"Tore All to Pieces"

Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr. is an advocate, educator, author, and Kentucky Teacher of the Year. His work is focused on advocating for LGBTQ+ rights and creating inclusive spaces for students, especially within the context of Appalachia. He is the author of Tore All to Pieces, a fragmented novel about a small town in Appalachia and the interconnectedness of our identities, as well as Gay Poems for Red States, a bestselling collection of narrative poetry about his childhood growing up queer in Appalachia.

Carver applied the Page 69 Test to Tore All to Pieces and shared the following:

Hearing about the Page 69 Test tells me two things: (1) that I have the humour of a middle schooler, since I know that the poem “The Scientist” in my first collection begins on that page because I giggle every time I tell people to turn there, and (2) that I am not to be trusted.

This is because when I opened Tore All to Pieces to page 69, I immediately thought, “This is one of my favorite moments.” Then I found that suspect, so I randomly tried pages 86 and 141 and had similar feelings. Still…

On page 69, Patrick, a college-aged queer hillbilly, has just spent the evening in the backseat of a car with a stranger on the strip job at a coal operation, and is now tired and also afraid to retrieve his car from the driveway of a gun-toting family that lives against a hillside. He is trying to convince his sister, Rayeanne, to take him to get it, but she is more invested in canned cheese dip and police detective television shows. She simply declares, “Fuck I will.”

This page is a true slice of the entire book—a bite of dressing with onion, turkey, and celery in it. These characters are Appalachians for Appalachia. They’re unadorned, unafraid to be messy, and unwilling to have to work to be legible outside of here. Many Appalachians know the feeling of worrying about looking serious and worthy to others. This book refuses that lens. It begins with the knowledge that these people already matter—as do their stories. Tortilla chips broken in cheese dip and lovemaking up on strip jobs?

That’s home to me.

That’s Tore All to Pieces—folks I love without wrapping paper. Hungry. Tired. Worthy.

Visit Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr.'s website.

Q&A with Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr.

My Book, The Movie: Tore All to Pieces.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Only Spell Deep"

Ava Morgyn is the USA Today bestselling author of The Bane Witch and The Witches of Bone Hill. She grew up falling in love with all the wrong characters in all the wrong stories, then studied English Writing & Rhetoric at St. Edward’s University. She is a lover of witchcraft, tarot, and powerful women with bad reputations, and she currently resides in Houston surrounded by antiques and dog hair. When not at her laptop spinning darkly hypnotic tales, Morgyn writes for her blog on child loss (forloveofevelyn.com), hunts for vintage treasures, and reads the darkest books she can find.

She is the author of YA novels Resurrection Girls and The Salt in Our Blood.

Morgyn applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Only Spell Deep, with the following results:

Page 69 of Only Spell Deep reads:

A scream that my grandfather put there, that my mother fed and the voice honed, that woke up in the park under that bridge and might swallow me alive if I don’t get it out. It is a horrific, caterwauling sound that claws its way out of my throat and into the wires supplying the building. And when it hits the night, the Needle goes black, every light ticking off in a dizzying sequence, dousing the heart of the city in shadow.

While I find this passage intriguing and think it makes several very telling points—alluding to the abuse of her grandfather and mother, mentioning “the voice” which was such a significant part of her childhood, discussing the park in which she first met the Fathom, and most importantly describing her power and the effect it has on her as she exercises it again—I think there is just too little here to satiate readers that don’t already know the story. It even mentions “the Needle”, meaning the Seattle Space Needle, which hints at the setting, but without that other word, I don’t know if readers will even pick up on that.

That said, I do think even this tiny passage carries the tone and mood of the book and might be enough to draw a reader solely based on “vibes” if they know they are looking for dark fantasy and moody storytelling.

What I’d really like for readers to get as a teaser of my book is something more like this passage on page 23:

Magic is only spell deep, my mother used to say. It is as likely to harm as to heal.

