Most of my blog posts lately have been about new publications! It’s true I’ve had a bumper crop this fall, but after this one you can expect a lull. I’m pleased to announce that my short story “A Burden of Transmuting Metal” came out on Sunday in Silver Blade. You can read it here. You will notice an accompanying graphic depicting a dramatic tornado; this has nearly nothing to do with the story.

Some of my stories are very much inspired by real places (“Lómr” is a clear example of this). Last fall, when I had just arrived in Grinnell, I somehow got the idea to write a story set at a fictionalized version of Grinnell College, my new place of employment. So this is a story of academia, and grad school. (It’s a pretty happy grad school story! I have another less happy grad school story that I’m still shopping.) I also wove in the Manchu class I took as a Ph.D. student. But most importantly, “A Burden of Transmuting Metal” is a portal fantasy that pays homage most explicitly to Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials.

So last November I’m drafting this story about portals in college towns in rural Iowa, and one day I walk onto campus and see this:

It was uncanny.

Almost one year later, the story is published, and the empty doorway is still on campus.