"Beware the Night"

Jessika Fleck is a writer, unapologetic coffee drinker, and knitter -- she sincerely hopes to one day discover a way to do all three at once. Until then, she continues collecting vintage typewriters and hourglasses, dreaming of an Ireland getaway, and convincing her husband they need more kittens.

Fleck has lived all over the U.S. from Hawaii to Vermont, but currently calls Illinois home. She resides there with her sociology professor husband and two daughters where she’s learning to appreciate the beauty in cornfields and terrifyingly large cicadas.

Fleck writes both young adult and middle grade fiction and her work verges on fantastical and dark with a touch of realism. She is also a regular contributor to the fantastic kidlit blog, Kidliterati.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her latest novel, Beware the Night, and reported the following:

I love the idea of taking a page out of a book and examining it out of context.

Page 69 of Beware the Night [left; click to enlarge] certainly isn’t representative of the book as a whole; however, it does give a great window into the complicated relationship between Veda and Nico. They are childhood friends and care about one another deeply but despite living on the same small island, the lives they lead are worlds apart. Relationships (especially complicated ones)—family, friends, romantic—are a theme that carries throughout the book and into book two. There’s a constant push and pull between these two characters which is both lovely and heartbreaking. But we soon find that everything surrounding Veda exists in juxtaposition to itself. So, push and pull… dark and light… sun and moon… it all ties together.

Visit Jessika Fleck's website.

--Marshal Zeringue