Who knows how many other cautionary tales in love and magic populated my storied family tree? And at the simple age of sixteen, I had, in my own way, taken my place among them.

Still, I knew there was more. Things my mother hadn’t told me, things about my grandmother, about her, about our family. Things she’d run from once, only to have to run back. But I assumed that those things lived in the past; they couldn’t touch me.

This passage is only a small snippet of a much larger, more informative page, but even it tells and tantalizes in ways the page 69 passage does not. We know instantly that our main character is grappling with family secrets and generational trauma, with the silencing of women and with hereditary magic. We even get a glimpse of where the title of the book came from.

Visit Ava Morgyn's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Bane Witch.

Q&A with Ava Morgyn.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Best Little Motel in Texas"

Sonia Hartl (AKA Lyla Lane) is the author of YA, romance, and cozy mysteries. Her books have received starred reviews from BookPage and Booklist, and earned nominations for the Georgia Peach Book Award, YALSA’s Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers, Bank Street College of Education’s Best Children’s Books of the Year, ALA’s Rise: A Feminist Book Project List, and ALA’s Rainbow Booklist, and was named an Amazon Editors’ Pick for Best Young Adult. When she’s not writing she enjoys board games with her family, attempting to keep her garden alive, or looking up craft projects she’ll never get around to completing on Pinterest.

Hartl/Lane applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Best Little Motel in Texas, and reported the following:

Page 69 features Cordelia and the chicks trying to come up with a list of suspects for the murder of the local pastor and debating what makes someone a suspect. Cordelia thinks the pastor’s wife is guilty of poisoning him, while my the chicks think it’s the local land developer, but mostly because they can’t stand her.

The Page 69 Test works well for my book because it showcases the main characters just starting the investigation. They’re already putting together a list of both suspects and people they don’t like, and the way they chime in on individuals gives a good sense of their history, personalities, and their relationship with people in town. It’s a nice blend of both plot and character development.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but I drop a pretty significant clue on this page that doesn’t feel like a clue at all and is only mentioned in passing, but becomes Very Significant later on. Part of the fun of writing a mystery is leaving little breadcrumbs for the readers to pick up on, so it’s funny that I was asked to do this test and the page number given happened to have a great deal of relevancy to it.

Visit Lyla Lane's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Best Little Motel in Texas.

Q&A with Lyla Lane.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Island of Ghosts and Dreams"

Christopher Cosmos was raised in the Midwest and attended the University of Michigan as the recipient of a Chick Evans Scholarship. In addition to being a bestselling author, he is also a screenwriter and has had his work featured in the annual Black List of best Hollywood screenplays of the year. He lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Cosmos applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Island of Ghosts and Dreams, and shared the following:

Page 69 of Island of Ghosts and Dreams features the main character, Maria, talking with her best friend as they sit in her apartment and look out at the iconic Chania Harbor, discussing both the activity that's happening there in the harbor (the British and remaining Greeks getting ready for a potential invasion of their island) as well as the British soldier that Maria has found, nursed back to health, then returned to the British Army.

This passage is a great representation of the novel visually, as it's the stunning harbor of Chania which the characters are looking out at from an amazing vantage that was one of the inspirations for this novel. The harbor is also actually even featured on the cover!

It's also a good representation of the story as a whole, as Maria's life soon becomes defined by the German invasion of her island, and the help she receives from this particular British soldier she saved and which becomes essential to both her and her family.

If you have a chance to check out Island of Ghosts and Dreams, I so very much hope you enjoy! I'm a Greek-American writer and moved to Chania while I researched and wrote this story, sitting in an apartment looking out over the harbor each morning and day, just like Maria does on page 69.

Visit Christopher Cosmos's website and follow him on Instagram.

The Page 69 Test: Once We Were Here.

Q&A with Christopher Cosmos.

The Page 69 Test: Young Conquerors.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Pinky Swear"

Danielle Girard is the USA Today and Amazon #1 bestselling author of sixteen novels, including the Annabelle Schwartzman Series, Chasing Darkness, and The Rookie Club series. Her books have won the Barry Award, the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, and White Out was in the top 100 bestselling e-books of 2020. In addition, two of her titles have been optioned for screen.

