Mike? Are you still there, Mike?

Yes, although you wouldn't know it from this Archive. So here's a brief update for all my fans. (I know you're out there, I can see you clicking here by accident.)

Anyhow, I'm still at The Dallas Morning News. Still editing book reviews. I write them now and then -- here's one I did of a biography called Sonic Wind, by Craig Ryan, and here's a lovely title called The Secret Life of the American Musical: How Broadway Shows Are Built, by Jack Viertel. I also had time to interview Loving Day author Mat Johnson. And I just had the honor of moderating a panel at the Dallas Book Festival with the excellent Sarah Hepola and Merritt Tierce. You can see all the coverage my colleagues and I pulled together at this site.

  (Atmospheric photo via the Twitter account of my colleague Christopher Wynn.)

I guess that somewhere in there, I also managed to weigh in on that "new" Harper Lee book and even got my out-of-office reply reviewed in The New York Times. Really.

All of which is a prelude to explaining the main reason why I haven't been updating this archive much in the past year: It's because I've been busy writing something else. OK, technically, I have been rewriting. And then rewriting some more. And the result is ...

My first novel, Revenge of the Star Survivors, which was sold last fall to Holiday House books. As of this moment, it is not listed in their catalog, but they have signed papers and let a very good editor spend a whole lot of time thinking about how my manuscript could be better, so I'm hopeful it will actually happen, perhaps by next spring.

When that happens, I'm pretty sure I will not be so quiet about updating you. And everyone else.