"How the Mistakes Were Made"

Tyler McMahon received his MFA in fiction from Boise State University. His stories have appeared in Threepenny Review, Sycamore Review, and Surfer’s Journal, among others, and he has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is a professor of fiction at Hawaii Pacific University.

McMahon applied the Page 69 Test to How the Mistakes Were Made, his debut novel, and reported the following:

My heart sank a little as I flipped to page 69 of How the Mistakes Were Made. It’s literally four lines long—the end of a chapter, possibly the shortest page in the book. But as I reread those sentences, I came to realize that they did, in fact, represent a pivotal moment. The novel is about a fictional punk rock band called The Mistakes. It’s narrated by Laura Loss, the female drummer who will one day be blamed for the group’s destruction. The other two members are Nathan, the hardworking bassist and songsmith, and Sean, the lead guitarist who suffers from a rare condition known as synesthesia which allows him to experience music as color. Page 69 closes the evening of their first show together—in which they discover a chemistry nobody expected. It’s the night that plants the seeds of their musical success. But more specifically, page 69 ends the book’s first sex scene, between Laura and Sean. This late-night indiscretion will, in a sense, lead to the band’s unraveling. In those final sentences, Laura is contemplating Sean’s talent as well his condition, trying to imagine what it would be like to possess either.

So in spite of the brevity, all the key elements of the novel—a bit of envy, some ill-advised sex, the tension between outward success and inner turmoil—are all present in those four short sentences on page 69.

View the trailer for How the Mistakes Were Made, and learn more about the book and author at Tyler McMahon's website.

My Book, The Movie: How the Mistakes Were Made.

Writers Read: Tyler McMahon.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Lost Women of Lost Lake"

Ellen Hart, “a top novelist in the cultishly popular gay mystery genre” (Entertainment Weekly), is also a Lambda and Minnesota Book Award winner.

She applied the Page 69 Test to The Lost Women of Lost Lake, her 19th mystery featuring Jane Lawless, and reported the following:

I’ve heard about this “test,” but never actually performed it on one of my books. Here’s a bit of background to what I found:

The Lost Women of Lost Lake, the newest Jane Lawless Mystery, takes us to a small town in northern Minnesota, where two of Jane’s old friends, Tessa Cornell and Jill Ivorsen, life partners for over twenty years and co-owners of a premier resort, Thunderhook Lodge, are in trouble. Jane is a part-time sleuth who lives in Minneapolis, where she owns a couple of restaurants. Along with her on the trip is her theatrical friend, Cordelia Thorn. They arrive at the resort ready to offer what help they can, but are stopped in their tracks when a woman in town, a good friend of Tessa’s, dies suddenly and suspiciously. Was it an accident? A suicide? Murder? More importantly, was Tessa somehow involved, as her partner suspects?

On page 69 we are introduced to two characters: Jonah and his aunt, Tessa. All we know is that Tessa has asked him to run into her study and unlock a cedar chest. She tells him to bring her a rusted metal box he’ll find inside. Jonah does as she asks, but instead of simply taking the box, he pilfers one of her journals, one that’s labeled “1968.” He runs upstairs to a loft and hides it under a couch, then returns downstairs to deliver the box. The end of the page leaves us with a big question--a zinger for a mystery novel:

“Now,” said Tessa, smiling up at him, “if you don’t mind, this would be a perfect time to make coffee.”

“Happy to.” What he really wanted was to stay and get a firsthand look at the gun.

Learn more about the book and author at Ellen Hart's website.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"Roam"

Alan Lazar is a platinum-selling musician/composer whose career began in his native South Africa. He lives in Los Angeles, where he has composed music for more than 30 films and TV shows.

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

I was rather surprised when I checked to find Page 69 is in fact a major turning point page in my novel. It’s the page when Nelson, canine protagonist, makes a discovery which sets in motion the events which lead to him being lost and wandering in the wild for eight years. At two years old, he has spent most of his life with Katey, concert pianist, and her husband Don. He is particularly close to Katey, who becomes the Great Love of his life (all dogs have one). On page 69, Nelson is sniffing around in their bed and detects an alien smell. It turns out to be a piece of silver underwear which belongs to a woman Don has been having an affair with. Nelson barks loudly, and alerts Katey to the underwear. So, she discovers her husband has been cheating on her.

Learn more about the book and author at Alan Lazar's website.

