"Such a Pretty Girl"

T. Greenwood is the author of more than a dozen novels with more than a quarter-million copies sold. A two-time winner of the San Diego Book Award and LAMBDA Literary Award finalist, she has received grants from the Sherwood Anderson Foundation, the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Maryland State Arts Council. Five of her novels have been Indie Next Picks and her twelfth novel, Rust & Stardust, was a LibraryReads selection. Her novels have been translated into five languages. She lives with her family in San Diego, California, where she teaches creative writing, studies photography, and continues to write.

Greenwood applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Such a Pretty Girl, and reported the following:

From page 69:

Liliana throws her arm around Sasha’s shoulder. Their heads lean in together as they walk toward the elevators, and my throat feels swollen.

Gilly and I trail behind. There were a few people milling about in the corridors, but no one I recognize. I feel suddenly, oddly, territorial. As if this is my home, and it has been invaded by strangers. I know it’s ridiculous. I abandoned Westbeth; it didn’t abandon me.

As the elevator ascends, I feel my stomach bottom out. I study the numbered buttons and resist the impulse to press 2 for Henri’s floor.

“Second floor!” Gilly used to call out in a deep, silly voice, pretending he was one of the fancy elevator operators in the luxury apartment buildings and hotels that we sometimes passed on the street. We used to pretend they were those guards with the fuzzy hats who guarded the Queen of England, and we’d always try to make them laugh. But now, Gilly just stands quietly as we keep rising. On the ninth floor, we get off, and I take a deep breath.

“It’s okay,” Gilly insists, as if he can simply manifest my wellbeing with his sheer will.

The Page 69 Test works with Such a Pretty Girl! In this scene, an adult Ryan has returned to the artists’ residence (Westbeth) in the West Village where she grew up, and where many of her most wonderful, and most painful, memories reside.

Much of the novel -- in both the past and present chapters -- takes place inside the walls of this labyrinthine former Bell Labs building. Westbeth is a real place, the first federally funded residence for artists, which opened in 1970. Ryan and her mother, an aspiring actress, move with friends into the building in 1977 when Fiona decides to pursue her dreams in NYC. In the 1970s, it was a bohemian mecca. As the city crumbled around them, this community was alive and vibrant. It is where the storied Village Halloween Parade began. It was (and is) the home to painters and sculptors, writers, and dancers, and musicians.

Henri is a photographer, a man who becomes like a father to Ryan, and she, his muse. In this scene, Henri is now gone, and the ache of his absence is acute.

Gilly is Ryan’s lifelong best friend, and the one person who can calm her when her crippling anxiety – something she has suffered from since childhood – kicks in.

This novel is, in many ways, about Ryan’s revisiting her childhood and examining it through a contemporary lens. But in this scene, like many in the novel, the past and present conflate.

Visit T. Greenwood's website.

The Page 69 Test: Rust and Stardust.

The Page 69 Test: Keeping Lucy.

Q&A with T. Greenwood.

--Marshal Zeringue

"On Good Authority"

Briana Una McGuckin lives in a charmingly strange old house in Connecticut. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Western Connecticut State University and an MLS from Long Island University. Among other places, her work appears in the Bram Stoker Award–nominated horror anthology Not All Monsters, the modern Gothic horror anthology In Somnio, and The Lost Librarian’s Grave anthology. McGuckin has spastic diplegic cerebral palsy, a perhaps concerningly large collection of perfume oils, and a fascination with all things Victorian.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her debut novel, On Good Authority, and reported the following:

From page 69:

I wiped my eyes and recommenced the massage. “You’ve been alone.”

Mother sniffed. “So have you.”

And all at once I had a feeling that, because she was my mother, I had no secrets from her—and Mr. Bornholdt was between us. Mr. Bornholdt and his claustrophobic kiss.

“Saw your Valentine.”

I jerked to attention. “What?”

“Valentine,” she said, enunciating. “The lad. I saw him yesterday.”

I put my hand to my mouth, the corners of which dragged down. I forced myself to speak calmly. “That was many years ago, Mother. Valentine’s a man now; he’s not here anymore.”

“He is,” she said, raising her voice, startling me. “He came down from the attic. He asked after you to the matron.”

“Mother—”

“He had flowers. Purple hyacinths, he had. Good enough to eat.” She reached out and clutched my hand, and her grip was shocking in its strength. “But you mustn’t, Marian. Don’t eat them. He was insistent upon that.”

