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Patricia Briggs is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Mercy Thompson series, which includes Moon Called, Blood Bound, Iron Kissed, Bone Crossed, and Silver Borne. She's also written a spin-off series called Alpha and Omega. Her urban fantasy includes shapeshifters, werewolves, and vampires.
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This episode originally aired on 12/03/2009 with the following authors:
Note: The following interview has been transcribed from The Author Hour radio show. Please excuse any typos, spelling and gramatical errors.
Interview with Patricia Briggs | | |
Bonus Question(s) that Didn't Air on the Live Radio Show
Note that you can also listen to this while you read it.
Matthew Peterson:
Let me ask you a bonus question here.
Patricia Briggs:
Okay.
Matthew Peterson:
I’ll just ask a couple real quick ones. What’s a normal day in your life?
Patricia Briggs:
[laughs] I have eight horses and three kids, I’m not sure if there is any normal day in my life. But okay, well, this is what I strive for: I get up... my son is kind of in and out of the house; he’s 22 and he’s pretty much self contained. So I usually get up with my girls. They get up at 6:30 in the morning to go to school, and I’ll run around a little bit with them and stuff and kind of maybe laze around for an hour or so. But I’d like to get to my office by eight o’clock. And then when I get to my office, I’ll play music and I’ll go and I’ll play some games on the computer and that’s a really dangerous thing to do.
Matthew Peterson:
[laughs]
Patricia Briggs:
[laughs] Yeah, I agree to laugh.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah. I know.
Patricia Briggs:
Yeah, yeah. But I’ve found that it just puts me in the right mood. You know, when you sit down to work, you’re in the wrong mindset for writing a book because when you write you’re actually engaging your playing mode. The left hand brain, the creative side.
Matthew Peterson:
The creative side.
Patricia Briggs:
And if you sit down to work, you’ve got your editor in hand and that’s not a very comfortable companion when you’re writing the first draft. [laughs]
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah, yeah. Well, what type of games get you in the mood? What type of games do you play?
Patricia Briggs:
I have two, and the reason I only have two that I play is because I’ve played these enough that I can stop when I need to. I don’t get stuck.
Matthew Peterson:
Uh, huh.
Patricia Briggs:
I play Heroes of Might and Magic 3.
Matthew Peterson:
Ah.
Patricia Briggs:
Which was the last good Might and Magic game. [laughs]
Matthew Peterson:
That’s an old one.
Patricia Briggs:
There are like five or six now, I think.
Patricia Briggs:
But Heroes 3 was awesome. It’s sort of like chess, except for fantasy players.
Matthew Peterson:
Uh, huh.
Patricia Briggs:
And then I also have Solitaire. And there’s Might and Magic... I have one scenario I play, and it takes me about an hour to play it.
Matthew Peterson:
Uh, huh.
Patricia Briggs:
And I can engineer things so that I win. [laughs]
Matthew Peterson:
[laughs] Yeah.
Patricia Briggs:
Which is important for me. I’m not one of those equal opportunity game players. I want to win.
Matthew Peterson:
I must win.
Patricia Briggs:
Yeah, yeah. So I know that it’s only going to take me that long. If I’m more eager to get into writing, sometimes I’ll just play a couple hands of Solitaire.
Matthew Peterson:
Uh, huh.
Patricia Briggs:
It used to be that I would use whatever Solitaire that Windows had. But then I got Vista for business. Big difference that I’ve noticed between “for business” and “for home” is that they’ve took away all the games. [laughs]
Matthew Peterson:
Took away all the games. Yep. [laughs] Yeah, they did a study once and found that the average worker was spending like an hour a day on, I can’t remember what it was, but on Solitaire, or something like that. [laughs]
Patricia Briggs:
[laughs] Yeah, so I have a Solitaire game that I’ve purchased to put on my business Vista.
Matthew Peterson:
Well, you’re talking to a recovering video game addict.
Patricia Briggs:
Ah! Okay.
Matthew Peterson:
I don’t even play video games anymore. But I was so into them when I was a kid. I was one of those kids that you’d . . . well, they don’t really have the arcades anymore, but . . . you’d go to the arcade and I was the kid everybody was watching.
Patricia Briggs:
Oh, way cool.
Matthew Peterson:
You know, ‘cause I’d put one quarter in and an hour later I’d be done with the game, you know. That was me.
Patricia Briggs:
Yes. Yes. Well, I’ve found that with video games, with a few games, and stuff I can get obsessed with/about them. And so I deliberately don’t play any new ones.
Matthew Peterson:
Uh, huh.
Patricia Briggs:
[laughs] I just stick to the old ones.
Matthew Peterson:
Oh, I love the old ones.
