Well. I kind of make stuff up for a living. I’m not actually making a living, actually.

Scavenger Hunt, Day 9: Bring the pain.

For day nine of the scavenger hunt, I’m not actually going to ask you to hunt for anything, but I am going to ask you to share a memory. Of pain.

My protagonist in Beware the Hawk has an ankle injury for pretty much the whole book. Tell me about a time you had to live with an injury. Points if you have a photo of yourself from that time.

I realize that these stories might run the gamut from slapstick hilarity to grave injury. Share as much as you are comfortable sharing. Tweet it to me (@ann_oconnell) with the hashtag #bewarethehawk. Or post it to my author page on Facebook.

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Scavenger Hunt, Day 8: Shamrocks!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! We’ve been scavenger hunting for a week now! A few more days and the hunt will be over.

Today’s challenge is easy. Take a picture of a shamrock, but it has to be a purple shamrock. I don’t care how you get it to be purple, but it needs to be purple.

Why? Because in Beware the Hawk there’s a scene in which my protagonist meets a cute Irish guy in a bar called The Purple Shamrock. It’s too perfect. You’d think I’d planned this scavenger hunt for this week when I was writing the book a decade ago.

Tweet your shamrocks to me (@ann_oconnell) with the hashtag #bewarethehawk. Or post it to my author page on Facebook. If you have an iPhone, you may also use Instagram and post your photo with the #bewarethehawk hashtag.

Moving on, I should have known better than to send you folks to Craigslist yesterday to search for questionable ads, because the submissions I received are definitely NSFW.*

Luckily it’s Saturday, so go ahead and feast your eyes on the entry submitted by Mary-Jo Bates. The poster of this ad wants to tell you how to get to Skankville. That’s all I’ve  got right now. Alena Dillon’s submission was so spicy that it got pulled off the Internet by Craig and his Craigslist elves before I was able to post it.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day. I look forward to lots of purple shamrocks.

*That’s “Not Safe For Work,” folks.

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Scavenger Hunt, Day 7: The List of Craig

It’s day seven of the scavenger hunt and I want you to scour the Internet for today’s mission.

The protagonist in Beware the Hawk is a courier for a secret anti-government group called The Resistance. She found this job by responding to an intriguing ad on Craigslist. So today I’d like you to find an intriguing ad on Craigslist. It doesn’t have to be for a secret agency. It can be anything you find interesting or mysterious or  nefarious or just plain awesome.

Then tweet the link to me (@ann_oconnell) with the hashtag #bewarethehawk. Or post it to my author page on Facebook.

Speaking of which, let’s look at the results of yesterday’s mission, which was to write a haiku about a bird of prey. I’m excited to report that I had several submissions, and all of them are very different. Here they are, in order of receipt:

Mary-Jo Bates, who offers a different take on what a bird of prey is:

Robin feet in dirt
Worm hold lost
Flesh into flesh.

Esteemed poet Heidi St. Jean, sticking with the “hawk” theme:

Hawk stands tall on pine,
never wavering in wind –
breathes in warm mouse scent.

Alena Dillon, bemoaning the loss of her snack to a Long Island bird of prey:

It stole my pizza
and dropped it in the ocean
I so hate seagulls

Erin Skelly Cameron, with a requiem for a mouse:

Field mouse frolicking,
Beware the hawk swooping down!
Oh, no – no more mouse.

I was sort of sad that no one wrote a haiku about this kind of bird of prey, but that's just me.

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I get my first proof, and get very excited about some very local press.

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This is the sort of thing you could see all the time if you followed my author page on Facebook.

Remember how yesterday, I posted that my proof for the physical copy of Beware the Hawk was coming very soon? Well it did – I got it yesterday, and everyone who follows my Facebook fan page was forced to look at a crazy photo of me holding it.

It was amazing. I ran around the house like a little kid. I stared at it. I read it. I stared at it some more. I waved it at my husband. It’s right next to me now.

