Reasons to be Thankful in 2015

With Thanksgiving almost upon us, I thought I ought to write an upbeat post to set the proper holiday mood. Anyone that reads my work knows I tend to gravitate toward the darker side of things, but I promise I’ll do my best avoid that habit this go-around. After all, I’m trying to finish writing my first middle grade novel (that’s a novel geared toward kids age 8 and up) so I’d better get used to lightening up a bit.

Yes, we should all be thankful for our families, our health, and our friends. But you could just pick up a card at Hallmark if you wanted to read that sort of stuff. No, instead this Thanksgiving post is about all the good stuff the mass media gave us in 2015. After all, if you didn’t achieve fame and fabulous riches this year, the least the world can do is keep you entertained.

Doesn’t everyone love movies? 2015 offered up several good ones. I’m normally not a big fan of sequels, but this year I’m giving thanks for Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Spectre, Jurassic World, and Mad Max: Fury Road. Tom Cruise has still got it. James Bond remains the coolest spy ever. Dinosaurs may be extinct, but they’re still awesome. And while Mel Gibson will always be Max Rockatansky, Tom Hardy is a pretty solid fill-in.

There weren’t as many great original films in 2015 as some years prior, but we did get two new family classics in Inside Out and Paddington. Crimson Peak was probably my favorite of the more adult fare, but I’ve yet to see The Martian or Ex Machina, both of which sound right up my alley.

Like most aging music lovers, I find myself regularly decrying the death of rock and roll, but 2015 did deliver new music from old favorites Keith Richards, Duran Duran, and Marilyn Manson. “Trouble”, Keith’s single from Crosseyed Heart is fantastic. As I wrote in a September post, Paper Gods doesn’t measure up to the best of Duran Duran’s work, but it’s definitely worth a spin. And The Pale Emperor is some of Manson’s best stuff in years. I especially like “Killing Strangers” which was featured in one of my favorite films from 2014, John Wick. And just to prove Rock and Roll still has some life left in it, newer group Alabama Shakes released Sound & Color, an album that includes the stellar song, “Don’t Wanna Fight”.

Yes, TV remains the vast wasteland it’s always been, but there are always a few oases in the desert. 2015 gave us another highly entertaining season of Game of Thrones, one the best seasons (so far) of South Park in years, and the 31st (?!) season of Survivor, the one and only reality show I enjoy.

Of course I can’t fail to thank my favorite authors for their 2015 contributions. The Prolific One, Stephen King, delivered not one, but two new books this year. Adam Sternbergh dropped a second Spademan novel on us. And whiskey-soaked wordsmith Jeff Somers churned out some new Avery Cates eBooks to whet our appetite for his next full-length adventure.

Finally, I give thanks to the self-publishing platforms Amazon and Smashwords which have allowed me, like so many other indie authors, to share my work with a broader audience. This year’s Cell Block Z didn’t catch on as well as I hoped it would, but that lack of buzz has inspired me to give a new genre a try as well as to seek out an agent and a traditional publisher in 2016. You can bank on some related New Year’s resolutions in a couple of months!