"Goodbye for Now"

Laurie Frankel was recently named one of ten women to watch in 2012. She is a proud core member of the Seattle7Writers. Her first novel, The Atlas of Love, came out in August 2010.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Goodbye for Now, and reported the following:

Hmm, interesting. In my first book, The Atlas of Love, page 69 was the perfect encapsulation of the whole novel. It was amazing. This one isn’t quite as spot on, but it’s good too in a different way. Goodbye For Now’s page 69 is a turning point. Two, actually. Two things begin on page 69 that change the course of everything going forward.

The first half of page 69 is a warning: NO ONE CAN KNOW.

“You can’t tell your mom,” said Sam.

“I know.”

“You can’t.”

“I know.”

“Seriously, Merde. No one can know.”

“I know.”

It wasn’t out of the realm that Livvie wouldn’t have heard from her daughter in a while—it was entirely in character which was the only reason she had been able to comment on it. Kyle and Julia had cell phones and TV and an internet connection just like everybody else. But unlike everybody else, they ignored all of it for weeks and weeks at a time. Meredith hadn’t seen them in a few months, not since the funeral, but they were coming for Thanksgiving, for the whole weekend in fact, and though Meredith was looking forward to seeing them, she was a little anxious about the four days it meant she had to be out of touch with her grandmother.

Sam, computer genius, has developed some software, an algorithm so that his girlfriend Meredith can video chat with her recently deceased grandmother. In this scene, Meredith’s parents are coming for Thanksgiving. Sam is worried that she won’t be able to keep the software a secret. Sam is worried that she must keep the software a secret. Meredith is worried about being “out of touch” with a dead person. Those concerns, and their fallout, launch pretty much all of the book’s central conflicts and crises.

Then there’s this interaction with Meredith’s parents, Julia and Kyle, when they show up for Thanksgiving later on page 69.

Julia had lost some weight, but otherwise she seemed well. Kyle looked as he always did in “The Big City”—game, glad to see his kid, and oddly out of place somehow. They arrived late Thursday morning bearing island cheeses and yams and pies. Meredith was making soup, turkey, salad, beets, and a valiant attempt at steering the conversation away from what Sam was up to these days. It wasn’t easy.

“So, Sam, what are you up to these days?” Kyle asked genially.

“Don’t ask him that.” Julia swatted Kyle’s butt with a dish towel and then added sotto voce, but not quite sotto enough that Sam missed it, “He’s unemployed.”

Sam was not offended though he could hardly answer the question. “I’ve been running a lot in the mornings. Down along the waterfront. Sometimes in the Arboretum. It’s beautiful out there. I’ve been learning to cook, making a lot of meals. Getting settled in here. Getting caught up. I’ve also been doing some ... projects. For a friend.” He added this last so as to suggest freelance work and the ability to financially support Kyle’s daughter—who shot him a warning glance—but he worried her parents might have follow-up questions he couldn’t answer.

Meredith’s parents are worried about why Sam lost his job. (It’s because of the secret software they can’t know about.) They’re worried about what he’ll do next. (He’ll work more on the secret software they can’t know about.) This scene is about gaps in communication that spring up even among the living...never mind the ones that happen among the dead. And again, the seeds that get planted here between Sam, Meredith, Julia, and Kyle bear weighty fruit throughout the rest of the book.

Cool, no? This page 69 test always takes my breath away.

Learn more about the book and author at Laurie Frankel's website and blog.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Laurie Frankel and Calli.

My Book, The Movie: Goodbye for Now.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Kill You Twice"

Chelsea Cain is the New York Times bestselling author of Heartsick, Sweetheart, Evil at Heart, The Night Season, and the newly released Kill You Twice. Both Heartsick and Sweetheart were listed in Stephen King’s Top Ten Books of the Year in Entertainment Weekly.

