Home of Author Patricia Briggs.

June 9, 2008 [Mike]

Many of you have been following our ill-considered efforts to cast some functional silver bullets. In the early days of this bit of insanity I was told of an article published in Gun World, way back in 1964, documenting the efforts of a creative bunch led by Jack Lewis trying to create silver bullets just like the Lone Ranger. Sadly, this article was almost impossible to find, even though it's probably the only well-documented attempt to make silver bullets, and almost certainly the source of the firmly-established dogma that silver bullets won't work.

I contacted the editors at Gun World, who put me in touch with Jack Lewis, who was willing to sell me the rights to republish this classic article here on Hurog.com. So, for those of you who want a piece of silver bullet history, here's Lone Ranger, Go Away. Enjoy!

June 8, 2008 [Mike]

Mystery in the Mailbox

OK, we've got a real-life mystery on our hands. A couple of weeks ago we found a very elegant letter in our mailbox. A translucent envelope with a logo we didn't recognize on the corporate postage. Inside there was a lovely black envelope sealed with an honest-to-goodness wax seal, bearing the same logo. Inside the evelope we discovered a single page of translucent paper bearing writing in a language we don't recognize, with the same logo at the bottom. I think the writing was done by hand, and someone obviosly did much better in penmanship class than we did.

So, the question is, what is it? Who is it from? What does it say? We're curious. Someone spent some time and effort sending this to us, and we're clueless. We're also fresh out of Scooby-Snacks^®, but we'll offer a "Mercy's Garage" shirt or a signed book to the first person who can help us solve this riddle.

May 29, 2008 [Mike]

Miscon 22 Report

Patty signing a book after a panel at MisCon 22.

Miscon has come and gone again, and it was as much fun as it always is. This year was a little more stressful than usual: I ended up taking over as programming chair, so all the panels and so forth became my responsibility. Predictably, I sent the wrong version of the schedule to the folks who print up the program book; and the version I supplied them contained a nice smattering of schedule conflicts. It's always a joy to see the look of panic in the eyes of our hard-working professionals when they realize they're scheduled to give two different talks, in different locations, at the same time. I spent half of Friday skulking in the hotel room afraid to show my face (I'm allergic to rotten tomatos, particularly when thrown at high velocity). However, I should have had more confidence in the kindness of the attendees. Surprisingly, it all worked out fine, and the scheduling conflicts were fairly seamlessly routed around. The visiting pros really proved their mettle. Like a crack military troop ordered to take the capital with squirt guns they snapped a salute and got it done.

Like always, we managed to run flat-out for four full days, before collapsing in a coma. We got to meet lots of old friends: Cthulhu Bob, Sparky and Richard Peters, Tom and Debbie Lentz, Laurel and Lynn, and we reveled in the joy of old aquintences renewed. We also got to hang with some of our favorite authors: Diana Pharaoh Francis, Christina Morgan, Jim Glass and others. C.J. Cherryh and Jane Fancher were there (and a hoot to hang around as always). Jane is as fiesty as ever, and C.J. has this amazing ability to listen to other panelists babble for thirty minutes, then clarify the whole issue with a couple of insightful sentences -- she's kind of like Obi-Wan. The author Guest of Honor this year was Maggie Bonham, whom we met for the first time last year. She's a bit like a character from a fantasy novel: bold and active and always in the middle of everything, just a little larger than life and loving every minute of it. I can't possibly name all the friendly faces and dear friends old and new in attendence -- it's like a giant family reunion.

Hanging with friends at MisCon. Left-to-right: Lynn, Mike Briggs, Patty Briggs, Laurel

There were a number of unusual panels this year: I scheduled a group of gun-experts to do some presentations geared toward authors. Particularly in urban fantasy, it's obvious that there are otherwise wonderful authors who know next-to-nothing about firearms. Thumbing the safety on your revolver or having the heroine pulling a Desert Eagle from her ankle holster is a great way to annoy the reader. These panels were surprisingly well attended, and the gun-pros did a phenomenal job of bringing props and things to show the audience. We also had an insty-filk panel which yielded a surprisingly good piece, so the entire panel ran over to the art-auction and performed it on the spur of the moment. Lots of zany, giddy, feel-good fun.

I also did a panel on silver bullets, which was surprisingly well recieved. Even more interesting was the number of people who wanted to beg, buy borrow or steal a silver bullet. How cool is that? Speaking of which, I've updated the Silver Bullets pages with the results of my most recent casting.