Hidden Treasure: Part 2

Abigail, my geocaching heroine, has a better memory than I, and she reminded me recently that I haven't yet kept my promise to post pictures of some of the geocaches we've found.

In previous posts I've described geocaching as a quest to hide and seek treasure outdoors in weatherproof containers called geocaches. The geographical co-ordinates of the geocaches are posted on www.geocaching.com and treasure seekers download them onto a GPS (global positioning system) device, such as a smartphone, to find the treasure. However, the co-ordinates do not always lead to the exact spot, then you have to search for the geocache. Often it is camouflaged to blend with the environment e.g. a nut and bolt on a pole may actually be a little magnetic container. A friend circled the area of a geocache for quite a while before she found it—it was fashioned to look like doggie poop! The owner of a geocache will often include a clue on the website to help seekers find the container.

Geocaches may contain little trinkets or other items which can be taken if replaced with an item of similar value.

Geocaches include a logbook which the finder signs before recording the find on the geocaching website.

Ok, enough talking. Let's see some caches.

This is the first cache we found—a small plastic container hidden under a rock near a dam.

Here's the next one which we discovered a short while later in some fencing. Amazing what you can fit into one of those little containers which used to house a roll of camera film.

Here's an electrical fitting which has been cleverly modified. The round lid of the fitting is held in place by a magnet, and, when removed, reveals the cache inside

Let's take a look at the seed pod dangling amongst the other pods on a tree. Is it really a pod? Is that a lid hanging open?

And this tiny little magnetic cache only has room for a strip of paper to serve as a logbook.

Some caches at first appear to be small creatures like this beetle. Turn him over and you'll see he's just a toy concealing the treasure.

My favourite is this snail which we found in a crack in a rock in Ireland. When we pulled him out we saw he had a camouflage bag attached which held the logbook.

This one was rather scary, but we plucked up courage to investigate and found that the snake was just a toy.

However we have learnt to be very careful, as in the process of finding this one, we uncovered the scorpion below who was very much alive.

Abigail says that her favourite cache is the pirate chest, It's so big that you can stand on it, not much chance of missing this one! However it's chained and locked, you have to find the key to open it! Once open you'll see a skeleton guarding the treasure—pieces of eight, goblets, tiaras and necklaces.

There are currently over two  million geocaches worldwide and should you inadvertently find one, please replace it as you found it. Why not go to www.geocaching.com and sign up to join Abigail and me in our geocaching fun?

Hidden Treasure Revisited: Part 1

Last year I wrote a post describing how my character, Abigail, came into being (read it here). Abigail and I share a fascinating hobby—geocaching.

 If you're not sure what geocaching is, here's an excerpt from the post mentioned above which describes our hobby:

Geocaching is "a quest to hide and seek treasure outdoors in weatherproof containers called geocaches. The geographical co-ordinates of the geocaches are posted on www.geocaching.com and treasure seekers download them onto a GPS (global positioning system) device to find the treasure. However the co-ordinates do not always lead to the exact spot, so once you are in the area you have to search and find the geocache. Often it is camouflaged to blend with the environment eg a nut on a pole may actually be a little magnetic container. Another friend circled the area of a geocache for quite a while before she found it—it was fashioned to look like doggie poop! The owner of a geocache will often include a clue on the website to help seekers find the container.

Geocaches may contain little trinkets or other items which can be taken if replaced with an item of similar value."

Geocaches include a logbook which the finder signs before logging on to the geocaching website to record the find.

One of the attractions of geocaching is that it takes you to way-out  spots which you would not discover otherwise. The online description of the geocache usually includes interesting details about the location. 

I found several geocaches on a recent trip to Ireland. Here are a few of the sites I visited.

Ducketts's Grove

Ducketts's Grove

 Ducketts's Grove in County Carlow was the home of the Duckett family in the 18th, 19th and early 20th century. Although this spectacular Gothic castle is now a ruin, its remaining towers and turrets give it a romantic profile much loved by photgraphers. It has two walled gardens which are being restored.

