Jenny McLeod Carlisle is well past her little girl years. She remembers them as happy, but not carefree. Playing outside with her younger sister and the other kids in the neighborhood until the lightning bugs flickered, and the street lights started their nightly watch, there was a touch of loneliness. At age 5, divorce took away her front-porch reading companion, and forced her Mom to work hard to fill both parental roles. Writing letters to her Daddy who lived a couple of hours away helped fill the void, and developed her writing voice. Even back then, when asked the standard question about what she wanted to do when she grew up, her answer was to write books.
Now, with those childhood dreams still intact, she has published one book, entitled “Turn, Turn, Turn.” A compilation of short essays, it is a selection of the columns she has been writing each month for Ouachita Life, a regional publication in her adopted home state of Arkansas. The magazine, the columns, and now the book have developed a small but loyal following of folks who remember their own childhoods, and perhaps have had the same goal of retaining their dreams until they “grow up”.
Turn, Turn, Turn is non-fiction, a view from Jenny’s front porch about life’s ups and downs, about unfailing hope and trust in the Author of all of our stories. On the other hand, the stories that fill her brain are fictional. Make-believe people with problems and triumphs of their own are longing to tell their stories to others. Straddling the fine line between insanity and genius, Jenny is still striving to get those stories out.
Her adult life has been incredibly blessed. For over 40 years, she has been married to her soulmate and best friend, James. Together, they raised two boys and a girl, who are all married and living in three different states. Traveling to enjoy eight grandchildren or just to wander in search of new adventures occupies their time when she is not working at her full-time job as a human resource analyst for the Arkansas Economic Development Commission. She is a past president of the Arkansas Chapter of American Christian Fiction Writers, and her fiction and poetry have won awards at many local conferences. Though her works in progress fall in the category of contemporary women’s fiction, she also loves imagining what life was like in earlier times. She helped to form and later became president of Saline County Preservation, with the goal of restoring local historic sites. There is undoubtedly a story about the past in her future as well.
This new website is intended to encourage others who have the same focus, to seek God first (Matthew 6:33), to wait on Him to renew our strength (Isaiah 40:31) and humbly to walk in His way (Micah 6:8).
May you be richly blessed by whatever you glean from her musings here.
