"A Matter of Will"

Adam Mitzner is currently the head of the litigation department of Pavia & Harcourt LLP in midtown Manhattan and the author of several acclaimed novels, including Dead Certain, A Conflict of Interest, A Case of Redemption, Losing Faith, The Girl from Home, Dead Certain and Never Goodbye.

Mitzner applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, A Matter of Will, and reported the following:

Page 69 of A Matter of Will begins the 12th chapter and describes Will Matthews’ current living arrangement – a three-bedroom walkup in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan, which he shares with three other guys.

By this point in the book, Will has already met Sam Abaddon, the uber-wealthy investor who appears to be the answer to Will’s prayers. Prior to meeting Sam, Will was on the verge of being fired from his job as a stock broker, and sent packing back to his Midwest hometown with his tail between his legs. But now Will is on the cusp of snagging Sam’s business, which means that he won’t be living with his current roommates for too much longer.

This passage is representative of how life starts for a lot of would-be Masters of the Universe. They come to New York City with visions of living in penthouse apartments with commanding views of the city, and they end up sharing a bedroom in a setting that more resembles their college experience than Wall Street success.

At the same time, the reader knows that Will is within striking distance of that fancy penthouse he has always dreamed about. The question by page 69 of the novel is: What strings are attached to Will getting it?

Learn more about the book and author at Adam Mitzner's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Longer"

Michael Blumlein is the author of several novels and story collections, including the award-winning The Brains of Rats. He has twice been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and twice for the Bram Stoker. His story "Fidelity: A Primer" was short-listed for the Tiptree. He has written for both stage and film, including the award-winning independent film Decodings (included in the Biennial Exhibition of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and winner of the Special Jury Award of the SF International Film Festival). His novel X,Y was made into a feature-length movie. Until his recent retirement Dr. Blumlein taught and practiced medicine at the University of California in San Francisco.

Blumlein applied the Page 69 Test to his new novella, Longer, and reported the following:

On page 69 my two main characters, Cav and Gunjita, husband and wife, are having a conversation. Both are scientists, and they're trying to understand a scientific riddle that's unexpectedly presented itself. They're having a difference of opinion. Cav is fairly certain the answer lies in one direction; Gunjita is equally certain it lies in the opposite direction.

This difference reflects their different personalities. Cav is a dreamer and a wool-gatherer by nature, qualities that Gunjita admires and respects. Gunjita is pragmatic and thoughtful in ways that Cav both admires and lacks.

They met in their twenties. For Cav it was love at first sight. Nearly sixty years have passed since then. They've spent a lifetime together, a long and loving one.

Gunjita has just taken a treatment making her young again. Cav, at eighty, is dragging his feet.

Gunjita is growing impatient with him. She doesn't understand what's holding him up. Cav doesn't quite understand either. He loves her dearly, and he loves life. But he's already lived a long and deeply fulfilling one. What more can he expect? Is there such a thing as enough?

What draws two people together? What keeps them together? What drives them apart? When a relationship ends – and sooner or later, all relationships do, whether or not by choice – what happens next?

Longer is about many things – aging, mortality, scientific achievement, the very nature of life – but the persistence and changeability of love and togetherness lie at its heart.

Visit Michael Blumlein's website.

Writers Read: Michael Blumlein.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Summer Hours"

Amy Mason Doan grew up in Danville, California and now lives in Portland, Oregon.

She’s written for The Oregonian, San Francisco Chronicle, Wired, Forbes, The Orange County Register and other publications. Doan has an M.A. in Journalism from Stanford University and a B.A. in English from U.C. Berkeley.

Doan is the author of The Summer List and the newly released Summer Hours.

She applied the Page 69 Test to Summer Hours and reported the following:

From page 69

I wandered rooms like a nosy houseguest, finger-combing the fringe on the fuzzy red sofa afghan, turning knobs on our decades-old intercom panel. Serra and Eric and I used to play that we were DJs on it.

