Lisa Jensen's Blog
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Dec.29.2010
The most important person at our Thanksgiving feast this year wasn't even at the table. Before the first morsel of turkey was gobbled, my cousin Megan proposed that we raise our glasses to my mom, who passed away in February, one month shy of her 89th birthday.
It was a bittersweet time for us. We...
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Oct.13.2010
Around our house, the word 'garden' was never used as a verb. It used to be that whenever Art Boy and I ventured outdoors with gloves, spade, and clippers, what we did was yard work. Sweaty, grimy, back-breaking, knee-popping hard labor.
But a couple of years ago, we finally came up with a solution...
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Aug.31.2010
I need to get back to the place where the stories live. That bubbling wellspring where ideas pop into being, just below the surface of the conscious mind. I call it the Dreamtime.
I haven't been able to access it lately.
Writers are always told that as soon as they finish one project, they should...
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Aug.18.2010
My mom has been gone a few of months now, but I still feel her presence in my life every day. And not just metaphorically. As we speak, my spare room is full of stuff, random bits and pieces of my mom's 89 years on this planet, souvenirs of a long, full, and exuberant life.
I've always joked that...
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Aug.03.2010
As I write this, Santa Cruz is choking in the deathgrip of a particularly noxious bout of morning and evening coastal fog. It's our typical June Gloom—except it's now August.
It's hard to spring out of bed in the morning when there's no sun, especially in summer, when life is supposed to be one...
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Jul.04.2010
It's not all about flags, hot dogs and fireworks at the beach. My husband, James, and I have a different kind of Independence Day to celebrate every July, and for us, it's personal.
When James was about to turn 40, he had a kind of midlife crisis. The comic book store he'd co-owned for 16 years...
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Jun.20.2010
On Father's Day, dutiful offspring face the perplexing annual question of what to get the old man. Candy and flowers are so Mom, while department stores and newspaper ads promote such dad-friendly merchandise as the dreaded tie, or maybe a CD of Dad's favorite geezer rock (like, from the '80s)....
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Jun.11.2010
It's official: I'm a crone.
I don't mean the gnarled figure you see flying around on a broomstick at Halloween. I refer to the last of the three phases of the female principle in the ancient/pagan life cycle: the maiden (innocence), the madonna (fertility) and the crone (wisdom).
The...
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Jun.04.2010
I am in love with Richard Jury. He's smart, self-effacing, witty, and compassionate. Children and animals flock to him. He's devilishly attractive in the best possible way—he doesn't seem to know it. Of course, I know it'll never work out between us: I'm a happily married woman and he's a fictional...
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May.13.2010
"Woo hoo. A knife fight and pirate sex in the first chapter! Love it!" This was the very first comment posted on my serial novel-in-progress, Runaways: A Novel of Jonkanoo, now going up online, one chapter a week.
This is the gratifying part if the writing life, feedback from happy...
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May.05.2010
Nobody knew where her red hair came from.
Her father believed there had been a red-headed uncle on some distant limb of the family tree, possibly on the McAfee side. But her abundant red hair was just one of the things that made Barbara Anne Bader so special.
Times were tough in the Midwest ...
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Apr.02.2010
Maybe it's because I just saw the new Alice In Wonderland movie, but I felt like I'd fallen into the backwards looking-glass world when I heard that President Obama was opening up formery protected offshore coastal areas to oil drilling. It may be that this is just the opening gambit in a larger...
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Mar.03.2010
Unless you're composing haiku, the writing process is far more likely to be a marathon than a sprint. Because it's so easy to get overwhlmed, here's a handy list-gleaned from hard-won experience-of the Top 5 Things NOT To Do While Writing Your Opus:
5 Ignore Housework. Believe me, I know how...
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Feb.05.2010
Time is one of the most potent of human concepts. Think of all the axioms we've devised to groom and shape the unruly thing into something we can grasp: it flies, it crawls, it marches on. It heals all wounds but waits for no man. It's on our side, it's on our hands, it's of the essence, but where...
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Dec.09.2009
What's with this white Christmas we're all supposed to be dreaming of? The last turkey leg has barely been wrapped in foil and stashed in the fridge before we're bombarded from every radio, TV, and mall loudspeaker with the annual propoganda-winter wonderland, frosty snowmen, sleigh bells and...
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About Lisa
I grew up in Hermosa Beach, CA, and graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a decorative, but not especially useful B.A. in Aesthetic Studies. I launched my writing career as a film critic for the Santa Cruz alternative weekly, Good Times, a position I've held...
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Lisa’s Favorite Books
A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon. The entire Harry Potter ouvre (but especially The Prisoner of Azkaban) by J. K. Rowling....