My Book, The Movie: Roam.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Gun Church"

Reed Farrel Coleman has been called a hard-boiled poet by NPR’s Maureen Corrigan. He has published fourteen novels. Coleman is the three-time recipient of the Shamus Award for Best Detective Novel of the Year and has been twice nominated for the Edgar Award. He has also won the Macavity, Barry, and Anthony Awards. He is an adjunct professor of English at Hofstra University and lives with his family on Long Island.

Coleman applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Gun Church, and reported the following:

As Gun Church is an exclusive audio book available only at Audible.com beginning November 8, 2011, I used the manuscript for this test. Gun Church is the story of Kip Weiler, an 80s literary wunderkind, who, through his own demons and devices, has fallen to the bottom of the barrel. He’s now nearly 30 years past his prime and exiled to a small, rural mining town where he teaches creative writing at a community college. When he prevents one of his students from taking his class hostage, Kip gets a second fifteen minutes of fame. He also gets something even more important—the inspiration to write again. But what Kip doesn’t know is that his world is about to spin completely out of his control and that his life is about to become a version of Wonder Boys meets Fight Club with guns. Here on page 69, Kip is struggling with an assessment of his old writing and worries about what his new work will be like. Kip often refers to his old self in the third person as the Kipster.

The Kipster was a cynical bastard, full of high sentence, but never obtuse: a poet, a prince looking down upon the great unwashed with only contempt. He was above it all, untouchable and untouched. He was the master of his instrument, so much so that it was all an inside joke to him. I didn’t recognize the writing [Kip’s new work] because it came from a very different place than where the Kipster’s art had come. It all came too easily to the Kipster, which is why I foundered when the words stopped coming. I had nothing to hold onto but the empty shell of the Kipster. His old protagonists were whimsies and strawmen, put up like bowling pins only to be knocked down. They were sacrifices meant as meat for the elitist nobs. His protagonists were soulless, ironice follies to be run up the flagpole like a fat girl’s underthings.

Kip’s new book is based upon a chance meeting in the 90s with a former IRA assassin. But like any artist who has for so long lost his muse, Weiler isn’t quite sure how to go about dealing with the idea he’s had kicking around in his head. The assassin, know only as McGuinn, has haunted Kip.

I wasn’t a biographer, not in temperment or by training, but what McGuinn had given me was basically the details for the biography of a murderer. The killings—their mechanics, the reasons and rationalizations behind them, the stories of the victims—as fascinating as some readers might have found those things, weren’t what interested me. Nor do I think were they what motivated McGuinn. It was his emotional journey and evolution from teenage murderer to soldier to assassin to target that got my attention. Besides, I spent all of two months in Ireland and the North. I didn’t know the place or the people and I certainly had only a superficial understanding of the conflict. I had been a glorified tourist, nothing more. A mostly drunk one at that.

But what Kip doesn’t know is that the book he’s about to write will be a blueprint for his own destruction.

Learn more about the book and author at Reed Farrel Coleman's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Territory"

Tricia Fields lives in a log cabin on a small farm with her husband and two daughters. She was born in Hawaii, but has spent most of her life in small town Indiana where her husband is a state trooper.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her debut novel The Territory, winner of the 2010 Tony Hillerman Prize for Best First Mystery, and reported the following:

New to the Rule, I’ll admit that I expected little, but then found it applies brilliantly to my own book. Page 69 is the end of a scene that is pivotal to the plot, reveals character, and sets up crucial information regarding the murderer. In the scene below, Chief of Police Josie Gray and a fellow officer discover a tub of photographs located in the basement of a recently murdered man. The man was a 2nd Amendment proponent and leader of a group of gun fanatics called, ‘The Gunners.’

To the officers' surprise they discover nude photos of the woman who discovered the man’s body, bullet through his head, on her living room couch. The nude photographs prove critical to the investigation several hundred pages later. The scene also reveals that the murdered man had a relationship with the same Mexican cartel that the police suspect has infiltrated their small border town. This fact confirms their suspicions and will greatly impact the investigation. Beyond the plot issues, we see a vulnerability to Josie who puts up a tough public front, but who has personal issues she struggles with. She is a determined cop willing to fight the big battles, but personal relationships mystify her. In this scene, she identifies with the loneliness that she notices in another young woman. That’s a lot to ask of one page!

They found around forty pictures of Winning, mostly undressed, getting ready for bed or getting out of the shower. The pictures had obviously been taken on multiple days. One picture particularly bothered Josie. Winning stood completely naked at the kitchen counter, looking toward the window as if she heard a noise, with a shot glass held just up to her lips. Her expression was distant, the look of someone trying to deaden her loneliness through a bottle. Josie wondered what she might look like through a camera lens in the privacy of her own home at night. The thought depressed the hell out of her.

