Thieves' Gambit, Ep. 11: How to Plan a Heist
We’re gathering the people with essential skills, making a plan, anticipating obstacles, doing reconnaissance, and pulling off a heist. Erin and Anne-Marie break down the elements needed for a heist and analyze how Kayvion Lewis designed and executed the (writing of the) sarcophagus heist in Thieves’ Gambit.
Things we talk about:
Ocean’s Eleven
Ask the Author Book Club with Lindsay Lackey–NOTE: NEW DATE–May 13, 2025, 4:30-5:45pm Pacific/7:30-8:45 Eastern
“Building a Novel with Touchstone Moments,” taught by award-winning middle grade author Lindsay Lackey–NOTE NEW DATE AND TIME: May 27, 2025, 9:30-11am Pacific/12:30-2pm Eastern
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Transcript:
[00:00:00] Anne-Marie Strohman: Emotionally satisfying for the reader. Emotionally devastating for Ross.
[00:00:04] Erin Nuttall: Yeah for sure. Poor Ross. She goes through it.
[Music intro]
[00:00:09] Anne-Marie Strohman: Welcome to season two of the Kid Lit Craft Podcast. This season we're doing a deep dive into Kayvion Lewis's YA thriller Thieves’ Gambit. Today we're focusing on how to set up a heist. I'm Anne-Marie Strohman and I write for children and young adults as well as short stories for adults.
[00:00:26] Erin Nuttall: Hi, I am Erin Nuttall and I write mostly YA for those fun teenagers.
[00:00:32] Anne-Marie Strohman: On Kid Lit Craft, we look at mentor texts to discover the mechanics of how writers do what they do, so we can apply it to our own writing. And before we start, we wanted to let you know that our summer classes are now open for registration. We've got two new classes this summer. One is on writing middle grade and young adult novels, and it's based on a class I've offered in the past called Writing Middle Grade for Picture Book Authors. This class is open to anyone. It's a fast-paced class that covers everything you need to know to draft a novel and get started on revisions. I've had people take it that have actually written a draft of a novel and didn't know what they were doing, and they wanted to come learn how to do what they're trying to do, and it works really well.
[00:01:13] Erin Nuttall: Well, I will chime in that, I have taken this class from you and I have really enjoyed it.
[00:01:18] Anne-Marie Strohman: The second class is called Plan a Novel or Novel Revision with Me and will spend eight weeks diving into side writing exercises and planning to develop your novel idea or take what you have in a first draft and plan for the next stage of revision. I am super excited about this class.
I developed it out of some individual author coaching that I've been doing this year, and I'm excited to see what happens in a group. So I hope you will join me and you can find out more information and register at kidlitcraft.com/classes.
[00:01:51] Erin Nuttall: And if that's not enough, we also have one more Ask the Author book club event coming up April 22nd. Lindsay Lackey will be our guest author discussing her middle grade novel Farther than the Moon. It's got brothers, one of whom has severe disabilities, space camp, and a diverse cast of young aspiring astronauts, but also has a huge heart.
And I don't know about you, but space camp: I'm sold. Lindsay will also be leading a workshop on April 26th called Building a Novel With Touchstone Moments. She'll be focusing on getting to the heart of your story via your own experiences. It's just gonna be so fantastic. I'm just super excited. And you can find more about it and register at, I bet you're surprised, kidlitcraft.com.
[00:02:39] Anne-Marie Strohman: I am looking forward to all of it. So lots of exciting things coming up for Kid Lit Craft, and we will hope you will join us for some of it. So Erin, let's start with vocabulary. We're looking at heists today. So let's start with your definition of a heist.
[00:02:55] Erin Nuttall: Okay, so if you look up heist in the it's a very basic definition of, to take something unlawfully or a robbery, and that's super boring and I don't think accurate. In literature or movies, they tend to be a lot more specific. It's more of a large scale robbery or series of robberies that requires ingenuity, planning and skill. It's frequently though, not always glamorous.
[00:03:25] Anne-Marie Strohman: So let's get a little more specific and break down the elements that you think you need in a heist.
