  Short Stories
This week: GC1F2XN Edited by: Shannon  
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Welcome to the Short Stories Newsletter. I am Shannon and I'm your editor this week.
Read on for your chance to win a Detective merit badge
and find out what's behind the title of this week's newsletter. |
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When I was a kid, my favorite thing about summer camp or church socials was the scavenger hunt. It was so much fun to follow a carefully-drawn map, staying just a step or two ahead of my opponents, and cross the finish line to claim the treasure, whatever it may be. Usually the find didn't live up to my expectations, but knowing this ahead of time didn't diminish my enjoyment or my anticipation.
On July 26 my husband and I were sitting in the back yard when he suddenly produced what looked like a small peanut butter jar filled with odds and ends. "I found this about a year ago floating in Wildhorse Reservoir. Isn't that a strange collection of stuff?" he asked, handing the bottle to me. "I kept it because I've always wondered who it belonged to. Maybe it was a mom taking her kids fishing, or a hunter's survival kit, although the baseball cap wouldn't make sense in that case."
I opened the medium-sized plastic bottle and dumped it out on the picnic table in our backyard. There was a lighter, a single Q-Tip, a pencil, a pen, one individually-wrapped sani-wipe, a tube of chapstick, a book of matches, a GMC car key, a spent 40-caliber Smith & Wesson shell casing, a tiny blue rubber ball, a miniature baseball cap, and a homemade notebook of several small pages stapled together. The first entry in the notepad, dated 10/17/12, reads, Left Travel Bug and ball. The next entry is dated 11/22/12: Left pencil. TFTC. And the next says, Left car key.
"This is a geocache," I said, amused. "You're never supposed to remove a cache."
Del looked at me with an incredulous I-can't-believe-I-didn't-know-that expression on his face. "Well, I didn't read the notes, so...."
For those of you who don't know, geocaching is where people hide little waterproof containers of stuff, upload the GPS coordinates to a geocaching website (or app), then allow others to find it. Those who find it can take something (TS), take nothing (TN), leave something (LS), leave nothing (LN), sign the log (SL), and usually thank the person who hid the cache (TFTC). It's popular with outdoorsy types and something I've wanted to try for several years now but never have. This incident with the peanut butter jar was the push I needed, and I've since become a geocaching participant. In fact, come October my husband and I are planning a two-week cross-country 25th Anniversary vacation during which we plan to do some serious geocaching in several states. We always leave something, but have never taken anything. We haven't found a Travel Bug yet ("A trackable tag that you attach to an item. This allows you to track your item on Geocaching.com. The item becomes a hitchhiker that is carried from cache to cache (or person to person) in the real world and you can follow its progress online"), but when we do it'll be pretty cool to see where it's been.
My husband replaced all the items and wrote in the log, "Found May of 2013 below Wildhorse Dam in Nevada (floating in water). I had no idea what it was. It's been on a shelf in my garage for over a year. Just before throwing it away I read this (my wife knew what it was). Added shot glass for all those who looked all over for this thing." 
According to my Geocaching app, there are 2,469,490 geocaches worldwide. Imagine the possibilities! The search in itself is enough fodder for a story, not to mention each and every item found. You can read the log and see who's found it before you and sometimes even where they're from (the serious geocachers go to geocaching.com to write a little more about each cache they find). You can connect with other geocachers, plan geocaching vacations, and write about your adventures. It's a real-life treasure hunt right outside your door!
Here's your chance to win a Detective merit badge. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a story based on the peanut butter cache contents: a lighter, a single Q-Tip, a pencil, a pen, one individually-wrapped sani-wipe, a tube of chapstick, a book of matches, a GMC car key, a spent 40-caliber Smith & Wesson shell casing, a tiny blue rubber ball, a miniature baseball cap, and a shot glass.
Contest Rules:
Your story must be:
 Newly-written for this contest.
Rated 18+ or below.
Story need not be about geocaching, but it must incorporate all the items listed above.
A minimum of 1,500 and no more than 2,000 words. Word count must be provided at the bottom of the item.
Received by me no later than 11:59 p.m. WDC time on September 3, 2014. Create your entry as a Static Item and keep it in your portfolio. Email me the item ID number in bitem format and write "Contest Entry" in the email's subject line. For help using the bitem format, please refer to "Newbie Hyperlinking 101 - Bitem Format" [E].
