"Lamentation"

Ken Scholes's short fiction has been appearing in various magazines and anthologies for the last eight years, including Realms of Fantasy, Polyphony 6 and Weird Tales. He is a winner of the Writers of the Future contest.

He applied the Page 69 Test to Lamentation, his first novel, and reported the following:

“A woman met the forward scouts west of Sethbert's camp, lord. She came magicked and asking for your protection under the Providence of Kin-Clave.”

He smiled but there was no satisfaction in it. Maybe later, when all of this unpleasantness had passed. “Very well. Prepare her for travel.”

“Lord?”

“She is to be escorted to the seventh manor. You leave within the hour. The metal man goes with her. Select and magick a half-squad to assist you.”

“Yes, lord.”

“And fetch me my raven.” Rudolfo fell back into the cushions, exhaustion washing over him.

“Lord Rudolfo?” The metal man struggled to his feet, his damaged leg sparking. “Am I leaving you?”

“Yes, Isaak, for bit.” He rubbed his eyes. “I wish for you to start that work we spoke of. When I am finished here, I will bring you help.”

"Is there anything I can do here, lord?"

He doesn't wish to go, Rudolfo realized. But he was too tired to find words of explanation. And the metal man brought something out in him -- something like compassion. He couldn't bear to tell him that he was simply too dangerous a weapon to have on the battlefield. Rudolfo rubbed his eyes again and yawned. “Pack your tools, Isaak. You’re leaving soon.”

The metal man packed, then swung the heavy pouch over his shoulder. Rudolfo climbed to his feet.

“The woman you will be traveling with is Jin Li Tam of House Li Tam. I would have you bear a message to her.”

Isaak said nothing, waiting.

“Tell her she chose well and that I will come to her when I am finished here.”

“Yes, lord.”

Rudolfo followed Isaak out of the tent. His raven awaited, its feathers glossy and dark as a wooded midnight. He took it from the scout’s steady hands.

“When you reach the seventh manor,” he told his scout, “tell my steward there that Isaak -- the metal man -- bears my grace.”

The scout nodded once and left. Isaak looked at Rudolfo. His mouth opened and closed; no words came out.

Rudolfo held the raven close, stroking its back with his finger. “I will see you soon, Isaak. Start your work. I’ll send the others when I’ve freed them. You’ve a library to re-build.”

Above is Page 69 of my first novel, Lamentation, though I took the liberty of finishing Rudolfo's dialogue, which carries a few sentences over to Page 70.

This is actually a pretty good page for this exercise. We have three of the primary characters all preparing to move -- Rudolfo is getting ready for war while Jin Li Tam, the courtesan spy, and Isaak, the metal man Rudolfo found in the ruins of Windwir, are preparing to leave the Desolation for Rudolfo's Ninefold Forest. Isaak will begin rebuilding what of the library can be rebuilt from his memory scrolls and the memory scrolls of the other surviving mechoservitors Rudolfo is sworn to free from Sethbert's camp. Jin Li Tam will first lay eyes on what is to become her new home as a result of the sudden strategic alliance between her father and Rudolfo and move in the direction of becoming her own woman, despite her father's manipulations, in a partnership with someone who is her equal. The page also gives us some tidbits from the story -- magicked scouts, messenger birds, and the beginnings of Rudolfo's friendship with Isaak.

If you like Page 69, I hope you'll give the novel a try!

Read an excerpt from Lamentation, listen to an audio excerpt, and watch a video interview with Ken Scholes.

Learn more about the author and his work at Ken Scholes's website and blog.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Skin and Bones"

Tom Bale's debut novel, Sins of the Father, was published in April 2006.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his latest novel, Skin and Bones, and reported the following:

Skin and Bones tells the story of a young woman, Julia Trent, who gets caught up in a killing spree in the tiny Sussex village of Chilton. A gunman goes on the rampage, shooting everyone in his path, before taking his own life.

At least, that’s what everyone thinks.

