He applied the Page 69 Test to his latest novel, Pitch Dark, and reported the following:Pitch Dark is a supernatural thriller set on Minnesota’s northern border during a Christmas Eve blizzard. A young woman, Vera Coffey, is on the run from an apocalyptic cult. She has something they want badly. She’d give it up if it weren’t the only thing keeping her alive.Learn more about the book and author at Steven Sidor's website and blog.
On page 69, we meet Vera’s boyfriend, Chan, a professional thief who’s about to run into the worst kind of trouble:
Chan told her about this special assignment. A freaky group needed him to steal something for them. They couldn’t do it themselves. It wasn’t the danger involved that bugged them, it was freak rules. They were a kind of sect and another sect took their stuff. They wanted it back. He didn’t ask too many questions. Because it looked like easy money. A decent chunk of coin to bounce them out of this rut. Vera thought it sounded too weird. She didn’t like the name the group called themselves, either.After stealing an occult relic that may, or may not, open the gates of hell, Chan finds the mutilated bodies of the Wiccan witches whose home he invaded. Now he’s in too deep with no way out. And Vera’s stuck down there with him:
The Pitch.
Back inside their apartment, their security felt weak. Chan cracked the seal on a bottle of Old No. 7. Drank. The bottleneck clinked against his skull rings. She watched his whiskered throat move in jerks. The stolen item sat on the kitchen table. He came up for air. His face sweated rivets.It’s up to Vera to save them, to stop the Pitch’s plan, and keep the gates of hell from breaking wide open...
“Put that thing in the closet. I can’t look at it,” he said. He rubbed the bottle against his flushed cheeks.
He went into the bedroom. Taking the bottle...
The Page 69 Test: Steven Sidor's The Mirror’s Edge.
Writers Read: Steven Sidor.
--Marshal Zeringue
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