Music of Hope by Tina Radcliffe

April 18, 2016 issue

Tagline: Josh never thought he would love again...until he met his son's piano teacher!

Observations: There were some aspects of this story that I liked and some that I didn't.

I liked that Josh was a strong enough person to take criticism about his cooking from a child. I liked that he was demonstrably grateful to his mother for helping out. I liked the tie-in between the canned spaghetti that Josh kept serving and the homemade lasagna that Maddy had made.

However, it read as if Josh didn't know his son was taking piano lessons at the beginning of the story. It might be because the son, Jake, had to explain how he'd had two lessons at Gram's house. This lead me to think there was an ex-wife and the dad just wasn't in the loop. However later, I found out that wasn't true. Josh is a widower.

Be careful about how you drop in backstory. Yes, it's great to do it in dialogue sometimes, but not in an "As you know, Bob" way. Some information should already be known to the characters talking and it doesn't make sense for Jake to tell his dad that he's taking piano lessons at Gran's house when his dad should already know this.

To me, Jake's character was hit and miss. Sometimes I really liked him and his dialogue sounded perfect. Other times, he did not sound like a seven-year-old.

I was unsure if Josh and Maddy lived in the same apartment building. Maddy, the piano teacher, just said, "We're in apartment 10, as if Jake knew where she lived. This is a tiny detail, but glitches like this can cause your reader to mentally stumble and take them out of the story. Do that more than once and you risk losing the reader completely.

So, a couple of confusing elements for me made it feel disjointed. Your mileage may vary. :)

Also is anyone else hungry for lasagna? LOL

Photo credit: Mark via Flickr Creative Commons license

Mom's Online Dating Adventure

by Susan Jaffer from the January 11, 2016 issue

Tagline: Okay, Lori had suggested online dating...but she never imagined her mother would take her advice!

I thought this was a cute story. Considering how popular online dating is, I'm surprised we don't see more stories featuring it.

Positives: I liked seeing the relationship between mother and daughter. I think many of us have experienced a reversal of roles regarding our parents. I'm old enough now so that my mother is looking to me for advice and help and my sister and I have my dad's power of attorney. I saw that reversal to a lesser degree here in this story.

"Seriously, which dating site was it?"

"I'm not going to tell you, Lori, because you'll look up my profile and make fun of it."

This rang so true and real.

I also liked all the reject candidates. That was cute.

Negatives: I was a little confused about Uncle Dan. When his name was first introduced, I got the feeling that he wasn't Lori's blood uncle, but his relationship was still murky until near the end of the story when we find out what the deal is:

"As you pointed out yourself, Lori, he's not actually your uncle," Mom said. "He's an old family friend, like Aunt Bev and Aunt Lindsay. I've known Dan since high school."

This is definitely an "as you know, Bob" paragraph. The mom even says, "As you pointed out yourself." There are defter ways of getting this type of information across. For instance, here is where Uncle Dan is first mentioned:

"Not exactly. Dan--you know, Uncle Dan--overheard our conversation, and he said he could help get me started."

There it is again. It even says "you know." Yes. Lori knows. Which is why it's awkward to put forth the information to the reader like this.

The author could have said something like this instead:

Lori nodded. It amused her that even though Lori was an adult, her mom still felt compelled to call him "Uncle Dan" when he wasn't a relative at all.

We're in Lori's POV. Take advantage of that.

Photo credit: John Ward via Flickr Creative Commons license