By page 69, Julia has been shot and left for dead. In the grim aftermath of the massacre, journalist Craig Walker tries unsuccessfully to reach the village, which is now sealed off by police. He is desperate to learn the fate of his father, who lived in Chilton, but at this stage the authorities won’t confirm any details about the number or identity of the victims. Reluctantly, Craig decides there isn’t much point remaining at the scene:

He had his press card and no doubt could have talked his way into the media tent, but it was bound to lead to trouble. He knew exactly the kind of morbid humour that journalists employed at times like this, and he’d just end up picking a fight with someone. He had no desire to mix with people for whom this was little more than a thrilling carnival.

Craig returns home, knowing he is set for a difficult conversation with his wife, Nina, whom he suspects of having an affair. She’d supposedly gone into work that Saturday morning, but when news of the massacre broke and Craig called her office, no one could find her.

She stepped forward as if to embrace him, but perhaps sensing it wouldn’t be welcome, settled for lightly caressing his arm. “Is he all right?”

“No news yet. They said they’ll let me know.” Again she reached out, but he brushed her off and made for the living room. He felt her freeze, slightly incredulous that she had been shunned. “What are they saying on TV?”

“Mostly speculation,” she said, “recycled over and over. Reporters interviewing each other because no one will speak to them.”

Craig grunted. He threw himself on to a sofa. Sky News was showing what appeared to be the same aerial footage from earlier. The voiceover said, “…now confirmed to be one of the worst spree killings in recent years.”

Page 69 isn’t particularly representative of the book, in that it features a secondary character, but hopefully it conveys some of the fear and confusion felt by those caught up in the tragedy. Soon Craig will learn that his father gave his life to save Julia, and then, when he eventually manages to speak to her, he makes an even more shocking discovery. There were two gunmen, not one. And the second killer is still out there…

Read an excerpt from Skin and Bones and watch the video trailer.

Learn more about the author and his work at Tom Bale's website.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Good Book"

David Plotz is the editor of Slate and the author of The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new book, Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible, and reported the following:

Page 69 begins a new chapter of Good Book, the chapter about the Bible’s Book of Numbers. So it’s a short page, with lots of white space. It has the chapter title—“The Book of Numbers: The Source of All Jewish Comedy”— and a chapter summary of the kind that you see in 19th century novels. Below that, there’s room for just a few sentences of actual writing. That said, it’s an acceptable stand-in for the whole book. Perhaps the two key points in Good Book are that the Bible is 1) very entertaining; and 2) omnipresent in modern life. The chapter subtitle, “The Source of All Jewish Comedy,” hints at both of those points. (What that subtitle refers to, incidentally, is the way in which the Jews wandering in the Sinai desert during Numbers keep histrionically moaning, “I wish I was dead,” a melodramatic complaint that has, thanks to Woody Allen and every Jewish mother joke, now been recast as comedy.) I also think that the few sentences that do fit on the bottom of the page, which describe the census of the Israelites that gives the Book of Numbers its name, do capture the basic tone of the book: enthusiastic, sardonic befuddlement.

Browse inside Good Book and read Plotz's essay "What I learned from reading the entire Bible."

Watch a video of David Plotz explaining the inspiration for the project that became Good Book, and view his appearance on The Colbert Report.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Bridge of Sand"

Janet Burroway is Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor Emerita of the Florida State University and the author of numerous novels, plays, poetry, essays, texts for dance, and children’s books. Her Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft is the most widely used creative writing text in America.

She applied “Page 69 Test” to her new novel, Bridge of Sand, and reported the following:

It pleases me that though p. 69 carries neither high action nor luminous prose, it does hint at intrigue and carries most of the novel’s themes.

Dana has failed to connect with her black lover Cassius, and, not daring to call him at home, she’s come to scope out the paper mill where he’s a security guard. She’s morally if not literally trespassing, so “an executive-looking sleek sedan of some sort” is out of her class, while a “pink-cheeked…Kewpie cop,” is, though by definition Cassius’s colleague, not somebody she could level with.

“Fight or flight,” I see, is an image of territorial imperative, which, from 9/11 when the novel begins to Dana’s longing search for a home, is probably the novel’s most pervasive theme. “Kewpie” is a reference back to an early incident, when the discovery of an old newspaper clipping reminded Dana of her grandmother’s doll collection, and so gave her the notion of returning south. The guard makes overt and status-conscious reference to 9/11, though Cassius told her that people around here didn’t pay much attention to it, as they were “just trying to get through to payday.”

