"The Speed of Sound"

Eric Bernt was born in Marion, Ohio, and raised in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, and Madison, Wisconsin. He attended Northwestern University, where he learned that journalism was not for him—but storytelling was. Upon graduation, he moved to Hollywood, where he wrote seven feature films including Virtuosity (starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe) and Surviving the Game (starring Rutger Hauer, Gary Busey, and F. Murray Abraham). He has also written for television (Z Nation). Bernt lives in Agoura Hills, California, with his wife and three children.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, The Speed of Sound, and reported the following:

Page 69 in The Speed of Sound is a scene in the Russell Senate Building in which a senator is introduced to the concept of 'acoustic archeology' and the intelligence possibilities it presents. This idea is at the very core of the book, so it most certainly represents the rest of it. I've been obsessed with this little known area of science since first reading about it two decades ago. Every now and then, I come across a new technology, approach, or advance that utterly captivates me. Acoustic archeology was one. This was a book I had to write.

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--Marshal Zeringue