"The Moment of Everything"

Shelly King is a native Southerner who packed her bags and moved to Silicon Valley at the beginning of the Internet boom. She works for a major software company as a social media strategist and information architect. Her stories have been published in the GW Review, Epiphany, Slow Trains, the Dos Passos Review, and the Coe Review.

She applied the Page 69 Test to The Moment of Everything, her first novel, and reported the following:

I think this page does represent the rest of the book quite well. It shows how the notes Maggie finds in the book are a fascination not just for her but for others. These people are longing for a little romance in their lives, just like Maggie is, and Maggie has found romance, at least someone else’s, in the pages of an old used book. The people who respond to her posting online the notes she finds represent what I hope the reader of The Moment of Everything is feeling. Who are these people? What happened to them? Can I find love in a bookstore? But the page also gives us more of a glimpse of Maggie’s friendship with Dizzy. This is a key relationship for her and this page shows that it’s not one-sided. He wants to help her get what she wants, or at least what she thinks she wants at the time. That relationship becomes one of the key points of tension throughout the novel. What happens when you change and your friend doesn't?

Visit Shelly King's website.

--Marshal Zeringue