She applied the Page 69 Test to Kill You Twice, and reported the following:

Gretchen Lowell is definitely my favorite character to write. Sure, she slaughters people, but she’s also an excellent conversationalist. She knows how to deliver a zinger. She’s smart. My favorite scenes are the ones between Gretchen and Archie, my beleaguered detective protagonist—sometimes they kiss, sometimes they try to kill each other, but they always break out the witty rejoinders. Page 69 of Kill You Twice is a scene between Gretchen and journalist Susan Ward. Gretchen loves to toy with Susan--and when you’re locked up in a mental hospital you have to get your entertainment where you can. She agrees to tell Susan about the first person she murdered, knowing that Susan won’t be able to resist the story. But Gretchen, as always, has an agenda. She knows that Susan will share their conversation with Archie and that Archie will be compelled to investigate, pulling him deeper into Gretchen’s sphere of manipulation. The scene is basically one long monologue. Gretchen drags out every gory detail, relishing in Susan’s discomfort. Susan doesn’t say anything on the entire page. She just listens and tries not to vomit. This is one of the more graphic scenes I’ve written. It was important that Gretchen describe the violence deliciously, because Susan starts out with the power in the scene and this is how Gretchen wins it back. On page 69 alone, she describes cutting off her victim’s nose (“flesh always looks so much smaller once it’s been dismembered”), and then disemboweling him (“He was fat and the blade got dull”). Is it representative of the book? No. I’m not sure I could sustain that! It’s too dark and intense. I think that this scene represents what some people assume my books are like. But Kill You Twice is also very funny in places and sexy in places and there is plenty of mystery solving and adventure. Plus, Archie is the protagonist. Any scene that would be representative of the book would have to have him in it.

Learn more about the book and author at Chelsea Cain’s website, blog, and Facebook page.

The Page 99 Test: Sweetheart.

The Page 69 Test: Evil at Heart.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Black Isle"

Sandi Tan was born in Singapore. She attended University of Kent in the UK and received an MFA in Screenwriting from Columbia University. Her short films have shown at major festivals and museums around the world, including the New York Film Festival and MoMA.

Tan applied the Page 69 Test to The Black Isle, her debut novel, and reported the following:

From page 69:

...The Depression had left this part of the world tattered and raw. Walking to and from St. Anne’s, I saw rickshaw coolies squatting in the shade, some without fares for days. Beside them were construction workers (many of them Chinese women), wharf laborers, beggars, all stooping together in what at first appeared to be silent solidarity but, at a second glance, was clearly bewilderment so deep as to have rendered every single one of them speechless. Only their children had the enterprise to beg, filling the district with their ubiquitous cry: “No mother, no father, no supper, no soda!”

After school, I often sat on a stone bench in the traffic island dividing Spring Street, the main artery of Chinatown. This island was tiny: just a small, raised slab with barely enough room for the bench, a hibiscus bush, and the pedestal where Mr. Singh, the Sikh policeman, stood directing traffic with oversized canvas sleeves fastened to his arms like wings. It was here, watching the throngs in cars, trams, buses, and on foot, that I received my practical education.

The Chinese, who made up a little more than half of the populace, came in a wide variety, from slave to millionaire. The ones known as Peranakans, whose families had been in the Nanyang for generations and proudly spoke no Chinese at all, fared the best...

Whoa! My page 69 represents a lull in the dark 469-page sweep of The Black Isle. It's the early 1930s here, and this section comes after the sinister prologue and opening chapters, all chock-full of Very Bad Happenings! At this point, my heroine Cassandra is still a young girl--barely twelve--and since my book charts her progress from unruly immigrant urchin to mature, powerful conjurer, there's still a long way to go. Cassandra is, of course, already gifted--or cursed--with the ability to see the dead, though there's no mention of the dead on this page!

Instead, what we have here is a segue into social anthropology--a guide to the flora and fauna, living and dead, of the Black Isle--following the ghostly roller-coaster ride of the earlier pages and before the terrors soon to follow (the haunted girls' school returns on Page 72). The next chapter recounts the even greater horror of going through puberty on an isolated rubber plantation, where the thin gray trees resemble skeleton armies in the dark.