Otto pulled another manila envelope out of the green tub and dumped the pictures onto the table, then laid them out in rows. The photos all appeared to be of Gunner members at various meetings and activities.

He pointed to a picture and leaned closer to the table to examine it. “Those fellas aren’t Gunners. Look at the three men in the background, all wearing desert camouflage.”

Josie picked up the picture and studied it. Two of the men had what appeared to be automatic machine guns strapped over their shoulders, and all three appeared to Mexican.

“Bingo.” Otto clapped Josie on the back. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

Learn more about the book and author at Tricia Fields's website and blog.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Corpse’s Nightmare"

Phillip DePoy is the author of a number of mysteries, including the Edgar Award winning play Easy. He has published short fiction, poetry, and criticism in Story, The Southern Poetry Review, Xanadu, and Yankee, among other magazines. As a folklorist, he has worked with Joseph Campbell and John Burrison. Depoy is currently the director of the theatre program at Clayton State University.

DePoy's Fever Devlin novels include The Drifter's Wheel.

He applied the Page 69 Test to A Corpse’s Nightmare, the latest Fever Devlin novel, and reported the following:

Here’s page 69 from A Corpse’s Nightmare:

A dream is a telegram composed in baffling poetry, I told myself. Decipher the poetry: get the message.

But these dreams were influenced by actual events. They weren’t purely Freudian or Jungian. They were half-remembered stories, dim angles on true history. And how could I decode their message without the attendant facts?

I would have to start by trying to recall the historical data. I pulled the bed sheet up a little, tried to relax and dig into the world’s most uncomfortable exercise: remembering things my mother told me.

The first thing that came to me, oddly, was her indignation at the very word history.

“Why isn’t it herstory in my case? In my personal case? It’s my story and I’m her.”

“If the word history is gender biased,” I had responded, “and maybe it is, then the mere word herstory is not sufficient to balance the long centuries of unfairly-tipped scales concerning the events on our planet—to date.”

“Then I think,” she fired back, “that a person might be forgiven for referring to an account such as mine by using the word mystory.”

“I see what you’re doing,” I told her with a growing ire. “You’ve done it before. I see that that the difference between mystory and mystery is only a single vowel.”

“Ergo,” she would conclude, “my story is in fact, a mystery.”

Difficult as it might have been for most people to believe, my mother and I had indulged in variations of that same dialogue perhaps a hundred times.

Then, for no reason I could discern at that moment, another conversation came back to me.

I remembered sitting in our kitchen eating grits. I couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve. It was early morning, the lights weren’t on, and ambient glow from the rising sun was rosy and gold.

This page is a perfect representation of the book, in part because it begins with one of my editor Keith Kahla’s favorite lines: “A dream is a telegram composed in baffling poetry.” I’m saying that if you like that line, you’ll like the book. If you hate that line, you should probably get something more useful—which is the way Saroyan used to tell people to buy his books only if they had some amount of Armenian blood in their veins. This page also contains the idea that “my story” and “mystery” are only separated by a single vowel, ergo all your stories are mysteries. Plus, the author actually uses the word “Ergo”—which, in itself, is pretty funny. Finally, the page includes a mention of food. For some reason, there are a lot of mentions of food in these books, the whole series. Usually it’s something a bit more entrancing than grits, but, then, grits are, in fact, serious, serious food. So. In this particular case, the Page 69 Test is perfect litmus.

Learn more about the book and author at Phillip DePoy's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Drifter's Wheel.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"Firebird"

Jack McDevitt is a former English teacher, naval officer, Philadelphia taxi driver, customs officer, and motivational trainer. Many of his works--Infinity Beach, Ancient Shores, “Time Travelers Never Die,” Moonfall, “Good Intentions” (cowritten with Stanley Schmidt), “Nothing Ever Happens in Rock City,” Chindi, Omega, and Polaris, "Henry James, This One's for You," and Seeker--have been Nebula Award finalists.

His first novel, The Hercules Text, was published in the celebrated Ace Specials series, and won the Philip K. Dick Special Award. In 1991, he won the first $10,000 UPC International Prize for his novella “Ships in the Night.” The Engines of God was a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and his novella “Time Travelers Never Die” was nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula. Omega received the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best SF novel, 2003.

McDevitt applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel Firebird, and reported the following:

In the far future world of Alex Benedict, a physicist had returned from a brief jaunt off world, was dropped off outside his home on Virginia Island, but somehow never made it inside. Years later, he is still missing.

