"The Lost Kings"

Tyrell Johnson is a father, writer, and editor. His postapocalyptic novel The Wolves of Winter was an Indie Next pick and garnered praise from Entertainment Weekly, PopSugar, Vogue, and many others.

Johnson applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, The Lost Kings, and reported the following:

From page 69:

Running takes my mind off the world. That, and it helps me sweat the alcohol out of my body. I focus on my breathing. I take in the reds and yellows of the deciduous leaves and realize that I don't like the changing seasons. The transitory nature of fall and spring makes me feel untethered, like everything is tumbling. It makes me desperate for something more substantial. Give me extremes. Give me summer or give me cold. Give me the harshness of winter over the soft gestures of fall. Winter is an exclamation mark--obvious, almost violent in its finality--while fall is a comma, uncertain, asking the one question that vexes humanity more than anything else in the world: What happens next? What happens tomorrow? Next week? Next winter? When we die? How does this not drive more people insane? Perhaps it does, and we carry on quietly in our madness.

Okay, so I think this actually passes the Page 69 Test! While it doesn't necessarily get at the larger plot of the novel, it is an excellent snapshot of Jeanie King and her mental state, which is perhaps the most important driver of the story as a whole. Ironically, it also includes the line from which the cover of the novel was created: "I take in the reds and yellows of the deciduous leaves and realize that I don't like the changing seasons." This was a concept that I actually wrote about when I was getting my MFA in Creative Writing. I wrote a poem about the changing seasons as a time of instability and anxiety. I thought this worked perfectly for my character, so I included it in the novel--and, amazingly, it landed right on page 69.

Visit Tyrell Johnson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue