mythos, what initially inspired your use of the skinwalker legend for Mercy?"
PB: One of the problems with a long-running series is that you have to live with decisions you made on impulse ten years ago.
I actually didn't base Mercy on skinwalkers at all. I wanted an underpowered (and thus more interesting) protagonist who was involved with werewolves. I'm from Montana. In Montana when you think underpowered wolf, you think coyote. I decided a coyote shape-shifter is what I needed. Native American lore lends itself quite well to the idea of a person who can become an animal (or an animal that can become a person). This is because that in general, Native Americans don't see a separation between humans and the rest of nature.
All this was well and good. Then I asked myself what white settlers encountering a creature like Mercy—or stories of someone who could change into an animal at will would be. That's when it all went wrong.
I am a history major from Montana. One of my pet peeves is the way that history books, movies, and even people who should know better treat all of the Native Americans as if they were one culture. I do it myself, right? I told you that Native Americans don't follow the European practice of trying to separate humans from the rest of nature. It's more practical to stick to generalities than to do the research to see which tribes might think of humans as superior to animals (or inferior). On a practical level, it is necessary to make generalities than to load down a very simple idea with four pages of explanation that might have nothing to do with the main idea a writer is trying to get across. But that practical lumping together has led to the perception that all Native Americans do share the same heritage, that they all feel the same way about things.
So I decided to show how misleading this practice could be. I decided that when confronted with a person who could change into an animal, the white settlers would just lump that person into a category that they already had a name for: skinwalkers. The settlers wouldn't, I reasoned, be aware of or even care that the skinwalkers are unique to the Southwestern tribes. They wouldn't care that skinwalkers cannot transform their too-human eyes, that skinwalkers are evil, selfish people.
Eventually I decided other people would see the difference and shorten the name to "walker."
Mercy is not a skinwalker. Not. She says so all the time, especially in the first chapter or two of most of the early books in the series.
But guess what? I was right. People confused the two, even when Mercy says that is not what she is, over and over. I just didn't think it through all the way. It certainly isn't the fault of the reader, many of whom are not familiar with skinwalkers (the original version) at all or at best as a dictionary-style entry: Native American shape-shifter.
It isn't the readers' fault. It is my job to maintain those separations, to help readers explore my world and feel comfortable in it. This is like the director who hires four dark-haired, tall, and very handsome-in-the-same-way actors—and then bangs his head into the wall afterward because his audience can't reliably tell one character from another until the last half of the movie.
Calling Mercy a walker isn't the only mistake I have made while writing the series. But it is the one I've had to live with the longest.
GR: The most frequently asked question by Goodreads members (like Edetha, Paula, Kacii, and Krystol) was some form of this: Will Mercy and Adam ever have a child?
PB: I am a mother. When I had my first child, I realized that I no longer had the right to endanger myself because my son needed me to take care of him. I cannot imagine that Mercy will not do the same. That makes it very difficult for me to use her as the protagonist in an urban fantasy series.
So my answer to this question is that in the world inside of my head (assuming Mercy and Adam both survive)—I think that they will have children. I also think that the only way they will have children (besides Jesse) within the pages of the series is if someday I decide that I really want to torture myself. I'm not ruling it out, just saying that it will make my job unbelievably difficult.
GR: Goodreads member Jamie asks, "How do you balance all of the demands of a successful writing career (writing, appearances, etc.) and the myriad personal life demands? (Hope to see you at RT2016—promise I won't cry at you in the hallway this time!)"
PB: Practice. Practice. Practice. I am so grateful that by the time the Mercy books went big, I'd been a writer for nearly 15 years. That gave me some experience with blocking out time to write without forgetting that the most important thing in my life is my family.
In addition to practice, I am pretty good at learning from my mistakes. There was a difficult year or two, as I learned that I had to say "no" to a large percentage of the invitations to science fiction conventions and personal appearances in order to save enough time to write.
And Jamie, friends of my imaginary friends can do no wrong. I am not expecting to make it to the RT 2016, mostly because it is in Las Vegas. There is nothing wrong with Las Vegas except that I am miserably, horribly allergic to cigarette smoke. After a day in Las Vegas, I sound like Marlene Dietrich and my eyes turn red and bulgy. After two days, I can't talk at all and my eyes open into little slits as long as the light isn't too bright. We're going to try for the 2017 convention, but watch my website before you count on me being somewhere.
