History Creator / MercedesLackey

When not creating, Lackey works as a wild bird rehabilitator in Oklahoma, and owns several parrots. Falconry and other avian pursuits, as well as equestrianism, are therefore [[AuthorAppeal common themes in her work]].

* ''Literature/TheShipWhoSearched''

* IdiotPlot: The main plot of ''Music to my Sorrow'' revolves around parents trying to reclaim their teenage children and fighting it out in court. Both kids are seventeen. They are friends with elves, and with humans who have gone Underhill and come out many years later in Above-time. The kids are hiding from their parents and desperately afraid of being taken back. It makes ''absolutely no sense'' that in both cases the heroes decided to open court cases and alert the parents to the kid's whereabouts instead of just popping them Underhill for a brief visit so that they're legally eighteen. Or, if they didn't want to do that, leaving them in the won't-tell-your-parents runaway program that they'd set up and paid for in the previous book! ''They only had to wait a few months.''

* SidenoteFullStory: The main character of the short story "Wide Wings" was originally a minor character in ''Literature/TheBlackSwan'', one of the potential brides that the Prince rejects in favor of Odette. According to Lackey, Honoria stood up and announced that she wanted ''her'' story told, and she didn't really care what Lackey wanted.

* {{Kitsune}}: Foxtrot X-Ray and Lady Ako in ''Chrome Circle''. FX has three tails and is pretty weak (though he eventually earns a two-tail upgrade for extreme valor). Ako has nine tails. She's also "the bearer of some of the most noble blood Under- or Above- Hill." Her half-kitsune/half-dragon daughter also has nine tails in her kitsune form.

* GRatedDrug: In the world of the ''[=SERRAted Edge=]'', ''Bedlam's Bard'', and ''The Doubled Edge'' series, elves react to caffeine the way humans to cocaine. (Give an elf a can of cola and he'll be very happy. Give him a double shot of expresso, and it could kill him if he's not used to it.)

* SeriesContinuityError: Lackey could use a continuity editor. Lampshaded early in her career - some time after writing a FilkSong about Tarma and Kethry she decided to turn it into a short story but didn't remember exactly who did what, and chalked the discrepancies up to an in-universe musician making things up, who the pair despise. The longer it's been since she wrote about a character or setting the more things are off - Need, last written in ''Storm Breaking'' in 1996, reappeared in a short story in 2019 with a completely different personality and set of powers - but events, things characters have said, and character motivations can also shift from one book in a series to the next.

!!Other works by Mercedess Lackey contain examples of:
* AgeGapRomance: An AuthorAppeal. They appear in both the Heralds of Valdemar and the Bardic Voices series.

* NoSenseOfHumor: In the ''Literature/[=SERRAted Edge=]'' novels, Unseleighe psychics have absolutely No Sense of Humor, along with little comprehension of allegory and the imaginations of bricks. In ''Chrome Circle'', they were driven insane trying to comprehend the lyrics of Music/TheyMightBeGiants.

* BulletproofVest: In a couple of Urban Fantasy books, the hero has not just a vest, but a bodysuit made out of dragon scales. These resist cutting, will stop bullets, and also have some protection against magic, but he can still be crushed through them.

* OurElvesAreBetter: The ''[=SERRAted Edge=]'' series features classic versions of High Elves (tall, pointed ears, magical, immortal) who incidentally drive race cars. They must have needed a little extra badass.

* CityOfWeirdos: In ''Invasion'', Belladonna Blues comments that it's easy for people like her (a metahuman with blue skin) to blend in in Vegas -- in this town, you can wait for the bus alongside a Russian acrobat, a seven foot tall transvestite in Cleopatra drag, a guy with an albino snake wrapped around his shoulders and five Elvii, and all anyone wants to talk about is last night's football game.

* TheShutIn: Victoria Victrix from ''The Secret World Chronicle'' became one of these through a combination of being betrayed by a lover and set on fire by a crazy relative. Her writing career allowed her to make a living without needing to leave her apartment for anything other than the horrifically stressful ordeal of grocery shopping, which she has to steel herself for days to perform, and does as early in the morning as possible so that she doesn't have to encounter many people. She starts opening up more after becoming a superheroine, but [[MissionControl her duties]] to her team are still arranged so she can perform them without leaving home, and her idea of hanging out with her teammates is to send an elemental to the bar where the others are hanging out to pick up drinks while she chats with them over the radio.

* SplitPersonality: In ''When the Bough Breaks'', a young girl develops multiple personalities when her father starts raping her. One personality takes over whenever she realizes a rape is about to occur, to protect the other personalities from knowing what's been going on. The girl's situation and her little system were essentially lifted whole cloth, lock, stock, and Irish alter, from''Literature/WhenRabbitHowls'' by the Troops for Truddi Chase (so you might want to read that as well). But hey, it's better than most of what you see in the media.