Various ghosts and banshees are reputed to haunt the castle and grounds, for example a phantom horse and carriage are said to park in front of the castle.

Walled garden

Rinn Duin-Cache

This cache  is situated on the Rinn Duin peninsula which has the best preserved ruins of a Norman town in Ireland. We saw the remains of a castle, town wall, three towers, a gatehouse, windmill, church and hospital. The bee bole (18th century beehave alcoves) was a rare and interesting sight.

Church ruins

Bee Bole

Aha! Found it!

Rinn Duin Peninsula at sunset

Rath Beag

Rath Beag or "little fort" is an Iron Age ring-barrow (a mound of earth heaped over a burial place). It has several tiers which build up to the top where there is a central cairn.

Rath Beag

Misgaun Medb and Milleen Medb

These are two large stones on the main burial mound at Rath Cruachan in County Roscommon which is believed to be the royal seat of Connacht. The stone on its side may mark the burial place of the Celtic warrior Queen Maeve.

Rath Cruachan features in theTain Bo Cualinge saga which narrates the story of a famous cattle raid by Medb (Maeve). She and her husband had equal possessions apart from one thing- her husband had a prize bull. Maeve wanted to have more than her husband and tried to acquire a superior bull from its owner in Ulster, He refused to part with it, so she put together an army and set out from Rath Cruachan to take the bull  by force, and in the process started a war with Ulster.

The view from the top of this mound is awe-inspiring.

I hope you've enjoyed seeing these gecocaching sites, look out for Part 2 when I'll be showing you some of the more ingenious caches I've found.

If you're a fellow geocacher, please take a moment to say hello to me and Abigail in the comments section.

Hidden Treasure

50 000 words into my novel, I ran out of ideas. How was I ever going to find a way for my heroine and hero to get out of their dilemma? Was there even a resolution to the situation? My novel languished in my laptop files as I wondered what would happen next in the storyline.

Then I read a blog post by Laurie Schnebly about Plotting via Motivation. I signed up for her next workshop and planned to take Gina and Riaan, my lead characters, with me. Perhaps I could find a way to finish my story.

Laurie suggested that I use a new "just for practice" story idea to learn her plotting method. Afterwards I could go back to Gina and Riaan’s story and apply the tools I learnt during the workshop. So my characters headed back to the laptop and I cast round for new ideas.

The new "just for practice" story idea was easy to find. My friend Amy and I had discovered a new hobby—geocaching. This a quest to hide and seek treasure outdoors in weatherproof containers called geocaches. The geographical co-ordinates of the geocaches are posted on www.geocaching.com and treasure seekers download them onto a GPS (global positioning systems) device to find the treasure. However the co-ordinates do not always lead to the exact spot so once you are in the area you have to search and find the geocache. Often it is camouflaged to blend with the environment eg a nut on a pole may actually be a little magnetic container. Another friend circled the area of a geocache for quite a while before she found it—it was fashioned to look like doggie poop! The owner of a geocache will often include a clue on the website to help seekers find the container.

Geocaches may contain little trinkets or other items which can be taken if replaced with an item of similar value.

So I decided to name my new character Abigail and to send her geocaching. It was great fun to use settings Amy and I experienced as we learned how to find geocaches. Our first attempt was unsuccessful as a high wall interfered with our GPS reading, but a second attempt uncovered the geocache in the photo below.

One of our first finds

We laughed in amazement as Amy’s GPS found hundreds of satellites to navigate by, until we realized it was actually recording the number of seconds that it had searched for satellites!

In a busy parking lot I didn’t want passers-by to see me retrieve a geocache, so I pretended to have a long conversation on my cell phone as an excuse to loiter without attacting attention. Several car thefts had occurred in the vicinity and we realized we looked somewhat suspicious as we hunted among the cars. Immediately a scene sprang to mind in which Abigail was taken in for questioning by a security guard in a parking area and had a hard time convincing him that she was not planning to commit a crime.