Girard applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Pinky Swear, with the following results:

Page 69 shows a look into the girls’ shared high school journal. This is their private, confessional space and it’s intimate, messy and very teenager. The entry starts innocently, discussing a love of peanut butter on graham crackers and a mother who stopped buying them because she thought her daughter was “getting fat in like third grade.” It’s funny, painful, and telling all at once.

The entry spirals into a strange reaction from her father and though the tone is flippant, there is something underneath about the girl’s reaction. Finally, the girl mentions a high school crush and calls herself his stalker for how much she watches him. Finally, the girl reassures the group that they can bury last weekend firmly in the past. They can keep this secret.

But that final line lands differently than the rest because secrets, of course, are never really buried.

Would page 69 give browsers a good idea of the whole work?

Yes, but maybe not in the way they would expect.

If a reader opened to page 69, they might initially think Pinky Swear is a novel about teenage girls, high school crushes, and family drama. They wouldn’t immediately see the suspense framework or the central crisis involving the surrogate’s disappearance.

But emotionally and in terms of the tone? The page is very representative of the novel.

At its core, Pinky Swear is about female friendship, about shared secrets, about the long tail of adolescent experiences into adulthood. The journal entries reveal how formative those early relationships are, and how the things we bury at sixteen have a way of resurfacing decades later.

So while page 69 might not scream “thriller” at first glance, it definitely reflects the heart of the book by hinting at the intensity of girlhood bonds, the complexity of family, and the dangerous illusion that the past can be sealed off.

In that sense, the test works surprisingly well.

I love that this page captures so many elements of the book. First, the authenticity of teenage voice. The humor (“barf”), the insecurity (“Does that make me a bitch?”), the melodrama, the rawness—it all feels immediate. While the girls are funny and sharp and self-aware, they are also deeply vulnerable and that emotional honesty is foundational to the novel.

Second, the page plants seeds of unease. The father’s strange behavior along with the abrupt emotional shifts and the casual mention of what happened “last weekend” as something they are determined to bury.

Third, the page underscores one of the novel’s central themes: how we misunderstand—or only partially understand—the people closest to us.

Finally, the shared journal itself is symbolic as it represents the intimacy and trust the girls have at sixteen.

So would page 69 give a browser the entire plot? No.

Would it give them the emotional essence of the book? Absolutely because it shows the origin story of a friendship and it hints at fracture lines in families. This page also introduces secrecy as both glue and fault line and it ends with the dangerous optimism of youth: We can keep this secret.

Anyone who reads that line and feels a prickle of dread is already in the right book.

Visit Danielle Girard's website.

Writers Read: Danielle Girard (August 2018).

My Book, The Movie: Expose.

The Page 69 Test: Expose.

The Page 69 Test: White Out.

Q&A with Danielle Girard.

Writers Read: Danielle Girard.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Then He Was Gone"

Isabel Booth is the pen name of Karen Jewell, a former trial attorney and now a writer. She holds an undergraduate degree in English, a Master’s in Business Administration, and a Juris Doctorate degree. When she’s not writing she loves to read, travel, and cook dinner for friends. She lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband.

Booth applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Then He Was Gone, and reported the following:

The scene on page 69 in Then He Was Gone is narrated by attorney Elizabeth English, the mother of six-year-old Henry, who has gone missing at the end of a family hike in the mountains. Elizabeth is packing a suitcase for Henry’s older brother Nick, to send him back to Houston, and giving him instructions about his flight home.

“You’ll board first, with any other unaccompanied minors. Aunt Kathleen will be waiting for you when you land.”

“Mom. This isn’t the first time I’ve flown by myself.”

True. He was a seasoned traveler, having been on trips with Paul and me from the time he was born, to London, Paris, Mexico, all over the U.S. and Canada. But as I packed, a scene kept playing in my mind. Nick walking down the runway in Denver, disappearing into the plane—never to be seen again.

