The Thwarting of Mr. Dingsnapple: Chapter Two

Tut and Cleopatra, the two African geese were always together. They considered themselves the most regal and elegant of all the zoofolk. Slender bodied and gray backs, their necks and chests were white as snow. Their black beaks could have been made of buffed leather. Tut sported a large leathery hump on the top edge of his beak between his eyes like a crown. Cleopatra’s hump was a bit smaller. Although their markings were similar to Sweetie’s she was much more heavy bodied.

The Thwarting of Mr. Dingsnapple: Chapter One

“…My eggs! He’s stolen my eggs!” Sweetie rooted her beak through her nest and looked back over her shoulder. Mr. Dingsnapple was walking away. He had just placed her four pearly-white eggs in a red wire basket.  She ran as fast as her big webbed feet could carry her. Her huge gray wings flapped with every step.

Writing Craft - Show Don't Tell

One of the hallmarks of skilled writing is the ability to draw the reader into the world you’ve created.

The reader wants to have sympathy for your character. He wants to feel what your character feels and experience what the character experiences. One of the primary reasons for recreational reading is to escape from reality and be somewhere else.

If your story doesn’t draw the reader in quickly, he will lose interest. Your story must pop with experiences that use the senses. Immerse your reader in sensory experiences. He must be able to touch, taste, smell, hear, and see the world you’ve created. Your job is to find words that convey those messages.

Writing Craft - Peopling Your World

When I started writing my first novel, (which will never get published… to many problems and nothing more than an exercise in futility). I realized I didn’t know what my villain looked like. No matter what I thought about, I could not envision this man.  I could not describe him.

Stumped, I looked through magazines for ideas, but he definitely wasn’t the fashion model type.  National Geographic didn’t help, either. 

Several weeks later I was browsing through my photo file of vacation pictures to Charleston, South Carolina.  Suddenly, I stopped and studied a crowd of passers-by. Right in the center of the screen was an angular, lanky man. His baseball cap crammed down on greasy dark hair pulled at an angle to almost hide his eyes. He had tight lips and a grim expression.  By his stance, I could see he was going some place in a hurry. My villain! I’d found my villain!

Why a Goose Story?

Over the years, people have told me I needed to put some of my funny animal stories into print. Several ideas milled around in my head, but I really didn’t know that much about writing.

I had participated for year in AuburnUniversity’s Novel Writing Workshop taught by Mary Moran. In this class, we were required to write ten pages per week and share them with the group for critiquing. It was an invaluable class, but my suspense novel manuscript was spotty and had too many missing parts. However, I did learn a bit about character development.

About the Author

Back in the 1990’s my husband Joe Crocilla and I began rescuing cast-off animals that needed a home.  Before long, we housed, loved, and cared for some 150 birds, mammals, and reptiles.  Eventually, we became the smallest U.S.D.A. licensed Petting Zoo in the State of Alabama.

This was a labor of love. Most of our animals were rescue animals, either domestic animals that had no place to go, orphaned wild babies needing TLC, and occasionally a legal home for illegally captive wild animals confiscated from their owners.