The exchange about a factory tour is idle self-justifying on Dana’s part now, but later in the book she’ll carry through with it in a more urgent attempt to track Cassius down—and will confusingly find herself very comfortable with the CEO of the mill.

I see I’ve missed a trick, though. The story is full of references to smoke and mirrors, a motif pointing to both the lies everybody in the book tells and also the way I’m working. The first word of the book is “smoke,” followed soon by a mirror in a mortuary limousine. There are sunglasses and tinted windows here on page 69, and one or the other should have been referred to as “smoky.” She should have seen the saloon first in the rear view mirror. Nobody, I trust, would ever notice this sort of thing unless I pointed it out (or unless some earnest Ph.D. student in Indiana should go to work on it), but it’s a major pleasure for me. Hint: look for devils.

Somebody told me once that all good novels could be summed up in their last word. I checked mine out. They end: pocket, all, too, ambition, me, world, peace. I’ll go with that.

Read an excerpt from Bridge of Sand and learn more about the author and her work at Janet Burroway's website.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Made to be Broken"

Kelley Armstrong is the author of the internationally bestselling The Otherworld series and other works.

She applied “Page 69 Test” to Made to be Broken, her second Nadia Stafford thriller, and reported the following:

Page 69 of Made to be Broken is a decent sample of the novel. My ex-cop-turned-hitwoman narrator, Nadia, is investigating the disappearance of her wilderness lodge’s teen mother housekeeper. Kids out camping on the night Sammi vanished reported hearing a cougar scream in the area, so Nadia and her mentor, Jack, have stopped at the local roadside zoo.

The page is a good mix of dialogue, action, description and introspection, not too heavy on any. It’s more descriptive than most of my writing but, in general, someone reading only this page will get a good sample of my work.

They’ll also get a good idea what the story is about, which doesn’t always happen in these tests! They can tell that the narrator is looking for an escaped cougar responsible for the death of a teenager. What they won’t get is any hint that the narrator is a woman or a professional killer, but if they’ve read the jacket copy, that’s clear.

There’s also a nice bit of character revelation here, in Nadia’s reaction to the zoo and, more subtly, with Jack, watching the aging caged cougar pace.

In sum, if someone did open Made to be Broken to page 69, I’d feel confident that it would give them a good idea whether or not it’s a book they might enjoy.

Page 69 – Made to be Broken:

Jack continued, his faint brogue swallowed as he affected what I called his “national newscaster” voice, no trace of any regional accent. “I need to talk to you about your big cats.”

“I didn’t lose no cougars.” She opened the gate and ushered us through. “Look around all you want. Tex and Mex are right where they should be. In their cage back here.” She started walking, then turned and gestured to Jack’s cast. “Watch your step. It’s the mud season. Damned slippery.”

We passed cages of monkeys, foxes and one lynx who lay draped over a branch like he’d died there. Judging by the smell, he had. All the other animals moved to the edge of their cages and stared out at us with the hardened bitterness of lifers.

People paid to come in here. In summer, kids raced along these rows, parents scurrying after them, and they had a good time. What kept them from taking one look, one sniff, and running to the nearest exit?

“Here they are,” Roberta said. “Tex and Mex. My cougars.”

One of the tawny big cats lay in the lone beam of sunlight that filtered past the heavy bars. The other paced the shadows at the back. Both were old, with rotting teeth and mangy fur, just as Meredith had said. I couldn’t imagine either having the strength to cover the twenty kilometers between here and the Potter place, let alone kill a healthy teenager.

I glanced at Jack, but he was watching the cat pace in its dirty cage. It turned to look at him, a haunted, half-mad emptiness in its eyes.

I checked the cage. No broken door bound shut with rope. No recent welds on the bars. No signs of any recent repairs. The pacing cat slumped into an exhausted heap and fell asleep almost as soon as it hit the floor.

Read the first three chapters of Made to be Broken, and learn more about the author and her work at Kelley Armstrong's website.

Read the My Book, The Movie entry for Exit Strategy, the first Nadia Stafford novel.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Darling Jim"

Born and raised in Copenhagen, Denmark, Christian Moerk moved to Vermont in his early twenties. After getting his MS in journalism at Columbia University, he was a movie executive for Warner Bros. Pictures, and later wrote about film for the New York Times.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his American debut novel, the gothic Irish thriller Darling Jim, and reported the following:

Sometimes, serendipity is precise.