[00:03:31] Erin Nuttall: Okay. So there are several specific aspects of a literary or movie heist. You need thieves, you need a group of robbers who are working together, and you can think of Ocean’s 11 for that. And part of what you have with this group, you get to see the group being assembled. It's not always part of the story, but it frequently is, because that helps you get to know the specific skills that each character has. And that is vital. Every character needs to have a specific skillset. And that can vary depending on the heist. They also frequently have, some of the characters or all of the characters have a weakness that puts the plan in danger. Some that are almost always part of a heist are you need your protagonist/your leader. That person is usually the one making the plan and is the person who is getting the group together, who has the idea in the first place. You can think of George Clooney in Ocean’s 11.
[00:04:28] Anne-Marie Strohman: Danny Ocean.
[00:04:29] Erin Nuttall: Danny Ocean, right there. Yeah. You also, um, usually have an IT expert, someone who can do the hacking and get around alarms and things like that. Occasionally you'll have an explosives expert. And one that you'll always have is someone, or sometimes multiple characters who are very charming. That can frequently also be the leader. But sometimes you have someone else who takes that role as well.
So in addition to the group of thieves, you need a target and it's generally something really big that nobody had thought was possible to steal. And then it's, it's always someone who deserves it. You are not going to perpetrate a heist against a hospital. Unless, unless the hospital board is evil and they're skimming or stealing themselves. And then you have like a Robin Hood moment, right? There's always like a virtuosity about it. I won't say always, we can never say always, but most of the time.
So you also need a plan before the robbery or the heist takes place. The plan is reviewed in detail for the reader. and then it's, that's kind of broken down. We have reconnaissance with pre-high surveillance. We also have all of the obstacles are going to happen in the heist, and they are laid out and they also have solutions laid out because the main character has planned it out.
We have the planner and they have figured out how this impossible thing is going to happen. And then, you have, I guess I call it the plot, but it's basically the many ways that the heist is intricate and involved and needs ingenuity in order to do the impossible thing. And then there's always a twist, and the twist is something goes wrong, but the planner has already accounted for it and solved it.
But it is a surprise to the reader or viewer when it is revealed. In Ocean’s 11, It is when we find out that they actually took the money out in the ambulances and we as the viewer did not know that they were going to do that with the money. We thought uh oh, they're caught, but really they weren't. Danny Ocean had already figured it out.
[00:06:51] Anne-Marie Strohman: Spoiler.
[00:06:52] Erin Nuttall: Yeah. Spoiler on this 20-year-old movie.
[00:06:55] Anne-Marie Strohman: So we've mentioned the word heist in other episodes. I think sometimes meaning like an escapade or a test or a task. Are all the tasks in the Thieves’ Gambit heists?
[00:07:05] Erin Nuttall: So the Thieves’ Gambit story has a series of robberies and some would call them heists, but they don't meet all the criteria I just. mentioned, and I don't consider them heists until we get to the sarcophagus. But honestly, you know, it's, it's a floating definition. This is, this is the definition that I just created for it. So, you know, it's the Nuttall definition. And if you yourself have a different definition, that's fine. Just know you're wrong.
[00:07:32] Anne-Marie Strohman: Or colloquial usage as we have in other episodes. We're being very specific in our definitions here, and the last job that they get to kidnap someone doesn't fit the definition of a heist either in the same way.
[00:07:45] Erin Nuttall: No, it doesn't. No. And so I just feel like gambit actually is really suitable for what it is because they are like a gambit. You're risking something really big to, and again, I don't know, I didn't look this up. I just am thinking of this as, as we chat, but a gambit is you have a high risk and you have a high reward.
And, I think for sure that is all the things in this book are covered by that.
[00:08:12] Anne-Marie Strohman: So let's focus on that sarcophagus heist. We mentioned before in a different episode that the start of the heist comes in at around the 50% mark. So remind me how that heist is set up when we find out about it.
