Interview with young adult sci-fi author Paul Briggs

Today’s guest author is Paul Briggs to chat with me about his new young adult sci-fi, Locksmith’s War. It’s the third book in his Locksmith Trilogy.

During his virtual book tour, Paul will be giving away a $50 Amazon or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card to a lucky randomly drawn winner. To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit his other tour stops and enter there, too!

Bio:
In addition to writing books, Paul Briggs has worked as a newspaper editor, court reporter’s assistant, and audio transcriber. In his spare time (when he has any) he sometimes performs in community theater, most recently taking on the roles of Bottom, Petruchio, Macbeth, Rosalind, and Richard III in a Shakespeare compilation. An Eastern Shore native who grew up in Chestertown, Maryland, Paul earned a BA in English from Washington College and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland – College Park.

He is the author of several short plays, including the award-winning The Worst Super Power Ever and The Picture of Health. He is also writing the sequel to his 2018 science fiction novel Altered Seasons: Monsoonrise, which vividly imagines the dislocations that follow when the Arctic Sea ice finally melts and the Chesapeake Bay is drowned by the effects of climate change.

Welcome, Paul. Please tell us about your new release.
For Lachlan Smith, learning the secret of the apocalypse was the easy part.

Ever since Locksmith found the portal to the future, he has been wondering who or what was responsible for the empty, uninhabited world he found.

Now he knows—and now he has to fight them.

He thought he had fifteen years in which to prevent the extinction of the human species.

Now, he has only hours.

When the portal is stolen by a cabal of dangerous fanatics, his mother and many of his friends are trapped on the other side. Now the enemy is after him, and the only way to thwart their genocidal plan is to retake the portal and hold it—at both ends.

With very little time left, a handful of allies who don’t trust each other, almost no chance of success and the survival of humanity itself at stake… Locksmith is going to war.

Tell us something about your newest release that is NOT in the blurb.
June, who’s been a minor character in the last two books, plays a bigger role in this one.

Excerpt from Locksmith’s War:
This was a storm with everything on it

This was a storm with everything on it.

Rain? Thick billowing sheets of it sweeping over the landscape.

Wind? Lots of it, making the rain fall at something like a 45-degree angle. If you went out there with an umbrella, it’d be inside out before you could get to shelter.

Thunder and lightning? There was so much of both, there wasn’t any point trying to do that one-banana two-banana thing for figuring out how far away the lightning was. You couldn’t tell which thunderclap belonged to which lightning stroke.

The only thing missing was hail. Lock tried not to think too much about this, in case he jinxed it and big chunks of ice starting falling from the sky.

Ultralights weren’t meant to fly in the rain. Lock wasn’t too clear on what would happen if you tried it. Heather had never even tried to teach him how. The planes could handle a slight drizzle, but this was not a slight drizzle.

Lock turned and went back down the stairs. Just past the door to the attic, he met Luther.

“What are you still doing here? Go!” said the detective.

Lock ran back. I didn’t actually tell him about the rain. Maybe I should have. Another failure to communicate. He’d hoped he was done with those.

Then he thought And if I had, what would he have said? “So much for that, let’s all go home and try again tomorrow?” This isn’t a track meet, this is a heist. You can’t just reschedule it.

How long have you been writing?
Pretty much since as long as I could hold a pencil. My serious book-writing phase has been going on for 15 years now.

What advice would you give a new writer just starting out?
Listen to people. A lot. Get a feel for how they talk. This will do wonders for your dialogue.

Do you have any tattoos? Where? When did you get it/them? Where are they on your body?
No.

Is your life anything like it was two years ago?
Unfortunately, yes. The main difference is that I don’t get to meet other people as often.

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