A Yellow Tree Surprise!

     The autumn afternoon brightens my paper. I try to pen the colorful scene in my backyard, but the  rusty red leaves keep falling on my paper. Two yellow trees in the distance, late to lose their leaves, display the perfect fall attire. The twin trees are such a nice surprise. I love discovering a surprise in a story. I also enjoy hanging onto suspense in a mystery. Combine those two elements, and now you're talking! Autumn is the perfect season for surprise and suspense.
     Researching other writers and thier development of these two elements is a whole lot fun. Who doesn' t love a good adventure or mystery? Remember reading Mark Twain's novel, Tom Sawyer? My youngest son is reading the classic for English. No one does it better than Mark Twain. His simple town with a simple mystery creates a ton of suspense and surprise. That simple town based on his childhood home is really Hannibal, Missouri, where I reside.
I pass Cardiff Hill where Widow Douglas lives in the novel. I can still see Injun Joe seeking revenge in the dead of night, and Huck Finn hunkering down scared to death.The Mark Twain cave south of town depicted Tom and Becky lost deep in the labrynth of connected tunnels. Then Injun Joe jumps out of the shadows, surprise!
    Chase and I made puppets (for his English class, of course) of the characters in Tom Sawyer. Injun Joe even looks scary dressed up in felt on a popsicle stick! Try looking for the two elements of surprise and suspense the next time you read a classic novel or a current book hot off the press.