Edited only until the deadline.
Any entry not following these rules will be disqualified.
Only one entry per person, please.
 A minimum of five entries is required before a winner will be chosen to receive the merit badge. If fewer than five entries are received, each author who submitted a story will instead be given 1,000 gift points for their time and effort. If five or more entries are received, a winner will be chosen, the author awarded a Detective merit badge, and the story featured in the September 10, 2014 issue of the Short Stories Newsletter.
Good luck, and thank you for reading.
P.S. The title of this newsletter (GC1F2XN) is the number of one of my favorite (as well as one of my most recently-found) geocaches, found in the middle of nowhere, Oregon, along the Ochoco Highway. If you're into geocaching, go to geocaching.com (or open your geocaching app) and copy/paste the code into the search window to search for it the next time you're in the area. Happy hunting!
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I hope you enjoy this week's featured selections. Please do the authors the courtesy of reviewing the ones you read. Thank you, and have a great week!
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Have an opinion on what you've read here today? Then send the Editor feedback! Find an item that you think would be perfect for showcasing here? Submit it for consideration in the newsletter!
https://www.Writing.Com/go/nl_form
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The following is in response to "The Trickster" :
Doug Rainbow  writes, "Can the central character be a trickster? If so, I nominate Tom Sawyer. I have a WIP about a little person who works with a ventriloquist as a dummy. The little guy crafts a full-sized dummy of his own to fool audiences into believing that the little guy is the dummy and the creation is the ventriloquist. Now there is a trick." Hey, that was a 1962 episode of the Twilight Zone called "The Dummy." I remember watching it when I was a kid, and it was one of the episodes that always stuck with me because it creeped me out.
An apple a day....  writes, "I know this is childish, but the first trickster I thought of was Bugs Bunny, my fav cartoon character when I was little. He pulled some good ones and you could always rely on him to be 'Bugs.'" Bugs is a great Trickster! He always kept 'em guessing, didn't he? 
Quick-Quill  writes, "I loved this series and looked forward to every one. Each has taught me to look at things differently and to really get into my characters. I anxiously look forward to your next series of informational, intellectual offerings. Kudos to you!" Aw, you are so sweet! Thank you. 
lawli writes, "That would be Ludwig from my story 'Silent Worlds.' He's an overbearing-to-gentle-nudging force driving good moods out of people with little effort." He sounds fun! Send us a link to the story so we can all fall in love with him. I'll share it in the next newsletter. 
Elfin Dragon-finally published  writes, "For a trickster I've always thought of Loki as being the ultimate of tricksters. He can be truthful, in the middle, and outright deceitful. He's got magic tricks up his sleeves and he's also not afraid to even try and trick his master, the king of fairies. Now that's an ultimate trickster." Oh, yes. Some people love him so much, in fact, that they name their dogs after him (my daughter, Ashley, for example). 
Voodoo Shampoo writes, "Hello, i found the title of your newsletter intriguing, so i checked it out. You say tricksters aren't strong? Well then you should check out the "Hunter x Hunter" manga. You might disagree with reading a japanese comic strip, but there's that certain character named Hisoka which pretty much is a trickster, but unlike the tricksters you describe is also very strong and a scary opponent in any way you imagine. Nonetheless, it's a great trickster character within a well thought story. If you read it / watch it you won't regret it." I don't recall saying Tricksters aren't strong. I said, "They may be smaller, slighter, and less physically inclined," but that doesn't mean they're not strong. I think a Trickster MUST be strong, at least mentally if not physically; it's usually an inherent part of their makeup. Thank you for sharing your recommendation, and thank you for reading and commenting. 
The following is in response to "The Shapeshifter" :
Elfin Dragon-finally published writes, "I know I'm behind on my reading of newsletters, but when I read this one I wasn't sure if I'd commented or not. In regards to shapeshifters, in today's genre they don't necessarily have to take the back seat anymore. They can now be the hero instead of the villain or a sub-character. There are many books and TV shows now dedicated to this way of thinking. Even my own main character is a shapeshifter (although in my world there is a big difference between a shapeshifter and a changeling)." YES, I agree! Any character can be the Shapeshifter. They can wear that hat throughout the story or temporarily in order to move the story forward. 
The following item was submitted by its author:
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Amazon's Price: $ 4.99
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Short Stories: August 13, 2014 Issue [#6482]
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