Original Voices Award and 2006 SIBA Book Award, a long list nominee for the 2005 James Tiptree, Jr. Award (now known as the Otherwise Award), and a 2010 Costco Pennie’s Pick. The Keeper of Tales Trilogy, which can be read in any order, includes The Mapmaker's War, The Chronicle of Secret Riven, and The Plague Diaries.
Domingue applied the Page 69 Test to The Mercy of Thin Air and shared the following:
From The Mercy of Thin Air, page 69:Visit Ronlyn Domingue's website.Amy didn’t watch the rest of the DVD Chloe had sent her, but I did. There were only a few minutes left. The footage was taken at a party. People waved at the camera and talked to Chloe, the voice behind the lens. The microphone hummed with music and chatter. The shot moved through a dining room next to a narrow kitchen doorway. On the wall behind Amy was a calendar, August 1992. She hugged the dark-haired young man, and he clearly didn’t want them to be interrupted. They shared a strangely intimate moment for such a celebratory atmosphere. He was talking, but his voice did not come through. I strained through the noise and read his lips--It’ll be okay, he said. We’ll have the whole drive up. Sex in at least one strange bed. He nudged her, and she smiled. Thanksgiving will be here before you know it. This is only temporary.Does the Page 69 Test work for my novel? Absolutely it does on the level of theme—a refusal to confront the past. Amy hides a secret, as well as profound trauma, that will be revealed in the pages that follow. The narrator Razi Nolan—a ghost who wouldn’t call herself a ghost—struggles with similar buried troubles. On top of that, page 69 picks up on other aspects of the story such as heightened senses and matters of intimacy.
For several days after she hid the disc, the essence of another man billowed intermittently throughout the house. More often, she snapped her head toward doorways and furniture corners with no discernable reason why. Amy was not reacting to me, I knew: there was another reason for her jitters.
Within that time, Amy stopped watching Scott as he slept before she left for work. Then one morning, and another, and each one after, she didn’t kiss him goodbye. The only habit she kept was to keep him warm.
So much has changed since the novel was published in 2005—from technology to politics—that I wondered if it would hold up in light of that—and for the story itself. For the book’s twentieth anniversary, a friend invited me to do an interview on his podcast. I had to reread the book for the first time in about 10 years to get ready. In the opening minutes, he quoted several reviews, one I didn’t remember. “In a word: Timeless,” he said. I paused. Yes. Because, at the core, this story is about deep love among friends, family, and partners, The Mercy of Thin Air is truly timeless.
--Marshal Zeringue
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