Volume 6, Issue 1 – January, 2003
Patricia Briggs: Sharing Fantastic Secrets
Your mother’s warning to the contrary, people really don’t judge books by their covers. Readers judge them by their characters. Fantasy writer Patricia Briggs’ characters walk off the page and introduce themselves as neighborly as you please. Their unaffected manner and wry humor effortlessly draw you into fantastic worlds where dragons run in the family and the payment for a Hob’s aid proves to be something much subtler than sacrifice.
Briggs’ gift for characterization and delicious twists of fate give her books a reading life that far exceeds their time on the bookstore shelves. Although Briggs only began publishing in 1993, her out-of-print paperback originals already qualify as collectors items, fetching prices that attest to a devoted — and growing — fandom. Just before Dragon Blood, the sequel to Dragon Bones, arrived at bookstores, Crescent Blues talked to Briggs about connecting characters and readers, and why things should always be more than they seem.
Crescent Blues: From the Shark in When Demons Walk to Wardwick in Dragon Bones and Dragon Blood, you seem to have a thing for big, blond, slow-seeming heroes who are anything but. What is the source of this fascination?
Patricia Briggs: I love characters who are more than they seem. First of all, characters with secrets are interesting. Secondly, a shared secret – between the reader and the character establishes a connection between them — an inside joke.
I have to admit, though, that the Shark and Ward were the only characters I ever wrote who were based on a real person… There was a man my husband worked with who was well over six feet tall and big as a linebacker. Although he was quite handsome, there was something about his face that said, “Use little words and short sentences.” Of course, he was absolutely brilliant. The first time I talked to him, I knew that I was going to have to use that combination in a book. The Shark, who is not nearly nice as my husband’s coworker, worked out so well, that I used a bit of him to flesh out Ward.
You describe Wardwick as a “finder.” How does this talent work?
“Finders” can find things — sort of like Mommies. I can find a missing shoe or homework packet in under two minutes.
When I have a character who has a magical talent I have to decide how it works, what it feels like to use, and I have to give it strict limits — because the more power I give a character, the less interesting they are.
Ward has to look for an individual item. He could find the marbled pen I use for book signings, but not just any old pen. That means that he can’t find someone he doesn’t know or something that he’s never paid much attention too. Just think about it, do you remember enough about your stapler to distinguish it from all other staplers? Even then he can only locate them in reference to himself — this can be a real pain if he’s looking for someone in a maze of tunnels. Sure his sister is fifty feet to the left, but should he take the upper tunnel or the lower tunnel to get there?
What was your inspiration for giving him this particular gift?
When I was about ten I read a book about a box that collected lost things: What the Witch Left by Ruth Chew. Although the last time I read it was twenty years ago, the image of that innocent box, which turned up such interesting items as a pair of 100 league boots (each step moved you 100 leagues), is still vivid. I’ve often thought that such a box — or the lesser talent of finding would be useful. Since then, I’ve seen a few characters in other people’s books who were “finders.” (Emma Bull’s book, Finder, comes to mind.) But it’s a magic talent that hasn’t been over-exploited. Since this book wasn’t about how Ward became a great mage to save the world, I didn’t want Ward to have a talent that was too powerful. Finding was a talent that just seemed to dovetail with Ward’s character.
Wardwick’s adventures take up two books. What was it about the character or his situation that inspired you to continue his adventures into a second volume?
I had not planned on two books. In fact I had Dragon Bones polished and sent to my editor when I decided it needed a sequel. There were several reasons which mostly boiled down to this: by the end of the first book there were a lot of changes just teetering on the edge — a lot of potential storytelling to go.
I had originally planned on Ward having a love life in Dragon Bones, but the tension between Oreg and Ward took me by surprise. There simply wasn’t enough emotional room to bring in another strong relationship, even if Dragon Bones had been 600 pages long. There was no impetus for Jackoven to move against the Hurog family during the events of Dragon Bones, but I just knew that he wouldn’t let his mistake lie. I didn’t want to muddy the impact of Dragon Bones just to tidy up the world for the bit characters, but I’d come to really like several of them and I hated to leave their stories untold.
The ending of Dragon Blood neatly caps the plot of the book (and answers many of the questions remaining from the first book in the series). But it implies that Wardwick will continue to face challenges on many fronts. Do you plan additional books in the series?
I don’t believe in absolute endings. Life doesn’t just stop when Cinderella marries the Prince. How terrible for her if it did! I usually end my books with a few hints about what might lie ahead. Ward has a lot of adventures ahead of him, but that’s what happy ever after is all about. I’m pleased with where Ward ended up. He has more adventures ahead, but I don’t know what they are exactly or if he’ll need another book.
Have you ever been tempted to model any other characters on real people?
I’ve only ever used one person to model characters on and even then I just stole bits and pieces. I think using real people is a dangerous practice for a writer’s personal and professional life — especially for me who can’t keep a secret to save my soul.
I know that some of my friends read through my books to see if they are in them. When I was teaching, the first thing students asked me was, “Are you going to use us in your books?” But if they find themselves and don’t like what they see they’ll be understandably upset — so I just don’t put them in.