“I know. You’ll be fine.”

I zipped the suitcase and set it on the floor. Nick took the handle and rolled it into the living room.

“Ready to go?” Paul said.

“Yup.”

We’d agreed that Paul would take Nick to Denver, buy him dinner at the airport, and stay with him until the plane took off. The press was still camped out beyond the gate. We put Nick’s suitcase in the Jeep in the garage, with the door closed. He lay down in the back seat, and I sat beside Paul in front. Paul opened the garage door and backed out, turned the Jeep around, and headed down the driveway. As we approached the gate, I said, “I love you, Nicky,” and he said, “I love you” back. I hopped out and unlocked the gate, opened then closed it after Paul had driven through. Cameras clicked and whirred, still and video shots of Paul driving away, me walking back to the cabin as the reporters shouted, “Is there any news of Henry, Mrs. English?” “Have they found anything—any articles of clothing?” “It’s been almost forty-eight hours since Henry went missing . . . Do you believe he’s still alive?”

Page 69 establishes that Henry is missing, which is the main plot line of Then He Was Gone. It introduces Elizabeth, as well as Paul and Nick, who will narrate their own chapters of the story. It reveals the anxiety Elizabeth feels about being separated from Nick, and her fear that she’ll lose him, too. It shows the family being hounded by the press, and the parents’ desire to protect Nick from that.

Page 69 doesn’t give a sense of the tense pace of the investigation into Henry’s disappearance, or the twists of the narrative as evidence turns up. It doesn’t offer a full picture of the desperate parents searching for their son, or the heartbreaking effects of Henry’s disappearance on Nick. It doesn’t reveal Elizabeth’s mounting anguish as the days turn into weeks, then months, and she relentlessly combs the trails in Rocky Mountain National Park and drives the towns in the surrounding area looking for Henry. And it doesn’t introduce the other interesting characters who narrate the story: Monroe, a former Montana sheriff, now park ranger, who leads the investigation; Alexis, Henry’s godmother, a high-powered corporate lawyer and Elizabeth’s best friend; and Eddie, an ex-con obsessed with Elizabeth because she helped send him to prison years before.

But I hope page 69 leaves the reader wanting to know the answer to this question and read on: What happened to Henry? If so, I guess it passes the test.

Visit Isabel Booth's website.

My Book, The Movie: Then He Was Gone.

Q&A with Isabel Booth.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Cheerleader"

Marina Evans is a former Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader who graduated from Southern Methodist University with degrees in English Literature and Creative Writing. During her time with the Cowboys, she cheered under her maiden name/nickname, Rena Morelli. She lives in Arizona now but thinks about her days in short-shorts often.

Evans applied the Page 69 Test to The Cheerleader (Death of a Cheerleader, UK title), her debut thriller, and shared the following:

My novel, The Cheerleader, is a high-gloss, fast-paced thriller that explores the dark side of professional cheerleading. It’s (very loosely) based on my background as a former Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader. With plenty of high-kicks, high hair, and high drama, the story is what you’d expect from a murder mystery set in Texas cheer royalty.

I would say that on page 69 of the book, we are still meeting the main characters. Namely, Nikki Keegan who is an ambitious filmmaker hired to document the supposed comeback of the Dallas Lonestars—a fictional football team. She takes the opportunity to film an unauthorized true crime series on the side, and in that, she notices the team’s star quarterback lurking outside the residence of the deceased cheer captain. On page 69, Nikki begins to research him. The QB is married with a child, and his wife is social media sensation. Was he just paying is “Lonestars” respects along with other lookie loos?

Nikki also watches an interview featuring the father of the murdered cheerleader. We feel the man’s pain, and we listen to his criticism of the police during their investigation. So, while we don’t get the full scoop of the entire story on page 69, trouble is brewing! And perhaps a little foreshadowing??