And then I talked to my father on the phone and he told me that this week’s issue of my hometown newspaper, The Town Times, ran an announcement about my upcoming appearance at the Watertown Library. Now, I used to work at a local paper. I’ve placed people’s announcements. It was no biggie. If there was enough space for them, I put them in. Nothing to get worked up about. I could understand people getting excited if a reporter wrote about them and someone came out to take a photo, but a press release? Not exciting.

Well, I don’t know when I got un-jaded.

When my father told me that my press release was in the Town Times I flipped. I freaked out like Time Magazine had named me Person of the Year. Why? I don’t know. Probably because when I was a kid, it was my great ambition to make it into the Town Times. Whenever a photographer from the Town Times went to anything, I tried desperately to look extra involved in whatever they were photographing so that they would take my picture. And then the paper would come on Thursday and I inevitably wouldn’t be in the photo and I’d sulk.

Clearly this attention-hungry child lives on within me.

You know, if I knew I’d get this much of a rush from being in the Town Times, I would have let my mom submit my wedding announcement.

Who knows? Maybe my desire to get into journalism came from my weekly desire to see myself in the Town Times. I knew that I’d be guaranteed a byline whenever the paper came out. All in all, today was a very good day to be a writer from Oakville.

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Scavenger Hunt, Day Six: The haiku challenge.

Before I share today’s challenge, a bit of news: I heard from my editor yesterday afternoon, and she tells me that I’ll be getting the proof for the physical copy of Beware the Hawk very soon!

I’m curious to see what that will look like, since Beware the Hawk is less than 50 pages long. I’ve been reading several of literature’s greatest short books lately (The House on Mango Street, The Stranger, Heart of Darkness, Turn of the Screw) and all of them are pretty slim volumes, but Beware the Hawk is shorter than all of them. That’s going to be one narrow book spine.

Because of all that shortness, today’s challenge will celebrate brevity with the shortest form of all: the haiku.

Write me a haiku about a bird of prey.

You know what a haiku is, right? Of course you do. Three lines of poetry. Line one has five syllables, line two has seven syllables and line three has five syllables. I realize this isn’t really a hunt. In fact I was planning to have you search for a haiku about a bird of prey, but writing haiku is more fun. (Although if you’d rather search for one, be my guest, just credit the poet when you submit.)

Tweet the poem to me (@ann_oconnell) with the hashtag #bewarethehawk. Or post it to my author page on Facebook.

Speaking of which, I have some neat iPhone apps to share from yesterday’s challenge.

UPDATE: Erin Skelly Cameron submitted Instagram, which is a personal favorite of mine. It’s like Twitter, but with photos. Unfortunately, it’s only available for iPhone users now, and Erin owns a Droid.

Alena Dillon of The Time is Write submitted this neat app, Star Walk. It’s a sort of augmented stargazing app. You point your phone the sky and the constellations appear. You point it at an unidentified object and it tells you what you’re looking at. That’s right – UFOs are a thing of the past. Your iPhone will ID every object in the sky. I think I might want it.

Ally Arendt of WordVagabond submitted a link to an app for writers, FIG. FIG stands for Fiction Idea Generator, and it’s a plot generator that lives in your phone. It suggests plots, genre, period, narrative voice and appears to have several other generators included including an emotion generator. That’s pretty neat, too.

Normally I just sponge off the free iPhone apps and tolerate all the advertising that comes with them, but maybe I should shell out the five bucks for these two apps. Any other suggestions, folks?

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Scavenger Hunt, Day 5: There’s an app for that

The iPhone plays a big role in Beware the Hawk. I know, I know. I’m perpetuating the Apple iCulture in which we all live.

I’m going to defend the inclusion of the iPhone in my plot by saying two things: a) Apple didn’t pay me to make their phone into a tool of fictional dissidents, and b) art imitates life. That is, art would imitate life if you could never turn your iPhone off and your employers used its GPS to keep tabs on you, which they don’t.

Or do they?

For day five of the hunt, tell me about the coolest iPhone app you’ve ever heard of and if you have it, share the link.

Then tweet the information to me (@ann_oconnell) with the hashtag #bewarethehawk. Or post it to my author page on Facebook.