Hopefully, my Page 69 will tell serious readers that The Black Isle's not just about phantoms but also ghosts of a more pernicious kind: the past.

Read an excerpt from The Black Isle, view the book trailer, and learn more about the book and author at Sandi Tan's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Book of Jonas"

Stephen Dau is originally from western Pennsylvania. He worked for ten years in postwar reconstruction and international development before studying creative writing at Johns Hopkins University and Bennington College, where he received an MFA. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, on MSNBC, and elsewhere. Dau lives in Brussels, Belgium, with his family.

He applied the Page 69 Test to The Book of Jonas, his first novel, and reported the following:

I'm not sure if page 69 of The Book of Jonas is representative or not. It takes place after Jonas comes to America, just after he begins college, and it recounts his first love. This is truly dangerous territory for a writer, as it's a subject that has been done so many times that finding anything fresh and un-clichéd to say is difficult. At the same time, familiar love-story tropes can be appropriate, especially in a book that is not, at it's core, a love story. It gives the reader something to hang onto. So this then, was my best stab at describing the exhilaration and exclusion of Jonas falling in love.

Page 69 excerpt:

He soon finds that, except to those in the middle of it, being in love is the most boring thing, the most incomprehensible thing in the world.

They dine at a secluded corner table on a red-and-white paper tablecloth, upon which the food before them either loses all meaning or becomes their entire existence. Her hands fly around as she talks, seeming to push the words through the air in front of her, and he hangs from them like a strand of over-cooked fettuccini.

She tells him that, were the earth the size of an apple, its surface would be as smooth as its skin. This bit of trivia feels vitally important to him, as though it says something fundamental about their lives. He finds it amusing when she tries to show him the correct way to hold a fork. He tells her that if you hold your hand at arms length out to the night sky, an area of the night equivalent to the space of your thumbnail would contain a million stars, most of which cannot even be seen by the naked eye. By which he means that present between them are infinite possibilities.

And they are only dimly aware that, to an outside observer, someone lacking their interest or enthusiasm or imagination, they are talking a kind of silly code, a special language known only to them.

Learn more about the book and author at Stephen Dau's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns"

Margaret Dilloway was inspired by her Japanese mother's experiences when she wrote The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns, and especially by a book her father had given to her mother called The American Way of Housekeeping.

She applied the Page 69 Test to The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns, and reported the following:

Page 69 is a short page, the beginning of a chapter. It finds my character, Gal Garner, at the end of a tutoring session with her students. Though it has nothing to do with the roses that have a strong theme in much of the book, the page shows several important Gal-elements:

• Her sort of curmudgeonly attitude
  
• Her illness
  
• Her fear of talking to other people and asking for help
  
• Her attraction to Mr. Morton, which she denies to herself repeatedly

Here’s part of page 69:

I am going to Mr. Morton’s room. Tomorrow the Science Olympiad team meets, and I will ask him to be the other coach. Though he is brand-new and he could be the worst teacher on the planet for all I know, I cannot handle the team alone anymore. Last month, I had to cancel two practices due to my own illness. Though I was fine moments before, I shiver and pull my cardigan closer around myself. It’s too cold in here with all the students gone. My heart rate increases. I realize I am nervous about asking him to help me out.

I’d want to keep reading, to find out more about what’s going to happen next. Why does talking to Mr. Morton make her so anxious? What’s wrong with her health? She seems lonely to me here—“It’s too cold in here with all the students gone,” yet resistant to seeking out interaction.

Learn more about the book and author at Margaret Dilloway's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Amped"

Daniel H. Wilson earned a Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University. His books include How to Survive a Robot Uprising, Where’s My Jetpack?, How to Build a Robot Army, The Mad Scientist Hall of Fame, Bro-Jitsu: The Martial Art of Sibling Smackdown, A Boy and His Bot, and Robopocalypse.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Amped, and reported the following:

From page 69:

“Do you ever wish that you were a regular kid? A Reggie?” I ask.