Visit Marina Evans's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Cheerleader.

Q&A with Marina Evans.

Writers Read: Marina Evans.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Defiant Woman"

Karen E. Olson, author of An Inconvenient Wife, is the winner of the Sara Ann Freed Memorial Award and a Shamus Award finalist. She is the author of the Annie Seymour mysteries, the Tattoo Shop mysteries, and the Black Hat thrillers. Olson was a longtime editor, both in newspapers and at Yale. She lives in North Haven, Connecticut.

Olson applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, A Defiant Woman, with the following results:

Page 69 of A Defiant Woman is the last page of a chapter. In it, Nan Tudor—Hank Tudor’s second wife who has been living in France under an alias for eight years—is hiring private investigator Thomas Wyatt to help her find her kidnapped daughter. Nan had been lured back to the States with the threat of her daughter’s life; however, Nan suspects that the kidnapping was not as much about her daughter as about her—and who wants to take revenge on her:

“As I see it,” he said, putting his glass back down, “once I find your daughter, I’ll also find out who’s after you.”

“Oh, I already know who’s after me,” Nan said with a smirk.

He laughed then. “Why the hell do you need me, then?”

Nan leaned forward, her elbows on the table, and she stared into his eyes.

“Because if it’s who I suspect, the person who’s orchestrated this tried to have me killed once before, and I have to make sure she never gets another chance.”

In the exchange with Wyatt, the reader sees a snapshot of Nan’s personality: her defiance and determination—and courage. It also sets the stage for the rest of the book. While I gave Hank Tudor’s other wives—Catherine, Kate, and Anna—their own chapters and points of view, A Defiant Woman is truly Nan’s story. It’s serendipitous that page 69 reflects that so definitively.

Visit Karen E. Olson's website.

The Page 69 Test: An Inconvenient Wife.

Q&A with Karen E. Olson.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Ruby Falls"

Gin Phillips has written seven novels and her work has been sold in 29 countries.

Phillips’s debut novel, The Well and the Mine, won the 2009 Barnes & Noble Discover Award. The Los Angeles Times called it “an astonishing debut” and noted that “a whisper runs through the novel — the ghosts of places and people and luscious peach pies, making it a combination of dream and nightmare, nightmare and dream.”

Her novel, Fierce Kingdom, was named one of the Best Crime Novels of 2017 by the New York Times Book Review. It was also named one of the best books of the year by NPR, Publishers Weekly, Amazon, and Kirkus Reviews.

Phillips applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Ruby Falls, and reported the following:

I’m always delighted by the alchemy of the Page 69 Test—I don’t know if it works well in every book, but it works astonishingly well in mine.

My novel, Ruby Falls, begins with a man discovering a waterfall in the middle of a mountain. He names it after his wife, Ruby, and opens the tourist attraction to the public …just as the Great Depression hits full force. Meanwhile, Ada Smith has been exploring the caverns around the falls on her own—she’s lost plenty in her life, but this underground world has opened up possibilities she had no idea existed.

Page 69 hits right as the reader learns the basic framework of the novel: a local newspaper article details the plans for a famous mind reader to arrive in town as part of PR effort to sell tickets to Ruby Falls.

“He has been invited to Chattanooga by Leo Lambert, discovered of Ruby Falls, in hopes that he will perform the most mind-bending display of his abilities to date,” the article says. “He will navigate the underground passages of Lookout Mountain, using only his psychic energy to locate a hidden hatpin.”

Ada is scanning the article after a man she barely knows knocks on her front door and announces he has a proposition for her. She’s met Quinton in the caverns once before, but now she invites him inside her home for the first time:

He takes off his hat and starts to sit down in the straight-backed cane chair by the coatrack, and she’s glad when he reconsiders. She’s not sure it would hold him.

“Tea?” she says, wishing she had sugar. “Or I’ve got coffee on the burner I can warm up.”

He rests a hand on the back of the too-spindly chair. “I’ll take the coffee, if it’s not too much trouble.”