On page 69 of Darling Jim, the reader is put slap bang into the middle of what I’ve attempted with this book: tell a story that’s a modern folk tale, a love story, and a thriller.

The audience’s representative is Niall, a young mail carrier with artistic aspirations, who leads us through the story in the present day. He uncovers two diaries written by young women who were murdered and succeeded in mailing out their last thoughts before the end, hoping a kind soul would solve the mystery of their death; these women’s past unfolds in the near-present. But the “Darling Jim” of the title is a seanchaí – a charming bard who tells stories up and down the Irish coast – around whom the entire secret revolves.

And on my page 69, he has reached the point where his mythical tale in Ireland’s distant past begins to reveal parallels to his own present-day life. His unfolding story, you see, has to do with the nature of love and death. Will a man condemned to spend eternity as a wolf unless he finds love continue to murder regardless? And will the mostly female audience to Jim’s tale ignore the obvious warning signs and continue to let themselves be charmed by someone so obviously manipulative? Should one pay heed to moral fables?

On page 69, the mythical ascendant king Euan’s taste for preying on women is overcome by his need to hunt wolves – an appetite that will cost him dearly:

Henceforth, the castle with the black gate would forever come to be known as Dún an Fhaoil. For what had a better ring to it than the Fort of the Wolf? He struck his family’s age-old nautical crest from the castle’s banners and shields and replaced it with a fearsome wolf leaping through a forest clearing, a sign of his own good fortune and ferocious human appetites.

King Euan lived almost three more years this way.

Until God finally decided to frown on cowardice and treachery.

So, thematically, this page represent the theme of sexual and predatory rapaciousness. But the folk tale is only one leg in the tripod the makes up the entire story. Niall’s search for clues in the wilds of West Cork and the dead women acting as his guide from beyond the grave are the two parts that showcase an unusual part of modern Ireland few people get to see. The language here is completely different and bears no resemblance to the high-toned nature of Jim’s macabre tale. But taken together, the story asks one question:

Will love or death triumph?

I hope you’ll enjoy this triptych.

Read an excerpt from Darling Jim, and visit Christian Moerk's website and the Darling Jim Facebook group.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Life Sentences"

Laura Lippman has won virtually every major award given to U.S. crime writings, including the Edgar Award, Anthony Award, Agatha Award, Nero Wolfe Award, Shamus Award, and the Quill Award.

She applied both the “Page 99 Test” and the “Page 69 Test” to her latest novel, Life Sentences, and reported the following:

P. 69 is essential to the book and I think most women reading it would want to keep reading. I'm not sure what men would think. It's about the main character's relationship to her father, a difficult man in many ways. Please understand, I'm not being sexist. I assume some men would find this intriguing and some would not. But this, ultimately, is a very feminine book. Which means, to my mind, that it's about things that obsess women. And this hints at a vital truth, one that the main character has yet to confront fully.

P. 99 This is trickier. Life Sentences has a book within the book, excerpts of the main character's bestselling memoir, and those sections are written in what I'll call the self-consciously erudite voice of some memoir writers. So, no, I hate to contradict Mr. Ford, but page 99 does not reveal the quality of the whole. Page 98, though, is really something.

Browse inside Life Sentences and visit Laura Lippman's website.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Bellini Card"

Jason Goodwin's Edgar Award–winning series--The Janissary Tree, The Snake Stone, and now The Bellini Card--is set in Istanbul at the end of the Ottoman Empire and features Investigator Yashim: detective, polyglot, chef, eunuch.

Goodwin applied the Page 69 Test to the new novel and reported the following:

Bah! Smack after a chapter that delves into the life and mind of a sinister fraudster, page 69 of The Bellini Card merely cuts to an invitation. It’s a scene-setter – but what a scene!

I keep to short chapters: it’s a trick I learned from pulp fiction. It keeps things moving smartly along – and, as my optician pointed out, it means she can read a chapter or two on the train or bus to work, then close the book. We’re very film-savvy: these days we appreciate cut-aways and rapid scene changes as we read.

