Jessica Barksdale Inclan
Some say heartfelt and honest, some say Harry Potter for adults with sex.

Jessica Barksdale Inclan's Blog

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Nov.09.2011

It's All Big

A long time ago, I took a writing class from a local, well-known author. This was one of my first fiction classes, and I was very nervous. I'd just made the leap from poetry to fiction, and though I'd been a voracious fiction reader my entire life, I was unsure how to tell a story...

Nov.02.2011

Getting Rid of the Blackberry

Last week, I walked into Verizon with my younger son andbought a new phone. Wait, it's not a new phone. It's a tiny, itty computer with the notion of phone. It's a "phone" with more power, 8 times over, than the first computer that I purchased back in the stone ages. It's a...

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Oct.26.2011

I'm The One Watching

I am not brave enough for civil disobedience. In fact, I'm not brave enough to get to the airport less than two hours before a flight. I pay my taxes on time, and I pay contractors, even when the job isn't done. I go to the dentist twice a year, though I do decline the x-rays,...

Oct.19.2011

Ghost Dad

Once upon a time, I was a fifteen-year-old girl whose father died. It was often confusing remembering he was actually dead, though, because all his things were still around. His pipe seemed to smolder in the ashtray, the smell of tobacco in the family room. His clothes hung like...

Oct.15.2011

Needing a New, Good Word

In recent weeks, I've heard a term bandied about, one that gives me pause, but one that works in a few good instances: douchebagery. Yes, taking a harmless douche bag as the metaphor it has become and adding that y to add some punch and make it active. Many folks these days...

Oct.06.2011

If I Were the Poet Laureate

Earlier this week, I was standing in front of one of my freshman composition classes, introducing aspects of fiction. We've just come off a long essay-reading section followed by workshop and a turned in essay, and now we are reading Robin Black's short story collection If I Loved You, I'd...

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Sep.28.2011

In a Flash of Light and Film

My grandmother and her three sisters, 1936

I have so many favorite photos, mostly old, the new too new to love just yet. The old photos bring me sometimes to a past older than my own, to a moment in time caught and held and perfect in that fraction of an instant. No one knows what will happen a day, week, year later. No...

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Sep.26.2011

No More Foam. Ever.

Sometimes it is refreshing to catch yourself in a moment of cultural folly. It's hard, though, as we humans are full of folly, folly full, as it were, often the idiots of the joke told centuries later (her wig was ten feet high and had a nesting bird in it. Really! I kid you not,...

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Sep.13.2011

Almost a Year

It's not quite a year since Michael and I were married. I'm having flashbacks now about the weeks leading up to the wedding. A year ago, I was worried about the weather. Would it be too hot? (It was). Would it rain? (It didn't, at least, do that). Would everyone coming...

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Sep.11.2011

Ten Years Ago

Ten years ago today, I was in another life, in another house, married to another man. I still had two children living at home. I didn't have a smart phone or wifi. or bluetooth I couldn't stand on a streetcorner talking into "nothing" and not have folks think I was a...

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Sep.07.2011

The Story of a Story

About a hundred years ago, maybe back in 1995, I came home from a writing workshop. I'd been gone a week. My younger son was only 7, but instead of falling into all their open arms, I headed right to my computer and wrote a story, the spine of it coming together in less than an hour....

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Aug.30.2011

To My Forties

To My Forties I leave them lighter than when I started, one husband, two children, a uterus, a couple of friends, and about 60 pounds gone but not forgotten, especially the children, who are still around, thank god, but I don’t have to drive them anywhere. No more Aikido or tutor or...

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Aug.25.2011

Chain Saw, Open Window

I've been thinking a number of deep and heavy thoughts lately, so deep and so heavy that I can't actually remember any of them. I did have a lighter thought just a minute ago, one that involved the notion of how we can get used to anything. Like a chain saw going all day in the next door...

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Aug.18.2011

Everything Different, Everything Changed

It's a cliche, these moments. They are clifhangers we survive from. We are led up to the precipice, teeter over the edge, and then are pulled back by a miracle. We don't know what happens in those times we don't survive because we don't survive. We aren't around to look back and...

Aug.13.2011

What I Did During My Summer Vacation

Bottom line: I rewrote my novel, twice almost. The first big push was during finals week and a writing workshop I held at my house. And then, this week, when I was visiting my older son. Nothing, it seems, happens when I'm wondering what rerun I can watch on Showtime. No,...

About Jessica

Jessica Barksdale Inclán's debut novel Her Daughter's Eyes, published in 2001, was the premier novel published under New American Library's new imprint Accent. Her Daughter's Eyes was a final nominee for the YALSA Award for the best books of 2001 and best...

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