She taps the back of her oak rocking chair, and he drops into it with less jouncing than she expected. She steps to the stove, pulling her matches out of the drawer.

Within a few pages, we’ll learn that Quinton wants Ada to accompany him on part of the expedition that’s being kept secret—the two of them will follow the mind reader and his party at a distance in case of emergency. But even before that reveal, I like how this page sets up the divide between Ada’s life aboveground and belowground. She’s been raised to believe that her roles in life will be as a wife and mother, and she’s tried to play those roles: she has, in the past, desperately wanted to play them. But after her babies never lived to take a breath and her husband died, she’s coming to terms with the fact that she’s not going to fit the mold of all the women around her. She’s finding a new narrative in the caverns, exploring on her own, thrilled by the unknown.

We see her playing hostess on this page, with all the usual trappings of coffee and comfy seats, but it’s not a role she’s entirely comfortable with anymore. Her path is forking, both because of her passion for the caves and because of Quinton, who winds up playing a large role in how Ada’s story unfurls.

Here’s another thing I like: while much of the novel plays out underground in a world flush with millipedes and oxides and limestone and bats, the Great Depression—the weight and fear and constancy of it—is a big part of this story. Ada’s house has a certain barebones quality that almost every house would have had—no sugar, no extra food, furniture used past its prime.

The limits of life aboveground make the strange splendor of the Ruby Falls caverns seem even more otherworldly.

Visit Gin Phillips's website.

Writers Read: Gin Phillips (August 2017).

The Page 69 Test: Fierce Kingdom.

The Page 69 Test: Family Law.

Q&A with Gin Phillips.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Brighter the Light, the Darker the Shadow"

Verlin Darrow is a psychotherapist who lives with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near the Monterey Bay in northern California. They diagnose each other as necessary. Darrow is a former professional volleyball player (in Italy), unsuccessful country-western singer/songwriter, import store owner, and assistant guru in a small, benign spiritual organization.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, The Brighter the Light, the Darker the Shadow, and shared the following:

From page 69:

“I never really thanked you for all you did for me.”

“It was my pleasure. Listen, this is Bill Cullen. He’s investigating a murder up on our land, and he thought you might be able to help.”

Gar’s face darkened. “I’m tired of this shit, officer. I’ve been clean for six years now and I did my time. Anyway, I was never violent.”

Bill’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? I’ve seen your file, Brindisi. Resisting arrest? Wasn’t that one of your crimes?”

“That was bogus. They tacked that on to strengthen their case so I’d make a deal. All I did was try to grab my coat while this asshole was pulling my arm at the front door. Shit, it was cold out.”

“The detective has to explore all the possibilities, Gar,” I said. “I told him you’d never be involved in anything like a murder. But maybe you know who would, or how we could find out.”

“Cuz I have a record? That makes me a font of information?” He looked down and then spoke in a softer, calmer tone. “Look, I’d help you if I could. All I can say is nobody up there could’ve done it unless there’ve been newcomers in the last four months.”

Bill looked at me, and I shook my head.

“I know every person in the community, and I knew killers in Folsom,” Gar continued. “You’re talking about opposite ends of the spectrum. Look elsewhere.”

“Okay, thanks,” Bill told him.

This excerpt is typical of the middle part of my mystery, in which Kade, my protagonist, and a police detective question a series of suspects to investigate a murder on a rural spiritual community’s land. The page isn’t particularly significant or interesting compared to some of the other encounters—ones that yield important plot points or further character development. Since the latter part of the book is a murder trial, this page isn’t any sort of harbinger of what’s to come, either.

All in all, I’d say page 69 lets the reader know a bit about the general idea of the book. It introduces the setting, two of the main characters, and that there’s a murder to solve. Beyond that, I hope this relatively unexciting scene doesn’t reflect how engaging the book will be to readers.

I’m going to take the opportunity to let my protagonist dispense advice to writers.