So here we are in Venice, at the beginning of chapter 24, and the Contessa d’Apsi d’Istria sends a footman over to invite Palewski to coffee.

Palewski? Readers of The Janissary Tree and The Snake Stone will know that Yashim’s firmest friend is the Polish ambassador in Istanbul. Now Yashim has deputed him to undertake a search for a long-lost painting by the Venetian artist Gentile Bellini. Yashim stays in Istanbul while Palewski travels to Venice, masquerading as an American art dealer. It isn’t giving too much away to say that Yashim does have to come to Venice himself, eventually.

The Contessa is a Venetian aristocrat through and through, as we learn on page 69. Her palazzo ‘contained a great deal of martial trompe l’oeil decoration, a ceiling by Tiepolo and, beyond the grand piano nobile apartments where the Contessa entertained, barely a stick of furniture.’

And that is what made The Bellini Card such fun to write. Venice is so well-known, in film and books, that it’s a challenge to find a new way of seeing it: but back in 1840 it was seedy and poor, neither the proud Republic of former days, not the tourist Mecca of our age. It survived by flogging off its treasures to visiting lords. Palewski gets fastened on by a host of art hustlers. Some, I’m afraid, don’t make it through to the end of the book.

Is the Contessa – proud, beautiful and a dab hand at fencing with a foil - among them?

The footman led Palewski up the stairs into a small vestibule decorated with frescoes of cupids pouring cornucopias of fruit into the laps of languid women.

‘I shall inform the Contessa of your arrival, signore.’

He was forestalled by the arrival of the Contessa herself, flinging back the door.

So ends page 69, on an appropriate cliff-hanger.

Preview The Bellini Card, and learn more about Jason Goodwin and his work at his website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: The Snake Stone.

My Book, The Movie: The Snake Stone.

--Marshal Zeringue

"American Rust"

Philipp Meyer's writing has been published in McSweeney's, The Iowa Review, Salon.com, and New Stories from the South. From 2005 to 2008 Meyer was a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, American Rust, and reported the following:

American Rust is told from six different deeply internal perspectives. For the most part, each chapter is told from a single character’s perspective. The thought patterns, rhythms of thought and speech, vocabulary and grammar all change. All of it is in third person, which I find much harder to write, but offers nearly infinite flexibility. You can take readers in and out of characters minds with ease, you can show the readers things the characters couldn’t know.

This is from the top of p.69, from the point of view of Billy Poe, one of the protagonists. He and his best friend Isaac English have just been involved in the killing of a homeless man, though at the moment of this passage, Poe thinks that those complications are over. He is in a bar with the woman he loves, Lee, who happens to be Isaac’s sister. At the moment of this passage, Lee has gone across the room, and Poe’s thoughts turn to death and mortality.

In this passage the “her” is a woman Poe briefly dated in high school, who joined the Army for the benefits, was deployed to Iraq and killed. As we can see, Poe can be little bit racist in his generalizations, though he is otherwise a kind person. I think there can be a tendency among writers to either soften these sorts of views or mock characters for having them. It was important to me to be accurate about these things—that these characters be real people whose minds were full of complex and often self-contradictory views, some of which they are aware of, others of which they are not.

The passage:

an IED got her, it was what got all of them over there. All she’d done was join the Reserve. He hoped the Arabs that did it were dead, hoped they’d been gutshot by some hucklebuck sniper with a deer rifle, hoped those Arabs thought they were safe and meanwhile that sniper was adjusting his windage and boom—they were holding in their guts. Christ, he thought, what happened, a second ago you were happy.

Lee handed his beer over and said: “They wouldn’t let me pay for drinks.”

The rest of the page describes an altercation between Poe and another man in the bar. That scene is primarily an action scene, so I imagine that certain readers would like it, while other readers would not.

Read an excerpt from American Rust, and learn more about the book and author at Philipp Meyer's website.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Little Sleep"

Paul Tremblay is a two-time nominee for the Bram Stoker Award and the author of the short speculative fiction collection Compositions for the Young and Old and the hard-boiled/dark fantasy novella City Pier: Above and Below. He has sold over fifty short stories to markets such as Razor Magazine, CHIZINE, Weird Tales, Last Pentacle of the Sun: Writings in Support of the West Memphis Three, and Horror: The Year's Best 2007.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, The Little Sleep, and reported the following:

The Little Sleep features Mark Genevich, a small-small time private detective eeking out an existence in South Boston. Mark is narcoleptic, and he suffers from the most severe symptoms, including hypnogogic hallucinations and cataplexy (a waking paralysis). The novel opens with a young woman walking into his office with an outlandish story about a man who stole her fingers.

