Kayt Burgess wins 3-Day Novel contest

Kayt Burgess

Announcing the winner of the 34th International 3-Day Novel contest

Grand prize winner: Heidegger Stairwell by Kayt Burgess of Aurora,  Ontario

About the Author


Kayt Burgess is a writer, artist, opera singer and musician. She studied classical music at the University of Western Ontario and earned her Master’s degree in creative writing from Bath Spa University in the UK. Kayt was born in Manitouwadge, Ontario, grew up in Elliot Lake and now lives near Toronto after stints in New Zealand, England and Scotland.Heidegger Stairwell is her first novel. It will be released by 3-Day Books in September 2012.

About the Book

Music journalist Evan Strocker has almost finished a memoir chronicling his time with Heidegger Stairwell, an indie-rock legend from small-town Ontario whose members he has known his whole life. But the band thinks he’s left a little too much of himself on the page—allowing his experiences as a transgender man and his complicated romance with the lead guitarist eclipse the story of the group’s dramatic rise and fall. Through graphic notes and colourful marginalia, the musicians weigh in on their friend’s version of the truth, and fight to put their own testimony on the record. As Strocker’s manuscript finally comes together, both band and writer are forced to face a shocking new event that will once again change their fortunes.

Second prize winner: Street Dogs by Brandon Hobson

Brandon Hobson is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing atOklahoma State University. His fiction has appeared in NOON, New York Tyrant, Puerto del Sol, Narrative Magazine, Web Conjunctionsand elsewhere. He lives in Hennessey, Oklahoma, with his wife and son.

Third prize winner: She felt like velvet by Karen Cressman

Karen Cressman is a marketing writer with a fascination for all things Alice In Wonderland. She is currently developing three novels-in-progress and, of course, dreaming up plots for the next 3-Day Novel Contest. She lives with her husband in Brampton, Ontario.

Our Top-10 Runners-Up

• Full Moon Rules by Lenore Butcher of Woodstock, Ontario
• Alice’s Adventures Through a Very Big Mirror by Victoria Dunn of Ottawa, Ontario
• Darius to the Max by Cathi Radner Castrio of Argyle, New York
• Not by Terry Leeder of Oakville, Ontario
• Rounds Down Range by J.L. Myer of Tulsa, Oklahoma
• Half of No by Kari Pilgrim of Brooklyn, New York
• Happily Destroyed by Evan Purcell of Bullhead City, Arizona
• Deadfall by Rachel Slansky of San Francisco, California
• Lords of Ironfire by Rudy Thauberger of Vancouver, British Columbia
• Banquet of Consequences by Anderson Todd of Toronto, Ontario

http://www.3daynovel.com/2012/01/30/announcing-the-winners-of-the-34th-annual-international-3-day-novel-contest/

Insanity is infectious

No prizes. No honourable mentions. 

Just this certificate, and a brief note that the judges enjoyed "Ghost Stories". 

That's one better than last year -- then, it was just a certificate. 

Now waiting for the 34th Annual International 3-Day Novel Contest and another opportunity to "display courage, literary fortitude and a touch of insanity by writing an entire novel over the Labour Day weekend..." 

Terroryaki by Jennifer K. Chung wins 33rd 3-Day Novel contest

Jennifer K. Chung

First prize: Jennifer K. Chung of Bellevue, Washington, for Terroryaki!

About the Book: It’s three months until the wedding, and Samantha’s Taiwanese parents won’t warm up to her hopelessly white fiancé. Meanwhile, Sam’s food-obsessed sister, Daisy, is on the hunt for an otherworldly take-out truck whose dishes are to die for. Terroryaki! is a quirky tale of love, family, redemption and the best—if slightly cursed—dish of chicken teriyaki to be found in this realm of existence.

About the Author: Jennifer K. Chung is a Taiwanese-American writer, pianist and software engineer. She grew up in Southern California and studied computer science at MIT in Cambridge, MA. In her spare time, Jennifer plays keyboard in a goth metal band and studies the Japanese martial art of Naginata. She lives near Seattle.

Second prize: Gwendolyn Bird of Kasilof, Alaska

For The Island of Broken Toys, the haunting tale of a community of mysterious children who seek out the truth behind their exile

Third prize: Tate Young of Toronto, Ontario

For The Ridgeback, a witty thriller about a bloody murder, a very large diamond and a dogwalker on the run.

