Hanging Out with Patty Briggs

If I wasn't a fan of Patty Briggs before, I definitely am now.  (OK, so I was already a Briggs fan, but now I love her even more.)  I was lucky enough to spend two hours with the author of the Mercy Thompson and the Alpha and Omega series at a signing for Fair Game in New Orleans Friday.

I spied Patty in the bookstore about a half hour before the signing began and she patiently and kindly let me babble and gush on about how great she is.  And she never called security even once.

The gathering was surprisingly small, which gave it a much more intimate atmosphere. It was almost like we were all just sitting around chatting.  Patty gave a short reading from the book then answered questions from fans.  We spent alot of time talking about Bran.  She says she is not as adamant as she used to be about not writing his book.  But it's more likely to be a short story.  (She's working on a collection of those.)  The thing is, Patty likes her books to have a happy ending or at least a HFN, and she doesn't know that she could do that with Bran.  She said that zealots rarely end up happy and that Bran really is a zealot: protecting his wolves is everything to him.

We talked about Leah and how many people wished for her death (myself included.)  But Patty considers her a strong and vital character.  We talked about how some relationships are simply dysfunctional. I asked her if we should feel sorry for Leah and she said that she does.  But Leah knew what she was getting into when she married Bran.  That what she wanted was to be the Queen Bee and she got what she wanted.  But she'll never have Bran's love --and really, if Bran ever did love her, she would be unhappy because she'd be incapable of living up to the demands his love would bring.

Patty also says she is definitely doing short stories for Samuel, Ben, and Tad (who is a favorite of hers.)  She says she doesn't take notes to keep her world straight in her head, but she is thankful to the ladies on her forum who keep it all straight in the Mercy Canon section of the site, which is pretty awesome.

She points out that even if you don't read the Alpha and Omega books, that you really need to read Fair Game before the next Mercy book. That amazing ending is going to carry over big-time.

Other tidbits:

• Adam would rather bite his arm off than let Jessie become a werewolf, though she may feel differently.
• The next Mercy book will open with Mercy and Jessie shopping on Black Friday.
• Bran's short story may be set in the past.
• Patty loved writing a short story for Warren and found it interesting that killing bothers him so little.
• Sometimes she writes backstory for her characters, just to help herself understand them better. She did this for how Mercy and Zee met and it became the basis for the Homecoming graphic novel.
• Alpha and Omega wasn't initially designed to be a series, but the short story was so well received that her publisher asked her to turn it into one. She said it made for a sticky situation with the beginning really taking place in a short story. When Cry Wolf is released in hardcover, it will include the novella.

It was a great night and Patty was a lovely lady!  I hope I get a chance to meet her again.