[00:08:26] Erin Nuttall: So I think it was the third big task. That also depends on how you're counting tasks in the gambit. So just know thirdish. And when they start planning out, they find out that they need to steal the sarcophagus from this auction in Egypt, our group with Ross in it, and when they start making the plan, it is 50%. And so their target, if we follow the definition I just mentioned, their target is an Egyptian sarcophagus. In this story, the target who deserves it is the opposite team. And there's also mention that the buyers at the auction would be taking antiquities out of Egypt. So it's not, I suppose, a huge moral high ground kind of Robin Hood story, but neither is Ocean’s 11. He's stealing from his ex-wife's boyfriend. Right? But that guy's a jerk and he deserves it. And so kind of here we are. The people who are buying, who would actually be buying this are the jerks as you might have, because they're taking the sarcophagus out of Egypt.
[00:09:30] Anne-Marie Strohman: So, the characters, as you mentioned, are divided into two teams. They have, each have four people at this point, and both teams are competing to steal the same object. So what does Ross's team bring to the table? What are their special skills?
[00:09:43] Erin Nuttall: Okay, so their special skills. We have Mylo, and he is a pickpocket. And he's also a danger junkie which, Ross is worried about is going to put their heist in jeopardy. He’s also really smart and is a fast, fast thinker on his feet. We have Kyung-soon and she is an IT expert. And Devroe, he is persuasion, charm, he also can lip read, and then Ross is the planner.
[00:10:10] Anne-Marie Strohman: Take us through the obstacles they face, and how are they planning to solve all these things that are gonna get in the way of them taking the sarcophagus.
[00:10:17] Erin Nuttall: Okay, so we have an obstacle, that the auction security is immediately dismissed as too difficult to break. So that's our first obstacle. the security at the auction is just beyond impossible. And so the solution that they come to is that they'll wait until it's sold and the transport and security becomes the responsibility of the buyer.
And depending on who that buyer is, they feel like the security could be something that they could break. Then another obstacle is they don't know who that security team is and how to target them until after the auction. And so the solution is, figure out, out of the potential buyers who has the weakest security team. And I will point out that, while the first one with the obstacle being that the auction security is so difficult and that they'll wait until it's sold, that was sort of a group decision. And then we have pretty much all Ross's solutions. And so Ross figures out her solution is that they're going to figure out who the potential buyers, which one of them has the weakest security.
And then so that of course brings up the obstacle of they need the buyer with the weakest security to win the auction. And this is interesting because it's all really quick and it's all laid out quickly. I think that that works really well for a high story. You don't wanna spend too much time on these details, because it could bog down the pace of the story.
So when you think about Ocean’s 11, they have several montages. And one of them is when they are talking about their plan, how they're going to overcome the obstacles.
And this is set up very similarly. Okay. So they need the buyer with the weakest security to win the auction. And the solution is, Devroe claims, he can persuade that person to be the buyer with some special tools. And that's kind of a mystery. Everyone's like, I don't think you're that persuasive dude.
And he's like, no, I totally am. So, they go with that. And then there's another obstacle that the other team is coming the next day and right now they have a day's head start because of the previous gambit. They won an extra day. So this was Ross's idea, which, I think was super fun and an interesting way to get the other team outta the way is Ross thinks that they should get them banned from the hotel. And so Kyung-soon puts them like on a terror watch list type thing and gets them banned from the hotel. So we have a list of obstacles and solutions that plays out quickly in like a montage fashion.
[00:12:58] Anne-Marie Strohman: So we have some of their roles that you've hinted at that, that Devroe is gonna be the persuader. And that Kyung-soon has done some IT things. So we've seen them a little bit in their roles. What about the reconnaissance piece?
[00:13:13] Erin Nuttall: The one piece of reconnaissance that we don't see is Mylo and Kyung-soon are doing research on the potential buyers, and who would be interested in the sarcophagus and what do their security teams look like. We don't really see that. And who would want to, that sounds super boring.
[00:13:28] Anne-Marie Strohman: And that's just a lot of Googling.
[00:13:30] Erin Nuttall: That's like if you're in the, if you're in the mu-movie, you can do a little montage where they're like sitting at their keyboard looking all serious with the glow of the computer on their face. And even that's kind of boring. In a book you can just say, hey, this is happening in the background. But the fun reconnaissance is Ross and Devroe, they get to get dressed up to go to this fancy cocktail party and mingle with the auction crowd to feel out and get a better sense of who is interested in the sarcophagus. Through that, all through the reconnaissance we also are finding out some more obstacles and some more solutions. They're kind of coming at them on the fly and they're figuring them out sort of, which is interesting and is not always the order that things are set up. But I do like it because that makes it feel realistic.
