Author name: lisaalarsen.com

My mom and dad used to host parties for business purposes (supposedly.) Dad owned Impact Sales, an electronics supply company in Massachusetts, and he’d often entertain potential customers by taking them to dinner at upscale restaurants or, if they weren’t landlubbers or prone to sea sickness, he’d bring them sailing on his boat in Boston Harbor. This was back in the mid-sixties and I was still in grade school. Once a year he and mom would transform our beat up five-children house into a disco-themed fantasy world. Actually, I think they just dangled disco balls from the ceiling in several rooms and replaced the boring white lightbulbs in the house with gaudy blue and red ones. There’d be all sorts of elaborate finger foods to eat and booze everywhere… I wasn’t sure what an alcoholic beverage was back then, but I was enchanted with the Ice Nudes mom provided for the drinks. What the hell’s an Ice Nude, you ask? They were so cool! Imagine X-rated ice cubes, adult-themed, risqué, crude…sort of like the skeevy salesmen slinking around our house. The molds mom always used were about 2″ tall and depicted a voluptuous woman in a suggestive pose, nude as an ice cube can be. She’d drop these frigid women into glasses of champagne and other mystifying cocktails, and I’d watch them bobbing away, their massive boobs poking through the liquid like icebergs. When you write a book that’s an amalgamation of a quasi-memoir, a timid self-help piece and a daring spiritual guide, and then publish said book, and scatter it across the globe (…not yet, but soon) you’ve revealed personal, private and even painful parts of your life to a crap load of strangers. Even worse, your family and friends learn what you really think… I’m as exposed as an Ice Nude floating in a martini with only an olive for company. I’ve put myself out there, unclothed with nowhere to hide. Will I sink or swim? Will I get chewed up or left to melt into nothingness? Will I get tossed out with the unfinished drink, unwanted and forgotten? An Ice Nude doesn’t really have much of a future. Party-goers laugh at her, tell her she’s witty, then bite her head off. I can only hope that my future as the author of an amazing but peculiar book is brighter, warmer and longer lasting than that of a bare-ass naked Ice Nude. Be kind. Even Ice Nudes deserve a chance.

You gotta listen to this! It’s such an unlikely story, and yet it’s true. I’m guessing you’ve never witnessed such a spectacle before. And if you have, I’d like to hear from you. Sit back and be prepared to be amused…or as in my case, shocked. For over a dozen months after TQD was written I repeatedly found myself confronted with decisions I had to make…decisions about things I never even remotely considered. I just wanted to write my book. That’s it. I’m a writer because I love to write. I didn’t think past the final manuscript. However, there are scads of minutia that must be addressed if a book is to be successful. Who knew? Publishing, promoting, categorizing, pricing, and distributing were just a few examples of the necessary determinations I struggled with. I awoke each morning with a cascade of options and possibilities burying me. Releasing the book had to be timed as perfectly as possible, with promotional plans already in place, the red carpet ready to be rolled out. I felt hurried and unprepared. Did I, in my haste, create the unbelievable conditions for this disaster? Today, five days after the mess up occurred, I still don’t know. Maybe I don’t want to… So, what happened, you ask? After weeks of intense effort climbing a steep and seemingly endless learning curve, I finally felt reasonably confident that TQD was ready to be published on Amazon. Uploading my files to KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) was like releasing a baby bird I had protected and cared for, and hoping it would fly. My book would appear on Amazon in one to three days. I busied myself with other projects designed to relieve my obsessive worries, refusing to check on the progress of TQD’s debut. On day three I received an email from my web designer. My book went live! He said everything looked good except the book image was upside down. Huh? What does that mean, upside down? That can’t be possible, I thought. Rushing to my laptop I navigated to Amazon books, scrolling down pictures of best sellers and new releases, all with stunning book covers…and then I saw it. Holy vertigo, Batman, my freakin book image was indeed upside down! My first thought was, “who does this happen to?” My second thought was, “did I screw up?” I opened the file of the book cover I had uploaded. The image was perfectly formatted, right side up…KDP messed up, I concluded. I found their support number and immediately called. I was shaking, not just with anger, but with fear. How many potential readers of TQD were dissuaded when they saw an upside-down book? How many possible sales had I lost? I’m going to make an already long story shorter. I spoke with several KDP reps, each more dumbfounded than the next. In the end not one of them knew what to do. I was frantic. You know who fixed the issue? Bryant, my business acquaintance from Bangladesh! I discovered Bryant on Fiverr, and she has been working with me to promote my book. But she is an expert in so much more than that. From 8,842 miles away she singlehandedly flipped TQD back to its rightful position! Go ahead—get on Amazon and search for Lisa A. Larsen! You’ll be pleased with what you find!

