Tagline: After her cat brings home a stray kitten, Milly links up with her neighbor, Brady, to search for its mother...and finds a new chance at love in the process.
Observations: In my Basics Class, I talk about several ways to come up with story ideas. One of them is to think of a problem for your character and then write the story of how he/she solves it--and finds "a new chance at love in the process," as the tagline for this story says. Cooper does this in spades with this adorable story.
Milly's problem is that she can't finish painting her kitchen because she's too short to reach the top corner, even with her ladder. Great. But then you read about Milly's second problem--her cat brings home a newborn kitten. (I found this adorable, by the way.) And Milly has a third problem--a neighbor who was a "rather rough-looking man who played loud music and came and went at all hours."
This story was so stuffed with problems and cuteness that by the time I was reading the ending, I'd forgotten that Milly was trying to paint her kitchen, so when the hero noticed the paint smear on her nose, I was as surprised as Milly was.
Cooper also surprised me by stowing the mother cat under the porch. I was trying to figure out where the kitten had come from myself and coming up empty. This might be because in Southern California, most of the houses just sit on a slab. Either way, I love being surprised by stories.
Let me know in the comments how you felt about the ending.
Photo by: Jennifer C. via Flickr CC license
