Jean McKinney
Bio
Writer/artist reporting back from the places where the mundane meets the magical, with new stories and poems every week. Creator of the fantasy worlds of the Moon Road and Sorrows Hill. Learn more and get a free story at my LinkTree.
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Stories (33)
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Rusalka. Runner-up in Overboard Challenge. Top Story - August 2024.
On this midsummer morning the lake is a sheet of silver under the rising sun and the air smells of lingonberries and wild roses. Water laps at the sides of Dima’s little boat as we glide across the lake, eyeing each other like two wolves circling a kill.
By Jean McKinneyabout a year ago in Fiction
The Night Before
Outside in the courtyard, a Santa hat sits crooked on the top of a tall saguaro and sparkling fairy lights hang down from its outstretched arms. A couple of units down, Christmas music drifts out into the chill of this December twilight. Silent night. All is calm. All is bright.
By Jean McKinneyabout a year ago in Fiction
The Last of the Light (part three)
The sky is a never-ending vault of lavender and violet, and the moon, just coming on to full, is rising like a vast golden coin over the mountains. Lily sits on the porch, watching the road for Ethan, longing for the sight of his broad brown hat. The baby sleeps in her arms, full and warm and finally quiet.
By Jean McKinney2 years ago in Fiction
The Last of the Light (part two)
This is Part Two of four parts. Read Part One here. Around that last bend in the road, the hoof beats grow closer till an ugly little trap appears, drawn by an ugly mule and bearing an ugly man in a black frock coat. The man pulls the trap up into the yard and scrambles down.
By Jean McKinney2 years ago in Fiction
The Last of the Light (part one)
“So that light-footed man of yours is gone again.” Lily straightens. She’s been washing clothes, hauling water from the well in wooden buckets that leave splinters in her hands. The heat presses like an anvil on her back and her head aches with the hard white light of another spring morning in the desert. That relentless light lulls her into numbness, squeezes thought from her brain. She has to squint to make out the squat dark shape of Tia Rosa, emerging soundlessly from a tangle of crosote and low mesquites at the edge of the yard.
By Jean McKinney2 years ago in Fiction
In Santa Cruz
In Santa Cruz, the border is only a breath away. On these burning summer nights, stormclouds gather after sunset and the road spins out snakebelly white between Tombstone and Nogales. Taking those empty curves through the grasslands you lean had on the gas because . . .
By Jean McKinney2 years ago in Poets