Pg 69 is the last page of the eleventh chapter. That clearly means something.

I slowly walk away, exaggerate my limp, maybe give the cop some Keyser Soze thoughts.

Keyser Soze is the infamous presence that hovers over the film The Usual Suspects, serving as the film’s blurred line of reality. Is Soze real or some sort of legend or boogeyman?

Mark Genevich is very much real, but The Little Sleep asks similar questions of reality, memory, and identity. What’s real and what’s a construct? How much of Mark Genevich and his reality (or anyone’s reality for that matter) is based on fact, dreams, or faulty and co-opted memory?

The last thing I need is to have to answer a bunch of Barney Fife questions downtown, and calling Mommy to pick me up at the police station would ruin the whole vibe for everyone involved. I’m more afraid of having to answer Ellen’s questions than theirs. She’s tougher.

Mark wears the garb and follows in the tradition of the superheroes of noir, but he has no special powers. Things fall apart around Mark and he can’t always put them together, and sometimes it’s his fault. He’s not a great fighter and he isn’t good with a gun. He’s smart, but he can’t melt a witness with his intellect and he isn’t going to make mind-blowing inductive leaps of logic. That said, he isn’t lucky and he isn’t mediocre. Mark achieves his bitterly fought for successes because of his will. Yeah, he’s deeply flawed, he’s still financially supported by his mother, and he is prone to bouts of deep despair, but Mark still perseveres. He doesn’t give up despite the horrors of his everyday life and the horrors perpetrated by others around him.

And yeah, Mark calls his mother (Ellen) by her first name.

The stretcher’s metallic legs are like the barren tree branches. They look dead, unfit to carry life and too flimsy to carry any weight.

The last lines of pg 69 end Chapter 11 like a noir novel should: on a suitably dour and ominous note.

Read an excerpt from The Little Sleep, and visit Paul Tremblay's website, blog, and The Little Sleep Facebook page.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Pipeline"

Peter Schechter is the author of Point of Entry, and an international political and communications consultant. A founder of one of Washington's premier strategic communications consulting firms, he has spent twenty years advising presidents, writing advertising for political parties, ghost-writing columns for CEOs, and counseling international organizations out of crises. He also owns a winery, farms goats, and is a partner in a number of successful restaurants.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his latest novel, Pipeline, and reported the following:

On page 69, the trouble reveals itself. You already know the book is about the energy crisis. You already know there is a connection to Russia. But on page 69, you begin to understand the main characters’ deep personal connections to the biggest issue of our future: energy dependence.

Pipeline ricochets between Russia, the United States and Peru and the fight for access to natural gas: the fuel of the future. A huge Russian energy conglomerate plots to secretly take over the natural gas fields in Peru, the largest in the western hemisphere. Once they do, Russian will then add the United States to those countries in Europe that already feel the strangle of dependency from Russia’s monopoly supply of natural gas. How America falls into Russia’s trap and how one young presidential advisor at the White House saves the day is what the book is all about.

The book is about the most pressing issue of our children’s future. It is about energy. Most of our transportation, our electricity, our heating, and our factory outputs depend on fuel sources from an increasingly nasty world. And, America’s energy dependence on foreign sources has increased from 28 percent ten years ago to nearly 70 percent today. Europe’s is even higher.

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman has long advocated for a “Geo-Green” strategy. This means that reducing our dependence on foreign sources of energy is both good for the environment and good for the west’s security.

As pick up the newspaper, I find Pipeline’s plot reflected on the front pages. My first book, Point of Entry, was about the spread of weapons of mass destruction just before that issue hit the front pages. Now Pipeline highlights subjects that are sure to dominate the coming years.

Ø The book is about Russia’s aggressive resurgence; just witness its recent natural gas shut-off to Europe and last summer’s war with Georgia.

