The Red Kimono: A Novel by Jan Morrill My rating: 4 of 5 stars As delicate as a cherry blossom, The Red Kimono blooms quietly but persistently. It’s a gentle story of a very ungentle time. Mostly expressed through the words of young people, The Red Kimono is, of course, a comment on racism and war, but it is also a coming of age story not only for its characters but for a culture. Whether you buy the plot, or […]
Magic
296 posts
Ninety-nine words! “Why’d you come back?” He leaned against the doorframe—shirtless, tanned, beautiful. “Missed your cooking.” My dress hugged shaking legs in the spring breeze. I sounded braver than I felt. “Aren’t you sick of this—what did you call it?—backwoods boil on the Universe’s ass.” He spat the words. Gentle chimes broke his mood. A rising wind swayed the black iron bell on the porch. “It only rings for weddings and funerals.” His cat-green eyes slipped over me like warm […]
“He dropped me when I was forty. She was even younger,” said the lite beer motioning towards a Scotch-rocks at a nearby table, “I bet he’s already got another one lined up.” “Why would he leave me for her?” wailed the marguerite, eyeing a tall sangria. “Quiet. Here she comes.” The sangria joined them under the yellow umbrella on the patio, the silence as icy as the fresh round of drinks. “I suggest we work together,” said the sangria, smiling […]
When I sat down at the keyboard and started writing paranormal romance and mystery stories, my name was Kay Lawson, but something wasn’t working. Words weren’t coming, sentences weren’t sentencing, and paragraphs weren’t even paragraphing. At first, I hoped these problems were the result of a little rust on the old writing muscles—just a bit of literary atrophy. After a month or two of tapping out total and unadulterated tripe, I looked at myself in the mirror and wondered if––and […]
Once upon a time in the deep dark forest of Shannon County, Missouri, in America there lived a witch. Not an evil, pea-green, toddler-roasting witch and not a squeaky-voiced, insulin-depleted, do-gooder witch, just an everyday herb-growing, cat-loving, candle-making, moon-watching, tree-hugging sort of witch. The witch loved her house and her yard and her garden. One of her favorite things about the deep dark forest of Shannon County, Missouri, in America was that hardly anybody else lived there. She could go […]
From ghoulies and ghosties And long-leggedy beasties And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us! High on my list of bucket list tours—Note to self: Great name for my travel agency—is a haunted tour of Scotland. Apparently, you can’t swing a cat in Scotland without smacking into some kind of supernatural entity. The place is stiff with ghosts, spirits, mermaids, fairies, mysterious and shadowy figures, haunted castles, ladies of all the hues in the rainbow, and […]