Professionally speaking, I’ve heard about a writer who had just been through a nasty divorce and used the ex-wife/ex-husband as a caricature villain in a book — complete with name. The book got published, the author and publisher were sued. The maligned ex-spouse won, and that author never sold another book.
Many of your central characters are not what they seem at first glance, and many are shapeshifters. What makes these themes so attractive to you?
Okay. I confess. When other children were dreaming that they were adopted and someday the king of some foreign land would recognize them as their only child…I dreamed of being a horse. I can still whinny pretty well when I want to.
But more seriously, my first book was, in part, a spy novel. At the time I wrote it, there weren’t many fantasy genre writers (that I was reading anyway) who were dealing with espionage — an interesting side effect of politics. At the same time (early nineties) the subgenre of vampire fiction was gaining popularity outside of horror. I had always been rather more fascinated by the vampire’s spiritual brother, the werewolf. That gave me my shapeshifting spy to work with — Aralorn. I thoroughly enjoyed writing her, so I decided to try another spy for my second book, Steal the Dragon. By the third book, I’d discovered that I like characters who have secrets and odd abilities whether they were spies, wizards, or computer nerds.
Which usually comes first for you: the hero, the villain or the plot?
Usually the hero (though the first scene I wrote for Steal the Dragon actually was about the secondary lead). When I start out writing a book, I don’t usually take notes and build worlds — that comes later. I sit down and write scenes until I come up with a character I like. Then I flesh out the world a bit in the scene. Once I have a character in a world, then I try to figure out what that person wants most — and then I take it away or make it impossible to get. I usually don’t have a fleshed-out plot until I’m through with the first draft. At that stage I can fine tune the plot. The villains usually show up where and how they prefer. In The Hob’s Bargain, the real conflict was how to survive in a world which has just undergone a significant transformation. The confrontation with the villain of the piece was more a final goodbye to their old world than it was a major plot point.
When you sit down at the keyboard, are you in charge of your characters or are your characters in charge of you?
If I’m writing well, it feels as if the characters are in charge — though that’s not really true. I think of it like an actor being “in character” in a play. Once I have a good handle on who my character is, what she wants and how she views the world, then I have narrowed the range of reactions that she can have to a given situation — sometimes to the point that I cannot write a planned scene the way I wanted.
Take this as an example: in Dragon Blood, I gave my villain an artifact powered by dragon blood because that makes it a danger to my hero. Once I’d made that decision, I asked myself what that meant for the story. Primarily it meant that anyone who has a dragon ancestor is at risk, just like Ward. So who was in that group?
1) My dragon — except that his being a dragon is still a secret. Good that’s even more reason to keep his identity secret (because in this world, if everyone knew there are still dragons, the impact would be enormous — and nothing I wanted to deal with in this book).
2) All of Ward’s family is at risk. So I gather them all up and get them safely away.
Then I consider my villain’s next action.
Now, I know Jackoven. We’ve been acquainted for about a novel and a half at this point. So when I ask, “Would you go after Ward again?” I know that his reply is: “Certainly not without looking for better and easier prey.”
“What could be better than Ward?” I ask.
“Someone weaker,” he says, “and here in the capitol instead of in the frozen north.” Then he sits forward on his throne and surprises me, saying: “Ward’s blood was weak. Find me someone in whom the blood is concentrated, someone inbred. When Ward’s sister and his cousin marry in the first book, you established that, in this world, first cousins do marry. You put it in, you owe me.”
So the king wants weak prey, the product of two Hurogs. Ward’s father and grandfather slept around a lot, I mutter unwillingly.
“Ah,” he says. “Lovely. And they were both here, in my capitol. I sense a victim near at hand. Find me a young boy (because I’m really, really scary around young boys) the son of Ward’s father and someone else of Hurog blood.”
“Okay,” I said meekly and added another character to a book that was already pretty heavily populated.
I’ve come to believe that if the book is falling neatly into my original plans for it, I don’t have the characters right yet.
Your books often have a very romantic feel and place a great deal of emphasis on relationships. How do you keep the romance elements from overwhelming the fantasy and vice versa?
When writing a genre book, I believe it is important to write a book that could not have been written better in some other genre. The genre has to be central to the plot of the book. When I write fantasy, the fantastic elements — not the romance (or the mystery or spy elements) — ultimately drive the plot.
Romance, to me is a part of character development. It adds drama, helps flesh out characters and generally acts as a catalyst. I use romance extensively in my novels because it is an integral part of the interaction between people. The fantasy elements, though, are always critical to the plot and to the resolution of the story. If you take the romantic elements out of my stories (even The Hob’s Bargain or Steal the Dragon where romance plays a major part), they would still be stories — but not if you take away the magic.
How have other genres influenced your fantasy?
When I’m setting out to write a book, I try not to write the same book over and over again. One of the ways that I do this is to pick out a new genre to throw in. For example Masques had elements of the spy genre while When Demons Walk had bits of mystery and horror thrown in. I usually toss in a dash of political intrigue and romance to sweeten the pot. One of the things that I like best about fantasy is that it’s one of the few genres deep enough for this kind of tomfoolery.