Like once you get deeper into a project, you're like, oh yeah. This thing and this thing and this thing are also gonna be a problem, right?
[00:14:29] Anne-Marie Strohman: Right. So at this point we have a sense of what the plan is. Lay out, like what do we know at this point? What does the team plan to do in a little more detail?
[00:14:39] Erin Nuttall: So we actually get more detail after the reconnaissance of the plan. So the beginning, we know they want the sarcophagus. We know that they're going to target a weak security team and that they need to figure out who that is and how to get them to buy, right? So all of that's going on. And then after the cocktail party and after Mylo and Kyung-soon have done their research, the team meets together, they sketch out a more detailed plan. This is not as detailed, I will say, as like what you see in like the Ocean's 11 movie. That's super detailed. You hear Danny Ocean's voiceover explaining and then you see what it would look like when they're successful. Right? And I actually really like that it is not as detailed as that. I think you totally could do it and do it successfully, but I just feel like she did a good job with the level of detail that she did. Because again, you have to be really careful not to bog down the pace of your story.
Okay. So what we have is, I call a sketch of a plan. It's not a super detailed plan, but I think it's enough for the reader to know what's going on and to be able to follow the story with interest. So Devroe has info on a woman with lots of money and not great security, and his role is to make sure she bids and wins. And Mylo and Kyung-soon are going to take care of thwarting security and moving the sarcophagus from the buyer's warehouse to their own warehouse that they have rented. And Ross is in charge of, quote, “the most delicate part of the heist, the museum proxy”. And we're not totally told what that is. But we do know that her job is really important. So we'll get more information on that later. A new obstacle arises even though, or because Noelia’s team has been banned from the museum, they're worried that they are going to attack Ross's team once the sarcophagus is on the move.
And so their solution is to hire their own transport truck. And honestly, I don't know the ins and outs of the truck situation. She doesn't super explain that. Or maybe she did and I missed it, but what I got was enough to know, oh, they'll get their own truck. It'll be fine. So I know that I particularly can get bogged down in the intricacies of plans when I write 'em myself and I feel like it can be a rabbit hole of, and then we're gonna do this and then that, and then, and I don't think the reader needs to know. And so I actually like, or I don't mind, that the truck situation is a little vague to me. Even though I have read this several times, it's still vague.
[00:17:17] Anne-Marie Strohman: Well, and I think she's done a really smart thing by breaking up the planning part into two pieces and putting the really fun reconnaissance in between. And logically it works like, okay, we have a sort of plan. We need more information. Now we're gonna make the detail of the plan. So the logic of it works, but it also splits up that what could be drier material and keeps it shorter and punchy. She gives us enough that we can. Imagine that it's gonna be successful, we can project that this is gonna work. And it also, as it's being executed, there's a level of tension because we expect a certain outcome and we're worried that it won't happen.
[00:17:54] Erin Nuttall: Mm-hmm.
[00:17:55] Anne-Marie Strohman: And so she creates tension by letting us know what the plan is, but then with leaving some of it mysterious, she has the opportunities to surprise us in different ways as well.
[00:18:05] Erin Nuttall: Yeah, that's true. And I do appreciate, like I said, that she doesn't take us into the weeds of the plan, because. again, pacing it could just get really slow. And some people may super like that and that's just a different style of book. I think sometimes, there's certain sci-fi books or fantasy books I don't wanna read because they get really into the weeds of worlds or magic or science or you know, what have you. But other people just eat up. So know what kind of book you're writing.
[00:18:34] Anne-Marie Strohman: So they have this plan, and if they just executed it perfectly, it might be satisfying in a certain way, but it probably wouldn't have as much tension. And as we know, this book is full of tension and all about tension. So how does Lewis amp up the tension before they take action on the plan?
