Welcome to YA Scavenger Hunt! This bi-annual event was first organized by author Colleen Houck as a way to give readers a chance to gain access to exclusive bonus material from their favorite authors...and a chance to win some awesome prizes! At this hunt, you not only get access to exclusive content from each author, you also get a clue for the hunt. Add up the clues, and you can enter for our prize--one lucky winner will receive one signed book from each author on the hunt in my team! But play fast: this contest (and all the exclusive bonus material) will only be online for 72 hours!
Go to the YA Scavenger Huntpage to find out all about the hunt. There are SIX contests going on simultaneously, and you can enter one or all! I am a part of the INDIE TEAM--but there is also a red team, a gold team, an orange team, a blue team, and an green team for a chance to win a whole different set of signed books!
If you'd like to find out more about the hunt, see links to all the authors participating, and see the full list of prizes up for grabs, go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page.
Go to the YA Scavenger Huntpage to find out all about the hunt. There are SIX contests going on simultaneously, and you can enter one or all! I am a part of the INDIE TEAM--but there is also a red team, a gold team, an orange team, a blue team, and an green team for a chance to win a whole different set of signed books!
If you'd like to find out more about the hunt, see links to all the authors participating, and see the full list of prizes up for grabs, go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page.
SCAVENGER HUNT PUZZLE
Directions: Below, you'll notice that I've listed my favorite number. Collect the favorite numbers of all the authors on the indie team, and then add them up (don't worry, you can use a calculator!).
Entry Form: Once you've added up all the numbers, make sure you fill out the form here to officially qualify for the grand prize. Only entries that have the correct number will qualify.
Rules: Open internationally, anyone below the age of 18 should have a parent or guardian's permission to enter. To be eligible for the grand prize, you must submit the completed entry form by October 5, at noon Pacific Time. Entries sent without the correct number or without contact information will not be considered.
SCAVENGER HUNT POST
Today, I am hosting Matthew Phillion on my website for the YA Scavenger Hunt! He finished his novel in 13 weeks! Phew! Talk about knocking it out of the park!
Matthew Phillion is a writer, actor, and film director based in Salem, Massachusetts. An award-winning journalist by trade, he has also appeared in feature films including the sci-fi romance Harvest Moon and the independent horror flick Livestock. His screenwriting and directing debut, the romantic comedy Certainly Never, premiered in 2013 at the Massachusetts Independent Film Festival, where it was nominated for five awards including best screenplay and best New England film. An active freelance writer and journalist, Phillion continues to write about both local issues and the medical industry.
Find out more information by checking out the author website or find more about the author's book here!
EXCLUSIVE CONTENT
A solar powered girl. A ballerina vigilante. A boy with an alien living inside his brain. A werewolf with confidence issues. A girl with a black hole for a heart. Five teenagers, each with their own unique abilities, are gathered by veteran hero Doc Silence to become their generation's super-team. But when they find out someone else is building their own monsters to change the world, will the Indestructibles be ready in time? Or will their inexperience be their downfall?
Doc Silence:
Monsters
You never forget the first time
you see a real monster.
When you start out in this
business--either business, heroics or private investigations--you start out on
the pavement. You stop liquor store robberies. You prevent assaults. It's like
a game. Look at me, watch me overpower these terrible people, ta-da,
abracadabra. But one thing leads to another and next you're up against
folks who really want to hurt people. Who know how to hurt people. You run
into bad men who aren't afraid of you and your shiny costume and flashy powers.
Maybe they have some powers of their own. Or maybe, instead, they just don't
care, and those are the truly frightening ones, the ones who aren't afraid of
anything at all, and have no reason or basis for that courage.
I know a few heroes who have that
look in their eyes too, and it isn't pretty, regardless of what side of the
coin you spin on.
But these aren't the monsters I'm
thinking of. I mean monsters, in the literal sense. The day you realize that
there is something under your bed and it will try to eat you,
when you actually bump into the thing that goes bump in the night.
