Wednesday, July 6, 2011

What's Your Number?

by Anna Jo Christopher from the July 4, 2011 issue

Tagline: When two strangers in a hurry shared a cab, their lives took a romantic turn...

In A Nutshell: After suffering through half of a truly horrible blind date, Valerie walks out. When she and a handsome stranger accidentally hail the same cab, they decide to share. They also discover they share the belief that they have lucky numbers.
Observations: I liked this story but was surprised to see such a vivid description of the bad date. Woman's World usually shies away from negativity and this loser that Valerie went out with was such a jerk! And yet the story wouldn't have worked without that description.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but note the motif of the lucky number in this story. It occurs first in the title. Then, right off the top we're shown that Valerie's lucky number is twelve. In the last third of the story, it's brought back as we discover that the hero, Kent, also has a lucky number. (Thankfully, it's not the same lucky number. I would have grimaced had Christopher chosen to go that far.)

One last observation--throughout the story they use the word "twelve," until the very end, when they use the roman numerals. It made me wonder why, bringing me out of the story. If I were submitting this story, I'd make sure I was consistent.

Okay, I lied. One more observation...this was the Fourth of July issue, and yet this story had no ties to the holiday at all. What's with that? Did no one submit a good Independence Day story???

2 comments:

Betsi said...

Kate, I submitted a 4th of July story that Johnene bought for next year, saying it had been "approved too late" for this year's issue -- although I submitted it on January 6th.

Betsi

Kate Willoughby said...

Oh yeah! I remember that now. Strange. You'd think that January would have been early enough!