GR: Before you published Masques in 1993, what novels most inspired you to write?
PB: Oh, wow. That was a long time ago! Andre Norton's Year of the Unicorn was one. All of Ms. Norton's work, really. She was my introduction into both science fiction and fantasy. Barbara Hambly's Windrose Chronicles taught me that my favorite books had characters who felt like real people. But if I had to pick just one book that made me want to tell my own stories, it would have to be Robin McKinley's The Hero and the Crown. She left me telling myself stories (which is what I did before I learned I could write them down) for months afterward.
GR: What are you reading now?
PB: I have in my possession the marvelous Carol Berg's Ash and Silver. I missed it when it came out in December—an oversight created when my yearling filly knocked me down and then accidently stepped on my face. (Don't worry, I'm fine and so is the yearling, who is a sweetheart.) Nothing less than a broken jaw would have kept a Carol Berg release out of my hands for this long.
GR: Patty, that's it! Thank you so much for taking the time to chat. Now I can take interviewing you off of my bucket list—and good luck with Fire Touched!
PB: Thank you so very much for this opportunity. This has been an honor. I'm not sure I've ever been on someone's bucket list before. Hopefully this won't be the last time we chat!
With the ninth Mercy Thompson novel, Fire Touched—in which the entire Tri-Cities area of Washington is put in danger by encroaching monstrosities—about to hit the shelves, Goodreads caught up with Briggs and asked her a few questions about her love of werewolves, the continued appeal of Mercy & Co., her take on the spectacular Dan Dos Santos covers that have graced all of her Mercy Thompson novels, and the fae walking stick that keeps coming back!
Patricia Briggs: Thank you! I'm so excited about this book—it was so much fun destroying my town. I just hope that the people of the Tri-Cities forgive me eventually.
I think the key to the series is Mercy. She's down-to-earth, funny, and resilient. She changes a lot throughout the series—there is no reset button on my characters at the end of the story—but the core of her remains the same. She is a fiercely loyal friend, tries her best to do the right thing, and never, ever lets anyone get the upper hand for long.
Like most of us, Mercy doesn't get to rely on an ever-increasing arsenal of superpowers. She has to use her wits to survive—and usually that means chaos ensues.
GR: Without spoiling anything for readers, I think it's safe to say that a major development in Fire Touched is Mercy's further acceptance (with the help of her Alpha husband, Adam) into the Columbia Basin werewolf pack. I love reading about these "pack dynamics"—there's an undeniable brutal honesty and simplicity in the way these werewolves live and love. I'm probably going way too deep with this question, but on some level are you subtly fusing existential enlightenment in your writing? Loyalty and having the courage to die for those you love, for example, are strong ideals throughout this entire saga.
PB: I love the werewolves. They are, by nature and by necessity, very straightforward beings at heart. I enjoy finding situations in which the nonhuman side of their natures comes out.
As far as existential enlightenment, what our purpose in life is, or should be...I try very hard to avoid soapboxes. It isn't that there isn't room for that sort of thing in fiction; it is just that I don't need everyone to think the same way I do about things. My characters have soapboxes upon which they stand to influence other characters, but when they are doing that, their soapboxes are rarely my own. I prefer to ask questions, present arguments, and then let the readers decide how they want to answer them. That's because in my version of the real world, big issues seldom have simple answers.
That said, a book that doesn't expose the raw nerves of its characters—and its writer—doesn't have much weight. It cannot affect the people reading it very deeply. Affecting our audience deeply is why we writers tell stories.
It is not so much that I am seeking a way to come to existential enlightenment in the novels, to finding the answers to the meaning of life. It is that my answers and my ongoing journey to why I'm here and what kind of person I want to be sneaks out here and there.
GR: Love that answer! Let's stay philosophical for a moment. At one point in Fire Touched, Bran Cornick (the most dominant werewolf in North America) says, "Let us be heroes as well as monsters..." That line struck me. It's the reason we read paranormal fantasy. From the relative safety of our comfy chairs, we can live vicariously through characters like Mercy, Adam, and Bran. Mercy lets us understand and, to some extent, embrace the monster inside us, but we also see the hero as well.