The books on my bedroom shelf and the clothes in my closet seemed like someone else’s, like riches, and I couldn’t remember why they hadn’t made the cut when I’d packed for Berkeley last summer.

I picked up the framed picture of Eric and Serra and me after the Senior Awards ceremony. We were grinning into the sun with our arms flung around each other, clutching our prizes—me the Haggermaker, Serra her Artists’ Network certificate, Eric the Rotary Club’s bright medal.

You must call each other all the time.

Eric and I hadn’t spoken once.

This is when 21-year-old Becc first comes home to her house in Southern California after leaving for college in Berkeley. We get a sense of Becc’s tight, lifelong friendship with Eric and Serra—their parents called them “The Three Mouseketeers” when they were younger—and how wounded Becc is by Eric drifting from her life. (Early in the book, Eric awkwardly reaches for more than friendship with her but she’s not ready.)

We also see that Becc was a high achiever when she was younger. But she’s examining the photo as if that good girl standing in the sun is now a stranger. Her desire to maintain a perfect image for her wealthy benefactor, Francine Haggermaker, is evident here, and foreshadows what’s to come. I had a lot of fun with the lies that Becc later writes in her letters to the older woman. Francine is a bit of a cipher until late in the book, but Becc is convinced that she will disapprove of her secret affair and increasing rebelliousness, rescind her scholarship, and make her life hell. Becc is like all of us in those not-quite-adult, not-quite-child years. She still has so much to learn.

Page 69 doesn’t hint at the other half of the book—adult Becc driving up the California coast with a mystery passenger to an old friend’s wedding, trying to make things right along the way.

But overall this captures the novel’s central conflict and my writing style perfectly, so I love it.

Visit Amy Mason Doan's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Last Day"

Domenica Ruta is a fiction writer and memoirist from Massachusetts. A scholarship kid at Phillips Academy Andover and Oberlin College, she has worked as a videographer and editor, a book store clerk, a waitress, a bartender, an English-as-a-Foreign-Language teacher, a nanny, a nursing home caregiver, a domestic violence hotline advocate and a house cleaner. She received her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Austin.

Her first book, the memoir With or Without You, was a New York Times Bestseller and named by Entertainment Weekly as one of the top three nonfiction books of the year 2013. The Boston Globe, Macleans, NPR, Slate, Elle, Bust, Oprah.com and USA Today all loved it.

Ruta applied the Page 69 Test to Last Day, her first novel, and reported the following:

Page 69 is a scene on the International Space Station starring Bear, the all-American astronaut. He's in the cupola, a module with all these gorgeous windows that allow astronauts to see the earth in her gorgeous entirety, "where he liked to take what he'd come to think of as a nice cool drink of Earth." He's feeling lonesome for Earth and the simple pleasures we take for granted, such as naturally moving water. I wouldn't say this page is a perfect representative of the whole book, but it does touch on something central - we are always reaching forward and backward at the same time: into the past and into the future; longing for home, in a spiritual sense, even as we push ourselves to leave home and explore the bigger world. It's about how precious our world is, how precarious, how intimate we are with it and how foreign it can feel.

Visit Domenica Ruta's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Cutting Room"

Ashley Dyer is the pseudonym for prize-winning novelist Margaret Murphy working in consultation with policing and forensics expert, Helen Pepper.

Dyer's new novel is The Cutting Room.

Murphy applied the Page 69 Test to The Cutting Room and reported the following:

By chance, page 69 of The Cutting Room provides a snapshot of the investigation, a glimpse into the mind of the serial killer at the heart of it, providing insights into the main protagonists, too. The Ferryman makes his victims the centrepiece of his art work, and here, detectives Greg Carver and Ruth Lake discuss his latest “art exhibit” with forensic psychologist, Dr Yi. “Catch the Gamma Wave” consisted of a row of laptop computers, propped open on a ledge of a natural sandstone escarpment not far from the city centre the night before. Each laptop screen was split into two parts; the top image showing a brain wave trace, the lower one, cardio.