[00:18:52] Erin Nuttall: So even though she set it up for us to think that, Mylo's danger junkie 'cause she does have a little piece at the very beginning that Mylo being a danger junkie might be a problem to the plan we get, I think it's a little bit of a surprise, in that Mylo and Devroe get into an argument and then Devroe goes MIA, and then Ross and Mylo hacked Devroe’s phone. Kind of 'cause they're mad at him. Right? I will say it's a super jerky thing of Devroe to do, to just disappear when they're in the middle of this high stakes thing. And he's got this prominent role. So we have this emotional conflict in the middle of it. And just to back up a little bit, we had a lovely piece of romantic tension just prior to the cocktail party where Ross comes out and is like dressed to the nines and looking really cute and Devroe’s like, oh wow, you're super hot. And she's like, yeah, I know. But there's this romantic tension, right? And now we're having this relationship tension that is definitely negative.
[00:19:52] Anne-Marie Strohman: Mm-hmm. So now we're tense and we're ready. We know the plan. We know it will take effort to execute the plan. We know one of many, many things could go wrong, including this interpersonal conflict and derail the whole thing. So walk us through what happens and how Lewis keeps that tension for the reader. Or even amps it up 'cause she does that.
[00:20:13] Erin Nuttall: Oh, she does, she does amp it up. So if you recall, the planning of the highest starts at 50%. The heist actually beginning is about 64%. And so you can see that that does take some time. It takes some pages, but it's not a ton. But you know, what is that 14%? 14, 15%? That's a good chunk. So don't feel like you have to cut that part short because that can bring tension to what comes after, having this set up well. Okay, so the heist begins.
They're at the auction. And surprise, surprise, Noelia shows up at the hotel. She's pulled some strings and got herself in. And then almost immediately after that, Ross is basically texting the team, hey, Noelia is here. Keep your eyes out. And we get a message from the people who run the gambit and they're giving them an extra task. They have to steal these digital folders from a room in the hotel. And everyone is busy doing something, but Ross has a tiny little break, so she decides she's gonna do it. She just executive decisions that. So we have the heist going on and then we have a new objective, which is to steal the files. So she goes in and she's, and she's able to steal the files and that gives her new, information about the gambit, like the people who run it. But then she also gets faced with some really big obstacles. We have talked about this. This is when she experiences the All is Lost/Dark Night of the Soul moments. 'Cause she faces these big obstacles and the culmination of them is that she is handcuffed to a balcony that's 5, 7, 8 stories high. I can't remember. It's high up there and she can't figure a way out of it. And Noelia has the digital files. She stole them from her.
So along with losing the files to Noelia for the second objective, because of that, they receive a penalty of no communication for 60 minutes. So now we have a major obstacle where she is not able to communicate with her team. And then Devroe, who does actually show up, despite his storming off, he accidentally takes some of the drugs that he was meant to use to persuade his target. And he passes out at the hotel and he's out of commission.
[00:22:37] Anne-Marie Strohman: So that seems like a lot of things are going wrong.
[00:22:40] Erin Nuttall: Oh, just one or two.
[00:22:42] Anne-Marie Strohman: But we know everything goes to 11. So how else do things go wrong?
[00:22:47] Erin Nuttall: Okay, so then we come at the 74% mark. The heist begins at 64%. The second objective is 66%. Dark Night of the Soul is 70%, and here we are at 74%. Ross is able to catch up with Mylo and Kyung-soon, but then they're all captured by Noelia’s team who steals the sarcophagus from them. I know. And it's dire, right?
[00:23:13] Anne-Marie Strohman: It is. They're losing.
[00:23:14] Erin Nuttall: Yes. But after Noelia’s team leaves, we and poor Kyung-soon, who has been in the dark, find out that Mylo switched the original sarcophagus with the replica. In an earlier episode, we talk about how Ross and Mylo see the replica and comment on, oh wow, the replica's really good. And that's all we get until now. So it's interesting because, a heist needs a twist. We need the reader to be surprised about something, but we don't want it to fully come out of nowhere or the reader might feel tricked rather than enjoyment at the twist. And so that little mention of them noticing the replica helps the reader be like, ah, I should have seen it coming. And like that kind of enjoyment that you can get. Anyway, they win, they get the sarcophagus.
