The Contest: You Can't Leave 'Till It's Over

Imagine an offer of sixty thousand dollars, the "Prize of Your Life," and an all expense paid, two-month retreat in Aspen, Colorado. George Russo is invited to participate in a writing competition sponsored by an agency that represents new authors. It is so intriguing and he is so destitute, he had to accept. Lured to Aspen, the contestants instead end up in a ghost town with a preserved hotel on the high-desert prairie. A hundred miles from nowhere, with no communication or transportation, their basic needs have been supplied. Faced with extreme conditions, total strangers must band together and try to survive for two months, while writing a winning manuscript. THE CONTEST takes you on a non-stop ride as George recounts a chilling story he lived through to a private investigator, retired homicide detective, Sergeant Rico Sanducci. George is in a private mental institution, and Rico can’t figure out if George's story is true or a manifestation of his psychosis. George swears by it, but the police say they can’t authenticate any of it, and no one believes him. "To say this was a strange case would be like saying the sun rises in the east. If his story is true, they were like rats in a cage, with the captors constantly poking them with sticks. The decisions they had to make—the ethical choices alone would make anyone question their own moral compass. Was it some kind of social experiment, a sick joke that got out of hand; or more like I believe, an organization that preys on vulnerable people?" - Rico Sanducci, P.I.

TIMOTHY M. BRAUN was born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1952. He served for over seven years in the Army Security Agency as a crypto-analyst, spending most of that time in Japan and Korea. He retired from a Massachusetts police department as a Detective Sergeant after which he owned and wrote for the Gold Camp Journal in Cripple Creek, Colorado. The Contest is his second novel. He is also the author of When The Angels Cry-The Story of Arielle. Mr. Braun is married and splits his time between his homes in Cripple Creek, Colorado and Corpus Christi, Texas. When he is not writing, he volunteers his time to non-profit organizations.