From page 69:

[Ruth] hesitated, and Carver gazed at the space around her head.

‘What?’ he said.

Ruth knew that Carver had learned to read emotions like anger and guilt accurately, but complex emotions were trickier, and anyway she wasn’t sure if there was a colour for freaked out.

‘I did some background reading on gamma brain waves overnight,’ she said. ‘They’re typical of the brain state associated with “Eureka” moments – you know, sudden, unexpected sparks of insight or knowledge.’

Yi nodded. ‘There’s quite a lot in the literature about gamma brain waves and the “A-ha!” moment.’

‘Okay,’ Carver said. ‘And the brain waves on the laptop screens – were they actually gamma waves?’

‘I couldn’t tell a gamma wave from a microwave,’ Ruth admitted. ‘Doctor Yi?’

The psychologist leafed through the notes and printouts he’d brought with him. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘In my opinion they are.’

They looked to Ruth to take up the story again.

How to explain it? ‘If you drop a stone in a pond; you’d expect the ripples to get weaker and shallower as the energy dissipates, wouldn’t you?’

Carver nodded.

‘Brain waves should behave in the same way,’ Ruth said. ‘So, when the heart stops, brain activity weakens, brain waves slow down, and finally, they stop.’

‘Flatlining,’ Carver said.

‘Kind of ... An academic study on rats found that a type of brainwave called “low gamma waves” got stronger – for up to thirty seconds after the animals were technically dead.’

Detective Carver survived a near-fatal attack in Book #1, but he was in a coma for days, and now, as he recovers from a serious brain injury, he sees auras of light shimmering around people. It’s rare form of synesthesia; more commonly, synesthetes will ‘see’ words as colors, or ‘taste’ sounds, but for Carver, the flashes of light and color seem to correspond to the moods of those around him, and he has begun to interpret the colors in order to gain insights into others’ thoughts and feelings. The auras are mentioned here, as Carver tries to read Ruth Lake. Here, too, Ruth demonstrates her background in science; a former CSI, she has researched gamma waves overnight, hoping to understand the warped message behind the Ferryman’s art.

The experiment she refers to on page 69 refers to a discovery that low gamma brainwaves become stronger and more synchronized in the 30 seconds after death (i.e. when the heart stops or a massive stroke occurs), indicating heightened, organised and focused consciousness. This revelation leaves us in no doubt that the killer is sadistic, calculating, and without conscience: the brainwaves prove that the victims were aware of what was happening to them—even after he’d murdered them.

Visit Ashley Dyer's website and Facebook page.

Writers Read: Ashley Dyer.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Cygnet"

Season Butler is a London-based writer, performance artist and teacher, and an associate producer of the I'm With You art collective.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Cygnet, and reported the following:

This was an interesting one for me, since Cygnet's pagination of the UK edition, published by Dialogue Books, is slightly different from the North American one, out with Harper Collins. Together, the two page 69s perfectly capture the narrator’s internal dilemma and the social landscape of Swan Island.

I first reached for the UK edition of Cygnet, where The Kid is mentally tangled in a panic of stories and images which all contribute to her morbid fantasies around the potential finality of the loss of her family and totality of her alienation.

How long will it be until I or my folks have weathered into a shape where can’t even recognise each other anymore? Or until we’ve changed so much we can’t love each other again, like jigsaw puzzle pieces that have gotten wet and warped and can’t fit together, like they should, and the picture will never be right. I wonder if what I’ve lost is the possibility of fitting anywhere. An extraneous piece, the wrong blue for the sky or the sea, the wrong green for the leaves or the grass or the café awnings or the leather of the little boy’s lederhosen.

My parents lost all the photos from my childhood in some move or other. I don’t have the straw to spin into gold, the way I do it up here in Mrs Tyburn’s attic. My magic will work on her but not on me. I’ll have to start from scratch, on my own, the old-fashioned way. Except I know they’ll come back for me tomorrow. I know they will.

