It feels good to have cooked up a reader’s draft of a short story during my spring writer’s retreat in Corvallis, Oregon earlier this week. Even better is that this new story, “Arden Is a New World,” takes place in the John Demetrius story cycle that I have been toying with for many years–I had worried for a while that I had run out of gas on the John Demetrius concept.

Knowing me, I’m a few months and a couple of peer critiques away from sending the story anywhere, but it feels wonderful to be building up a roster of publishable stories again. I worked so long and hard on novels–first Pacifica, then Exit Black, then Pacifica again–that I’m surprised by that short fiction feeling, the sense of being able to get one’s head around an entire narrative in a single sitting. I’ve missed short stories, and it’s good to be back.