Wednesday, November 30, 2022

Turkey Day Setup


by Dorothy Wills-Raftery from the November 21, 2022 issue

Tagline: Single mom Laci isn't interested in her sister's attempts to set her up with friends...that is until she sits next to Brent at Thanksgiving dinner.

Observations: Ms. Wills-Raftery has written such a warm Thanksgivingish (new word, made it up) story. I'm reading it after Thanksgiving but the story is still giving me warm fuzzy feelings from the recent memories. She and I worked on several of her stories in the past and I'm excited to see her stories being published. I can see so many Woman's World elements included that it's easy to see why the editors chose it.

I learned that pie crust can contain eggs. My pie crust recipe doesn't include eggs, so I was skeptical at first, but the good old internet told me that there's more than one way to crust a pie.

I liked the sisters' relationship. My sister and I often cook together for family events. I never tried to set my sister up, though. LOL

I also really enjoyed the epilogue last paragraph. 

However, I spied with my editor's eye, a dangling participle. A dangling participle is a participle or participial phrase, often found at the beginning of a sentence, that  is unintentionally modifying the wrong noun in the sentence. For example: Plunging hundreds of feet into the gorge, we saw Yosemite Falls.

Can you find the dangling participle in this story? I'll post it in the comments.

Photo by Tony Alter via Flickr Creative Commons License

4 comments:

Kate Willoughby said...

The dangling participle was "Dressed in a dark blue shirt that skimmed over his muscles, Laci could see he was fit, and his warm smile and mesmerizing brown eyes immediately drew her in."

Nanci said...

This story is so cozy. 😀❤️ Ah, yeah the dangling participle. Wonder how that escaped the editor? I too loved the ending. Awwww. 😍

Sandy Smith said...

I hadn't caught the dangling participle when I first read it, but when I went back through, it really stood out. It was a great story.

FiveSibesMom said...

Thanks, Kate, for the nice review! Dangling participle and all! (Whoops).