On page 69 of Harper Collins’ North American edition, we’re in Swan Island’s café, the Psychedelicatessen, with the owners, Suzie-Q and Johnny-Come-Lately. The Kid has come in with Jason, the grandson of one of the Wrinklies who takes their homegrown marijuana to sell back on the mainland, helping them maintain their autonomy with the profit. He brings with him all the stuff they can’t grow, that helps keep retirement sweet.

The setting in the Psychedeli captures the aesthetics and politics of Swan Island life:

Inside, blue walls painted with a cloudscape that mimics the sky on a clear summer day gives the Psychedeli a great feeling of spaciousness, which it needs against the hodgepodge of homemade and salvaged furniture and pillows and bean bags that make up the dining room. Hardly anyone uses the bean bags because it’s hard to get up once you’re in one, even for me, and they always talk about getting rid of them but never do. They’ve hung some flags over the counter at the back, all with acronyms like POW- MIA and AFL-CIO, and ones with the Led Zeppelin zeppelin and the Rolling Stones lips.

The Kid and Jason, Suzie and Johnny, settle into a booth at the back and get down to business…

Visit Season Butler's website.

My Book, The Movie: Cygnet.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Perfect Fraud"

Ellen LaCorte worked for many years in human resources. She now writes full time from her home where she lives with her husband in Titusville, New Jersey. She is the mother of two grown sons.

LaCorte applied the Page 69 Test to her debut novel, The Perfect Fraud, and reported the following:

Claire Hathaway fakes her way through her job as a psychic. Her mother is the real deal. On page 69, Claire Hathaway has returned home because her father is gravely ill. This is heartbreaking for Claire but it also puts her right back into what she’s worked her adult life to escape—trying to keep her mother from dissolving into an emotional disaster.

“What time’s the operation?” I ask my mother as she maneuvers the car out of the parking lot.

Adjusting the rearview mirror, she says, “As long as he remains stable during the night, they’re planning for eight-thirty.”

“Early. That’s good.”

When did this stiltedness between us become entrenched? Unless my mother is unloading her anxiety on me via psychic vision or through nutritional advice—more of a monologue on her part than a two-way exchange—our conversations are mostly superficial and perfunctory. It feels like we both have to carefully consider what we’re going to say, as if we were strangers who’d met in the grocery line, marking time until our turns at the register by discussing the pros and cons of firm or extra-firm tofu.

This excerpt from page 69 defines one of Claire’s major issues in the novel, that is, how to reconcile her relationship with her mother who had burdened Claire with responsibilities no young child should have had to take on. This has left Claire with a heightened sense of guilt and an extreme reluctance to take on any responsibility.

Until she is forced to.

When Claire meets Rena, a mother with a very sick child, she must decide whether or not to become involved. Claire has doubts about her psychic skills and is not sure how she can or if she will help, but a little girl’s fate may be in her hands.

Visit Ellen LaCorte's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"All The Greys on Greene Street"

Laura Tucker is a writer and former literary agent who has coauthored books on a wide range of topics, including health, fitness, parenting, and self-help. Her credits include Still Room for Hope by Alisa Kaplan, Standing Tall by C. Vivian Stringer, Shalom in the Home by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, and Training for Life by Debbie Rocker. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Tucker applied the Page 69 Test to her debut novel, All the Greys on Greene Street, and reported the following:

On page 69 of All The Greys on Greene Street, Olympia, the main character of the book, has left Washington Square Park with her friend Alex to find a payphone. (The book, I should mention, is set in 1981.) On the surface, the scene is a casual conversation between friends who have known each other since preschool, but it’s quickly apparent that there’s quite a bit of tension between them.

One source of that tension is longstanding: Alex is the kind of kinetic kid who never stops moving, and Ollie often finds this extremely annoying. But her irritation with him in this scene is definitely amplified by the uncomfortable questions Alex insists on asking about her dad’s sudden disappearance. The official story doesn’t add up, and Ollie knows it, but she’s not ready to ask why.

