Tucholke applied the Page 69 Test to Between the Spark and the Burn, the sequel to Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, and reported the following:I think pg 69 does a pretty good job of representing the rest of my book, actually. There's a mysterious girl with blood on her dress, talking about a devil-boy who steals dreams. The main character, Violet, has followed a rumor to a small village in the Virginian mountains. Everyone in the village is hostile and odd, in the classic manner of H.P. Lovecraft--Lovecraft and his eerie, secluded towns served as an inspiration for this sequel.Learn more about the book and author at April Genevieve Tucholke's website.
From page 69:looked toward her house, quick, and then looked back at us again. “Some people are saying he’s the devil and has hooves for feet and fire coming out of his fingertips, but it’s wrong. It’s all wrong. He . . . he just looks like a boy, just a boy like either of you.” She stopped and stared at Neely, and then at Luke. “I saw him when he came to me, in my bedroom. He sat on my stomach, light as air, and tried to steal my dreams, only I woke up. The other girls, they didn’t wake up in time, they didn’t see his face in the dark, but I struck a match. I saw.”
Neely flinched when the girl said a boy, just a boy like either of you.
The girl started blinking fast, and her eyes were pleading and wistful and kind of lonely. That look was familiar to me, in some deep, almost forgotten way.
“I didn’t tell anyone,” she said. “The other girls told, but I didn’t.”
I wanted to ask her more, and so did Neely, behind me. His mouth was parted and I could almost see his questions, sitting on the edge of his tongue...
But I felt so bad for her suddenly, with her red-rimmed eyes and her skinny shoulders all hunched up and the blood on her dress. I didn’t care about anything, right then. Not the devil-boy, not the dead birds, not Brodie. There was just this girl.
My Book, The Movie: Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.
--Marshal Zeringue
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