An Alligator in the Basement [Excerpt only]

by David E. Manuel

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) Entry - this eBook is a sample of the first 3,000-5,000 words; it is not the full book. The ABNA contest is operated on Amazon.com only. Visit this entry on Amazon.com to leave customer feedback.

There's an alligator living in Danny Foster's basement, but that's the least of his concerns. Every day, he worries the principal at the middle school where he teaches English will find out he doesn't know what he's doing and fire him. A bigger fear is that his wife will finally realize she's married to a socially inept bore and leave him. Mostly he’s afraid that his father was right, that he's a loser who will never amount to anything. The alligator's about the only thing he figures he’s got a handle on. After all, he's been taking care of it since his father brought it back from Florida years before. But when it escapes its enclosure and takes to sitting at the foot of the basement stairs trying to figure out how to climb them, Danny realizes he's going to have to deal with the single problem he thought he had under control. Because an alligator on the loose is the one thing that can shatter Danny's tenuous existence. An Alligator in the Basement is a comic, first-person narrative about growing up in a wacky and dysfunctional world. It’s about love, loss, family, relationships, musical comedies, bunnies, getting a job, dealing with school delinquents, buying your first gun. Mostly, though, it’s the story of Danny Foster and the alligator in his basement.

16 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 14, 2014

About the author

DAVID E. MANUEL grew up in Houston, Texas and attended the University of Houston, receiving degrees in history and political science. After college, he worked for a few years in the corporate office of an offshore drilling company. In the mid-1980s he moved to the Washington DC area and took a job with the U.S. Government.

David lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and their English Shepherd, Falco, who, as far as we know, is not a secret government agent.