PB: I think that is, in many ways, the heart of urban fantasy. Why it is different from horror. Instead of the monsters destroying us, we explore them. We look in the mirror and see our reflection and see also the possibility that the monster might be redeemable. Because fundamentally, fantasy is the literature of hope.
I write stories about heroes because I find them interesting. Not just the Lancelots of the world, who wage war on evil with great fanfare and sacrifice, but also the father who goes to work for 30 years at a job he hates in order to support his family, the mother who stays up all night comforting her sick child, the child who stops a bully from tormenting his classmate.
GR: Kudos to you that in a novel filled with fantastical supernatural creatures—trolls, vampires, werewolves, Joel the "brimstone beast," etc.—one of my favorite characters was a walking stick! I loved that thing! Seriously, how much fun do you have coming up with these story lines and characters?
PB: Oh, that walking stick. It was supposed to be a minor...thing. Just a fun little something to provide some warmth in a book that had gone down some dark paths. And then...it just kept showing back up.
When I write, I tend to throw my characters into a room with their various motivations and a problem and see what happens. Each of the characters, but especially my main character, has a bag of tools to bring to the table.
When I create something for the series, whether a character or a magic object, I usually start with a few basic decisions about that object. As the story takes us (takes me and my imaginary friends) places, I refine those decisions with others in a semilogical pattern.
And it wouldn't leave me alone. Though my own logic trees and my weakness for interesting ideas, it haunted me even more doggedly than it ever had haunted Mercy. Worrying that it might destroy the story balance, might make Mercy dependent upon it, I let it be corrupted and then sent it away. It stayed away one whole book. Even Coyote couldn't contain it.
It isn't that I can't control my characters, it is that I am always seeking interesting twists—and the walking stick managed to be both interesting and twisted.
GR: The sequences set in Underhill (a magic realm that the power of the faeries is tied to) in Fire Touched were simply breathtaking. Do writing those surreal and enigmatic scenes present any particular problems?
PB: Oh, thank goodness they worked for you. I worried (still worry) over those scenes a lot. I've known a lot about Underhill ever since Mercy first crossed into her in Iron Kissed, but I needed the proper time and place to use the setting.
Putting something otherworldly into urban fantasy, where so much of the genre's appeal is in the juxtaposition of the real world with the fantastic, is risky. Essentially, for those scenes I am using my supernatural characters as the anchor of reality in Underhill, when usually they are the fantastical element.
I fussed and fussed over those scenes, trying to make Underhill, which can be pretty amorphous, not feel like a bad acid trip, trying to strike the Lewis Carroll balance between odd and indecipherable. I think I caught it—but that you enjoyed those scenes is a big relief.
PB: Oh, you bet your booties I do.
I was about halfway through Moon Called when I saw the first sketch—and I'm not dumb, I recognize genius when I saw it. It wasn't just that it was such a stupendous piece of work, which it is. It was that it was such a good cover.
The job of a cover is to tell readers what kind of book it is—not just genre, but also tone and a dozen more subtle things—and this cover did all of that and was beautiful, too. I took one look at the cover, turned to my husband, and told him that Daniel Dos Santos had just doubled the sales of the book. I think now that I was wrong. It did a lot more than that.
When I think of Mercy now, I picture the woman on Dan's covers. When I'm floundering with a scene, I've been known to stare into Mercy's face and try to work out what such a woman would do to create the most havoc.
GR: Agreed. I love that cover, too.
PB: Dan's covers, I think, have become irrevocably tied to Mercy's characters. I am not aware of any other fantasy series that isn't a graphic novel in which the story and the artwork are so tied together. Dan understands not just art, not just cover art, but how to combine the visual art with the story in a way that pulls readers into the story. I consider Dan's covers to be the opening scene in any Mercy or Alpha and Omega book.
GR: Mercy is known for her tattoos, particularly the coyote paw print just below her navel. During book signings and conventions, have you seen many Mercy-inspired tattoos, and if so, what was the most memorable?