[00:24:07] Anne-Marie Strohman: Yeah, I, I love that you mentioned just the clues that she gives us that are really throwaway moments. Ross sees the replica, Ross points it out to Mylo, Mylo says “the original has been disassembled and reassembled several times.” And so we get those little three clues, three moments of setup that make it feel like, oh, of course, this is what happened, but when you're reading it, it doesn't sink in that much.
And so she set us up for that twist without spoiling it but made that twist feel grounded instead of coming completely out of the blue.
[00:24:43] Erin Nuttall: Right. And like we said, she sets it up so it's not out of nowhere, but because there's so much tension, there's so many relationship moments, both romantic and friendship wise. And also the extra objective that they have to do, and plus all of the moving parts of the heist.
It's super easy as a reader to just miss them until later and then be like, oh yeah, which is, I think, just the ideal response to something like that is to have the reader be like, ah, yes, this is so cool.
[00:25:15] Anne-Marie Strohman: I am a reader who loves that tension of knowing they're gonna win, right? Like they're gonna win.
But I always feel, at least in this book, I always felt like, oh, but they could lose. Oh, but they could lose. Oh, but they could lose. Oh no, they lost. Oh, they won. Right? Like that feeling that I had during the whole thing. I didn't trust that they were gonna win, even though my analytic brain is like, well, they're probably gonna win.
But she set us up with some losses early so that we feel like loss is possible. She sets up all these different obstacles like there are all those things that build that tension that it might fail.
[00:25:52] Erin Nuttall: She does give us the possibility that it totally might fail. And I will say if you go into it knowing it's going to be continued at the end, which I didn't, but if you do know that, like if you were to pick it up today knowing that there's already a second book out, you might actually think that they would lose it. And then we could pick up more of the story in the next book.
We just have a lot going on and it, and it's, and it's a lot for your mind to think about and it's a lot for, I mean, my story brain is always picking apart stories. It's just what my brain likes to do when I read. It's part of the enjoyment of reading for me. So when I'm still like, I dunno what's gonna happen next, then that's a good thing for sure. Not for me. It makes me a little mad. No, just kidding.
[00:26:39] Anne-Marie Strohman: So Erin, what are you taking away from today?
[00:26:42] Erin Nuttall: I am taking away the power of keeping your reader distracted. I feel like this book is just really awesome at that. She is able to keep, like I just talked about, just so many things going on at once that your reader is like, oh, I wish they would kiss and then oh man, what's gonna happen on the train? Like we don't have a moment to breathe and fully process and that way you can trick your reader..
[00:27:12] Anne-Marie Strohman: Hmm.
[00:27:13] Erin Nuttall: What about you? What are you taking away?
[00:27:16] Anne-Marie Strohman: I am taking away the power of relationship or internal struggle as an obstacle within a very external plot. We have this heist that's all about these external obstacles. The security teams, Noelia showing up, transport trucks, like it's very concrete stuff, and yet what adds tension is Devroe storming off or Mylo and Devroe having a fight or Ross feeling discouraged. Right? There's this internal piece that can create more obstacles and tension, in a place that I wouldn't normally have thought I would see that that much.
[00:27:55] Erin Nuttall: Yeah, and there is a lot of, we didn't even talk about, we talked a little bit about one tiny romantic moment, but there's actually several romantic moments in the middle of this. And it's like we also get Devroe, giving her her bracelet back, but he has somehow covered in gold without making it ruined. I don't really know how that works, but it's awesome. It takes this piece that's very important to her and ties it to him. So yes, there's just so much internal stuff happening. I like the timing of it all. It's also not distracting where you're like, oh my gosh, get over this romance, we gotta get back to the heist. Right? It's, we've had enough setup of both that we're like, yes, romance, and then yes heist. So…
[00:28:43] Anne-Marie Strohman: Yeah. We're rooting for both of them. And they, because they kind of coincide too, right? Like the, the heist is dependent on their relationship being at least amicable. Right? So there's a tie between those two plots.
[00:28:58] Erin Nuttall: Yes, for sure. And having that romance right here in the height of a big external obstacle is actually really a nice setup for when Devroe ultimately betrays her. So she gets an external betrayal in that her aunt is stolen or kidnapped, and then we get the internal betrayal of her romantic interest is the kidnapper. Without that romantic piece happening there, then, it wouldn't be as satisfying.
