Patricia Briggs: On Collecting Idea Kernels

Patricia Briggs is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Mercy Thompson urban fantasy series (Soul Taken, Smoke Bitten) and the Alpha and Omega novels (Wild Sign, Burn Bright). Follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

Patricia Briggs

Photo by Mike Briggs

In this interview, Patricia discusses the process of writing the next chapter in her Mercy Thompson series, Winter Lost, her advice for writers, and more!

Name: Patricia Briggs
Book title: Winter Lost
Publisher: Ace/Penguin Random House
Release date: June 18, 2024
Genre/category: Urban fantasy
Previous titles: #1 NYT bestselling series’, Mercy Thompson and Alpha and Omega
Elevator pitch: Caught in the heart of an enormous winter storm, our coyote shapeshifting auto mechanic Mercy faces down bad roads, Norse gods, and a hot-spring fed lake in order to save the world. Or get warm. Something like that anyway.

Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

What prompted you to write this book?

When I started, I knew that there were matters from the previous novel that needed tending to—one way to keep these books feeling real is that events from one book affect the ongoing books, both for the main character and the side characters. But I didn’t know what the book would be about.

I tend to collect idea kernels and throw them in a bag and shake them up. Winter Lost was already underway when I visited one of the many hot spring/lake hotels built at the turn of the last century in the nearby mountains. It’s early 20th century décor made me think of Agatha Christie, and I thought I’d shape this story as a closed-circle mystery (that didn’t work out) but the feel of an Agatha Christie novel is in the narrative. That feeling of early 20th century made me think of a character from a short story I wrote a number of years ago, and I’ve been looking for a way to make her fit better into Mercy’s world. I pulled out a side character from a much earlier book in the series, who had been waiting in the dressing room long enough, to bring Norse mythology to the world of Mercy Thompson. And then I pulled on my childhood memories of ferocious winter storms and used that to tie the story together.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

Writing a long-running series (Moon Called, the first book in the Mercy Thompson series, was first published in 2006, and Winter Lost is the 14th book in the series) gives me some leeway and also a very large cast of characters. Because they are written in first person with a sometimes-unreliable narrator, I keep multiple side stories running in my head alongside the narrative.

Stories work because we humans are very good at pattern recognition—we fill in the blank spots when we read. If I say “dragon,” readers have a whole understanding of dragons the world brings to mind. That means I only have to use a few sentences to build up a solid image of what “my” dragon is. People also recognize patterns in human (and nearly human) behaviors.

Because all of the characters in my books have backgrounds and ongoing stories of their own (most of which will never see the light of day), readers feel the solidness of those characters and the world without having to trudge through a hundred mundane stories. But sometimes that’s a problem.

In earlier books in the series, I’ve added chapters in Mercy’s mate Adam’s point of view to fill out reader’s understanding of the story. I did that for Winter Lost as well. But when the book was “finished” (there is a quote about art is never finished, only abandoned by its creator that every writer understands viscerally) the holes left by those missing stories were a little too obvious. In Winter Lost, Mercy is dumped into the middle of two ongoing stories that run parallel, then intersect. (Yes, I know parallel lines don’t intersect, but I’m going for an imperfect metaphor here.) There are pressures on Adam, as Alpha of his pack—and as a businessman—that compete strongly with his need to keep Mercy safe. He chooses Mercy—but the weight of the tasks he abandons to do so lingered in the book.

I took my “finished” manuscript back and added interludes between each chapter in viewpoints other than Mercy’s. I’ve never done anything like it before and I am a little uncomfortable by the insight it gives readers into how I really tell a story. But it fixed the problems I had with the novel. I’m happy with it now—and hope readers find it entertaining as well.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Read. Read good books. Read bad books. Figure out what makes them good or bad. Read books in your genre. Read books outside of your usual reading genres.

With a growing catalog of instructional writing videos available instantly, we have writing instruction on everything from improving your craft to getting published and finding an audience. New videos are added every month!