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Found and Lost: Short Stories in Geocaches


boudinot

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I'm excited to announce the launch of Found and Lost, a series of linked short stories distributed solely via geocache.

 

I've been a writer for a long time but am very new to geocaching. I'm the author of the novel Misconception and the short story collection The Littlest Hitler. My work has appeared in McSweeney's, The Best American Fantasy, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and a number of other journals and anthologies. I teach creative writing at Goddard College and am currently a Writer in Residence at Seattle's Richard Hugo House.

 

As soon as I discovered the world of geocaching, I started thinking about how I might combine my life-long love of writing with this cool new activity. I decided that I could approach geocaches as a publishing platform, sending my stories out into the world, monitoring their progress as they're discovered and passed from reader to reader. I decided to create an interlinked series of stories called Found and Lost. Each story features a character who finds something and loses something else. Each story can be enjoyed independently, but the object that one character loses is the object that the next character finds. This struck me as a thematically cool way to speak to the experience of discovering geocaches and the transient nature of travel bugs. Each copy of each story is travel bugged, registered at geocaching.com, and designed to withstand the elements. They're also meant to travel the world, finding readers where people least expect to encounter literature. I decided to make the stories family-friendly (as opposed to a lot of the other stuff I write), knowing that they could be discovered by families with children.

 

This project is a process that I'm still figuring out as I go along. I'm chronicling the whole thing at boudinot.wordpress.com and welcome any wisdom more experienced geocachers may have. This project is not designed to promote anything or make me money in any way. (In fact it's costing me money.) I'm simply compelled to explore the possibilities of sending my stories into the world in a unique way that combines technology, nature, and literature.

 

Ryan Boudinot

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I'm excited to announce the launch of Found and Lost, a series of linked short stories distributed solely via geocache.

 

I've been a writer for a long time but am very new to geocaching. I'm the author of the novel Misconception and the short story collection The Littlest Hitler. My work has appeared in McSweeney's, The Best American Fantasy, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and a number of other journals and anthologies. I teach creative writing at Goddard College and am currently a Writer in Residence at Seattle's Richard Hugo House.

 

As soon as I discovered the world of geocaching, I started thinking about how I might combine my life-long love of writing with this cool new activity. I decided that I could approach geocaches as a publishing platform, sending my stories out into the world, monitoring their progress as they're discovered and passed from reader to reader. I decided to create an interlinked series of stories called Found and Lost. Each story features a character who finds something and loses something else. Each story can be enjoyed independently, but the object that one character loses is the object that the next character finds. This struck me as a thematically cool way to speak to the experience of discovering geocaches and the transient nature of travel bugs. Each copy of each story is travel bugged, registered at geocaching.com, and designed to withstand the elements. They're also meant to travel the world, finding readers where people least expect to encounter literature. I decided to make the stories family-friendly (as opposed to a lot of the other stuff I write), knowing that they could be discovered by families with children.

 

This project is a process that I'm still figuring out as I go along. I'm chronicling the whole thing at boudinot.wordpress.com and welcome any wisdom more experienced geocachers may have. This project is not designed to promote anything or make me money in any way. (In fact it's costing me money.) I'm simply compelled to explore the possibilities of sending my stories into the world in a unique way that combines technology, nature, and literature.

 

Ryan Boudinot

 

Super SUPER COOL! :o:DB):D:D

 

I'm a wanna be writer and I may try that myself some day.

 

If you (or anyone) want to start some of your stories (TBs) in Texas or the High Sierra, send one of your TBs to me at:

 

Mark aka Snoogans

C/O PRESS Your Luck

P.O. Box 516

Missouri City, Texas 77489-0516

 

(Next High Sierra drop is in June.)

 

May I suggest releasing your stories at GeoWoodstock 8 in Seattle? I created a system (for GW4) that is now used at many large and MEGA geocaching events to direct travel bugs TOWARD their goals rather than scattering them willy nilly.

 

You could get your stories all over the country and the world with one stop. :lol:

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As a storyteller and geocacher, I find this idea really, really appealing. If you'd like one to start its journey along the upper Mississippi River valley, we'd be glad to help a story along. I've got a little experience in both moving stories along and moving TBs. Really a cool concept, thanks for letting us all know what you're doing. I've already added the blog to my bookmarks!

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