Chase Kolpath, representing antiquarian Alex Benedict, is on Virginia Island looking for a clue to what might have happened. On page 69, she is questioning Father Everett, the local priest. Father Everett recalls that the physicist had been an atheist with exquisite musical taste. The police suspected his wife of being involved in his disappearance, but no evidence ever surfaced. And there was something odd: He kept buying yachts (interstellar vehicles) and losing them. He and his associate would take them out and just lose them. They’d ride back in the associate’s yacht. The story always was that they’d broken down or something. But of course it made no sense.

Learn more about the book and author at Jack McDevitt's website.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Devil's Ribbon"

D.E. Meredith read English at Cambridge, then ran the press office and the land mines campaign for the Red Cross, travelling extensively to Bosnia, Afghanistan and Rwanda during the conflicts. She worked as a consultant on media relations for Greenpeace and other worthy causes before embarking on "The Hatton and Roumande Mysteries" series for St Martin's Press (Devoured, October 2010, The Devil's Ribbon, October 2011).

She applied the Page 69 Test to The Devil's Ribbon and reported the following:

From Page 69:

He’d be angry with her and she’d only kiss him and tell him, “It’s of no matter, Addy. A hundred years ago. All forgiven and forgotten.”

He should have headed his father’s warning.

The accusation came on the brow of a hill. Eddy Stoates had come out of nowhere, red faced, spitting, “That Irish bitch of yours is stealing. Her whole family is. Our milks gone sour, the hens ain’t laying, my Ma’s silver brush has been taken from the dresser.”

Eddy Stoates was leering at her. “So, what have you got to say for yourself? But I’ll let you off a thrashing, if you give me whatever your givin’ Addy Hatton, here...”

Hatton rounded on him saying he would give him a pummelling if he didn’t take every word back and for good measure, Mary said, “He’ll not be bothering me, Addy. Pogue mahone, Stoat face...”

“Irish bitch”

Addy was quick, running at Eddy Stoates, levelling him, his fists raised for more, “Apologise, right now -”

Mary was quicker, laughing her head off and grabbing some itchy hay, sticking it down the boy’s shirt and calling him a scarecrow. “That’ll teach you a lesson.” The boy kicked her and wrestled himself free and slunk off, “You’ll pay for this...”

Addy brushed himself down, “Are you alright, Mary? He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

She smiled, “In Troid e an Saol! Life’s a fight, Addy. We saw him off though, didn’t we?”

If only he had seen her home, back to the bosom of her family but after talking for a while, he gave Mary a farewell kiss and left her on the path. He had studying to do, he said. September loomed and his Pa had finally raised the capital for boarding school. “Of course you must go,” she squeezed his hand. “Grab this opportunity with both hands, Addy. You can be whatever you want.”

“I want to be a doctor. To study science, chemistry, anatomy and go to Edinburgh, where the best work is done.”

Well, well, well. How very interesting. This is a flash back moment when Hatton is remembering his first love because she reminds him of the murdered MP’s wife – Sorcha McCarthy. This tiny moment shines a light on why Hatton becomes a forensic scientist in the first place (If only he had seen her home, back to the bosom of her family), his humble background, his passion for right and wrong, his relationship with his father, with women and these are major drivers for The Devil's Ribbon and his troubled character so I’d say Page 69 and what its hinting at, lies at the very heart of the book. Would the reader read on? Yes, I think they would because there’s some romance, a drama, unfinished business, a future longing (his wish to be a doctor), a fight (!!!) and an over-riding sense of brooding menace. Eddie Stoates isn’t just going to slope off, after that humiliation, is he?

Only one bit missing here, I guess in that we don’t get to meet Monsieur Albert Roumande (his very able “Assistant” and dear friend) but we do learn “In Troid e an Saol! Life’s a fight, Addy. We saw him off though, didn’t we?” And that slightly beleaguered, then To-Hell-With-It spirit, is very central to the relationship between Hatton and Roumande and the narrative drive. I think this is a great snap shot for the book.

Learn more about the book and author at Denise Meredith's website.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Kingdom of Childhood"

A New Yorker by birth, Rebecca Coleman grew up in the close suburbs of Washington, D.C., in an academic family. A year spent in Germany, at the age of eight, would later provide the basis for the protagonist's background in The Kingdom of Childhood. She first learned about the Waldorf School movement at age 14 and quickly developed a fascination with its culture and philosophies. After studying elementary education for several years at the University of Maryland, she graduated with a degree in English, awarded with honors.