PB: I've seen a lot of Mercy-inspired tattoos. The majority of them have been paw prints—which I think makes a terrific tattoo. But I've seen beautiful wolves, coyotes, and tribal art. People have tattooed names of their favorite characters.
Two of the tattoos stand out for me, though. There was a man at a book signing who had a werewolf tattoo in progress on his arm—it was drawn on in marker, not yet inked. He asked me if I would sign his arm so that his tattoo artist could make that part of the whole. (I did.) There was also a man who had (with permission) the cover of Bone Crossed on his arm. It was beautifully done.
That my imaginary friends have become so important to so many people is amazing and wonderful. It also reminds me to be careful of what I write. If words have the power to inspire people to permanently alter their skin, then words have the power to do more than that. I cannot soften the impact of my stories without betraying the truth of what I do. But it solidifies my determination that when any reader finishes the last line of one of my stories, no matter what hell I've put Mercy and that poor reader through, that reader will find themselves in a little better place than they were when they started the book.
GR: Two Goodreads members, Jamie H. and Stormy, asked essentially the same question: "When creating your world's mythos, what initially inspired your use of the skinwalker legend for Mercy?"
PB: One of the problems with a long-running series is that you have to live with decisions you made on impulse ten years ago.
I actually didn't base Mercy on skinwalkers at all. I wanted an underpowered (and thus more interesting) protagonist who was involved with werewolves. I'm from Montana. In Montana when you think underpowered wolf, you think coyote. I decided a coyote shape-shifter is what I needed. Native American lore lends itself quite well to the idea of a person who can become an animal (or an animal that can become a person). This is because that in general, Native Americans don't see a separation between humans and the rest of nature.
All this was well and good. Then I asked myself what white settlers encountering a creature like Mercy—or stories of someone who could change into an animal at will would be. That's when it all went wrong.
I am a history major from Montana. One of my pet peeves is the way that history books, movies, and even people who should know better treat all of the Native Americans as if they were one culture. I do it myself, right? I told you that Native Americans don't follow the European practice of trying to separate humans from the rest of nature. It's more practical to stick to generalities than to do the research to see which tribes might think of humans as superior to animals (or inferior). On a practical level, it is necessary to make generalities than to load down a very simple idea with four pages of explanation that might have nothing to do with the main idea a writer is trying to get across. But that practical lumping together has led to the perception that all Native Americans do share the same heritage, that they all feel the same way about things.
So I decided to show how misleading this practice could be. I decided that when confronted with a person who could change into an animal, the white settlers would just lump that person into a category that they already had a name for: skinwalkers. The settlers wouldn't, I reasoned, be aware of or even care that the skinwalkers are unique to the Southwestern tribes. They wouldn't care that skinwalkers cannot transform their too-human eyes, that skinwalkers are evil, selfish people.
Eventually I decided other people would see the difference and shorten the name to "walker."
Mercy is not a skinwalker. Not. She says so all the time, especially in the first chapter or two of most of the early books in the series.
But guess what? I was right. People confused the two, even when Mercy says that is not what she is, over and over. I just didn't think it through all the way. It certainly isn't the fault of the reader, many of whom are not familiar with skinwalkers (the original version) at all or at best as a dictionary-style entry: Native American shape-shifter.
It isn't the readers' fault. It is my job to maintain those separations, to help readers explore my world and feel comfortable in it. This is like the director who hires four dark-haired, tall, and very handsome-in-the-same-way actors—and then bangs his head into the wall afterward because his audience can't reliably tell one character from another until the last half of the movie.
Calling Mercy a walker isn't the only mistake I have made while writing the series. But it is the one I've had to live with the longest.
GR: The most frequently asked question by Goodreads members (like Edetha, Paula, Kacii, and Krystol) was some form of this: Will Mercy and Adam ever have a child?
PB: I am a mother. When I had my first child, I realized that I no longer had the right to endanger myself because my son needed me to take care of him. I cannot imagine that Mercy will not do the same. That makes it very difficult for me to use her as the protagonist in an urban fantasy series.