One of my favorite finds was in a nature reserve when Amy and I took a detour from a bird walk. This is where the hero came into being—he was a bird photographer and none too happy to find Abigail in the way as he tried to capture a shot of a rare bird. Abigail of course was frustrated as she couldn’t retrieve the geocache until the photographer left.

On another occasion Amy’s sandal strap broke. We ended up in a shoe-shop so that she could buy a new pair of sandals. Aha, Abigail's strap could also break, but she could injure her foot and the only person nearby to come to the rescue would, of course, be the photographer.

With further real-life geocaching adventures and Laurie’s enthusiastic comments and encouragement, my “just-for-practice” story grew. A twist developed when Abigail inadvertently left a small family heirloom in a geocache. When she realized what had happened, she went back to recover it, only to find it was no longer there. As she searched for her lost trinket, she discovered a more important and unexpected treasure in her relationship with God.

Today my geocaching skills are much improved, my “just-for-practice” story is an outline for a new novel, and I have the tools to rescue Riaan and Gina and complete their story.

If the idea of geocaching interests you, you’ll enjoy this post by fellow ICFW blogger Valerie Comer and her novella in the Rainbow’s End anthology.

And if you have any interesting or funny geocaching experiences, I would love to read about them in the comments section below.

Sold!

On this blog of international authors, what's a Canadian doing with an upcoming novella set in the USA? It's an interesting conundrum, and one I hope won't get me sent packing off this blog. (I'm just kidding…I hope!)

To put it simply, I have stories to tell, and in order to do so, I've decided not to push the boundaries of conventional wisdom: ie, that nonAmerican settings don't sell. Many of you have placed your stories in exotic and unique settings--China, the Middle East, South America, Africa--and here I am. Is it perhaps that Canada is not seen as exotic enough? That may be it.

Whatever the reason, I'm thankful and thrilled to announce my first sale, that of a contemporary romance novella to Barbour Publishing. It will appear in a collection with those of three other authors: Nicole O'Dell, Cara Putman, and Annalisa Daughety.

Barbour's call for proposals in December 2010 had clear guidelines, one of which was a 'unique American setting.' When I saw the invitation to submit, I knew it was a better opportunity to make a sale than any others I'd seen in awhile. Barbour was soliciting writers, asking them to team up, experienced and inexperienced together, to create these proposals. At least I knew this was one time not to push for a Canadian setting! The parameters had been set.

Nicole, Cara, Annalisa, and I chose the Lake of the Ozarks area in Missouri. It's a place I've been to several times years ago and where members of my family frequently visit, so I'm not coming to this setting completely cold. We added a geocaching theme to link the novellas together. Not familiar with the term? Here's the definition from geocaching.com:

Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS (global positioning systems) devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. Geocaching is enjoyed by people from all age groups, with a strong sense of community and support for the environment.

My husband and I have done a bit of geocaching in our region of British Columbia, so adding this familiarity is a big help. One less thing to research! And taking the concept of treasure hunting into our novella collection gave us a scripture to base our common theme upon: Matthew 6:19-21 Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The concept of the anthology is: Treasure seekers unite at the Rainbow's End geocache hunt along Lake of the Ozarks, but some discover more challenges than they expected.

Besides the huge thrill and benefit of landing my first ever book contract, I'm blessed to accept representation by Joyce Hart of Hartline Literary Agency. We're working together to fine tune my proposal for a series of novels set in Northern Idaho, close to home for me. At this time, the universal themes of my stories are more important to me than where they're set. Though I have to admit, I wouldn't say no to writing stories set in the Canadian west!

At Rainbow's End will release in March, 2012, from Barbour Publishing.

Valerie Comer writes contemporary romance with green themes. Her day job is split between flooring sales and writing, and her not-day job is split between family, local food action, and farming. She lives on a small three-generation farm with her husband, her in-laws, her son and daughter-in-law, and an assorted menagerie. Visit her website and blog to find out more.