I bit my lip. But I held her close to me, saying nothing. It didn’t matter if she was going mad. The important thing was that she was here, and so was I. We were together.

Mother put her chin over my shoulder. “Will you go off with him? Once I’m gone?”

“Don’t talk so, Mother.” I patted her back. “You’re not rushing off anywhere.”

I am stunned—stunned!—by how well the Page 69 Test worked for the book, thematically! There is so much here, in a roundabout way, that gets to the very heart of the story. There is, in fact, on this very page, the one and only little “Easter egg” I put in the book for anyone of curious mind to pursue (preferably when they’re finished, so they don’t spoil anything for themselves).

But I’m being frustratingly vague. More directly, I think we see all Marian’s problems here at once: her being alone in the world, the looming danger her master Mr. Bornholdt presents in his position of power over her, her guilt and worry over her mother, and a connection to young Valentine, whom she sees as only part of her past. The gang’s all here.

Can we tell that we’re in Victorian London, here? Maybe not. But I think we get a good sense of voice, and if we don’t know precisely where we are we do know how it feels: desperate and dreary.

But there’s a bit of hope to go on, too: the boy with the flowers.

Visit Briana Una McGuckin's website.

Q&A with Briana Una McGuckin.

My Book, The Movie: On Good Authority.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Wolves Are Watching"

Natalie Lund is the author of the young adult novels, The Wolves Are Watching, The Sky Above Us, and We Speak in Storms. She is a former middle and high school teacher and a graduate of Purdue University’s MFA program.

Lund applied the Page 69 Test to The Wolves Are Watching and reported the following:

I was excited to apply the Page 69 Test to The Wolves Are Watching because it is a delightfully brief page:

“Hurry, Fanya,” Teodora says when our song is finished. “You must go before light.”

I grab the New Form by its head-fur. It is heavy, but I am strong in haunch, foot, and jaw.

I run.

I think the test works. From this short snippet, browsers get a surprisingly good sense of several aspects of the book. The Wolves Are Watching is an adaptation of Slavic folklore about Vila, fairy creatures that transform into animals and trap wanderers with their songs. And while the casual browser applying the Page 69 Test may not glean what these creatures are from this passage, they will probably pick up on the fact that we are dealing with non-human characters (“strong in haunch, foot, and jaw”) who speak differently (“New Form” and “head-fur.”) A particularly observant browser may also note that the names are eastern european.

There is, of course, a large swath of information that readers are missing from just glancing at page 69–primarily the fact that the novel rotates perspectives and that the dominant perspective is a teen girl named Luce. Her voice and conflict–a cousin that goes missing in the middle of the night–are central to the story.

That said, plenty is communicated about the type of book The Wolves Are Watching is. Even on this short page, there’s a pressing timeline–something that Fanya must rush to do before first light that requires strength and speed. There’s an element of mystery as well. What is a New Form? Even readers who have read the prior 68 pages have not discovered the answer to that question yet. Hopefully, browsers applying the Page 69 test will intuit that this novel not only includes folkloric creatures, but also elements of a mystery and thriller–plenty to keep them turning the pages.

Visit Natalie Lund's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"My Dirty California"

Jason Mosberg lives in Los Angeles where he works as a novelist, screenwriter, and TV creator.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, My Dirty California, and reported the following:

Page 69 of My Dirty California features a character named Tiph who's at an activist rally in Downtown Los Angeles. Her husband, who's stoned at the time, is not pleased to be there. But he pops out of his stupor and comes to her defense when Tiph gets in a fight with a group of men.

Reading this page alone is a nice tease into Tiph's storyline in the novel. However, Tiph's storyline is just one of four storylines that interweave across the whole book. And Tiph's is the fourth to be introduced. There's nothing on page 69 that indicates Tiph's storyline is not the main one. Each of the four storylines has a different protagonist, hook, engine, and even tone.

If readers bought this book based on page 69, I think some would find it thrilling to dive into the other three storylines, and I think others would find it jarring. One part features a thirtysomething woman who's looking for proof we're living in a simulation. One features a man who traveled to Los Angeles from Pennsylvania to solve the murder of his brother. And the other storyline features a young Mexican immigrant who is trapped in a house with no idea how she got there. The stories are linked through a video log by one character called My Dirty California.