* ColdIron: In the world of ''[=The SERRAted Edge=]'', it's a rare Fae who can so much as touch iron without getting nasty burns. In addition, iron warps Elven magic; the good-guy Elves have learned to predict what running past an iron bar will do to a spell's trajectory, and take advantage of this during at least one fight scene. A group of Elves who get involved in stock car racing get around the cold iron by making their cars out of fiberglass -- which has the added benefit of making them lighter and therefore faster.

* BrownNote: In ''Chrome Circle'', Tannim uses the entire discography of Music/TheyMightBeGiants to do this to a group of psychics sicced on him by the BigBad; the theory was that the nonsensical nature of the band's lyrics made it impossible to sing along to without devoting a considerable amount of conscious thought to them, meaning his (and their) minds would be too preoccupied with thinking about the lyrics to do much of anything else. (It helped that the psychics trying to pick his brain were culturally stuck in the Middle Ages and had no ''possible'' context by which to even begin to grasp what was going on in his head; one of them was led off wailing helplessly about alchemical formulae.) Also, they were addictive, so every psychic who didn't have them stuck in their head yet would hear it from the ones who are already affected, thus infecting them too.

* ''Wing Commander: Freedom Flight'' (with Creator/EllenGuon), the first novel based on the ''Wing Commander'' franchise. One of her few licensed novels, and the only one which stuck closely to the themes of the original game (the remainder, written primarily by a well-known military fiction author and conservative pundit, veer far more toward traditional MilitaryScienceFiction).

* BrownNote: In ''Chrome Circle'', Tannim uses the entire discography of Music/TheyMightBeGiants to do this to a group of psychics sicced on him by the BigBad; the theory was that the nonsensical nature of the band's lyrics made it impossible to sing along to without devoting a considerable amount of conscious thought to them, meaning his (and their) minds would be too preoccupied with thinking about the lyrics to do much of anything else. (It helped that the psychics trying to pick his brain were culturally stuck in the Middle Ages and had no ''possible'' context by which to even begin to grasp what was going on in his head; one of them was led off wailing helplessly about alchemical formulae.) Also, they were [[EarWorm Ear Worms]], so every psychic who didn't have them stuck in their head yet would hear it from the ones who are already affected, thus infecting them too.

* ''Literature/WingCommander: Freedom Flight'' (with Creator/EllenGuon), the first novel based on the ''Wing Commander'' franchise. One of her few licensed novels, and the only one which stuck closely to the themes of the original game (the remainder, written primarily by a well-known military fiction author and conservative pundit, veer far more toward traditional MilitaryScienceFiction).

* ''Shadow Grail'' series with Creator/RosemaryEdghill, about Spirit White, a teenager who has lost her family in an accident and is sent to [[WizardingSchool Oakhurst Academy]], where all the students have magical powers.

* IntimateHealing: The "Osage blanket ritual" mentioned a few times in ''Sacred Ground''.

* SplitPersonality: In ''When the Bough Breaks'', a young girl develops multiple personalities when her father starts raping her. One personality takes over whenever she realizes a rape is about to occur, to protect the other personalities from knowing what's been going on.

* The ''Hunter'' trilogy, with the first two books out so far, of a dystopian future Earth, where otherwordly creatures, most with some basis out of various myths and legends, appear and attack the world (most likely due to some Christians setting off a nuke in attempt to kickstart the Apocalypse). Hunters, or those born with some kind of magic, are normally recruited and trained by the capital, Apex City, to fight the monsters, known as Othersiders, with the aid of their Hounds, supernatural creatures that allied with the humans. The trilogy focuses on a young Hunter named Joyeaux Charmand.

* ItWorksBetterWithBullets: Played with in one of the ''[=SERRAted Edge=]'' novels. During the final fight scene, an evil elf casts a spell on one of the heroes that deactivates the ammo in his gun. She then ignores that hero, because his only weapon is the gun, and, well, see the trope name. Too bad she'd never learned about speedloaders. And if that didn't work, the hero would have simply clubbed her with the gun.

* LiteralGenie: In ''Born to Run'', an elven sorceress commands elemental spirits to neutralize the gunpowder in the bullets of a gun so that they won't fire, and then ignores the guy with the gun. Too bad, because the spirits only altered the bullets ''in the gun'', and the guy's got a speed-loader.

* ItWorksBetterWithBullets: Played with in one of the ''[=SERRAted Edge=]'' novels. During the final fight scene, an evil elf casts a spell on one of the heroes that deactivates the ammo in his gun. She then ignores that hero, because his only weapon is the gun, and, well, see the trope name. Too bad she'd never learned about speedloaders.

* AllTherapistsAreMuggles: Averted in ''Music To My Sorrow'', where we are told that Eric has found a therapist that knows that magic and elves are real.

Mercedes Lackey is a prolific author of {{fantasy}} and UrbanFantasy literature, as well as a lyricist, songwriter, and [[FilkSong filk singer]]. She started out as a {{fanfic}} writer.