Nick snorts. “I could barely see before I got retinal. Could barely think without Autofocus. And you’re asking me if I want to have the dumbs? No thanks. I’d rather be weird and know it than be a stupid ass.”

I can’t help but feel like I’m speaking to an adult.

“What about you?” asks Nick.

“Me?”

“Yeah. You want to be a reggie?”

“It would make life a lot easier.”

Nick stops, frowns at me. “Would it?” he asks.

Amped is about a civil rights movement sparked when people with disabilities begin using neural implants that make them smarter than average people. The characters, young and old, have to come to terms with being ostracized by "regular" members of society. It's an issue being dealt with on page 69, and an issue that leads to violence and mayhem by page 269.

Learn more about the book and author at Daniel Wilson's website.

Wilson earned a Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University. His books include How to Survive a Robot Uprising, Where’s My Jetpack?, How to Build a Robot Army, The Mad Scientist Hall of Fame, Bro-Jitsu: The Martial Art of Sibling Smackdown, A Boy and His Bot, and Robopocalypse.

My Book, The Movie: Amped.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Death of a Schoolgirl"

Joanna Campbell Slan’s first novel—Paper, Scissors, Death—was an Agatha Award finalist. It features Kiki Lowenstein, a spunky single mom who lives in St. Louis The sixth book in that series will be released Summer 2013.

The author applied the Page 69 Test to Death of a Schoolgirl, the first novel in her newest series—The Jane Eyre Chronicles, which features Charlotte Brontë’s classic heroine Jane Eyre as an amateur sleuth—and reported the following:

Here is Page 69 of Death of a Schoolgirl, almost in its entirety:

"Here." Cook poured from a teapot with a chipped spout, a delicate vessel on which pale roses had been painted, her chapped red hands thickly incongruous against the translucent white of the pot. She pressed a mug of lukewarm tea on me. I took a tentative sip. I wished it had milk and sugar, but I was grateful nonetheless.

I closed my eyes to savor the brew. One more image impressed itself on my brain-a flapping sheet, the spectral silhouette I'd witnessed from the walkway.

I squeezed the thick mug, trying to transfer its warmth. I was cold, and hungry and tired. When the senses are over-stimulated, the imagination naturally attempts mediation, doesn't it? I decided that my mind had taken my concern for Adèle, my guilt at not visiting, her fearful letter, my own memories of Lowood, and woven all these separate occurrences into a new and fantastical tale. Mixed together with the sight of a sheet flapping in the wind, I'd invented a dramatic intrigue. My mind had merely woven disparate visions together, hoping to create a narrative, even where none existed.

That couldn't have been a dead body that I had seen.

Taken in tandem with the threat to Adèle, it conjured up all sorts of wild imaginings.

Don't go there, Jane, I warned myself. Keep to your plan. Surely Adèle is fine!

Industry. I wanted motion and purpose to keep my emotions in check. I drained the mug. Before I could thank the cook, she took the cup from me and turned her back on me.

"Hamburg. That's a long way away, eh? You been running from someone. He done you harm, eh?"

She had confused me with someone else. I opened my mouth to correct her, but before I could, she said, "No matter. Miss Miller will be happy to see you. Especially after what happened this morning. She is going to need all the help she can get, I'll warrant."

I couldn't have chosen a better page if I'd skimmed through my book looking for a sample. This short excerpt captures Jane's cerebral nature. She's very internal, and she questions what she experiences. When I think of Jane Eyre, I think of how resolute she was in Brontë's classic. After all, Jane left Edward Rochester without any plan, any resources, but with a grim determination that she could not live in the same house with him after she learned he was a married man. Over and over again, Jane values what is right over what is expedient or easy.

Learn more about the author and her work at Joanna Slan's website and blog.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Joanna Slan & Rafferty and Victoria.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Larceny in My Blood"

Matthew Parker recently earned an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University and has been drug- and crime-free since 2002. Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, he now lives in New York City.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new book, Larceny in My Blood: A Memoir of Heroin, Handcuffs, and Higher Education, and reported the following:

On page 69 of my book there is a comparison of prison bureaucracy with university bureaucracy, and how the costs—and by that token, the profits—of both have risen dramatically over the past 30 or so years. I also talk about how strange it was for me to go from an Arizona State Prison to an Arizona State University:

“I went from a prison yard to a college campus.”

