Cara Lopez Lee's Blog

In keeping with our Route 66 theme, I have a less than highbrow goal in visiting the Art Institute of Chicago: I’m here to see that creepy icon of nostalgic Americana known as American Gothic. So I figure hitting the museum an hour before closing will give Steph and me plenty [...]

Hope you don’t mind talking about sex, because that’s where my subject matter has landed for the second year in a row at the In-House Writer’s Contest for the Denver Woman’s Press Club. My first stab at flash fiction came in second place last week. The idea was to write a complete story in 500 [...]

Saturday, May 3, 2008
We’re about to ask the hotel concierge how to find a few sites from my list, when we overhear him telling some senior citizens about a boat tour of the skyscrapers lining the Chicago River. Chicago was the birthplace of the modern skyscraper, back when that word meant a building of ten [...]

“-est”… That’s how I’d describe Alaska. It’s the United States’ furthest northwest state, with the Aleutian Islands reaching further west than Hawaii. It has North America’s highest mountain – Mount McKinley - the largest national park, the largest national forest, the globe’s third longest river system, and the world’s largest sub-polar ice field. [...]

“…the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn…” Jack Kerouac.


We grab a cab to take us to the oldest [...]

Friday, May 2, 2008
My first full day in Chicago starts with gray rain and a cold shower, but I won’t let it color my mood. The Whitehall Hotel’s boiler is on the fritz, so the front desk comps our breakfast while Steph waits for hot water. We order our meal brought up, so my friend [...]

Thursday, May 1, 2008
Stephanie has never cut out on her husband for two weeks before. My husband told me, “It’s okay, I’m getting used to it.” I recently returned from a three-week book-research trip to China, stayed home for two weeks, then split again today to start this road trip down Route 66. [...]

“We swear you’ll thank us for this,” is what Lonely Planet said. The travel book described it, quite simply, as one of Bali’s most sacred Hindu temples, and it turned out to be, quite simply, the opposite. Pura Lempuyang sits high on a mountain overlooking the Bali Sea and the active volcano Mount [...]

"We swear you'll thank us for this," is what Lonely Planet said. The travel book described it, quite simply, as one of Bali's most sacred Hindu temples, and it turned out to be, quite simply, the opposite. Pura Lempuyang sits high on a mountain overlooking the Bali Sea and the active volcano Mount [...]

I believe that fiction sometimes reveals more of a writer's true nature than nonfiction. In nonfiction we filter what we wish to reveal, but in fiction our hidden dreams and nightmares may sneak out without us even knowing. This is no less true of the young writers I've mentored this past year for [...]