So my answer to this question is that in the world inside of my head (assuming Mercy and Adam both survive)—I think that they will have children. I also think that the only way they will have children (besides Jesse) within the pages of the series is if someday I decide that I really want to torture myself. I'm not ruling it out, just saying that it will make my job unbelievably difficult.
GR: Goodreads member Jamie asks, "How do you balance all of the demands of a successful writing career (writing, appearances, etc.) and the myriad personal life demands? (Hope to see you at RT2016—promise I won't cry at you in the hallway this time!)"
PB: Practice. Practice. Practice. I am so grateful that by the time the Mercy books went big, I'd been a writer for nearly 15 years. That gave me some experience with blocking out time to write without forgetting that the most important thing in my life is my family.
In addition to practice, I am pretty good at learning from my mistakes. There was a difficult year or two, as I learned that I had to say "no" to a large percentage of the invitations to science fiction conventions and personal appearances in order to save enough time to write.
And Jamie, friends of my imaginary friends can do no wrong. I am not expecting to make it to the RT 2016, mostly because it is in Las Vegas. There is nothing wrong with Las Vegas except that I am miserably, horribly allergic to cigarette smoke. After a day in Las Vegas, I sound like Marlene Dietrich and my eyes turn red and bulgy. After two days, I can't talk at all and my eyes open into little slits as long as the light isn't too bright. We're going to try for the 2017 convention, but watch my website before you count on me being somewhere.
GR: Before you published Masques in 1993, what novels most inspired you to write?
GR: What are you reading now?
PB: I have in my possession the marvelous Carol Berg's Ash and Silver. I missed it when it came out in December—an oversight created when my yearling filly knocked me down and then accidently stepped on my face. (Don't worry, I'm fine and so is the yearling, who is a sweetheart.) Nothing less than a broken jaw would have kept a Carol Berg release out of my hands for this long.
GR: Patty, that's it! Thank you so much for taking the time to chat. Now I can take interviewing you off of my bucket list—and good luck with Fire Touched!
PB: Thank you so very much for this opportunity. This has been an honor. I'm not sure I've ever been on someone's bucket list before. Hopefully this won't be the last time we chat!
Interview by Paul Goat Allen for Goodreads. Paul has been a genre fiction book reviewer for the last 20 years, working for companies like BN.com, PW, The Chicago Tribune, Kirkus, and BlueInk, to name a few. He has written more than 8,000 reviews and interviewed hundreds of writers, including Anne McCaffrey, Michael Moorcock, Dean Koontz, Terry Goodkind, Laurell K. Hamilton, Patrick Rothfuss, and Charlaine Harris. He also works as an adjunct faculty member in Seton Hill University's Writing Popular Fiction program.
Learn more about Paul and follow what he's reading.
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William
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Mar 01, 2016 10:04PM
I think I'd have about as much interest in this writer as I would in the history of a dishcloth ...
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Everyone likes different things. I enjoy her books.
Great interview! I can't wait to read Fire Touched.
William wrote: "I think I'd have about as much interest in this writer as I would in the history of a dishcloth ..."We are proud of you lad! It takes hard work and determination to be so pathetic.
I don't think that calling Mercy a "walker" was a mistake in this series, and the distinction from Apache/SW skinwalkers couldn't be more clear in the books. Frankly, I've read enough "shifter" books, that I'm glad Mercy isn't called anything so mundane. Calling her a walker makes her special, different from all of those other shifters out there populating the urban fantasy landscape.The occasional confusion that afflicts modern readers just reinforces how easy it would have been for those early white settlers to have conflated the different types of Native magics. To me, it merely makes the story feel even more real.
Laura wrote: "William wrote: "I think I'd have about as much interest in this writer as I would in the history of a dishcloth ..."We are proud of you lad! It takes hard work and determination to be so pathetic."
Laura, thank you for saying it. Pathetic indeed.
I do not understand the need of some people to comment about how they hate something, or dont like it, or wont do it. No one cares about your interests if you have not even read the writer. He is not even contributing something related to the subject being discussed. I guess we are supposed to be in awe, or concerned that he has no interest in reading Patty's books. Get over yourself, William. You are not the end all be all so kindly shut it.
Great interview, love these books -so much fun to read!