Visit Jason Mosberg's website.

My Book, The Movie: My Dirty California.

Q&A with Jason Mosberg.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Year the Maps Changed"

Danielle Binks is an author and literary agent from Melbourne, Australia. The Year the Maps Changed was her debut novel and has been shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award and was a Children’s Book Council of Australia Notable Book. She has since written her first young adult novel, The Monster of Her Age, and has edited and contributed to Begin, End, Begin, an anthology of new Australian young adult writing, which won an Australian Book Industry Award.

Binks applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Year the Maps Changed, and reported the following:

From page 69:

Mr. Khouri lifted a hand to rub between his eyes. “We do not condone bullying or intimidation of any kind at this school—you both understand that, don’t you?”

I’m not convinced the Page 69 Test quite works for my book – only because mine has a few story layers (kind of like the contour lines on a topographic map, if you will) and this is just one of those lines, showing a bit of friction between Fred and Sam, her new ‘kind of’ adopted brother – the son of her father’s new partner. But this test doesn’t show the background also happening, which is the Kosovo War conflict heightening and the Australian Government preparing Fred’s hometown to be a ‘safe haven’ location.

I do like that it’s a scene with Mr. Khouri – Sam and Fred’s teacher – who is the font of a lot of wisdom. In fact, I think Mr. Khouri says something (before page 69!) that hints at why this limited view of a story doesn’t quite work. It’s something that Fred decides of her worldview, shaped by a Mr. Khouri teaching; I have decided that memories are a little like mountains. You need to hike to the top and get some height—what Mr. Khouri calls perspective—so you can look down at how far you’ve come, and see all the people and choices that make up the map of your life.

Visit Danielle Binks's website.

Q&A with Danielle Binks.

My Book, The Movie: The Year the Maps Changed.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Rabbit's Gift"

Jessica Vitalis is the author of The Wolf’s Curse. She is a full-time writer with a previous career in business and an MBA from Columbia Business School. An American expat, she now lives in Canada with her husband and two daughters.

Vitalis applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Rabbit's Gift, and reported the following:

From page 69:

“Things are out of balance now, but nature always rights itself,” Maman said.

She sounded certain, but I wasn’t so sure. The Grande Maman in the Moon had honored our family with the responsibility of running the country—we even had a small chunk of moon rock on display at home to prove it. But that was back at the beginning of time. To my knowledge, none of us had heard from her since.

I couldn’t believe she’d really punish us for doing everything we could––including using science––to help her people. (For all we knew, maybe the drought was punishment for not doing science.) Then again, the last time Madame Pauline had tried to convince Maman to allow scientists into the country, she’d taken ill with a fever for more than a week.

This passage provides an excellent glimpse into the themes in The Rabbit’s Gift.

The story, a French twist on stork mythology, takes place in a country where human babies are grown in cabbage-like plants and delivered by rabbits. Told in dual points of view, one side features a scrawny rabbit determined to prove himself to his starving warren. The other point of view (featured above) is a girl by the name of Fleurine; she longs to study botany in order to unlock the elusive secrets growing in the rabbits’ warren, but she is the daughter of the most powerful woman in the country and expected to follow in her mother’s political footsteps. Even worse, science is frowned upon in Montepeyroux for fear that it might upset the natural order and offend the Grande Maman in the Moon. Fleurine is certain that the scientific advancements she’s heard of in other countries could help decrease their dependence on rabbits, and maybe even decrease the impact of the recent drought that has driven people to the cities in search of food. When Fleurine discovers Quincy Rabbit stealing her gardening supplies, she follows him back to the top-secret warren, setting off a string of events that could prove catastrophic for rabbits and humans alike.

Visit Jessica Vitalis's website.

Q&A with Jessica Vitalis.

The Page 69 Test: The Wolf's Curse.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Improbably Yours"

Kerry Anne King is a Washington Post and Amazon charts bestselling author of compelling and transformational stories about family and personal growth with elements of mystery, humor, and an undercurrent of romance. She was voted the 2020 Writer of the Year by the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. Her novel, Everything You Are, was a finalist in the Nancy Pearl Book Awards hosted by the Pacific Northwest Writers Association, and A Borrowed Life was a finalist in the 2020 Authors on the Air Book of the Year Awards. In addition to writing, Kerry Schafer supports other writers through motivational coaching and speaking.

King applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Improbably Yours, and reported the following:

On page 69 of Improbably Yours we find the main character, Blythe, having breakfast with her sister, Kristen:

“How can you eat that?” I gesture with my fork at the pallid, rubbery thing on her plate.

“You’ll die of cholesterol before you’re forty,” she retorts.

“As it turns out, a certain amount of fat is good for you,” I point out. “You should eat the whole egg. Yolks are full of antioxidants, vitamins, omega-threes...”

She shudders. “And calories. Back to Alan—”

“I am not discussing Alan.”

“Fine then, what are you going to do about Nomi’s ashes?”

“I’m taking them to the island and burying them. As she asked.”

“To the fictional island you created when you were a child.”

“As it turns out, there’s a real island at those coordinate points. In the San Juans, not far from Orcas Island. I saw the attorney yesterday. There’s even money set aside for me to go, so why not?”

“Three reasons,” she says, ticking them off on her fingers. “Alan. Your new job. And just because there’s a land mass at those coordinates, it doesn’t mean it’s a real island. I mean, okay. Yes. It’s real but not the island. Not the one you drew in that stupid map.”

“How do you know that?” I ask. I was about to tell her that Mr. Wilcox has money in trust for her, too, but now she has annoyed me and I figure she can find that out for herself.

She stares at me as if I’ve completely lost my mind. I smile at her in the way I know pisses her off and say, “Right island or not, I’m going as soon as I can figure out a place to stay.”

As it turns out, the Page 69 Test works well for Improbably Yours. This one conversation sums up the major question asked in the book. Blythe has been presented with an improbable quest: using a treasure map that she drew as a child during a game of ‘let’s pretend’ to find the spot where her beloved deceased grandmother wants her ashes to be buried. Leaving to follow the quest means turning her back on a life that offers security, even if not exactly what she wants – the ambitious and handsome young man who wants to marry her, a job offer her sister would nearly die for, and the version of reality Blythe has always believed in. If she accepts this wild goose chase of a quest will she find the life and love she dreams of, or lose everything she has and come to regret her decision?

Visit Kerry Anne King's website.

The Page 69 Test: Everything You Are.

The Page 69 Test: A Borrowed Life.

The Page 69 Test: Other People's Things.

Writers Read: Kerry Anne King.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Raven Song"

Luanne G. Smith is the Washington Post and Amazon Charts bestselling author of The Vine Witch, The Glamourist, and The Conjurer, a witchy historical fantasy series set in Belle Époque France, and The Raven Spell and The Raven Song, a gothic witch series set in a fantasy version of Victorian London. She’s lucky enough to live in Colorado at the base of the beautiful Rocky Mountains, where she enjoys reading, gardening, hiking, a glass of wine at the end of the day, and finding the magic in everyday life.

Smith applied the Page 69 Test to The Raven Song and reported the following:

A large part of page 69 of The Raven Song is an exchange between Sir Henry Elvanfoot, a renowned wizard in the north (Edinburgh), and Edwina Blackwood, a shapeshifting witch who has recently traveled north (from London) to escape a man who has been stalking her.

Besides showing a brief conversation between the wizard and a pair of bees, there’s also this observation from Elvanfoot about Edwina when he sees her clutch her shawl around her: “It’s almost like a swaddling motion, is it not? The way you keep your shawl held snug around you whenever you’re a bit flustered?”

Edwina answers:

“I’m not flustered. Not exactly.” She loosened her grip on the shawl and settled herself. “But when Mary and I were younger, it often helped with the transformation, as you suggest. My mother is a textile witch. She can sew, weave, knit. She made the shawls when we were younger, enchanting them with malleable threads that conformed to our bodies. You see, it does take a measure of self-control to keep the mind and body housed together when things get stressful.”

I wouldn’t say the page is remarkably representative of the overall book, but the scene is an important one because it reveals information about Edwina and Mary and the relevance of their flowing shawls that hadn’t been covered in depth in the first book. Without saying more to avoid spoilers, the information on the page is part of the set up for the villain’s ultimate motive to do what he does.

The Raven Song is the second book in The Conspiracy of Magic duology. There were a lot of unanswered questions in the first book, The Raven Spell. Some of that was done deliberately, of course, with new questions raised at the end to entice readers to return for the sequel. I think this second book will answer most of those nagging reader questions. They’ll find it also explores more of the Celtic folklore as the characters travel north, hopefully providing one complete story arc by the end of book two.