[00:29:33] Anne-Marie Strohman: Right. Or devastating, really, for her.
[00:29:37] Erin Nuttall: Oh yeah, that too.
[00:29:40] Anne-Marie Strohman: Emotionally satisfying for the reader. Emotionally devastating for Ross.
[00:29:45] Erin Nuttall: Yeah for sure. Poor Ross. She goes through it.
Okay, so what is this episode's Cool Gadget?
[00:29:53] Anne-Marie Strohman: Well, I have clearly saved the best Cool adget for last, and because it's such an ultra cool gadget and Lewis uses it a lot, I'm gonna bring it back for an encore next time. We're gonna talk about the meteor bracelet, which you just mentioned.
[00:30:07] Erin Nuttall: I did. It's like, it's like an impression or something.
[00:30:11] Anne-Marie Strohman: So today I just wanna talk about how it's set up and how Ross is using it for heisty purposes or gambit purposes.
[00:30:18] Erin Nuttall: Mm-hmm.
[00:30:19] Anne-Marie Strohman: It shows up on page three when she's in the little cabinet on the first jigsaw job with her mom, and it says this. “Crouching, I unrolled my weapon of choice. The Quest fam isn't fond of guns. They're not stealthy. Mom carries a knife and according to her, granny once had a collection of syringes with fast acting sedatives that she could dish out like spices by a five star chef. I suspect I didn't have the stomach to sink a blade or a needle into someone's flesh. So instead, I adopted the meteor bracelet. The length of lynx is easy to wrap around my wrist and the heavy cherry sized metal weight at the end pop snugly into a magnetized ring on my middle finger. It's less difficult to smuggle past checkpoints than blades and in my hands just as effective, if not as final as a knife.”
[00:31:08] Erin Nuttall: Ooooh.
[00:31:09] Anne-Marie Strohman: So then we just get a few more mentions when she's on the ship with her mom during the heist, which is something we really haven't talked about at all in this podcast. When she decides after the mom's kidnapped and she decides to go to the gambit, she has to sneak out of the house. And it's just mentioned that she has her bag that she packed and she says, “with my meteor bracelet still wrapped around my wrist.” And then a few pages later when she's on the flight, they didn't even put her through security and she says, “if I'd known they weren't going to check my bag, I would've brought more weapons than just my meteor bracelet, which I'd worked extra hard to style as a harmless accessory. What were my competitors bringing to the game?”
So just in that, it's used nicely to show us that she's probably under weaponized, under armored, and she's curious about what her competitors bring and it kind of is a transition into thinking about the gambit as a whole. And then we really see it in action in the gallery scenes. And we looked both at the fight with Noelia in a Cool Gadget section and then the fight with Adra as well with the rings, ring girl. And she is using her bracelet as a weapon in both of those cases. So it's the only weapon she brings. We know that's all she's got. She's super comfortable using it. She doesn't wanna use knives. That tells us a lot about her, that she's squeamish about puncturing flesh, even though she will hit it. And so far, you know, it's something that she, is really personal to her. It's special, it's unique, it's hers. And next time we're gonna look at the emotional resonance and how that plays out in the rest of the story.
[00:32:45] Erin Nuttall: And there is a lot, it is a little bit of a safety blanket for her, so it'll be fun to see how, how that works out.
[Music outro]
[00:32:52] Anne-Marie Strohman: So that is it for today. The Kid Lit Craft Podcast is scripted by Erin, produced by me, edited by Ander Nuttall, and has music by Trevor Strohman. If you enjoyed this podcast, you can find more content like this as well as our summer classes, Ask the Author book club, and workshops at kidlitcraft.com. Find us on social media @KidLitCraft, and you can support this podcast on Patreon. We've also got T-shirts, and you can find those at Cotton Bureau and there will be a link in the show notes.
[00:33:23] Erin Nuttall: Just an FYI. If you like a soft T-shirt with a cute logo, there you go. That's where you go, to our show notes, to Cotton Bureau. Please download episodes; like, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen; and let your writer friends know about the podcast. We can't wait to nerd out with you.
[00:33:41] Anne-Marie Strohman: Thanks for joining us. See you next time.
