Tuesday, June 9, 2020

"Summer and July"

Paul Mosier began writing novels in 2011 but has written in some fashion his entire life. He is married and the father to two daughters, one of whom has passed to the next dimension. He lives near his place of birth in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. He loves listening to baseball on the radio, eating vegetarian food, drinking coffee, and talking nonstop. He has written three critically acclaimed books for middle grade readers: Train I Ride, Echo’s Sister, and Summer and July.

Mosier applied the Page 69 Test to Summer and July and reported the following:
Page 69 is a half-page with spot art on the upper half, as it’s the first page of a chapter, so I’m cheating and going to page 70. On this page, Summer and Juillet have arrived at the 3rd Street promenade in Santa Monica on their way to visit the pier. Both things terrify Juillet, because she has an irrational fear of the number 3, and she is afraid of amusement park rides and the ocean. Juillet is wearing her gothic makeup and a tee shirt that says DEATH. “In this case it’s not the name of one of my favorite bands, or any band that I’m aware of. It’s just what happens to all of us eventually.” Summer is wearing a light blue hoodie that says UM OKAY. “People we pass look from me to Summer, from Summer to me, and smile like we’re telling some kind of joke. Like Happy is taking Sad for a walk.”

The page does a good job of demonstrating the baseline that the characters entered the story with, and contains the beginning of a hint of what will amount to a role reversal. It doesn’t happen on the beach, and there are no waves on this page, but it’s a pretty demonstrative page. I’ve described the story as “a crush between a gothic girl and a surfer girl who help each other through a difficult time in each other’s lives.”