Visit Luanne G. Smith's website.

Q&A with Luanne G. Smith.

The Page 69 Test: The Raven Spell.

--Marshal Zeringue

"River Woman, River Demon"

Jennifer Givhan, a National Endowment for the Arts and PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices fellow, is a Chicana and Indigenous novelist, poet, and transformational coach. She is the author of Jubilee, which received an honorable mention for the 2021 Rudolfo Anaya Best Latino-Focused Fiction Book Award, and Trinity Sight, winner of the 2020 Southwest Book Award. She has also published five full-length poetry collections and her honors include the Frost Place Latinx Scholarship and the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize.

Givhan applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, River Woman, River Demon, and reported the following:

From page 69:

It was like that each midnight for seven more nights. Each time we returned to the fork in the road—the place no one owned, the place that belonged to the spirits—some animal or other came to greet us. One night, a black fat-tailed scorpion scuttled across the sand, and Jericho said it represented adaptation and strength—even the small guy’s got to protect himself. Later, I looked up the scorpion’s origins: native to Africa. There’s no way it should’ve been in San Diego. Had he conjured it?

“The spirits will come,” he said. “You have to believe they’re coming. That they’re already here.”

The final night Jericho said if the spirits had accepted, then the Black man would come.

I grinned ruefully up at him, thinking he was teasing. He’d been there all along, right? Jericho was the devil?

He rolled his eyes at me. “Not a brown-skinned man, Eva love. Not that kind of Black man. And not the Judeo-Christian devil either. Lil ole funny boy. He of many names and iterations. If he shows himself to you, you gotta be brave, Eva woman, you hear me? Show no fear. He’ll ask to borrow your glass, and he’ll show you how to transform it into a piece not only proficient for a student, not a utilitarian ashtray or wine glass, but artwork that seems to flow and move of its own accord. Artwork so lifelike it feels magic.” He said the last part with the flair of the showman he was.

I asked, “How are you so sure the devil’s a man? Couldn’t she be a woman?”

“You know, I just do believe your devil might be a woman.” He laughed, the edges of his eyes crinkling. “Well, come to think of it, Pomba Gira is a femme deity in Umbanda. You’d love her. They call her the Mistress of Witchcraft. She’s Èsú’s wife, Queen of the Crossroads.”

We lit a candle in the crossroad sand, placed four pennies around it, and waited.

Part of me doubted. I wasn’t an overnight convert. Maybe that’s why Jericho was so drawn to me. I wasn’t an easy sell. I took coaxing. But perhaps my willingness to sit with my doubt, to wait despite my doubt, perhaps that was as powerful as if I’d believed entirely.

As if by magick, page 69 of River Woman, River Demon absolutely does encapsulate the larger themes of the novel in such a compelling and succinct way. I never cease feeling amazed by the synchronicities of the Universe, and this case is no exception. In this scene, the protagonist Eva, who is a bruja by birth who is disconnected from her magickal roots and searching for a link to her innate belief, power, and strength, which she'd believed she'd found, at least in part, through her relationship with her hoodoo practicing professor of a husband, Jericho; he's taken her to the crossroads to perform a ritual to find her mojo, which in this case and traditional hoodoo means the essence of her creative spirit and a belief in herself and the magick within that will empower her and lead her to her creative destiny.

In typical Eva fashion, she's skeptical but enamored of the idea and Jericho, thus open to possibility. In her internal dialogue, she muses, “Part of me doubted. I wasn’t an overnight convert. Maybe that's why Jericho was so drawn to me. I wasn't an easy sell. I took coaxing. But perhaps my willingness to sit with my doubt, to wait despite my doubt, perhaps that was as powerful as if I'd believed entirely.”

What's cool about this passage in relation to the entire book is that this summarizes the lesson that she must learn through the entire novel; she doesn't believe it here, doesn't believe in herself, and, when her husband is accused of murdering their best friend who is found dead in his arms in the river beside their house, Eva will struggle to believe him.

This page sets up the endearing dynamic between them shrouded by uncertainty built into the ritual of their magick as well as their own natures, his enigmatic and hers self-protective. As this murder mystery + ghost story unfolds, the reader must puzzle together who to believe and whether the magick they discuss here was a blessing or curse, whether it will protect or destroy them.

