I'm Back!

So, 2012 is here, and I suppose now is as good a time as any to start up this blog again. Over the last year or so, I've been working hard on my writing, and the encouragement I've received from everyone I can bring myself to tell about it has led me to start thinking seriously about the possibility of becoming a published author some time in the future. And if there is one piece of advice that anyone who is a serious author already has for aspiring authors, it's that nothing is more important than writing. And not just writing that one novel, but writing blog posts, or short stories, or news articles, or... well, anything.

And almost as important as writing is reading. I've never had any trouble with that; I love reading, and have been devouring books since I was old enough to recognize words on a page. But I'm the first to admit that I rarely read for anything but entertainment, and I rarely pay attention to a story's structure, or an author's style, or anything else about a book beyond whether I liked it or not. Since trying to become a serious writer myself, though, I've been trying to change that. I am not above reading books more than once--I'm kind of known for reading books over... and over... and over--so when it comes to reading for technical structure, style, or anything else, I have plenty of great books to choose from. Plenty of books, in fact, that I would love to share my opinions of with all of you.

So this blog will finally have a focus.. sort of. My hope is to post at least once a week, and the majority of those posts will likely be book reviews, sprinkled with snippets of stories that I'm writing, the occasional piece of short fiction once I branch out that far, and possibly a post or two about my ideas on politics, atheism, and other observations on the cosmos. Happy New Year, everyone!