I avoid fluffy, paranormal romances which I feared the first Mercy might have been when I received it from a friend. I enjoy the Mercy books, and have read them all. I also read the Anita Blake series and the Hollows series by Harrison. Being male, I realize that I am in the minority, but I find most of these books a light, fun read as long as the romance stuff doesn't get too intense.
Unlike Anita, I like how Mercy, despite everything, has remained mostly the same. I miss the old Anita, not liking the more bad-ass version of the latest books as much. I appreciate that Mercy has to use her wits more than an ever-increasing arsenal of supe powers.
I especially like that damn Fae walking stick, that not even Coyote could contain.
I dont think the walker thing is a mistake. To me its pretty obvious. However when ive reread the books, i noticed that in the beginning only very few can tell when someone is lying. Now it is very fewwho cant. I dont think it is that big of a deal though. And btw meeting you is on my bucket list. And that stick is one of my favourites.
I'm really looking forward to the new book. I reread the whole series in preparation and enjoyed all the books just as much this time. Thank you, Patricia Briggs.
So happy she did this interview, I'm excited for the next book.
I can't wait for the next book, I'm sure it will lead to a straight read-through, several hour even for me!
I've had waning excitement for Mercy's books as the series has progressed. Not much excitement in a book where the main antagonist is your husband's nagging ex trying to move into your house. Oh and there was some kind of lava tiki guy in a couple scenes, too.Also, were they REALLY lauding the cover of the first book? Seriously?
I have read all of the books in this series (more than once actually) and I can't wait for this one. Even better is Ms. Briggs is coming to do a book signing in Portland on March 9th and I will be there. Yahoo! :) :)
Great interview. I love this series and can't wait to read Fire Touched.
I have to agree with the rest of the folks here - this interview is awesome! It really helped to understand the writer behind the book who is a real phenomenon herself. All her answers have a special edge to them, the deepness that shows she is not a mere writer, oh no. She's like a explorer of souls. After reading this interview, I'm more excited than ever to read the next installment of the hands-down fabulous series. I just wish I could get my hands on it right now.
So exciting!
I have just reread all the mercy books in anticipation of my (preordered) hardback arriving. Counting down the days. Mercy and the whole skinwalker / walker thing for me was quite clear. I like the confusion, life is confusing and people get things wrong. I think it adds depth because you get more information gradually, in some ways her exploring the culture allows me and others who have never met an American Indian to explore it with her. I do keep expecting more native stuff to pop out of the woodwork, maybe an actual skinwalker to target Mercy for some reason, defining the difference by making the two types of native shifter confront each other.
I love Mercy, she is so real. She doesn't look perfect or act perfectly, she makes mistakes. So many series I find have a beautiful woman, who thinks she's ugly and who has a perfect job, friends, etc. It's like, wow, where was I when all the perfection was handed out? Mercy putting peanut butter on the Marok's carseat, that's the kind of real, snarky, small detail that makes a character feel like their a person you could meet down the street. If you leave out the supernatural bits, most of the characters feel that way. Stephen, Samuel, Adam, Jessie. They feel real. Which is why I can happily reread these books. I have an automatic buy on anything in this series, loved the book of short stories BTW.
I appreciate the gentle touch with the romance and sex, I don't have an aversion to sex in books but I wish some writers would remember that if you rip out all the pages with sex on them there should still be a book left. I never feel that with these books, I also really appreciated that Mercy was affected by the rape. I know it's a horrible thing and the fact that you let the character be panicked, be afraid, be sick was so powerful, it hurt, reading it. But it was good, because so many writers that put in a horrible traumatic event make the character just bounce back like their silly putty, not a person. I have never been attacked like that, but I know people don't just recover like it was a case of the flu.
I'm so glad to be able to read these books, to move out of my life and into an adventure for a while. Of course the very best thing about a book, no ads, no popups, no interruptions (I take the phone off the hook). Just me and the book. Keep writing, I'll keep buying.
I love this series! I had to move recently And had to downsize my book selection. The Mercy series and Alpha and Omega series were not left behind. I have reread this series so many times and no matter where I go I carry one of these books with me. It is such a great conversation starter with the awesome cover art!!!! Thank you Patty for every book that you give us!!