Page 69 also contains one of my favorite of Ollie’s memories:

[Alex’s] dad travelled so much for work, we thought LaGuardia was some kind of magical city until we were most of the way through third grade. “My dad’s flying out of LaGuardia tonight,” Alex would tell us, reverent and hushed, so that we could practically see the jacketed doorman hailing a cab while his dad waited under a heated marquee, beautiful globe lights reflecting off rain-slicked roads.

Then someone figured out that LaGuardia was just an airport in Queens.

Maybe I was overly prone to glamorous fantasies, but I remember many similarly disappointing moments of discovery. This might be one of the less lovely parts of growing up....

Visit Laura Tucker's website.

Writers Read: Laura Tucker.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Gospel According to Lazarus"

Richard Zimler's novels include The Search for Sana, The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, and The Seventh Gate. He has won many prizes for his writing and has lectured on Sephardic Jewish culture all over the world. He now lives in Porto, Portugal, where he teaches journalism and writes.

Zimler applied the Page 69 Test to his latest novel, The Gospel According to Lazarus, and reported the following:

In the New Testament, we learn that Jesus resurrected a beloved friend named Lazarus. And yet, nowhere in the Gospels is there any mention of how Jesus created this miracle or if he had any special reason for doing so. In my novel, The Gospel According to Lazarus, I explore these questions while narrating the tale of Lazarus from his own point of view.

The story begins with Lazarus awakening in his tomb, unsure of where he is and disoriented. Worst of all, his faith has been shattered because he remembers nothing of an afterlife. Fragile and vulnerable, he turns to Jesus for help, and the two men embark on a new phase of their long friendship.

After Jesus’s arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, Lazarus concludes that his whole life may have been a test for this chance to save his beloved friend from crucifixion. Only many years later, however – after our narrator has been forced to flee Jerusalem – does he begin to understand the true role that he played in Jesus’ life. And he begins to believe that he might still be able to help his old friend by voicing his unique perspective on the religious and mystical movement that became known as Christianity.

One of my objectives in this novel was to restore to Jesus and Lazarus their Judaism. And so Jesus is known by his Hebrew name, Yeshua ben Yosef, and Lazarus is referred to as Eliezer ben Natan.

On page 69, Eliezer is about to finish telling his grandson a mystical version of the story from John 8 of a woman accused of adultery and facing punishment. In Eliezer’s version, the woman has been and beaten and brutalized. Yeshua saves her life by using an insightful strategy against her accuser. Here is what Eliezer says.

All who have ever heard this story believe they know the lesson that Yeshua wished to teach us. It is contained in these words: ‘Let he who is without blemish or who has never lost his way cast the first stone.’

But, while that is an important lesson, it is only the one we see at first glance, written across the polished surface of his actions.

If you gaze below this level of meaning, dear boy, you may glimpse the second – and some would say, more life-changing – lesson that Yeshua intended for us that day, and it is this: The only hands and eyes that the Lord has to right injustice in our world are our own.

Page 69 captures a bit of the mystical tone of the book but not the rapid pace and down-to-earth atmosphere. The review in England’s The Observer newspaper is relevant in this regard: “A very human tale of rivalry, betrayal, power-grabbing and sacrifice... Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this brave and engaging novel is that Zimler manages to make the best-known narrative in western culture a page-turner. I simply had to keep going to the end to know what would happen.”

Visit Richard Zimler's website.

The Page 99: Guardian of the Dawn.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Last Bus to Everland"

Sophie Cameron was born in the Scottish Highlands and studied French & Comparative Literature at the University of Edinburgh. She has lived in France, Canada, Germany and now lives in Barcelona with her wife.