Visit Jennifer Givhan's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Beasts of the Earth"

James Wade lives and writes in the Texas Hill Country with his wife and daughter. He is the author of River, Sing Out and All Things Left Wild, a winner of the prestigious MPIBA Reading the West Award for Debut Fiction, and a recipient of the Spur Award for Best Historical Novel from the Western Writers of America.

Wade applied the Page 69 Test to his third novel, Beasts of the Earth, and reported the following:

Beasts of the Earth occurs in two timelines-- one in Texas in the 1980s, and the other in Louisiana in the 1960s. Page 69 falls in the Louisiana timeline and describes the first moment that young Michael Fischer's father, Munday, arrives home from his stint in the state prison. There is little action-- or even description-- on the page, and yet Munday's arrival is something that irrevocably upends Michael's life. It is one of the defining moments in the novel's chain.

On first glance, it would appear the test "failed," as the page is void of much of the novel's stylized prose or plot-based content. However, there are repetitive thematic elements that cycle through the text and a few of them pop up on this page. The first is Michael waking from a dream. Both Michael and Harlen (the lead character in the Texas timeline) oscillate between dreams and reality, often finding the latter a much darker place to dwell. Additionally, Munday's reappearance in Michael's life is part of the continual rotation of evil that haunts him, despite his own attempts to walk a righteous path.

It is my non-expert and unsolicited opinion that any page of any work ought to contain some element of the novel's soul-- the tone, the theme, the essence, etc. While page 69 of Beasts of the Earth would certainly not be the page I would choose to promote, it does offer enough of a glimpse at the novel's heartbeat that it passes my own test of relevance.

Visit James Wade's website.

Q&A with James Wade.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Vicious Circle"

Katherine St. John is a native of Mississippi and a graduate of the University of Southern California who spent over a decade in the film industry as an actress, screenwriter, and director before turning to penning novels. When she's not writing, she can be found hiking or on the beach with a good book. St. John currently lives in Atlanta with her husband and two daughters.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Vicious Circle, and reported the following:

From page 69:

“What?” Lucas asks. As he leans past me to see what I’m looking at, I catch the scent of something faintly woodsy and masculine.

“No doors,” I say, quickly stepping away from him.

Lucas rolls his eyes. “Communes. Everybody’s gotta overshare.” Responding to my quizzical look, he continues, “I lived in one when I was a teenager.”

“You did?” I ask, surprised. I’m sure he’d never mentioned that when we first met. “With your parents?”

“My mom.” I notice that the corner of his mouth turns down slightly at the mention of her. He ambles into the spacious marble and gold bath- room, which fortunately does have a door, and washes his hands in the sink, looking at me through the mirror as I do the same at the matching sink. “She and my dad got divorced when I was twelve, and she took me and my sister to live with a bunch of hippies in the foothills of the Sierras.”

“Why?”

“Good question,” he answers dryly. “I don’t know. She was always more religious than my dad, but after they divorced, she kinda went off the deep end with it, wanted to devote her life to God, live more ‘naturally.’ She sold candles she made at the farmers market outside of Oakland and met the leader of the group there—before I knew it I was living in a bunk room with fifty other kids.”

“Where was your dad?” I ask.

“In Argentina taking care of his dying mother. Had a hell of a time finding us when he got back.”

“Wow.” I dry my hands and lean against the counter facing the jacuzzi and gold-rimmed shower as Lucas splashes his face with water. I’m annoyed he’s here, but in two days’ time I’ll never see him again, and never having met anyone that grew up in an actual commune, I am curious. “What was that like, living in a commune?”

“I mean, I was a kid, so at first I thought it was awesome.”

The Vicious Circle deals with the very human need to belong and how it can be abused by leaders with bad intentions. We follow Sveta as she travels to Mexico to pay her respects to her long-lost uncle Paul, who has just died and unexpectedly left her his entire estate, including his retreat center, Xanadu, which stands at the edge of a river deep in the Mexican jungle. The longer Sveta is at Xanadu, the more she begins to believe that the group living at the retreat center is not simply a commune, but a cult devoted to Kali, her uncle’s common-law wife, who has been running Xanadu in the two years since Paul fell ill.

