from a very young age. Today, Weiss is utterly fascinated with the convergence of Judaism and popular culture in film, television, comics, literature, and other media. After college, he became a freelance entertainment journalist, writing stories for SYFY WIRE, The Hollywood Reporter, Forbes, and Marvel Entertainment. He currently resides in Philadelphia with his fiancée, as well as an extensive collection of graphic T-shirts, movie posters, vinyl records, and a few books, of course.
Weiss applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Beat the Devils, and reported the following:
As fate would have it, the 69th page in Beat the Devils is a blank filler page. I could just take the easy way out and say that this was an intentional nod to the moral bankruptcy of this dystopian timeline, but instead, let’s take a look at Page 65, which closes out the first part of the narrative (the book is broken up into several different days).Follow Josh Weiss on Twitter.
In the final paragraph of Part I, Baker lies awake in the middle of the night after spending an evening with his on-again-off-again girlfriend, Elizabeth Short (aka the infamous “Black Dahlia” victim in our reality). He muses on how it’s becoming harder and harder to stave off the traumatic memories of the war. Our protagonist is “slowly building up a tolerance to the comfort Liz once brought him.”
Memory and guilt are two of the book’s central thematic pillars. The overarching mystery exposes the horrors of Baker’s past until he’s got nowhere else to hide. He must face the past head-on if he is to move forward with his life — emotionally, socially, psychologically, and yes, even romantically.
Writers Read: Josh Weiss.
My Book, The Movie: Beat the Devils.
--Marshal Zeringue
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