Honourable mentions

• Jon Billman of Stillwater, Oklahoma, for Bicycle Tramps
• Alan James Blair of Stillwater, Oklahoma, for The Mermaid’s Brother
• Jenni Bomford of Prince George, B.C., for Spiritual
• Keith Chittleborough of Glen Waverley, Australia, for Near Dreg Experience
• Paul Colley & Laura Colley of Pickering, Ontario, for Clockwork
• Logan Evans of Pullman, Washington, for The Boundary Nebula
• Gayleen Froese of Edmonton, Alberta, for What the Cat Dragged In
• B. Gordon of Victoria, B.C., for Archipelago
• Diana Holdsworth of Amherst, Massachusetts, for The Golden Tooth
• Jimmm Kelly of Vancouver, B.C., for The Little Man
• Ashok Mathur of Vancouver, B.C., for The First White Black Man
• Iulia Park of Toronto, Ontario, for Canadian Experience
• Rudy Thauberger of Vancouver, B.C., for Evil Beach Dance Party
• Jake Wallis Simons of Winchester, United Kingdom, for 24/3
• Jenny D. Williams of Brooklyn, New York, for The Widow and the Twin

This year’s youngest entrants, three-time contest veterans Natasha Carr-Harris, Abby Adams and Sean Vipond, as well as the latest under-10 entrant, Albrightine Ngusurun Orsar.


{from 3-Day novel contest website: http://www.3daynovel.com/2011/01/25/the-winners-of-the-33rd-annual-international-3-day-novel-contest/} 

& Just a little bit of madness...

As I said, I didn't win any prize; but got this certificate. I could've done better, but what the heck. I'll try this year again.


The citation reads: Official Survivor of the 32nd Annual International 3-Day Novel Contest Mayank Bhatt displayed courage, bravery, stamina, creativity, persistence, risk-taking, literary fortitude and just a little bit of madness by completing an entire novel over the September 2009 Labour Day long weekend.

3-Day Novel Contest winner

And, by the way, I didn't win. Nothing unusual.

SNOWMEN by MARK SEDORE

Charles Perth intends to be the first person to walk alone across the North Pole, bisecting the Arctic Circle between Canada and Russia. He leaves behind the woman he loves—knowing he can never see her again even if he makes it to the other side. During his journey, Charles is confronted by the extreme climate, dangerous predators and constant blinding summer sun of the Arctic, now permanently frozen due to a drastic global climate shift. Charles is also subject to the intentional malevolence of his unstable and resentful brother who, from thousands of kilometres away, has the resources and knowledge to make the solo expedition difficult, or even deadly. If Charles is to succeed—or survive—he must overcome exhaustion, starvation, sabotage and despair, and find in himself the strength and will to beat his brother at his own game.

Snowmen will be released by 3-Day Books in August 2010, and will be distributed by Arsenal Pulp Press (via Consortium in the U.S. and Jaguar in Canada). ISBN 978-1-55152-366-8, $14.95 CAD/USD, 5×7.25″ quality paperback, 176 pp.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Sedore, winner of the 32nd Annual International 3-Day Novel Contest, is a professional writer and graduate student living in Toronto. His previous entries to the 3-Day Novel Contest have won honourable mention and second place. Snowmen will be his first published novel.

Mark came up with the idea for Snowmen while visiting Whitehorse over the 2008 winter holiday. As with his previous contest entries, he approached the event without a formal outline—as an experienced graduate student he has produced many, many outlines and essays, and he prefers to approach the contest in a different way. (”I think it’s important to keep surprising yourself,” he says.) But unlike his previous attempts, in which he tackled the 3-Day Novel Contest alone, this time he teamed up with a small group of friends and fellow entrants to write and suffer together. He left his wife behind to travel with them to Perth, Ontario, where they holed up in a friend’s house to write without distractions over the Labour Day long weekend.

Mark has an MA in Political Science from the University of Toronto and is finishing a second in Communication and Culture from York and Ryerson universities. He has worked as a writer for the City of Toronto, has produced a zine on Scouting, and ran for Toronto City Council at the age of 22 (and was “flatteringly defeated by eight other candidates”). Mark currently works full-time at the University of Toronto as a writer in the President’s Office and part-time as a supervisor at Massey Hall.

Image: http://www.3daynovel.com/2010/01/25/presenting-the-winner-of-the-32nd-annual-international-3-day-novel-contest/

For more information contact: Melissa Edwards, Managing Editor at info@3daynovel.com

The Videographer

Jason Rapczynski's The Videographer is an exciting story of a down and out film student turned porn movie cameraman.

No, let me rephrase that.

Actually, it’s a regular, routine story about young people in the digital age doing what young people have done through the ages.

Get drunk, fornicate furiously and have delusions of creativity.

What’s unique about the story is way in which it’s told. Rapczynski’s style is fast-paced and pulsating.