This passage takes place just after Sveta has arrived at Xanadu with Lucas, the executor of her uncle’s will, who Sveta had a brief but memorable fling with a dozen years ago, and hasn’t spoken to since. There’s a lingering attraction between them that Sveta doesn’t want to acknowledge because she’s engaged––and also because Lucas ghosted her all those years ago.

With the discovery that the bedrooms of the villa have no doors, Sveta begins to realize that there may be more to Xanadu than meets the eye. In this scene, she learns Lucas spent time in a commune when he was younger, and he doesn’t have a favorable opinion of the lifestyle. This is something that will come up again later in the book, as Sveta and Lucas’s relationship evolves.

Even though our villain, cult leader Kali, isn’t mentioned here, I feel like the Page 69 Test really works here because this is the first time we get the sense something may be off with Xanadu, and learn that Lucas has experience with a live-in spiritual group. We also see a hint of the attraction between Lucas and Sveta that will develop over the course of the book.

Visit Katherine St. John's website.

Q&A with Katherine St. John.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Saturnalia"

Stephanie Feldman is the author of the novels Saturnalia and The Angel of Losses, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, winner of the Crawford Fantasy Award, and finalist for the Mythopoeic Award. She is co-editor of the multi-genre anthology Who Will Speak for America? and her stories and essays have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Catapult Magazine, Electric Literature, Flash Fiction Online, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Rumpus, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and more. She lives outside Philadelphia with her family.

Feldman applied the Page 69 Test to Saturnalia and reported the following:

From page 69:

You think you will know the end when it arrives. How could you miss an epic plague, a meteorite plunging into the sea, a zombie invasion? How could you miss a tidal wave or a government coup, nuclear annihilation or environmental collapse?

We reassured ourselves by imagining ever more fantastic catastrophes while the real disasters unfolded. We saw the bees disappearing, and the seas warming, and the anonymous oligarchs funding political campaigns. Sometimes, it seemed it was all we talked about, but our complaints were mundane. The weather, for instance: no snow on Christmas. Flood insurance premiums increased, but only on the coast, and don’t they have enough money there? Those people with their beach houses? I can’t afford a beach house; I can’t afford any house; I can’t afford my education, but no one told me that until after I graduated. I’m just glad there’s a basement, muddy though it is. My phone trills tornado alarms in the middle of the night. More and more tornadoes, spinning off from more and more hurricanes.

It’s just the weather. Hasn’t the weather always been bad? Haven’t we always had Lyme disease? Haven’t we always longed for spring to come early? Can’t I just focus on those little gifts, those simple pleasures, a flower blooming in December? Can’t I have anything to sweeten the mounting grit of daily life, here, in the end of days?

Because now, as we all know, it’s too late. A tipping point. The floodwaters and mosquitos and tornadoes are killing us here in Pennsylvania, but we’re lucky—lucky we’re not in another region of this fraying country, running from fires, rationing water, or sinking into the rising tide. Or in another part of the world, which has tipped, which spills nations across borders, which puts people in a jar and shakes them until they fight like scorpions.

Page 69 is the one passage that directly captures the mood and setting of Saturnalia, which is all about our changing world and how we will face it. Our anxiety, our rationalizations, our compartmentalization and mental juggling. Our struggle to manage our own lives and comprehend the enormity of what’s confronting humanity.

In this way, the Page 69 Test is eerily spot on! Which I love—Saturnalia is also about synchronicity, and that tug between reason and our desire for the numinous.

At the same time, I wouldn’t use this page to introduce Saturnalia to readers. It’s an urgent, present-tense narrative that unfolds over one night and from one point of view, as the protagonist, Nina careens from disaster to opportunity and back again—and as her relationships shift between friendship and antagonism. Page 69 is contemplative (if still sort of chaotic) while the rest of Saturnalia is rooted in action.

I don’t know if it’s a cop-out to say I would start on page one, of if this test proves I made the right choice. But on the very first page, Nina considers an invitation from Max, her last friend, to visit him on Saturnalia eve. Soon, the wild winter solstice carnival will begin, a festival that brings up only bad memories for Nina, and she’d rather hide out in her deteriorating house. But Max offers her work, and she’s broke. She’s also been isolating herself for years, and Max’s call beckons her back into the world—not just a world of disaster, but a world of pageantry, hedonism, and power. Nina insists she’s done with all that, but she can’t resist.

Visit Stephanie Feldman's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

The Page 69 Test: The Angel of Losses.

--Marshal Zeringue