“We have a choice to either hunker down and resist being changed by what comes our way, or grow and evolve as the ground underneath us shifts. Trying to maintain our historical sense of ourselves through thick and thin can be subtle, using psychological defenses, or it can be obvious, arguing away others’ point of view or freezing our development by drinking. Our attempts to make ourselves feel safe and secure are doomed. Impermanence prevails.

For writers, this means we have to surf the randomness and capriciousness of the publishing world, especially in regards to the end result of our efforts. It’s easy to adopt a subtle adversarial stance toward the folks who hold the fate of our careers in their hands. Why won’t they accept our query/submission of such a wonderful manuscript? What’s wrong with these people? The reality we sometimes need to accept is that our work may not be wonderful, after all. And even if it is, it may not be marketable in the eyes of people more expert than us. If we can yield gracefully—without a fight—to all of this, including our feelings and thoughts about it all, we can proceed in whatever is the best way possible.”

This is in his voice, and he’s no dummy.

Visit Verlin Darrow's website.

Writers Read: Verlin Darrow (May 2023).

My Book, The Movie: Murder for Liar.

The Page 69 Test: Murder for Liar.

The Page 69 Test: The Not Quite Enlightened Sleuth.

Writers Read: Verlin Darrow (April 2024).

My Book, The Movie: The Not Quite Enlightened Sleuth.

My Book, The Movie: The Brighter the Light, the Darker the Shadow.

Q&A with Verlin Darrow.

Writers Read: Verlin Darrow.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Ramin Abbas Has MAJOR Questions"

Ahmad Saber is a young adult author who grew up on an all-girls college campus next to a massive fort in Pakistan. He now lives in Canada, and loves Broadway (favorite show = Phantom), travel (favorite place = 4-way tie between NYC, Seoul, Paris, and Melbourne), and Taylor Swift (favorite album = folklore) He's also a self-professed Chocolate Chip Cookie Connoisseur and has crowned New York's Culture Espresso’s as the best in the world.

Ramin Abbas has MAJOR Questions is his debut novel and is based in part on his own lived experience, exploring the inherent challenges of being queer and Muslim, and the struggle to reconcile faith with sexuality.

Saber is also a medical doctor specializing in rheumatology.

He applied the Page 69 Test to Ramin Abbas has MAJOR Questions with the following results:

This is fun! Here’s what’s on Page 69 of Ramin Abbas has MAJOR Questions:

“Don’t talk poorly of your aunt,” Dad says irritably. “And leave your daadu out of this.”

But it is about Daadu. It’s got everything to do with my grandfather. Five months have gone by since Telephone Grandpa passed away, but Dad’s grief shows no sign of abating. When Dad emigrated, Daadu moved in with Aunty Fauzia, Dad’s younger sister. Aunty Fauzia doesn’t have a computer with a webcam or even Wi-Fi; the only option to talk with our grandfather was by phone. So, while Zayn and I wanted Daadu in our lives, it’s kinda hard to get to know someone when you can’t even see them. And it’s harder to be there for them. Aunty Fauzia loves reminding my father of this. Loves accusing him of being selfish for leaving. Never mind that Dad tried to sponsor Daadu four times, but the immigration people kept rejecting his application. Canada doesn’t want old, sick people.

I lay a hand on Dad’s shoulder. “Uh. We can talk about Daadu, you know.” My voice is shaky; I don’t know how he’ll react.

Dad runs his fingers through my hair. “Ramin. He is gone. No point talking about the past. We should focus on the future and fix things. It is not too late.”

“Fix things?” I bolt upright.

“I mean, it is not too late to make some big decisions. You and Zayn are young. You can still adapt easily. Islamabad has great universities.”

I leap off the couch as if it’s made of lava. “Come on, Dad! We’ve talked about this already! We’re not moving back to Pakistan. This is our home!”