“From muscular men to women with fake tits.”

“And cell phones.”

“There are lots of fake tits and cell phones at Arizona State.”

“It’s a wonder that they haven’t yet combined the two.”

“There were no tits in prison, but lots of pecs.”

The drawings that accompany these lines are satirical, highlighting how obsessed many of us can be with our chests. In prison, most guys work out their upper bodies only, leading to what is known as the “prison build;” massive torsos mounted precariously on scrawny waist and legs, so that it often looks like they will tip over at any minute. Women with breast implants, by comparison, often conjure the same top-heavy image, and I was both surprised and dismayed to witness the prevalence of so many young women who felt that they needed to surgically augment their bodies in order to feel attractive. Added to this was the sheer ubiquity of cell phones and you had a very confused ex-con walking around the campus of ASU.

Page 69 is somewhat representative of the book in that it shows how prison can often be a microcosm of society, a theme repeated throughout the book. But it also underscores the tax dollars being spent to imprison so many nonviolent drug offenders; tax dollars that would better serve the public on more worthwhile institutions.

Like education.

Learn more about Larceny in My Blood at the publisher's website, and visit the Larceny in My Blood Facebook page.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Thing About Thugs"

Tabish Khair is an award-winning poet, journalist, critic, educator and novelist. A citizen of India, he lives in Denmark and teaches literature at Aarhus University.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his novel The Thing about Thugs, and reported the following:

The Thing About Thugs, released on 24th July 2012 by Houghton Mifflin in North America, is basically about a young Indian man, Amir Ali, who is taken to London by a Captain Meadows in the 1830s. Meadows wants to record Amir's life story as a member of India's dreaded 'cult' of thugs, and also use him to settle some 'scholarly' matters in phrenological circles. But when the underclass of London starts losing its heads, Amir the Thug becomes the prime suspect, and his only defenders are a ragtag army of ayahs, lascars and ex-slaves in foggy, crowded early Victorian London.

On page 69, Amir -- made to dress up as a 'real Indian' (turban and all), which is not his normal attire, is returning from a meeting of Meadows' phrenological society and passes -- unknown to him -- the murderers depriving the London underclass of its heads. So, does that 'represent' the rest of the novel? Yes and no, I hope. I imagine the different pages of all my novels to be tiles on a wall that is coherent and complete. No two tiles are or should be entirely alike, for that would make one redundant. And yet, every tile has to be necessary in order to make the wall complete and coherent. I believe page 69 is such a tile.

Learn more about the book and author at Tabish Khair's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"City of the Lost"

Stephen Blackmoore is a Los Angeles-based writer of crime and horror.

He applied the Page 69 Test to City of the Lost, his first novel, and reported the following:

I'm not sure how indicative of the rest of the book page 69 is. It's one of the few pages that isn't full of profanity, brutal violence, or undead face munching.

City of the Lost is about a thug, Joe Sunday, who gets murdered and brought back from the dead. In this chunk of scene set in a bar he meets a woman whose appearance is a little too convenient.

“So what brings you out here tonight?” she asks. “Tragedy or comedy?”

“Does it have to be either?”

“In my experience it usually is.”

That one’s easy. “I’d say tragedy.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. The two aren’t really all that different from each other, you know. All depends on whether the ending’s happy.”

“You don’t say.” I know she’s linked with the stone somehow and what’s happened to me, but there’s something about her that sets me at ease.

“I think your problems could probably yield some pretty interesting opportunities,” she says.

I’m sure you do. “Is this where you try to sell me on Amway?”

“Unitarianism, actually, but I can see you’re not the cultish type. Besides, they kicked me out.”

“Funny. I had the same problem with the Methodists.”