Cameron applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Last Bus to Everland, and reported the following:

Last Bus to Everland has two settings: one is Everland, a magical dimension that the main character, Brody Fair, visits every Thursday night with his friends; and the other is modern-day Edinburgh, where Brody lives in a cramped apartment with his parents and siblings. Brody’s dad has agoraphobia as a result of PTSD and rarely leaves the building. On page 69 of the book, Brody is looking back at how his father’s condition began after waking up from a short coma caused by a vicious attack:

But then I remember Mam rushing into our bedroom to tell us that Dad had woken up. I remember the car ride to the hospital in our pajamas, and that giddy mix of relief and joy and nerves when we arrived to find him sitting up, bruised and bandaged but smiling. It was in the papers and all: “Brave Father Makes ‘Miracle’ Recovery after Intervening in Leith Attack.”

I thought that was it. I thought Dad was better, that everything was back to normal. But when he walked through the front doors of the hospital the following week, before we’d even reached the car, he had a panic attack.

Doesn’t sound like much when you say it like that. It doesn’t sound the way I remember it: Dad gasping for breath, eyes wide and face pale, clammy hands tugging at his collar as if his clothes were suffocating him. It doesn’t sound like the horror in his face, or the fear that seeped out of him and snatched my own breath away. It doesn’t sound like Keira crying, or Jake asking over and over what was wrong.

In many ways, this page isn’t particularly representative of the novel as a whole: there is no sign of the magic here that Brody discovers when he’s taken to Everland. But on the other hand, it does show some of the challenges of the difficult (and occasionally dangerous) real world that Brody lives in, and his love for his family. Brody finds his father’s condition frustrating and unfair, but he’s always empathetic. He understands that it’s a real disability and that his dad is doing his best.

Despite being a fantasy novel, the family dynamics are really the heart of Last Bus to Everland. Brody’s home life isn’t always easy: his father’s disability means he can’t work, his mum is struggling to make up the hours, and Brody is caught between his genius older brother and his attention-seeking younger sister. He doesn’t feel seen or understood, but he loves them regardless. When the doors to Everland begin to close, he’s forced to choose between the magical dimension (and Nico, the boy he’s fallen in love with there) and his family – and it’s not an easy decision at all.

Visit Sophie Cameron's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Perfect Plan"

Bryan Reardon is the author of Finding Jake and The Real Michael Swann. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Bryan worked for the State of Delaware for more than a decade, starting in the Office of the Governor. He holds a degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame and lives in West Chester, Pennsylvania, with his wife and kids.

Reardon applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, The Perfect Plan, and reported the following:

From page 69:

"I'm busy, Liam. You know that. I can't afford anything going wrong right now."

"It's cool," I say. "Everything's cool. I promise."

"It better be," he says. "I suggest you head home right now."

I keep staring at the car, the police, the guy with the beard.

"I will," I say, and hang up.

Page 69 of The Perfect Plan is short, the end of a chapter. The dialog could mean anything without the proper context. Maybe just a banal conversation between two brothers, Liam and Drew. Or maybe not. Liam might have just left a car in the middle of an intersection after getting into an altercation with the bearded man. The Jetta he abandoned could have been used in the abduction of a woman on Drew's gubernatorial campaign staff. In fact, it is the woman's car. And Liam is the one that abducted her.

The interaction above may be the start of a complex cat and mouse game. The kind that you're never sure who might be the villain. And who the hero. In life, though, there is rarely one or the other. Instead, we are both. Or neither. On page 69, it appears that Liam is the former and his brother the later. Maybe that perception will be flipped on its heels. Maybe they are both villains, and Drew's staffer is nothing but an innocent victim. Chances are, though, their story will lead to something very different. Because we are talking about the Brennan brothers. With them, nothing is as it appears.

Follow Bryan Reardon on Facebook and Twitter.

Writers Read: Bryan Reardon.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Time’s Demon"

D.B. Jackson is the pen name of fantasy author David B. Coe. He is the award-winning author of more than twenty novels and as many short stories. His newest novel, Time’s Demon, is the second volume in a time travel/epic fantasy series called The Islevale Cycle. Time’s Children is volume one; Jackson is working on the third book, Time’s Assassin.