Ø The book is about the sharp debate between environmental hopes and energy needs. Can you still hear campaign cries that erupted with Sarah Palin’s call to “Drill, Baby, Drill?” By the way, Pipeline has a very sexy, very tough and very Alaskan head of the CIA. General Martha Packard was already at my editor’s desk long before we got to know Governor Palin.

Ø Pipeline zeroes in on the global race to secure natural gas. All Americans have by now heard from T. Boone Pickens’ brave campaign that natural gas is the next – and maybe the last – generation of fossil fuels before a revolutionary transition to renewable energy.

I write to provide a good, entertaining story. But I also write to educate readers on some of the pressing issues of our times. Indeed, the novel is about difficult questions about America’s foreign policy, the role of Russia and the sacrifices that we, as citizens, must make to free our nation from crippling foreign energy dependence.

Read an excerpt from Pipeline, and learn more about the book and author at Peter Schechter's website and blog.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Afraid"

Jack Kilborn is a pen name for award winning thriller author JA Konrath.

Here is the entry at the Page 69 Test for his new novel, Afraid:

My name is JA Konrath, and I'm known for writing a series of comedic thriller novels about a cop named Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels. All of the books are named after drinks. The newest, Cherry Bomb, comes out this July.

But today I want to talk about another book, written under my pseudonym, Jack Kilborn. It's called Afraid.

Afraid doesn't have any humor in it. From the first page, to the last, it's sole purpose is to shock and terrify.

In this excerpt, taking from page 69 of the UK edition, a very bad man broke into a house to abduct a child. The child is trying to escape...
--

Bernie howled, falling onto his butt, and Duncan ran for the front door with Woof on his heels. The night was cold and dark. Duncan knew to go to his neighbor, Mrs. Teller, for help when Mom wasn’t home, but Mrs. Teller’s lights weren’t on. In fact, no one on the block had their lights on. Duncan figured the electricity was out all over. He and Woof ran to Mrs. Teller’s front door and he banged on it with both hands.

Something glowed behind him. Duncan turned around and saw orange fire flickering through the windows of his house. Bernie appeared in the doorway, lighter raised above his head, and spotted Duncan. He began to limp after him.

“Mrs. Teller!” Duncan banged harder on the door. “It’s Duncan!”

Woof began to bark like crazy. Bernie got closer, close enough for Duncan to hear his manic giggling. Behind Bernie, the fire had spread throughout Duncan’s house. He could now see flames in all four front windows, and smoke rose from the roof.

Bernie’s face stretched out in a grotesque smile. He came closer, and closer, and got within fifteen feet when Mrs. Teller’s door finally opened.

“Stop!” she commanded. Duncan looked at her. Mrs. Teller was close to eighty years old, and her back bent in the shape of a question mark, and Duncan had to help her open jars. But she looked totally scary standing there with Mr. Teller’s old shotgun.

Bernie must have thought so too, because he didn’t come any closer.

“Shoot him!” Duncan cried. “He broke into my house and burned it down and hurt Woof and wants to kill me!”

Bernie giggled. “I saw the house on fire, and tried to help.”

“He’s lying, Mrs. Teller!”

“The boy, the boy is obviously upset and confused. I saved his life.”

“You’re not from around here,” Mrs. Teller said.

“I was passing through. Good thing, good thing I did, or else he’d—the boy—would be dead.”

“Where’s your car?”

Bernie’s grin faltered. “What? Oh, there, on the street.”

“That’s the Chavez’s car,” Mrs. Teller said, and then aimed and pulled the trigger.
--

Unfortunately, Mrs. Teller isn't able to stop Bernie. But you probably expected that, since this is page 69, and there are 250 more pages to read.

While I wouldn't call this scene a good representation of the entirety of Afraid--Duncan is only one of seven main characters, and Bernie is only one of five psychopaths that have come to this sleepy little Midwestern town--it does represent the pace and ongoing sense of menace that pervades the book.

Scary books tend to have a cumulative effect. Building atmosphere, and drawing out suspense, adds to reader anxiety. For a longer look at Afraid, visit www.JackKilborn.com and you can read the first forty pages for free.

I recommend leaving the lights on while you do...

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

The Page 99 Test: Afraid.

--Marshal Zeringue