I’d like to say this is the weirdest conversation I’ve had in a while, but the last twenty-four hours have been a lesson in freakish. Besides, she’s so damn comfortable to talk to. It’s easy, and fun. And for a few minutes, at least, I can forget about immortality and zombies and not breathing.

“What about you?” I ask. “What brings you out here?”

“Got bored, decided to check this place out. Nice vibe.” She gives me that dazzling smile again. “Nice people.”

“So you’re not a regular?”

She shakes her head. “Oh, hell no. Though I must say I’ve been enjoying the show.”
She seems to see my scotch for the first time. “If I’d known you were a serious drinker, I wouldn’t be trying to ply you with this crap. What are you drinking?”

“Nothing.” I slide the glass over to her. What’s the point if you can’t get drunk?

She reaches over, takes a sniff, a delicate taste.

“Oban. Pretty expensive nothing.”

“You know your scotches. Consider it the obligatory drink I buy you.”

Learn more about the book and author at Stephen Blackmoore's website.

My Book, The Movie: City of the Lost.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Small Damages"

Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of more than a dozen books. She teaches creative nonfiction at the University of Pennsylvania.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Small Damages, and reported the following:

On page 69 of Small Damages, we are not in southern Spain, where most of the novel takes place. We are not on the cortijo, not in the company of the stubborn old cook, not near the beautiful young man who tends the cortijo horses, not near the acres of bulls, and the roads are not dusty. We are, instead, in suburban Philadelphia, a flashback moment for my heroine, Kenzie. She is remembering a late night with her best American friends. The stories they would tell to each other. The comfort they took from each other. The comforts of what Kenzie always knew as home. They have climbed through an abandoned shelter, having fled the prom. They are settling in among bat droppings and wings. They are thinking about the future, imagining all the changes that will come with graduation.

Kenzie has no idea, as she sits—none, yet—that her future is beyond all imagining. That she will not head off to Syracuse University in the fall. That she will not stay with her boyfriend. That she will not summer with these best friends on the Jersey shore. Her future is different. Her future is already beating within. Her future is the baby she doesn’t know she’s having yet.

Turn the page, and we’re back at the cortijo. But on page 69, the future hasn’t happened yet.

Learn more about the book and author at Beth Kephart's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Castro's Daughter"

David Hagberg is a former Air Force cryptographer who has traveled extensively in Europe, the Arctic, and the Caribbean and has spoken at CIA functions. He has published more than twenty novels of suspense, including Allah's Scorpion, Dance With the Dragon, The Expediter, and Abyss.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his latest novel, Castro's Daughter, and reported the following:

I guess I’ve been reading the Page 69 Test for too long—or maybe not long enough—because damn if page 69 of Castro's Daughter doesn’t lay out what Kirk McGarvey’s next quest will be.

Louise Horn, the wife of McGarvey’s best friend Otto Rencke, has been kidnapped by agents of the Cuban intelligence service—the DI--and the ransom is Otto showing up in Havana to attend the funeral of Fidel Castro. Of course Otto agrees.

Mac who is hiding out on a Greek island licking his wounds after a particularly hurtful assignment in which his wife, daughter and son in law were brutally assassinated is approached with the news by Marty Bambridge, the CIA’s Deputy Director of Operations.

“Is the Bureau making any progress finding Louise?”

“They’re looking for the Caddy the kidnappers used, but it’s disappeared. No one at the day care got a tag number.”

“Has the White House been informed?”

“No, it was one of Otto’s conditions.”

“Good, and we’re going to keep it that way,” McGarvey said. “Because they’re not interested in Louise or Otto, it’s me the DI wants, and luring Otto to Havana was the only way they could dig me out.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”

“Just how do you plan on doing that?” Bambridge asked.

“I’m going to Havana to ask the woman why her dying father’s last wish was to make contact with me. And then I’m bringing Otto home.”

Learn more about the book and author at David Hagberg's website.

Writers Read: David Hagberg (July 2011).

My Book, The Movie: Abyss.

The Page 69 Test: Abyss.

--Marshal Zeringue