Thanks for the wonderful interview! I've loved Patricia Briggs' books ever since first picking up Dragon Bones many years ago, and I'm so glad that Mercy has become such a popular character. Every time I think I know where the story is going something unexpected happens, and I have been looking forward to reading Fire Touched since I finished Night Broken!
Thank you for the very good interview. I love Patricia Briggs' books. I love both the Mercy series as well as the Alpha and Omega books.
This was a very good interview.And, the fact that A. Norton is one of her icons just puts the icing on that cake.
Also, R. McKinley is a long time favorite, ditto B Hambly.
Fanastic interview! I'm looking forward to listening to Patty on some panels at DragonCon..Mercy Thompon was my gateway drug into urban fantasy. I have loved most of the series; however, I don't really care for Joe Coyote. I think he has weakened the series.
I really wish you would have included the Jane Yellowrock series in your list of enduring urban fantasy series! Book 10, Shadow Rites, will be released next month. And, unlike the Mercy series, which seemed to slump a couple of books ago, before regaining its footing, every book is better than the last. You meaned The Hollows series. The last couple of books in that series went downhill for me. Kim Harrison started playing with gods, too. Sherilyn Kenyon can deal successfully with gods, but when they showed up in Mercy's world and in The Hollows, it felt like the authors were grasping at straws to think of new situations. But, that's just my opinion.
Wonderful interview and wonderful books! I am anxiously awaiting the newest Mercy book to add to my collection. I love the way Mercy stays so real throughout the books. She grows, and her strength and courage and grittiness grows with her. I, like many others, adore the walking stick and am happy to see it when it appears. A bit like a wild pet that comes and goes at will. May it have many more comings than goings in the books to come.
I love all your books. I especially love the female hero that you write. It makes me feel so empowered. Thank you for writing such great books
I've read all of Patricia Briggs books and I have never found one I didn't like. If there is one book I like more, it is Robin McKinley's The Blue Sword. I love that Robin McKinley was one of her inspirations.
I am so excited to read Fire Touched! I am especially looking forward to the effects of Mercy adding Joel to the pack. that will be fun :p
I love this series, as well as the spin-off Alpha and Omega series. Mercy is such an interesting character. The cover art is fantastic: It truly draws one in and speaks for the author. I look forward to each book cover almost as much as I look forward to the next installment in Mercy's story. Great interview, too. Thank you both so much for that :)
I really think ill like this series it seems like the book that I am reading right now.
Great interview! Briggs is one of my favorite authors. I rarely buy the books I read but I own all of the Mercy series and the Alpha/Omega series as well.
I have read every single book by Patricia Briggs and I plan to read through the Mercy Thompson series again. She is an absolutely amazing author in that her characters are so absolutely true to themselves throughout the entire series, even as we see them grow in their strengths and in their self-knowledge and in their relationships. Fire Touched 'touched' me deeply and made me love Mercy and Adam more than ever before...and look forward to the further development of their family as well as their extended circle of family and friends. Thank you for this interview. It's nice to be reminded that Patricia Briggs really is a human being like the rest of us :)
Love these book and so excited for the next one even if I have to wait a whole year.
This was a great interview and touched on many questions/ideas I also had. I have read the Mercy Thompson series (more than a few times!LOL) but also her Alpha & Omega series.
These two series together are a much bigger picture.
Most noticeable, the characters - each one is unique and adds to the story immeasurably! The blending allows so much more to each series and I am grateful to Patty for sharing her imagination with us and taking the time and effort to write and publish!!
Thank you, Patty - keep writing - I will keep reading!! XO
Sorry to be asking but what are Joel's 2 forms again? I am listening to Storm Cursed and missed/misunderstood the listing when it was read odd...
Tasha wrote: "Sorry to be asking but what are Joel's 2 forms again? I am listening to Storm Cursed and missed/misunderstood the listing when it was read odd..."The volcanic tibicena & his human form ⁉️
Love this Amazing Interview 💝 I just discovered it right after I finished Book Six in the Alpha & Omega series ➡️
Wild Sign 💎⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️And ~ "walkers" in this story~ truly made my skin crawl 💥
Definitely nothing like Mercy❣️