Three-Quarters Dead…Huh? What the hell does that mean? Well, the title simply announces an estimation of how dead I currently am. The average life expectancy for a woman in the U.S. is approximately 81 years. So far, I’ve lived three-quarters of that number, which means I’m about 75% dead with 25% of life left. It’s sort of like looking at the glass of water and deciding it’s half-empty or half-full. Seeing it as half-empty implies you’re a negative pessimist. If you see it as half-full, you’re a positive optimist. Most aging people would be more inclined to look to the future, and how much time they have left. They base this on their past. They remember good feelings and try to recapture them. They dwell on fun vacations, long-gone relationships, and “simpler times, in hopes of experiencing them again. While giving  copious amounts of time to their pasts, the future slowly erodes, one day at a time. I, on the other hand, prefer to consider my past dead, as it only has the life I give it, and even then it’s not actual life our memories offer, but rather a vast collection of dim and misconstrued emotions that have the power to lull us into believing they are real. Like a large oak branch that is diseased three-quarters down from its tip, we lop off the dead wood to prevent the rot from spreading into the remaining healthy quarter. By removing what the branch no longer needs, the remainder stays active and now has a chance to grow new leaves. Who knew the title of this awesome new book could have such philosophical meaning? I believe that the aging process, whether it’s our own aging, or that of our elderly parents, needs to be reconsidered outside of the messages bombarding us through the media, the medical profession, and the social mores surrounding us. Only YOU can know your truth. Experience your life, minute by minute, because the past is dead, and the future but a dream.

Yeah. It’s true. I started a lawn care service way, way back in 1995. I called it Mowgirl Lawn Care. That’s because all my friends would see me being dragged behind an 18 HP, 36″ Snapper mower, and I’d be sweaty and dirty and a girl. Based on these astute observations, some witty onlooker came up with the oh-so-creative title, Mowgirl, and it stuck. If I stopped at the grocery store on my way home from work, covered in grass clippings, a trail of mud and leaves in my wake as I navigated the aisles, inevitably someone would cry out, “Hey look! There goes Mowgirl!” At the gas station while filling up my tattered Suburban with the cheapest unleaded available, some rando would pull up beside me, glance over and blurt, “Mowgirl! How’s it going? You still cutting grass?” No one in Cocoa Beach knew my real name. My kids introduced me to their friends like this: “Hey you guys. This is my mom, Mowgirl. You can call her Lisa but no one else does.” Even my parents used the moniker when addressing me. WTF?  Well before 1995 I was a self-proclaimed writer. I scribed copious short stories and poems. I enrolled in several creative writing courses at the local community college. I attended writer’s workshops and even took first place in the annual short fiction contest hosted by the Space Coast Writer’s Group.   My stories were published in several literary magazines as well as some newspapers. A scout representing the Sally Jesse Raphael Show read one of my articles and I was invited to appear on the show. I’m guessing not many of you are familiar with her talk show. It was stupid and lame, which of course made it popular. But like all dinosaurs, it dropped dead.   All this begs the question, how the hell did I end up cutting grass? Let’s explore that topic in my next blog. I’m hungry. I need an omelet. 

If you think I had an easy time adding an image to this post, you’re so wrong that I feel sorry for you. I’m such a shitty blog person that I shudder at my ignorance. But honestly, who cares, right? There must be at least one or two bloggers out there that suck more than I do. So it’s 2025. Big deal. It’s more exciting to consider that we’ve completed a revolution around the sun and we’re now beginning another. That’s 584 million miles we just traveled! That’s a lot of frequent flyer miles. Perhaps you’d be surprised to know that in my hiking career, starting in 2015, I’ve walked a bit more than one tenth of the Earth’s circumference–2,700 miles or so. Not as impressive as Lady Earth’s mileage, but my legs are a lot shorter than hers. Hikers receive trail names, assigned by other hikers, that supposedly have something to do with that particular hiker’s characteristics or personality or any other trait that is prominent. Trail names are silly, but they serve a purpose. They mask our true identity, and we traipse around the forest as attendees of a sort of masquerade ball. We have so much fun, and do such outlandish things, yet no one really knows who we are. My trail name is Legz With a Zee. It’s appropriate. I have long legs and a long stride. I cover a lot of ground quickly. Over the years I’ve walked the trails with Froggy (she burps loud and hard), Stats (she rattles off statistics like mileage, elevation, temperatures, camping options, etc.), Daddy Long Legs (he’s skinny and tall, with spindly legs resembling a spider), Rude (he is), Banger (he habitually smacks his head on low hanging branches, the slanted ceilings in shelters, etc.), Mr. Clean, Pop Tart, Jaws, Lobo, Amelia Earhart, Hell Raiser, Not Yet, Long Story, Gandalf…this colorful list goes on and on. Wow…I really prattled on in this post, with no cohesiveness and pretty much no point. Well, that’s good enough for me.

