Paul Briggs

YouTube video by lockswriter BOOK TRAILER: Locksmith's Closet

#TimeTravelAuthors
The first trailer I ever made for Locksmith's Closet.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=OriX...

#FebruaryWorldbuilders A lot of smaller nations are in an alliance, the Grand Coalition, against a superpower which they call "the Black Banner" - the United Republic of Kuvra. The GC and URK are about to go to war, and what my characters are about to steal is a potential military resource.

25. Wednesday POST-SIZED snippet (optional word: glow)

#TimeTravelAuthors One of them — a white horse, so pale it seemed to glow — reared up on its hind legs, its hooves flailing perilously close to Lock’s head. As he stepped back, he saw the wound on one of its front legs, as if something with massive jaws had tried to grab it there.

21. Saturday excerpt (optional word: listen)

#TimeTravelAuthors “Okay, listen up,” said Lock. “New rules — I say what this is about. I say what’s important. You don’t talk unless I ask you a question, and then you tell me everything I want to know. Otherwise I hang up again, and this time I turn the phone off. Got all that?”

#FebruaryWorldbuilders My protagonists have been assured that what they're doing has the blessing of the law and/or the Azure Order. I mean, if you can't trust a mysterious shapeshifting benefactor, who can you trust?

#WIPSnips “Each of them carries a record of every coin and piece of jewelry that’s supposed to be in every room. So if you pry one little diamond out of a thousand-year-old brooch in the corner of Chamber 17, you’ve got eight hours to get out of Kisatòn with it before they find out it’s missing.”

19. How honest are your characters?

#TimeTravelAuthors Gary sometimes tries to lie, but is really bad at it for somebody that smart.
Lock can lie, but would rather not.

Can't. Let me sleep on it—I'll give you an answer in the morning.

Can, but I won't do that.

17. Does your world have the butterfly effect?

#TimeTravelAuthors Yes. In fact, when Lock and Gary spend a few hours making repeat trips to the future, they sometimes find the weather is completely different from what it was a moment ago.

A desert landscape with the foreground in almost total silhouette, with mesquite trees and creosote bushes rising up. A low band just above the horizon of orange, yellow, and red shows the last breath of the sunset, about an hour after the sun went down. The sky above is a brilliant deep blue rising into black, with stars visible in a dome around the image. Just above the horizon is a white streak of contrail that looks like a long flourish of a signature with a loop like a cursive 2 trailing off into the horizon.

Signature sunset

#FebruaryWorldbuilders In the city-state of Grand Harbor, the answer is: the Azure Order, the various municipal governments, and the central government, very much in that order. There are also strong traditions, such as "if it's not your town, stick to the main streets unless you have an invite."

#WIPSnips “…servants say he never came home. They thought he was spending the weekend with a mistress. We talked to all his mistresses. They never saw him. And when the staff came in on Archday morning… well, they found the body. We don’t know the exact time of death, but he was cold as the walls.”

15. Comp titles?

#TimeTravelAuthors I'm not sure. I thought at the time it was a little like City of Ember.

#WIPSnips *She’s hoping I’ll mess up on some detail. She’s looking for something she can use to call me a liar.*
The telegram. Packing for the trip. His sweetheart Arkhöa choosing to come with him. At this point Ms. Halbrex said, “Tell me about this young lady of yours.”

#WIPSnips As soon as Rhadmin saw the interrogator, he knew this was serious. Not because she was intimidating, but because she wasn’t.
She was maybe forty, on the plump side, with silver-streaked dark hair and the kind and guileless face of a kindergarten teacher.

#FebruaryWorldbuilders There are as many mutually incompatible creation stories as there are mythologies. The more modern Cosmic School has the doctrine "we don't know yet, let's wait for scientists to figure it out."

#FebruaryWorldbuilders You'd think, with necromancy and all, that people would be able to say yes for sure. Trouble with necromancy is, you can't learn anything that the deceased didn't know when they last held the object you're using to contact them… assuming they're willing to talk.

13. Love in your story

#FebruaryWorldbuilders
1. Gary's crush on Lock's mom
2. Gary's later relationship with Tara, who at least is the same age
3. Lock's budding romance with June
4. Rikki and Lucy

Reform would mean putting a better set of rules in place.
That only works on people who are willing to obey rules to begin with.
You really are going to have to get rid of the damn thing.

#FebruaryWorldbuilders As in our world, it's up for debate.
And as in our world, a lot of people who believe in it still want to believe in divine foreknowledge of human action, while a lot of people who don't believe in it still want to denounce sinners.

#FebruaryWorldbuilders There are those who have the power to commune with the dead by touching something that the dead once handled. But they can't extract any information the dead wouldn't have been willing to share in life.
There have been prophets, but their accuracy is up for debate.

11. Wednesday POST-SIZED snippet (optional word: hug)

#TimeTravelAuthors “We need you!” He grabbed onto her right hand and held it firmly. Gary did the same with her left. Eventually her weeping subsided into steady, regular breathing. Then, without warning, she grabbed both of them and drew them into a hug.

9. Does your story get "political"?

#TimeTravelAuthors Only loosely. One of the reasons the gang doesn't go public with the existence of the time portal is that it will inevitably end up in the hands of the government, and they don't trust the government with that kind of power.

#FebruaryWorldbuilders Grand Harbor is the greatest and most complex natural harbor beneath the arch. Picture Scapa Flow with a city around it. It was a pirate/privateer haven for most of its history, and kept its independence because it was so valuable no nation would allow another to possess it.

#WIPSnips He had blundered at the Kamichogo. And though he’d never admit it in front of someone who’d never gone to war at all, he did feel like he had to do something to redeem himself.

7. Saturday excerpt (optional word: love)

#TimeTravelAuthors “Because when you love someone, you don’t just want them to love you back — you want them to love themselves too, to take care of themselves and cherish themselves as much as…” It was at this point that Lock broke down. Lucy drew him into a hug.

#FebruaryWorldbuilders Mangrove forests line the coasts of Byrex's Land. The glassbark mangrove species (my invention) are smooth-barked trees whose tough wood wears out a lot of saws and axes.
Their fruit is edible. Imagine a kiwi with a slightly-too-strong taste of truffle and rosemary.