Category: Books

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Holiday Specials!

Photo of promotional brochure

The Corona Virus has made this a tough year for us all, and the prospect of holiday shopping during a pandemic won’t make December any easier.

But I can help!

From now until December 24th, I am pleased to offer free delivery in central Ottawa of an autographed copy Black Grass for only $15.00, and The Old Man’s Last Sauna for the extraordinary price of only $10.00!

For those of you out of town, the discounted prices still apply, but alas, so do the standard shipping rates.

What better way to tell the bookworm (or bookworms!) in your life that you care than to give them one or both of these remarkable books by a local author, published by a small press?

If you have any doubts, you can read the first three chapters of Black Grass here, and the deeply moving novelette, “O! Ernie, What Have they Done To You?” here.

To skip all that and purchase one or both books, in paper or electronic editions, please click here to visit our store.

Thank you for reading this, and happy holidays!

Geoffrey Dow, Publisher

Black Grass front cover image
Click here to read an excerpt
Cover of The Old Man's Last Sauna, by Carl Dow
Click here to read a story


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Black Grass – the first 3 chapters

Front cover of Black Grass, by Carl Dow

“I wanted to write a story about a Canadian hero who wasn’t hanged,” Carl Dow told me in conversation some months back.

Gabriel Dumont was the hero, and Black Grass was the resulting novel, a novel which led me down the path to being a publisher. Of course, I am biased – the shared last name is no accident – but I read the book in manuscript form in one sitting, coming up for air with the rising sun.

If my say-so doesn’t convince you, please click here to read the first three chapters and then decide for yourself.

Happy reading!

Geoffrey Dow, Publisher

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Introduction to “O! Ernie … What Have They Done to You?

Short story collections are a notoriously hard kind of book to sell. Short story collections by first-time authors are even more so. Nevertheless, I published Carl Dow‘s collection of stories, and the BumblePuppy Press’ first commercial book, The Old Man’s Last Sauna because I believed in 2013 – and still do! – that these stories were good ones and deserved to be read.

Though “O! Ernie … What have they done to you?” is set shortly after the Second World War and directly concerns the “red scare” of the post-war era, it is a story that is just as relevant today as it is to the era in which it is set (consider the cases of Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning, if you believe that times have really changed).

Beyond the politics, “O! Ernie …” is both a deeply human tragedy, and a study in resilience and the stubborn triumph of the human spirit even when faced by an implacable foe.

I re-read the story for the first time in a long while last night to write this introductory note, and found myself deeply moved by it all over again. It will be available to read for free for only one week – if you like it, please consider buying the book from which it is taken!

Cover of The Old Man's Last Sauna, by Carl Dow
Buy The Old Man’s Last Sauna

Geoffrey Dow, Publisher – December 3, 2020

Read “O! Ernie … What Have They Done to You?”

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Black Grass on the pod(cast)

Photo illustration showing Peter Anthony Holder, left, and Carl Dow, right.

Carl interviewed by Peter Anthony Holder

Peter Anthony Holder of The Stuph File, left, Carl Dow holding copy of Black Grass, right.

We at the BumblePuppy Press were delighted when Carl‘s friend and colleague, Randy Ray, told us he wanted to put his skills at as a publicist to work for us.

Last week, Randy got down to it while on vacation in Florida (what a world!) and we are seeing the fruits of his labours already! Carl was interviewed on Peter Anthony Holder’s Montreal-based podcast, The Stuph File Program.

You can read Carl’s thoughts about the interview here, or you can just listen to interview by clicking below.

The full program can be found at The Stuph File. Look for program #0551.

And of course, Black Grass is available in print and e-book editions from your favourite online retailer. And autographed copies can be ordered directly from us.

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Black Grass is coming

Things move slow when one has to juggle a day-job and a relationship with the responsibility of running a small press.

But things do move, and it is with great pleasure that I can now say (for real!), that our next book — Carl Dow’s Black Grass, a novel that smoothly combines adventure, historical, romance and western genres — is in production and will (yes, for real!) be published next year.

Read more …

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The Old Man’s Last Sauna

Stories that will move, amuse and even shock
in their subtle explorations of the human spirit

From odes to loves lost and loves found; from a clear-eyed look at what it takes to destroy a strong man to the web of love between a mother and her son; from the greed that drives a man to murder to a father’s understanding of the difference between his son’s imagination and the lies that lurk in the minds of his grandparents, Carl Dow’s stories introduce a powerful voice for the 21st century, one born of the turmoil, violence and struggle for justice and understanding that marked so much of the 20th.

A limited number (under two hundred) copies of The Old Man’s Last Sauna are still available directly from the publisher. Each will be autographed by the author and when they’re gone, they’re gone!

Copies of the second edition can be ordered through your favourite online vendor.
Continue reading The Old Man’s Last Sauna