a YA fantasy author wasn’t anything she’d ever considered until she was in her twenties. Her first short story was a romance novel parody that ended up being a hit among her friends. After that success, she started writing seriously, which led to her earning an MFA in Writing for Children at The New School.
Currently, she lives in Long Island, New York, with her cat Martha. When she’s not working at her day job or writing her next novel, Louise can be found with her nose buried in a graphic novel or taking down bad guys in her favorite video games.
She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Waking Fire and reported the following:
From page 69:Visit Jean Louise's website.Obba passes his staff to Omma and takes the sword in hand. He flexes his wrist a few times, the light dancing on the curve of the blade, before tucking it into his waistband.I love the idea of this test (and I’ll try it out the next time I’m book shopping!), but unfortunately, I don’t think a browser would get a good idea if they’d be interested in reading more of my book based on that page alone. The passage is too short (it’s the last three paragraphs of Chapter 5) and the narrator does not speak in this section, so they wouldn’t have any idea of who she is and what she wants.
“Isrof, are you sure this is a good idea?” Omma glances at Nez with concern in the crease of her brow. “Shouldn’t you both stay here where it’s safe?”
“If the Vra Gool Dambi break through the gates,” Obba says, “then nowhere is safe.”
However, I think the test does reveal a really important theme in my book: To what lengths would you go to protect those you love? For the protagonist, everything she does is spurred by her need to protect her family, and in this passage, you can see her mother’s concern for Nez, Naira’s twin brother, and her father’s determination to fight to keep his family safe. In Naira’s desire to protect her family, she makes some questionable decisions which she struggles with, but the idea of not fighting for those she loves never crosses her mind.
The funny thing is I selected page 69 from the printed hardcover of the book since that’s what most browsers would be viewing, but in earlier drafts of the book, page 69 is a scene that takes place in the very next chapter, between Naira and her mother, that shows another way of protecting others besides fighting. Omma, Naira’s mother, is a healer and Naira realizes that even though her mother doesn’t use a sword, her method of protecting her family is just as powerful. I think if browsers read that page 69, they’d have a better idea of who Naira is and what her journey will be.
--Marshal Zeringue
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