Warmest wishes to all in this year 2015 — not brand-new anymore, but still newish. It’s high time to pump the bellows and coax the embers of this blog up into a cheery blaze again.

It’s been a good year for stories, right? We got our third Hobbit film, and what a wild ride it was! I know opinions vary on the choices Mr. Jackson and crew had to make in adapting the book for the screen, but the fact remains that it’s a great story — and for as long as we humans have had great stories, our storytellers have been adapting them — telling them in different ways at different times for different audiences, readjusting the focus, the perspective, even some of the particulars. The Big Stories can take that solid handling and rehandling — not only take it, but thrive on it. The Hobbit is Big enough. The little hobbit’s shoulders are broad enough. And I contend that the filmmakers were quite true to the spirit of the book; they hit all the important notes. Most of all, the deeds of little people matter. Even if you’re not descended from kings, you have a part to play; you change the world each day you live in it.

Good year for stories . . . if we’re counting the past year from right now, we also said goodbye to Parenthood on TV — wonderful, brilliant show. As a wise person I’m married to said of one scene: “That’s what Hallmark movies are trying to do.” It was a good year for Downton Abbey. And we’ve re-watched most of that single greatest TV series ever produced, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They did not write shows like that before Buffy, and they have not since — though some are, unquestionably, very good. Julie and I have had many a deep discussion about story itself, life, or theology, launched by ideas presented in Buffy.

I’m working on Part 6 of the Crowd-Sorcery project for Cricket Magazine, “The Girl Who Writes the Future.” Part 3 is on shelves now, in the February issue. If you haven’t seen any of it yet, the editors are making it available for free viewing on-line. Part 1 is up on www.cricketmagkids.com/chatterbox/crowdsorcery — scroll to the bottom item on that page and click on it. On the tablet version, in Emily Fiegenschuh’s illustrations, they’ve included some animation that moves! I saw a clip of Araceli Lumine’s black-feathered cloak billowing, of Lumine opening a chest, and of the cloudy ink billowing across the pages inside The Book of Shadows.

I’m making steady progress on the new book, too, the sequel to Signs and Shadows! I have to say, it is truly exciting and a joy to write a sequel, because you go into it already knowing the characters intimately. You’re not building from the ground up anymore — you’re building from the heights of Book 1. I cannot begin to express how much Julie is helping me with this book. First, she clamors for the next chapter. She reads and re-reads older chapters. We talk about the characters at least as much as we talk about the other people in our lives. She keeps composing piano music inspired by the book, and she “plays me into” many of my writing sessions. If I don’t deliver at least one new chapter each weekend, I hear about it. Some writers, I well know, have spouses who begrudge those hours that writers spend at their work of tuning into that faint, oft-broken radio signal that is the story and doggedly trying to get it down in fixed form. (Or again, as some famous writer said, it’s the task of “staring at the page until the drops of blood from your forehead form words on the paper.”) I am blessed beyond words, beyond imagining, with a help-meet who really gets it and loves it. With awe and trembling, “Thank You, Lord!”

I’m eight chapters into the book now — just over 20,000 words. And I’m really enjoying my first experience with a program called Scrivener. Most of my writer-friends have been lauding its virtues for several years now, but I’m ever the technophobe. I balked at what seemed like something that would be so hard to learn that it would distract me from the act of writing. And yes, when I’d watched a couple days’ worth of the tutorial, I kind of went tharn. But then it got through to me that you don’t have to use all of Scrivener any more than you have to use all of Word when you’re writing something. You use what’s useful and necessary to you and your project. For a long project like a novel, Scrivener is a Godsend, because you can handle your book like a whole, or you can handle it like individual chapters. You can click to view note cards associated with those chapters. You can keep a whole slew of notes on the project, rearrange them in any order, and delete the ones you’re done with, just as I like to throw away book-related memo papers I’m done with. You can put your research materials right into Scrivener, too — so you can be writing on a chapter as you’re looking at your notes on 1880s period clothing, etc. Really cool stuff!

One more exciting bit of news: I’ve been selected as the Writer-in-Residence for Spring 2015 at my alma mater, Concordia University Chicago! What that actually means is that on March 10, God willing, I’ll be on campus to conduct a workshop with the creative writing students, have some less structured time to answer their questions and chat about writing, eat lunch with some of the English faculty, and even do a reading and book-signing open to the public! If you’ll be in the Chicago area then, please stop by!

So that’s the state of the writing as we venture farther into 2015. Blessings to you, dear reader, and see you back here soon!