While the Page 69 Test doesn’t quite capture everything (mainly, the central conflict between Ramin’s queer sexual identity and his devout faith in Islam, which forbids homosexuality, and the central plot about the soccer competition), it has captured the general vibe of the story and I’m quite impressed with this test, actually. Therefore, I think the readers would definitely get a good taste of the story, like a tasty amuse bouche before the main courses are served.

My book spans a wide variety of subject matter, so I think it would be nearly impossible for a single page to capture the breadth of the novel, but why this test worked for my book is because it has captured a key component of the various types of conflict in the story: Ramin’s complicated relationship with his soccer-loving dad, who’s also very religious and very unlikely to be accepting of Ramin’s queerness. The page highlights Ramin’s dad’s struggle with adjusting in Canada, a move which came at the cost of strained family relationships and constant second-guessing his decision to immigrate. Dad’s guilt over this certainly affects his relationship with Ramin on a subconscious level, hence the page gives an idea of the struggle of many first generation immigrants to the modern west: the feeling of never quite belonging.

Lastly, the page happened to capture one of my favorite combinations of words in the book: Telephone Grandpa. Every kid who grew up far from their grandparents would likely immediately know and feel what a “Telephone Grandpa” is. I had received overwhelmingly positive feedback on this phrase from my beta readers when the novel was first being drafted.

In summary, I love the Page 69 Test! I’d never heard of it before, but now I have a feeling I’ll apply to every single book I browse or purchase. It’s just so much fun, and lands you right into the core of the book to get an idea of the writing, the themes, the worldbuilding etc.

Visit Ahmad Saber's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Dark Below"

Sherry Rankin grew up in New Jersey where she became an early and avid reader of mystery fiction. She earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in English and currently lives in Abilene, Texas where she has taught writing and literature at a local university for twenty years.

Her novel, Strange Fire, was shortlisted for the 2017 Daniel Goldsmith First Novel Prize and won the 2017 CWA Debut Dagger Award.

Her debut thriller, The Killing Plains, was published by Thomas & Mercer as a super lead title in February 2025.

Rankin applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Dark Below, and reported the following:

On page 69, Teddy stops by her father Milton’s house to check on him and drop off a few groceries on her way to the crime scene. When Teddy was a child, Milton was a brutal domestic tyrant. Now, in his seventies, he’s a reclusive hoarder and an alcoholic—a shell of his former self, but still spiteful and manipulative. Teddy looks after him out of a sense of pity and family obligation, and he repays her kindness with complaints.

Here's a passage from page 69:

Teddy opened the refrigerator to put the milk away. The handle was sticky. A line of ants crawled up the door. She washed her hands and dried them with a paper towel. When she tossed it into the overflowing garbage pail, a crumpled letter on county letterhead caught her eye.

She pulled it out. “Dad, what’s this?”

Milton drained his beer. “Health Department thinks they can bully a veteran.”

Teddy scanned the letter. “This says you have thirty days to clean up before they take you to court.” She checked the date. “It’s from a week ago.”

Milton picked up his cigarette. “People need to mind their own goddamn business.”

“This place is a health hazard, Dad. It stinks.”

“It’s them rats—they die in the walls.” He flicked ash into the tray. “What can they do, sue me? I ain’t got nothin’.”

“They can send in a crew with a roll-off dumpster and gut the place. That what you want?” A dull pain was pulsing behind Teddy’s eyes. She looked at her watch. “I’ve got to go, Dad. We’ll talk about this later.” She folded the letter and tucked it in her back pocket as she left.

The Dark Below is largely concerned with the darkness people keep buried beneath the surface of their lives. While page 69 isn’t directly tied to the central mystery, it captures Teddy’s ongoing struggle to manage her own anger and grief while tending to others—balancing career and family, pride and pity, rage and restraint. In that sense, page 69 offers a representative glimpse of the novel’s thematic center, even as the larger plot continues to unfold elsewhere.

Visit Sherry Rankin's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Killing Plains.

The Page 69 Test: The Killing Plains.

Q&A with Sherry Rankin.

My Book, The Movie: The Dark Below.

--Marshal Zeringue