Reflections on the Twelfth Week of Spring - "Walk Like a Turkey"

    Romance Magazine published my contemporary romance short story “Walk Like a Turkey” on Wednesday, four years and ten months after Spence gave me the idea.

On a morning in August 2011, Spence stopped reading news at his porch desk, walked into the log house, and said, “I've got the first line for your next story.” He flashed a toothy grin. “Meet me at Dairy Isle at ten,” he said and walked out.

    Puzzled, I followed him. “What?”

    Spence pointed at his computer. “Joe Hutto did an experiment raising turkeys. He couldn't meet anyone till after dark.”

    “I can't write a story about Joe Hutto.”

    “Write about another guy.” Spence flapped his arms up and down. “It's fiction. Make it up.”

    I researched turkeys, watched Hutto's “My Life as a Turkey,” and imagined character motivations. Creating the plot was the problem.

    “Build from character traits,” my son Spencer Charles advised. “Give the protagonist a business like a restaurant so a flock of turkeys could turn up in the parking lot.”

    Turkeys in a parking lot?

    I wrote multiple drafts of eight different versions and sifted through advice, like “Matt's too perfect” and “Matt's too weird,” from people in my writing workshops. Finally my “cute meet” won second prize in the 2015 Pennwriters Annual Writing Contest. The three judges checked “likely to be published” once I'd completed a list of revisions.

    Would the story ever be ready?

    I resumed my “butt in the chair” position.

    Kathy from Erie Pennwriters suggested publishing in FictionMagizine.com.

    Babs, from the Meadville group, reviewed rewrites and said, “Get this out and sell it!”

    Spencer Charles said, “Just send it out.”

    “I didn't finish the judges' list.”

    “Don't,” he said. “Send it out tomorrow.”

    On May 3, after revising another week without finishing the list, I submitted the story to the romance division of FictionMagizine.com. Within a month, Douglas W. Lance, Editor-in-Chief, emailed saying my story would appear in June 8^th Romance Magazine.

    I went to bed Tuesday, June 7 wondering what time Wednesday I'd get the magazine.

    At 6:59 a.m. the next morning, Douglas emailed the PDF link. Sitting on the edge of my chair and listening to Spence repeat “Just relax,” I clicked the link again and again. Each time I got, “Error in loading this page.”

    I slumped to the back of the chair and clicked the link for the magazine website instead. (https://www.fictionmagazines.com/shop/romance-issues/romance-magazine-vol-04-no-05/) That worked. The cover had a silhouette of a couple walking on a beach and my name listed under four other contributers. I jerked up to yoga sitting posture, took a deep breath, and emailed friends, relatives, and fellow writers with the news. Then I emailed Douglas about the broken PDF link.

    I shut down my computer and rushed off to swim half a mile at the Meadville YMCA.

    When I returned, I opened the computer to tweak my author's website, which Editor Douglas had called “cool,” and met a barrage of emails. One was from Douglas saying, “I fixed it. Sorry!” The others were congratulations.

    Beeping from incoming emails lasted two days. The three dozen messages from folks awed me more than having my story published.

    Giddy, I looked over my computer at Spence looking over his computer at me. “I only wrote one romance, and that's the story that got published. Maybe I can turn my other stories into romances?”

    “No,” he said. “The theme for your next romance is older people. When my grandmother Mimi was our age, she dated Wallace Simpson. Be sure to put in she swore she'd never marry again after living with my grandfather.”