Coleman applied the Page 69 Test to The Kingdom of Childhood and reported the following:

In the original (much longer) draft, I found that pivotal points-- four of them-- appeared with near-perfect precision at 100-page intervals. If that sounds like a sign that I should improve the pacing, well, my agent certainly thought so. Page 69 deserves a NSFW-language warning:

I reached into my canvas school bag for twine and scissors just as the screw gun let out a high-pitched whine that indicated it had slipped. I looked up in alarm to see Zach throw it out the window of the structure, then roll onto his back and clutch his face with both hands.

"Mother fucking fucker," he said, loudly but in a level voice.

I ventured toward the house. "Is everything all right?"

"No. I just spent an hour putting this shit on backwards." He slid out of the house and ripped off his headphones. They hung around his neck as he sat up, his knees against his chest, and rubbed his eyes. "And I got sawdust in my contacts."

"You didn't have your safety glasses on?"

"No," he snapped. "I was too occupied with messing shit up to remember them."

I sat cross-legged on the floor beside him. "What's the matter with you?"

"I'm just tired of this. I didn't get enough sleep, and then I overslept, and my mom came in like the wrath of Khan to get me up. I didn't have breakfast." He wrapped his arms around his knees and rested his forehead against them. I rubbed his back in a firm, comforting way, and he leaned his whole huddled form against me. His skin was drum-tight over those lanky bones of his, with not an ounce of fat for padding. "I'm starving," he repeated. "I'm never going to make it 'til one. My mom'll be picking up my corpse."

You see, Judy-- the 43-year-old narrator-- means well. She's the responsible adult, supervising 16-year-old Zach as he works on a playhouse for the school bazaar. As the teacher of the kindergarten class, she is accustomed to showing sympathy toward frustrated students and expressing concern for their safety. But at the end there-- well, something's just not quite right. And it will get worse. Much, much worse.

As it turns out, page 69 is a good representation of the novel as a whole: Judy hovers on the edge of making some very bad mistakes, while Zach reflects both mental immaturity and a prurient interest in Judy's attention. These two characters are stomping down the last fractured boundaries that stand in the way of disaster, and very soon-- before the chapter is over-- we'll be way past "not quite right."

And 25 pages earlier than in the original draft. Nice editing work there, Agent.

Learn more about the book and author at Rebecca Coleman's website and blog.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"Mink River"

Brian Doyle's books include Thirsty for the Joy: Australian and American Voices, Epiphanies and Elegies, The Wet Engine, and the new story collection Bin Laden's Bald Spot & Other Stories.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his novel Mink River, and reported the following:

I note with a grin, page 69 pretty much catches a lot of what’s happening in the book – some of a bear’s life in the spruce hills, some Gaelic, some stories of the Irish diaspora washing up on the wet wild Oregon coast, some hints of pain and grace, a dad telling stories to his son in the dark of a room where the boy is recovering from having his legs smashed in an accident in the woods – all in all, a shockingly representative page. The book’s about Oregonness, essentially, and uses Salish-speaking people (the tongue spoken here for thousands of years, before all its speakers died), the Irish arrival (especially as dairymen) after the Hunger, and the woods, and animals of every sort, and fish, and rain, and mud, and stories, and dreams, and a crow acting something like a stage manager, to try to stutter something real and piercing about Oregon character and flavor and grace under duress. Something like that. On the other hand, what do I know? I just committed the novel like an inky sin – it wanted to be told, I sometimes think, and I was chosen, as the nearest available fast typist.

Read more about Mink River at the publisher's website.

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

Writers Read: Brian Doyle.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Sacred Band"

David Anthony Durham received the 2009 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer of Science Fiction for Acacia and The Other Lands (the first two volumes of the Acacia trilogy).

He applied the Page 69 Test to The Sacred Band, the concluding volume of the trilogy, and reported the following:

The Page 69 Test gives me trouble every time. This time may be the most problematic. As per usual my page doesn’t manage to touch on the big plot elements of the book that well. I don’t know what page would, since this is a series of biggish books with scores of different characters. That’s not the real problem, though.

What is a problem is that I can’t quote any lines from that page without giving away some major plot spoilers. The Sacred Band is the third and concluding volume of the series. A lot has happened by the point. Quite a few characters have lived and died at, and others have emerged into positions of power that may not have been expected at the start of the series. Since I always write about the books in the hopes that new readers will be drawn in, I figure I shouldn’t give away any of those plot details now.

So, I won’t quote from the page.

