"Miss Ellicott's School for the Magically Minded"

Sage Blackwood lives at the edge of a large forest, with thousands of books and a very old dog, and enjoys carpentry, cooking, and walking in the woods of New York State.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her latest novel, Miss Ellicott's School for the Magically Minded, and reported the following:

Okay, I just went and looked at page 69 of Miss Ellicott's School for the Magically Minded. Yikes!

With each of my books, there's been a point in the editorial process where I've been asked to dial a scene back a little because it's too scary.

Nobody flagged the scene that starts on page 69 as scary.

It turns out that scene is very scary if (and only if) you're averse to snakes. Which it turns out some people are.

Snakes! Why did it have to be snakes?

Well, I thought, snakes are a metaphor for knowledge, right, and for the dangers some perceive as inherent to knowledge, and…

But snakes are also snakes.

So if you're an ophiophobe, the book stops being fun on page 69 and things might not improve until around page 191. Because although most of what happens in those 122 pages is about other things, unfortunately frequent snakiness does occur.

Well, just one snake. And it's a nice snake, really. And it turns into… but I get ahead of myself.

Yes, page 69 is representative of the book as a whole.

Visit Sage Blackwood's website.

--Marshal Zeringue