As D.B. Jackson, he also writes the Thieftaker Chronicles, a historical urban fantasy set in pre-Revolutionary Boston. As David B. Coe, he is the author of the Crawford Award-winning LonTobyn Chronicle, as well as the critically acclaimed Winds of the Forelands quintet and Blood of the Southlands trilogy; the novelization of Ridley Scott’s movie, Robin Hood; a contemporary urban fantasy trilogy, The Case Files of Justis Fearsson; and most recently, Knightfall: The Infinite Deep, a tie-in with the History Channel’s Knightfall series.

Coe has a Ph.D. in U.S. history from Stanford University. His books have been translated into a dozen languages. He and his family live on the Cumberland Plateau. When he’s not writing he likes to hike, play guitar, and stalk the perfect image with his camera.

Coe applied the Page 69 Test to Time’s Demon and reported the following:

From page 69:

Bexler wasn’t there, but the tri-sextant sat on his workbench. She guessed that he had already finished it, and was making arrangements for additional materials. His single-mindedness had its advantages...

...Bexler returned nearly two bells later, arriving in an ill temper. Apparently he would have to wait a ha’turn for the first arcs to reach Hayncalde, and another qua’turn after that for enough of them to complete two tri-sextants. In the interim, Gillian knew, he would be impossible to live with: more incentive to ingratiate herself with people in the castle. If she remained in the flat for all that time, her boredom might well prove fatal for at least one of them.

“Is this one finished?” she asked him, interrupting a tirade about the incompetence of ministers, and the value of tri-sextants.

“Yes, it’s ready. I have nothing to do for... for days upon days.”

He flounced to a chair near the hearth and dropped himself into it, a boy in a man’s body.

“Can’t you work on tri-apertures?”

“I suppose, but to what end? They don’t need those.”

“Not now, perhaps. They might before long.”

Bexler nodded. His gaze roamed the chamber, restless. Eventually it settled on her, and his mien shifted in a way she recognized too well.

“You know,” he said, smiling, “as long as we’ve nothing to do–”

“You have nothing to do. I have plenty. I’ll be leaving for the castle before long. In the meantime, I’d suggest you get to work on those apertures. If nothing else, we can sell them for food money, until some other noble has need of our services.”

He frowned, putting her in mind again of a fifteen year-old boy.

The “Page 69 Test” is always a crapshoot, because manuscript pages rarely correspond exactly to book pages. As with Time’s Children, the first book in my time travel/epic fantasy series The Islevale Cycle, page 69 of Time’s Demon, volume two in the series, is not representative of the entire book. It does illustrate, though, an essential truth about big fantasy projects.

On page 69 in Time’s Demon, we encounter Gillian Ainfor, a relatively minor and yet hugely important character in the series. She and her husband, Bexler Filt, have been spies in the court of the ruler who was overthrown and murdered in book I. Their actions helped my “bad guys” succeed in that coup. Now, however, their importance is diminished. Filt is a Binder and creates essential devices for the Windhome-trained Travelers who serve in the various courts. He remains valuable to those in power. Gillian, on the other hand, though smarter and more resourceful than her husband, finds herself feeling superfluous.

In this scene, she seeks to find renewed purpose. She intends to present herself to the new authorities in the city and offer her services as a spy. Anything to get away from her husband. Anything to put herself back at the center of world-shaping events.

Characters like Gillian (and Bexler) are critical to the success of big projects like this one. Epic fantasy works best when it has many plot threads and point of view characters, when readers find themselves in a web of storylines all driving toward a single narrative conclusion. Secondary characters have to feel real, their motivations and emotions need to resonate with readers, just as do the feelings and actions of central characters. As I say, Gillian’s arc is crucial to this novel, despite her being in only a few scenes. She is also a fun character to write, as much for her wit and candor as for her singular role in the story.

Learn more about the book and author at D. B. Jackson's website and blog..

The Page 69 Test: Thieftaker.

The Page 69 Test: Time’s Children.

Writers Read: D.B. Jackson.

--Marshal Zeringue