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Scavenger Hunt, Day 4: Happy hour at the dive bar

That’s right. For day four of the scavenger hunt, I want you to take a photo of a bar, the seedier, the better. The sort of bar that might have served as inspiration for this song. Then tweet the photo to me (@ann_oconnell) with the hashtag #bewarethehawk. Or post it to my author page on Facebook.

Boston's Chinatown gate, photo found by the resourceful Ally Arendt.

As I wrote during yesterday’s Chinatown challenge, a lot of the action in Beware the Hawk takes place in Boston’s Chinatown, but a lot of that action takes place in a hole-in-the-wall bar.

Your bar doesn’t have to be in Chinatown (points if it is, of course) and it doesn’t have to be in Boston (once again, points if it is) but it does have to be a dive. I know it’s Tuesday and most of you good people don’t frequent dive bars in the middle of the week, but take one for the team, folks. Head down to the bar and have one for me.

Or maybe drankin’ is not your thing. If you’re one of those pure thoughts and clean living types, take a photo of a bar from the outside, which might not be as much fun, but still counts for something.

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Scavenger Hunt, Day Three: Chinatown

Yesterday, we talked about the Fung-Wah, and I was sent this fabulous account of a scary 2006 bus trip by Ally.

That was yesterday. Today I want you to go down to Chinatown.

You don’t have to go literally, but for day three of the scavenger hunt, send me a photo of Chinatown.

A lot of the action in Beware the Hawk happens in Boston’s Chinatown, where one of the protagonist’s co-workers spends all of his free time. For the purposes of this game, any Chinatown will do, but points if it’s Boston’s Chinatown and double points if you can photograph an establishment called Snowflower, the Chinatown Gate or the weird nasty stuff in the gutter, all of which are mentioned in the book.

So head downtown, grab some lo mein and snap away. Just beware the Fung-Wah.

Also, check out the ladies with hair of many colors who sent in pics on Saturday.

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Scavenger Hunt, Day 2: The Fung-Wah

UPDATE: I was sent a photo of a lady with colorful hair on Saturday and I missed it because I’m an eejit who clearly doesn’t understand how Facebook Timeline works.  I want to post her photo now. Behold! The aqua coif of Mary-Jo Bates, whose eloquent thoughts you can find here.

It's like she's a natural bluenette.

Now, on with the post for Sunday:

Oh, the stories we hear about the Fung-Wah. For those of you who do not live on the I-95 corridor between Boston and New York, the Fung-Wah is a bus line known for its cheap fares and the excitement of its rides, which is why my protagonist in Beware the Hawk likes it so much. It’s a literal cheap thrill.

For day two of the scavenger hunt, I want you to share a story about the Fung-Wah. Do do some Sunday Googlin’ and find the most amusing review/story you can about the Fung-Wah, or share your own harrowing experience.

Then share it on Twitter (#bewarethehawk) or on my Facebook author page. Or what the hell, share a story in the comments. Best story gets featured here tomorrow, which reminds me, I have a cherry-haired lady to share:

This is Michelle. Her photo was submitted by her friend, Ally.

No worries if you didn’t get a picture of a woman with colorful hair to me today. You can send one in at any time between now and March 20. So if you see a pink-haired lady, get out your phone, get up in her business and snap away!

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Scavenger Hunt, Day 1: A hair color not found in nature

It’s day one of the Beware the Hawk scavenger hunt and your first mission is this: Snap me a photo of a woman with a hair color not found in nature.

Okay, okay. I know that most colors are found in nature if you look hard enough. And I know that pink, the color of my protagonist’s hair, is found in nature. Quite often, actually.

What I’m looking for here is a photo (that you took) of a woman with a hair color not naturally found on humans. Points if the hair is pink.

Complete the mission by posting the photo on Twitter, with the hashtag #bewarethehawk. Or post your pic on my Facebook author page. The best submissions will end up on this blog tomorrow, when I post the next mission.

Good luck, agents, and this message would self-destruct, but I don’t think WordPress has a widget for that yet.

 

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