"A Lite Too Bright"

Samuel Miller was born and raised in Vermillion, South Dakota, and now resides in Los Angeles, where, in addition to writing, he directs music videos and coaches Little League Baseball. He began writing his first novel while on tour in a fifteen-passenger van with the rock band Paradise Fears. A Lite Too Bright is his debut novel. Currently he attends graduate school at the University of Southern California. He credits his existence entirely to two spectacular parents, three brothers, one sister, and the best and sweetest puppy dog on the whole planet, Addison.

Miller applied the Page 69 Test to A Lite Too Bright and reported the following:

Page 69 of A Lite Too Bright is entirely dedicated to a public address announcement made by the conductor of the Zeyphr train (his second of six such announcements in the novel), alerting the train passengers their next stop is Elko, Nevada. While this may not contain much literal information about the plot, I think it captures the essence of the book in a couple of subtle ways:

The conductor is about as modern, middle America as you can get; he sounds like someone straight out of my youth, false enthusiasm & all, & to me, a lot of this book is about trying to create that world for the reader. He's expressing his frustration with people getting off to smoke at stops when they're not supposed to; but truly, as he reveals, his frustration is with the organization & bureaucracy of his superiors. Truthfully, he doesn't care about what people do, he just hates that he's made to care, because he has to, because of the way systems of power & money are structured in the world-- also an over-arching theme & common attitude amongst characters.

Mostly though, it just tells the readers where we are....

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--Marshal Zeringue