Still Kickin'

Not Dead Yet

January is almost over: how can this be? I am looking at my calendar right now and refusing to believe the evidence, because New Year's was, like, yesterday. Wasn't it?

I think our hiatus did us all good; we come back to the table with our li'l writing batteries recharged. We'll resume our normal schedule-ish, beginning in February. I say "ish" because we are going to try a few new things ... starting with a Story Review on the final week of every month. As writers, we figure, we are also naturally reviewers: not everyone reads a book or watches a movie with an eye toward reversals, archetypes, tropes, and dialogue. Sometimes we can't even turn that stuff off when we want to.

Stories don't just live in books, so we'll be reviewing more than books: movies are written, too. As are plays, television series, and musicals. If it was written and it has a story, we might review it ... with an eye toward the craft. To this end, we'd love to take suggestions: what great stories do you want us to review in 2013? Homeland? Lincoln? Gone Girl? The Book of Mormon? Well, we may not be able to review the latter (much as I'd love to) unless someone wins a ticket to New York, but you get the idea. Let us know what you'd like to discuss, and we'll try to add it to the review list.

To kick-start that process, I plan to review a buzzy novel I read recently: "The Dog Stars," by Peter Heller. Published in 2012, the novel is a little bit Cormac McCarthy, a little bit Old Yeller. OK, not really Old Yeller; but it does feature a dog, and you know what that means.

I'm planning to post that review at the end of February, so if you want to discuss it with me — please do! — snag that book from the library or the bookstore now.

Between reviews, we'll resume our normal weekly posts: explorations of All Things Writing. We hope our wonderful community here continues to support us and jump into the comments section: we don't mind lurkers, but we sure love your comments.

See you next week!