Howard West
Freelance Writer · Researcher · Explorer
In my younger years, I worked as a computer programmer, wedding photographer, cowboy, inventor, and freelance writer. My work appeared in publications, including Rock & Gem, Western Horseman, Nevada Magazine, Golf Digest, and 4-Wheeler.
I traveled on horseback through the Sierra Nevada and the mountains of Death Valley, listening to and collecting stories along the way. I also developed a patented solar-energy system and pursued historical and anthropological questions with the curiosity of an independent field researcher.
On one particularly memorable journey, I traveled 6,000 miles through the American West with a covered wagon and burros. Everyone loves a “good-looking ass”—and I owned six of them. Perhaps that is why storytellers along the trail always seemed to find me. Today, I turn that same curiosity toward the distant past of the Eastern Mediterranean, exploring its myths, mysteries, forgotten technologies, and unexpected connections—and wondering what its ancient storytellers were really trying to preserve.
When not writing or researching, I can be found deep in remote archaeological landscapes, accompanied only by the steady silence of the desert and a pair of pack burros, searching for what time tried to erase.
About Locked Gates
In Locked Gates, West invites readers into a historical investigation where familiar stories become coded messages and unexpected connections reveal themselves as clues. Drawing upon ancient accounts, scientific evidence, wordplay, and engineering principles, he challenges readers to reconsider what history has left in plain sight—and what it has deliberately obscured.
Locked Gates, The Riddle Lord’s Secrets is not merely a book about the past. It is a summons. An invitation to step into a world where riddles were never meant to deceive, but to protect. Where myths and legends may have been crafted as elegant facades—beautiful masks hiding powerful concepts within tales of sex, violence, and the supernatural. Stories repeated for thousands of years, carrying knowledge forward in disguise.
What if the stories we think we know were never meant as entertainment? What if ancient symbols concealed practical technologies once understood, then lost? What if the past has been whispering to us all along—its voice buried in riddles, waiting for someone willing to listen?
This book opens the gate. Whether readers step through is up to them.