I won’t name any characters.

Instead, I’ll speak of them in more general terms. Let’s see if this works…

The scene on page 69 involves four people, and also is heavily influenced by a fifth, that’s not actually in the scene. There is a prince, a young boy that feels quite confident about his place in the world. There is a dead person that’s been brought back to life. There is a man cursed with stone eyes, through which he sees a grey, coarse version of the world. There is a royal secretary, the closest confidante to the queen - the prince’s mother.

It’s a scene of casual conversation on the palace grounds. It’s a scene important not for what is said, but for what’s not said. You see, the absent character - the queen - has cast spells of varying sorts over each of the four. In the case of the boy, the influence is mostly that of mother over son. She has schooled him to see the world and his future role in it in a certain way. As yet this hasn’t been challenged, but it will be soon. The queen had plucked the secretary from a life of exile and disgrace. Because of it she’s loyal to her completely, no matter the crimes the queen perpetrates to meet her goals.

The two men have been trapped with sorcery. The dead man has been raised as a symbol to the nation of the queen’s power. She claimed that she was also bringing him back to help her rule, but instead she’s effectively controlled his thoughts. He has moments of truly thinking on his own, but before he can express himself the words that leave his mouth morph into the words the queen would want him to say. It’s frustrating, but he’s only vaguely aware of it.

The man with the stone eyes is the point of view character for the scene. His stone eyes were punishment inflicted upon him by the queen for being a firebrand that preached rebellion. The true curse she inflicts on him, however, is to become her mouthpiece. He’s been forced to travel the empire, giving speeches in her behalf. He never does this intentionally. He tries to rail against her. He always thinks he’s doing so, but discovers afterwards that the words that he spoke were never the ones he thought he was speaking. He’s much more aware of this than the dead man, and he feels particularly tortured by it.

That’s the dynamic that’s at play during the quiet conversation on page 69 of The Sacred Band. The question at the heart of it - about the nature of absolute power - is a big part of what the book is all about. I was interested not in power in general, but in how power manifests itself when shaped by an individual’s life experiences, fears and worry and hopes. That’s what’s happened with the queen, and the story - at this point in the series - is starting to build toward seeing the ramifications of that explode in a variety of chaotic ways.

Learn more about the book and author at David Anthony Durham's website, blog, and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: Acacia.

The Page 69 Test: The Other Lands.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Covenant"

Dean Crawford worked as a graphic designer before he left the industry to pursue his lifelong dream of writing full-time. An aviation and motorcycle enthusiast, he lives with his family in Surrey, England.

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

Page 69 ( in the UK paperback version ) is the opening to chapter 10, and follows two supporting major characters from the novel. Most of the attention focuses on Ethan Warner of course, but I created two detectives who are at work in Washington DC investigating the deaths of three men who appear to have suffered frostbite, despite DC sweltering under a heat wave. The two characters took on a life of their own as I wrote the first draft, and gave me a chance to create two people as full of life as the hero.

MEDICAL EXAMINER’S OFFICE, WASHINGTON DC

‘You know I hate this part.’

Lucas Tyrell grinned at Lopez as he drove the car into the parking lot and killed the engine.

‘You’ve gotta get used to it. Just don’t get too used to it, or I’ll have you sectioned.’ He turned to Bailey, who sat quietly in the rear seat. ‘Sit tight buddy, shouldn’t take too long.’ He tossed a handful of biscuits into the rear of the car and then clambered out, mopping his brow as he caught his breath.

Truth was, he felt the same about morgues as she did, and he had far more experience than her. Not for the first time he wondered what had kept her in the district.

Nicola Lopez had emigrated with her family to DC almost twenty years before as a gangly nine-year-old from Guanajuato, Mexico, a ramshackle town nestled in the Veeder Mountains. She had been raised a Catholic amidst the cobbled streets and quaint markets far from the hustle and bustle of America’s capital city. Dragged by a family searching for a better life away from the crippling silver mines of Las Ranas they had found instead only a better quality of misery, where endemic poverty and poor sanitation had been replaced with housing projects, fast food and Type-Two diabetes.

The reader learns more about the two characters as the novel develops, their close friendship becoming ever more strained as they struggle with the complexities of the case and their own conflicting interests. Even within the confines of a commercial thriller, it can still be fun to create realistic characters who have believable relationships, even if they ultimately are forced to turn against one another.

Learn more about the book and author at Dean Crawford's website and blog.

Writers Read: Dean Crawford.

My Book, The Movie: Covenant.

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

--Marshal Zeringue