Back in the old days when I was
running around the City I never saw those monsters. I saw some bad men, yes,
but they were men like me. Some of them where the generic beasts displaying the
worst the human mind has to offer. Some of them wielded black magic, and these
held a special place in my heart, not because they were more awful than anyone
else, but because I considered myself a magician as well, and I wanted to prove
I was better than they were. I loved breaking up Dagonite rituals on rooftops.
It was a hobby. It was a sport.
Then I went on walkabout and met
a few real monsters. I didn't challenge them. I didn't fight them. I would not
be standing here right now if I had. But I saw them, shuffling off, as Yeats
might say, to be born. Monsters are real.
My first case back in the City
took me into the sewers. Isn't that always the way? I left town because I was
sick of sewers, sick to death of them, sewers and those green-hued caves that
run like a honeycomb beneath our streets. I should have known I'd be back in the
sewers an hour after returning to town.
Only this time, it wasn't men who
greeted me as I stepped into the darkness. Some winged thing, all teeth and
limbs with too many bones, drifting on non-existent winds as it floated above
the human waste that ran green and black at our feet.
This monster, though, this
monster I could fight. And we did, and I sent him shuffling back to where he
came from. Him and others like him, one after another.
But of course, where there are
monsters there are always men. The Dagonites still hold a special place in my
heart. I no longer take pleasure in beating them at their own game. In part
because their game is not mine anymore--they truck in much darker materials
than I ever will again--but because they are willfully working towards some
dark purpose I don't fully comprehend, but know must be put down at every
opportunity.
Which is why, at the end of the
tunnel, when I see a man--a man like you or I, flesh and blood and will and
intent--dressed in green and gold, swelling like a fattened pig with power he
should not possess, I know there will be no arrest tonight. We fight. It is an
easier battle than I expected it would be. He falls easily, too confident in
his own power, and too reliant on the monsters I have put down one at a time on
my way to find him.
There is a moment when he could be subdued, or he could be ended, and the choice is easier than it sounds. The act is not as simple as the choice though, and I can still hear the wet thump his skull makes when he crashes to the concrete ten feet below us.
I check his pockets, like a
graverobber. Several items I destroy on the spot, trinkets that would be
dangerous in the wrong hands; one I pocket for myself, which will be useful
against more of his kind in the future; and one I take to bring to someone more
powerful than I am to hide or destroy. It's not something I want in my hands. I
might be tempted to use it myself some day.
It is dawn when I step out of the
sewers and into an alley in King's Corner. I take flight not because it is
something a hero would do, but because I stink of refuse and sewer water and I
don't want to offend anyone I might walk past on my way home. And as I take to
the sky, I wonder, not for the first time, how many more monsters wait below
us, every moment of every day.
Doc Silence: Monsters—Author’s note
By the time we meet Doc Silence in the first Indestructibles
novel, he’s already past his prime as a superhero, the last man standing from
the previous generation of heroes. But Doc has a long and storied past. He’s
seen things, as Batty from Blade Runner might say, you wouldn’t believe.
Doc also existed as a fully-realized character for me long
before any of the other Indestructibles. Several early adventures are hidden
away for what I hope will eventually be a prequel about young Doc Silence as he
explores how magic works in the world of the Indestructibles, and how he came
to be one of the most powerful heroes on Earth.
The following is a short story about an encounter he has
after he returns to the City from his globe-spanning walkabout, in which he
expresses the early signs of the world-weariness that have overtaken him when
he first appears in Book 1.
Thanks for reading… I hope you enjoy this early adventure in
Doc’s career.
And don't forget to enter the contest for a chance to win a ton of signed books by me, Matthew Phillion, and more! To enter, you need to know my favorite number. Add up all the favorite numbers of the authors on the indie team and you'll have all the secret code to enter for the grand prize!
CONTINUE THE HUNT
To keep going on your quest for the hunt, you need to check out the next author, L.H. Nicole!