Reading Rapczynski's book is like watching a trailer of a Bruce Willis movie where the entire movie is encapsulated in a montage of quick changing images and snatches of one-liners.

It sort of gives you the complete picture but leaves you hungry for more.

Obviously, it’s a style that’s worked for Rapczynski because The Videographer is the winner of the 31^st 3-Day Novel contest.

That’s right, Rapcznski wrote the novel in three days during the Labour Day long weekend in 2008, along with thousands of other participants from across the world.

More than 400 of them actually succeeded in completing their novels in three days.

The two youngest entrants who competed with complete novels were 14-year-old Carson Taylor of Claremore, OK, and 10-year-old Natasha Carr-Harris of Vancouver, BC.

This is Rapcznski’s first novel. He’ll definitely write and publish more novels, but it’s unlikely that he’ll enjoy writing any of them as much as he enjoyed writing The Videographer.

I know what it feels like to be writing continuously for three days. I participated in this year’s (32nd) 3-Day Novel contest.

I successfully started and completed Plague; a love story set in the tumultuous years of the mid-1990s, at a time when India was rocked with communal riots, serial bomb blasts and an outbreak of plague.

It's impossible to describe the experience or replicate it.

Nothing can match the tense excitement of developing a story from scratch, navigating it through various stages of plot and ultimately guiding it to a denouement that gives the reader a sense of genuine, logical closure.

I wrote about the 3-Day Novel contest couple of weeks ago (Becoming a writer) when I had attended the contest's launch event in Toronto.

Image: http://www.3daynovel.com/

Becoming a writer

It’s been a while since I wrote here.

I’ve been busy giving finishing touches to the first 50 pages of my novel. I’ll be entering my manuscript (only 50 pages) in a competition run by the Canadian Aid Charity and the BookLand Press.

Re-writing 50 pages is no joke, and I don’t even know whether it is any good. But I’m determined to participate. I figure I’ve nothing to lose.

The worst that can happen is that the organisers may reject my manuscript. That wouldn’t be unusual.

I’m reinventing my writing career in Canada. And the last year or so has been interesting and enriching. Rejections and acceptances are part of this process.

After I came here, I spent the first six to seven months in Canada without having to write. Now, I’ve never thought of myself as a great writer or even a good one, but I’ve been writing for a living for a larger part of the last two decades.

So, when I didn’t have anything to write after I came here, I wrote a short story to enter into a competition that would’ve paid for a writing course.

I must thank Susan Crangle, a communications professional, who edited the story and gave me key inputs. I didn’t win the competition. But learnt a few things from her.

In May, I entered the same story – with a few more re-writes and edits (this time Mahrukh helped me) and sent it to Diaspora Dialogues, an institution that is doing impressive work in enabling newcomers express themselves creatively.

I was selected for the mentoring program where I’d be working with an established writer to improve my short story. I’ll write about that in more details when the program concludes. See my profile here.

Then Joyce Wayne nominated me to participate at the Humber School of Writers’ Summer Workshop. There I got acquainted with the suave Antanas Sileika, who runs the program at Humber.

I assisted Isabel Huggan, an extraordinary writer and teacher. I learnt from her, too. ("All writing is rewriting," she said.)

A few writers, poets and playwrights from Diaspora Dialogues met last week at Central cafe in Mirvish Village. One of the participants – Michael Fraser – organises poetry readings here. He calls it the Plasticine Poetry Series.

We had a great time. I requested Jasmine D’Costa, author of the critically-acclaimed Curry is Thicker than Water, who was also there at the readings, to join us and give us publishing tips.

I met Dawn Promislow and subsequently read her a couple of her short stories.

I was at Mirvish Village again earlier this week. This time for an unbelievable event – the launch of the 32nd annual international 3-day novel contest. Barbara Zatyko and Melissa Edwards power this incredible event. (Thank you Dawn Boshcoff.)

Last year’s winner Jason Rapczynski read from his novel The Videographer. Several veteran participants from earlier competitions narrated their experiences, of sleep deprivation, generally losing control and doing silly things.

The contest began in 1977 in a Vancouver pub when a few crazy writers decided to emulate Jack Kerouac and complete writing a novel over a weekend. Apparently, Voltaire wrote Candide also in three days.

The tradition is now an established literary event and this Labour Day weekend, many writers from across the world will try to complete a novel in three days. This is an international event. So, anyone anywhere can participate.

I know of at least two people in India who should participate. They know that I know who they are, so I won't name them.

I’m going to participate and write another novel because the basic rule of the 3-Day novel contest is that you have to start and finish a novel between September 5 and September 7. I can't continue writing the one that I'm already writing.