What are you reading now?
We just moved into a new house, and for the first time in a long time, I’ve been able to get into my book boxes. So I’ve been rereading a lot of my old favorites: Andre Norton, Georgette Heyer, Barbara Hambly and the like. This week I found a box full of Regency romances and I’ve been skimming through those. A friend gave me a copy of Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett (I don’t know why I’ve never read him before). It was a terrific read, and has made me really careful about how many fantasy cliches creep into my books. Just this morning I finished The Man of Maybe Half a Dozen Faces by Ray Vukcevich again — it’s really funny, especially if you’ve ever lived in Eugene, Ore.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on a trilogy which is something I’ve never tried before. With more pages to work with, I can flesh out the world better without losing the emphasis on character. I’m having a lot of fun with the magic system, though I haven’t yet worked out all the kinks. I’m trying to thread a bit of Regency England into the book, too — but that might not last through the rewrites. I don’t want to give away too many details, because at this stage in writing, I’m not sure what’s going to stay and what will go — especially since the proposal’s currently on my editor’s desk.
Although you only started publishing within the past ten years, the prices your out of print titles fetch on Amazon, Ebay and Half.com are pretty staggering. (An average of $30 up to $85 for some items.) To what do you attribute this interest in your back list?
The prices are extremely flattering. I’ve always tried to write a good book, and the prices my out of print books are going for tells me that at least some readers like them. But whenever I start to get a swelled head, I go onto Amazon and read what my critics have to say [grins]. The reviews that really hurt are the ones I agree with.
My first book fell off the turnip truck. My husband likes to call it a “limited edition.” It was out of print almost before the second book, Steal the Dragon was published. Steal the Dragon had significantly better sales, but it was quite a while between it and When Demons Walk due to Masques‘ low numbers and Ace changing editors. By the time When Demons Walk came out, Steal the Dragon was out of print. When Demons Walk also sold pretty well (by my standards anyway), and The Hob’s Bargain made it to the Locus bestseller list. People who’d read The Hob’s Bargain and When Demons Walk started looking for the other books about the same time that the Internet became the place to go to look for out of print titles. The rarity of Masques drove the price of it up to around $30. Since that one was more expensive, booksellers began to ask for more money for Steal the Dragon, too. After that, I think, it was just a snowball effect.
Sometimes I worry that someone who pays $50-$100 for Masques (that means they paid as much as 50 cents a page) will feel cheated. But I haven’t got any hate mail about it yet.
Any chance that some of those books will be reprinted soon?
Soon is a relative term in publishing! Don’t look for reprints in the next six months or so. I haven’t been actively looking for new homes for my out of print titles, but Ace is issuing reprints of The Hob’s Bargain and Dragon Bones so there’s a possibility that they’ll reconsider the older books.
How important do you feel your covers have been in attracting potential readers to your books?
Stephen King could sell a book that had nothing but his name on it. The rest of us twitch in anxiety until we see what the art director and artist have come up with.
A good cover lets a person looking at a bookshelf from two or three feet away know what kind of a book it is. If it is a very good cover it does more than just indicate the genre. Is this a funny book? Is it an adventure? Is it a romantic fantasy or high fantasy? A good cover should appeal to a person who wants to read the kind of book. It’s advertising. I want every shopper who goes to a bookstore looking for my kind of fantasy to pick up my book.
I’ve been very fortunate so far, for which I thank my editors, the art department and the various artists who’ve done my covers.
Do you have any particular writing rituals?
First, I wait until everyone else has gone to work or school. I start my MP3 playlist of music. I own all the CD’s, of course, but the MP3 version allows me to mix the songs so I don’t get tired of my favorites. Most of the music is folk or filk (music with sf/fantasy themes) though I have a couple of opera singers I throw in the batch. I don’t play anything too modern, because I use the music to drown out the real world. Finally I light a scented candle or two — then I’m ready to work.
What’s the one piece of information about the writing business you wish someone had told you when you were starting out?
Don’t expect anything to happen fast. Editors take months to buy books, and then it can take 12 to 18 months to see print. Don’t watch the mailbox.
Go to science fiction conventions and talk to the pros. There is a tradition in the world of speculative (sf, fantasy and horror) fiction in which the old pros help the people who are trying to get into the game. The idea is that authors are not in competition with each other. Just think about how many new fantasy readers J.K. Rowling has created. What do they do while they are waiting for the next Harry Potter book? They buy other fantasy books.
Anything you’d like to add (soapboxes provided free of charge)?
No soapboxes, I save them for my books where I can pad the ground a bit in case I fall off. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to chat a bit about writing and books with you here at Crescent Blues.
Click here to learn more about Patricia Briggs.
Jean Marie Ward
In addition to editing Crescent Blues, Jean Marie Ward writes for a number of Web-based and print magazines, including Science Fiction Weekly. She is the author of Illumina: the Art of Jean Pierre Targete (Paper Tiger) and several short stories, including “Most Dead Bodies in a Confined Space” in Strange Pleasures 2 (Prime Books). Her first novel, With Nine You Get Vanyr, written with Teri Smith, is scheduled to be released by Samhain Publishing in late 2006..