Thursday, July 10, 2008

"Murder at the Bad Girl’s Bar and Grill"

N.M. Kelby, author of Whale Season, In the Company of Angels, Theater of the Stars, and the Campaign for the American Reader's entry on The Great Florida Novel, spent more than 20 years as a print and television journalist before she began writing novels.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Murder at the Bad Girl’s Bar and Grill, and reported the following:
69? 99? These questions are for skimmers.

Murder at the Bad Girl’s Bar and Grill is surrealistic murder mystery written with a Federico Fellini sensibility and featuring a dose of “surf’s up” magic realism, a dead body, a little Buddhist philosophy, a Barry Manilow impersonator with a dog named Mandy, and Danni “Queen of Scream” Keene (the unflappable goddess of horror films), along with the last living relative of the real Macbeth, who happens to be a circus clown with ineffectual wings. It’s set in the sleepy retirement community of Laguna Key whose security guard, named Brian Wilson, can’t stop thinking that “East Coast girls are hip.”

How can you skim that? Here’s a sample for the 69 crowd.

Pg. 69:

“I killed him,” she says.

Apparently, today’s discussion, “Finding the Way Back to Mayberry RFD: The Joys of a Simple Life,” is just going to have to wait.

Plus, there are jokes––lots of them. Some are literary. Some are not.

I came to writing dark comedic work because life is a morbid adventure and everybody needs have some fun, even smart people.

I create wildly poetic prose for people who are still willing to believe in joy.

How can you skim that?
Read an excerpt from Murder at the Bad Girl’s Bar and Grill, and learn more about the author and her work at N.M. Kleby's website and blog.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue