And thanks to these organizations for their prizes and promotional support:
In Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia, an inconsequential bureaucrat is put to work processing arrest warrants for political dissidents. A series of encounters with a priest, a prostitute, and the ghosts of the disappeared forces him to choose between the safety of inaction and the dangerous pull of his conscience.
In the Garden of Men will be released by 3-Day Books this August. You may pre-order this book using the Paypal link above.
More on the 2007 contest winners and shortlist.
ISBN 978-1-55152-239-5
Price: $14.95
3-Day Books
A young man propels himself through a series of dangerous ethical trials in his effort to balance his faith, his dark impulses, his offbeat family and his small-town reputation.
"An emotionally powerful book and an intense read...McLeod's knack for realistic dialogue and for shaping young male characters bring this coming-of-age tale to life."
—Now magazine
"McLeod's plot works away with quiet efficiency. Leonard comes apart as the book comes together."
—The Globe and Mail
"McLeod...has built a solid reputation as one of the country's best spoken word performers. It turns out his command of language is just as strong on paper, however, as Leonard McKinley is an equally funny, disturbing and poignant tale of a young man struggling to reconcile his strong Christian faith with his increasingly dark impulses." —Monday Magazine
"Brendan McLeod presents us with a protagonist who is at once mesmerizing and ridiculous, charming and offensive."
—Terence Young, Governor General’s Award Nominee
More on the 2006 contest winners and shortlist.
ISBN 978-1-55152-222-7
Price: $14.95
3-Day Books
An unproductive werewolf, a claustrophobic mummy, a free-wheeling zombie, a demon with a hidden human and other incompetent monsters struggle to find new truths to life on the dark side. Day Shift Werewolf is a creepy and comic spin on the traditional horror genre.
"A thorough delight that will make you laugh out loud."
—Bay Area Reporter
More on the 2005 contest winners and shortlist.
ISBN 1-55152-208-x
Price: $14.95
3-Day Books
Through a series of correspondences, two secret agents debate, bicker and commiserate while they search for a mysterious cure for the lovelorn (possibly in the form of a "love block" potion that will foil any and all heartbreak). Love Block explores the question of whether or not humans should surrender to the idea of true love. It's funny, furious, sometimes crazy and always fast-moving, just like the contest itself.
Read the review on Bookslut.com
More on the 2004 contest winners and shortlist.
ISBN 1-55152-194-6
Price: $14.95
3-Day Books
Meet Finnigan Heller, drifter: reclusive, abrasive and clairvoyant. He's also been struck by lightning more times than you've had hot dinners. Heller's bizzare gift has him on the run from a scientist, an intelligence agent, and an Englishman with a taste for violence. Struck is a story about thunderstorms, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, the nature of luck and the fate of one very attractive nose.
ISBN 1-895636-53-1
Price: $14
Anvil Press
Socket tells the gripping tale of Ronald Percy, an international aid worker who travels to Ethiopia to assist with an irrigation project for the African Development Organization. Upon arrival, he is unable to locate his agents or company representatives, and soon finds himself enmeshed in a web of bureaucracy and state corruption. Socket was selected as the Grand Winner from over 400 entries in the 2001 International 3-Day Novel-Writing Contest.
ISBN 1-895636-42-6
Price: $11.95
Anvil Press
A capricious comedy of errors, Small Apartments resonates with tremulous energy and memorable characters. Franklin Franklin is a fully realized and sympathetic protagonist in the vein of Ignatius Reilly (A Confederacy of Dunces), a simple man who yearns for "a land of pastoral serenity" devoid of the irritants of contemporary urban society. An off-beat tale, Small Apartments is accented along the way by murder, strange fingernail collections and the occasional blast from a treasured alphorn.
ISBN 1-895636-35-3
Price: $12.95
Anvil Press
Salacious, funny, and painfully emotive, Skin is a provocative and ruminative parable about our deep-rooted urge to ostracize the freakish and shun the disfigured among us. An unconventional love story, Bowman probes the surface to reveal deeper, more lingering impulses connected to desire, understanding, and love. It is only on very extraordinary occasions when beauty and the beast get together, but they do here. Skin is a cutting and startling debut novel. Skin won the Re-Lit Award in 2001.
ISBN 1-895636-32-9
Price: $12.95
Anvil Press
Ruby Ruby is a soft-boiled murder mystery that follows the trail of an expatriate Canuck as he tries to sleuth out the answers to a puzzling series of pointless and apparently motiveless murders: Who'd want to kill a sixtyish night watchman guarding an abandoned pie factory?
ISBN 1-895636-23-X
Price: $12.95
Anvil Press
Holden Caufield meets Barton Fink. A hotel with a past, a place that has failed to maintain the pace of present day life and now languishes in disrepair ... Enter Foster Lutz, a twenty-one-year-old pianist who lands the job of lounge entertainer in this once elegant establishment and The Underwood — including the lives of its inhabitants — is set for a spell of splendour and rejuvenation.
ISBN 1-895636-17-5
Price: $11.95
Anvil Press
This rollicking and caustic expose of the violent and ambivalent nature of the Toronto "after-hours" scene and its inhabitants became an instant underground hit.
ISBN 1-895636-14-0
Price: $11.95
Anvil Press
A novel about — what else — writing a novel in the space of three days, offers insights into family, friendship, growing up female. Body Speaking Words is a poignant, funny and sexy account of one woman's attempt to understand what drives us to document the essential stories of our lives.
ISBN 1-895636-09-4
Price: $10.95
Anvil Press
The first and only shared prize of publication. One, a nightmarish vision of a land in decline, the other, a finely crafted piece of prose, rich in mood and evocative in its language.
"Alcohol, drugs, hormones conjured by passion-bubbled blood, all pave a hallucinogenic path ... through thunderstorms within [the] skull." — Prairie Fire
ISBN 1-895636-06-X
Price: $11.95
Anvil Press
An impressionistic, finely-wrought tale of lost memory, tangled history, despair and discovery.
"An unsettling meditation on the passage of time and the nature of identity." — Books in Canada
ISBN 1-895636-03-5
Price: $9.95
Anvil Press
Out of Print. Find a used copy
ISBN 0-88978-229-6
Forrest thinks the world is a garbage dump, a surreal wasteland in which anything can happen. A series of circumstances forces him to abandon reality and search for fulfillment amidst the debris of a disposable society. Later sold as screenplay to Crescent Entertainment. Stephen Miller has since published The Woman in the Yard and The Field of Mars.
ISBN 0-88978-220-2
Price: $7.95
Pulp Press
Meet Chris Prior, your not-so-average down-on-the-ropes private eye--broke, hard-drinking and cynical--and suffering from a crisis of confidence. And things don't improve when she agrees to tackle a murder case involving an escort service and a rich, chess-playing university professor, which takes her from the seedy back streets of Vancouver to the quiet neighbourhoods of suburban Toronto
ISBN 0-88978-209-1
Price: $7.95
Pulp Press
Blind Banana Daiquiri is a guitarist accused of schizophrenia. He spends his nights performing his greatest hits as mood music for strip shows--that is, when he's not dreaming about love's labours lost and the distant promise of stardom. But growing up normal-sized in the Land of the Smalls (island cave dwellers who never grow taller than 4'6") taught him a thing or two about normalcy, and as a schizophrenic, the idea that fiction can be stranger than the truth.
ISBN 0-88978-195-8
Price: $7.95
Pulp Press
Out of Print. Find a used copy
ISBN: 0-88978-190-7
Downwardly mobile, having lost his unemployment insurance, Still plummets through the matrix of a society frenzied with hope and disappointment, as "the Thing" takes shape on the waterfront. Later re-published by Viking Penguin in the US.
ISBN 0-88978-179-6
Price: $8.95
Pulp Press
A 12-year-old boy longs for ordinary existence amid extraordinary circumstances. The World According to Garp written from the other side of the tracks.
ISBN 0-88978-167-2
Price: $7.95
Pulp Press
He's a high-tech millionaire-in-progress, she's a ballerina. Their love is as fragile as his ambitions and her bones.
ISBN 0-88978-151-6
Price: $7.95
Pulp Press
A haunting novel from one of Canada's most distinguished avant-garde poets. A work of profound emotional depth, subtlety, and intensity.
ISBN 0-88978-146-X
Price: $7.95
Pulp Press
The story of a Ukrainian family in post-war Winnipeg, Accordion Lessons is sad, funny, eloquent and both full of tenderness for things lost and enthusiastic about what can be found.
ISBN 0-88978-122-2
Price: $6.95
Pulp Press
The first winner of the 3-Day Novel Contest tells a gritty tale about a mass murderer, a musician, a dominatrix and a private eye. Some of them will die. Some have died before. Dr. Tin was later expanded and re-published as Shades in 1992.Tom Walmsley has penned several plays and screenplays, including the controversial films Paris, France and Blood (released on DVD in January, 2005).
ISBN: 0-88978-254-7
Price: $12.95
Arsenal Pulp Press
To order these 3-day Novels:
Need a journal to plan your outline? A t-shirt to announce your achievement? A mug for the five hundred cups of coffee you'll need to make it though this? Never fear! 3-Day Novel merchandise is available at CafePress.com.
... Take three deep breaths. Guzzle coffee, black or with sugar. Don't punish yourself. Do that on Tuesday. Get back to work. Take phone off hook. Pull drapes. If you feel lonely — an outcast — you are. That manuscript is now your only friend, the only one who cares. Finish it. Let it have a life, even if you don't. Bravo.