I warned everyone. I’m a mere shadow of a blogger. A blurred outline of a writer. A hideous creature watching football instead of entertaining my invisible audience. But hey, the new year is upon us, and I can make a new year’s resolution, (which I most likely will ignore, forget, or discard), to really hunker down and create a post once a week. So, let’s see how that goes.  Did I mention that my book, Three Quarters Dead, has been sitting at the publisher, polished and shiny and ready to release, for a year now? The edited, print-ready, actual book has been ready for publication for one freakin’ year. What the hell are you waiting for, Lisa, you may ask. What’s the hold up? Are you daft, dense, debilitated, delirious? Perhaps…but before we decide what my mental state is, picture this: you’re a kid who adores ice skating. You can’t wait for the mild fall weather to be replaced by the bone chilling temperatures of winter, sufficient to freeze the waters of your favorite skating pond. Your skates are ready—the leather dusted off, blades sharpened, laces new. Your time is approaching!  Soon the day arrives when you’re sure the conditions are right. Grabbing your gear, you trudge off to the pond, the frosty air freezing your eyeballs and instantly chapping your lips. You reach your destination, so excited you almost pee yourself, only to discover the water has a mere skin of ice floating above it, certainly too thin to hold your weight. Deeply disappointed, you turn around and drag yourself home.  A week later you’re ready to try again. You pack your stuff up and scurry to the pond, so excited you almost puke. You are ecstatic when you see that the ice covering the pond is like a thick and sturdy slab of concrete! But to your dismay a six-inch layer of snow glistens atop it, making skating impossible. You shuffle home awaiting the ice to be cleared.  Your next foray to the pond reveals a mob of skaters, mostly shitty ones, tripping over one another, bashing and slashing their way around the pond. Too crowded, you moan, and back home you go.  The next day you arise early, before the crowds amass, grab your stuff and scurry through the frigid air to the pond. A powerful north wind ushers in a cold front and the temperatures are single digit. Standing at the edge of a vast and empty slab of ice, you shiver and shake. Too cold, you decide, and walk away.  The point I’m trying to make is that the kid is waiting for the perfect conditions to be in place before he skates. If he waits long enough it’ll be spring, and his opportunity lost.   For me, 2024 has been riddled with problems and events and unexpected occurrences that have consistently pulled me away from my book. I have six children for crap’s sake. The odds of one of them needing my attention at any given time are pretty high. But that’s not all. Friends have died. Relatives have become ill and needed my assistance. I’ve helped a non-ambulatory college-mate pack an entire house of belongings into a moving van. I’ve shuttled others to the store or to medical appointments. My dog grew a 7-pound tumor in his leg. My daughter was in a near fatal car wreck. Another needed a hysterectomy. Another is experiencing a high-risk pregnancy. I’ve undergone two hurricanes this past summer, two surgeries, and a partridge in a pear tree….  Will the “conditions” ever be right for the release of Three Quarters Dead? I think not. If I keep waiting, I’ll have to change the title to Four Quarters Dead. And nobody wants that.  So, my plan is to publish my very patient and sympathetic book in January 2025. No person, or ailment, or calamity, or tsunami, volcano or act of God can dissuade me. It’s game on, people. Get your skates ready! The pond is freezing over. 

This website, this book, this endeavor–they are all in their infancy stages. Goo-goo-gaga. Feed me. Burp me. Change me. Cradle me. And most importantly, grow with me. Be patient as I learn how to navigate the world of blogging. Giggle when I fall. Be forgiving when I spit up. Be patient when I’m shrieking for no apparent reason. When I poop myself be grateful I’m not asking you to change my diapers. I’d never do that to a stranger. But don’t feel rejected. Once we get to know one another a bit more my poopy diapers will be all yours. Don’t argue amongst yourselves about whose turn it is to remove the toxic bum-turban. There’s enough for everyone. So, I’m not a blogger any more than I’m a logger or snogger or dogger. But from what I understand, blogging is important for a new author. It’s a way of inviting my adoring followers into my shower so they can know every intimate detail of my bathing routine, my favorite beauty products, the degree of soap scum clinging to the tiled walls, the kind of shower cap I use (a zip lock bag) and of course, every bump, lump, and hump adorning my naked body. Yeah…so I’m real excited to get to it…  Listen, Three Quarters Dead may be the first book I’ve published, but it’s not the only “book” I’ve written. Not at all. It’s just the first one I’ve actually finished. I’m also a prolific writer of short stories, my favorite platform because my attention span is less than that of a sugar-powered kindergartener. Crafting a short story encourages me because I can see the end like a running back sees the end zone. It doesn’t mean he’s going to snag a touchdown, however, but he knows the direction to head for before some 300-pound meatball bowls him over.  I digress…this blog should be interesting, is all I’m saying. The current post I’m working on right now has taken nearly a week to write. I don’t know why. It’s not because the task is difficult. It’s not because I can’t decide what to say. It’s possible that laziness has something to do with it…who knows. But here goes….POST!