Patricia Briggs:
Yeah, they’re awesome, but I’ve done them enough that they have lost a lot of their grip.
Matthew Peterson:
Uh, huh.
Patricia Briggs:
You know what I mean? So then about an hour into . . . by nine o’clock I want to be in and writing. I want to get some stuff done.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah.
Patricia Briggs:
And then I pretty much play music, not so much to listen to. In fact, I deliberately listen to music that I’ve heard over and over again so that I’m not tempted to stop and just listen to the song. What I really want that to do is to get between me and the real world.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah.
Patricia Briggs:
And to cut out the real world. And then I write until probably 3 or 4. And sometimes I get like a page done, [laughs] which is really frustrating.
Matthew Peterson:
[laughs]
Patricia Briggs:
But my goal is five pages a day. And usually I can do that.
Matthew Peterson:
Oh, good, good. Yeah, I know everyone writes at a different level and just crazy, you know. Some people it takes them years to write one book and others just a couple months.
Patricia Briggs:
Well, part of it is experience. My first couple books, it took me almost a year to write. And I was writing pretty steady. It took me a year to write each of those, and now I’m down to where in a pinch I can write one in about three months.
Matthew Peterson:
Hmm.
Patricia Briggs:
I don’t like to do that ‘cause I’d like to have a little more time, you know. Because some of the good scenes don’t come until the third or fourth revision. You think, “Oh, wait a minute, I can put a scene in here! This would be really cool!”
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah.
Patricia Briggs:
And you lose those moments when you’re trying to write under tight deadlines.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah.
Patricia Briggs:
And you know, some weeks I will get my total production... for some weeks it’ll be three or four pages and some days, you know, on a good day, I can get forty-fifty.
Matthew Peterson:
Wow.
Patricia Briggs:
That doesn’t happen very often. [laughs]
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah. [laughs]
Patricia Briggs:
Or I’d be writing a lot faster than I am, but yeah, so it’s just kind of a mixed bag.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah, what you’re in the mood and what you’re doing, so . . . Well, that’s great. Thanks, Patty. I appreciate talking with ya.
Extra Material That was Cut from the Show Because of Time Constraints
Note that you can also listen to this while you read it (you'll need to fast forward past the bonus questions).
Matthew Peterson:
You know your very, very, very first book was called Masques. Is that right?
Patricia Briggs:
It is correct, yes.
Matthew Peterson:
It’s kind of a different spelling, so that’s why . . .
Patricia Briggs:
Yeah, you’d actually pronounce it like “Masks.”
Matthew Peterson:
Masks.
Patricia Briggs:
It’s a regency ball. It’s like a costume ball.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah. I actually had to look that up in the dictionary.
Patricia Briggs:
Yeah, it was probably not a very good choice of title. The original title was with an “sk” and an “s.”
Matthew Peterson:
Uh, huh.
Patricia Briggs:
But my publisher also publishes Dean Koontz, who had a Mask with an “sk,” and despite the fact that I told them that I wouldn’t mind if their bookkeepers got our numbers mixed up.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah, yeah.
Patricia Briggs:
They weren’t entirely good with that. [laughs]
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah. That’s funny.
* * * * * * * * * *
Patricia Briggs:
I’m a big Charles de Lint fan.
Matthew Peterson:
Uh, huh.
Patricia Briggs:
A lot of times when I . . . okay I love Sherrilyn Kenyon and Charlaine Harris too, obviously. But Charles de Lint, you know, I started reading him in college and I just love . . . he’s got such poetry in his work, I just love it. It’s really cool.
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah, yeah, very interesting guy, too.
Patricia Briggs:
Oh, yeah.
* * * * * * * * * *
Patricia Briggs:
We were talking about it because I’ve been gradually . . . due to circumstances, like I have back surgery and moved and had a whole series of things going on. I’ve been kind of falling back on my production schedule, which was a problem for my publisher because they also publish Charlaine Harris and they publish Jim Butcher and they publish a lot of really top notch urban fantasy, and they don’t like us to get off schedule because it really screws up their publishing. They don’t want us to come out the same month.
Matthew Peterson:
Oh, yeah.
Patricia Briggs:
They’d like to spread us out. [laughs] So . . . we’re talking about it . . .
* * * * * * * * * *
Patricia Briggs:
And we have three copies on my forums, you know. I put one up and a couple of my forum people put theirs up and so we ship them free, basically like a lending library–the last person that had it will ship it to you if you promise to ship it to the next person down the line.
Matthew Peterson:
Oh, okay.
Patricia Briggs:
So you know, trying to kind of alleviate the problem. [laughs]
Matthew Peterson:
Yeah.
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