Greetings, and welcome to the first post on the Royal Academy of Osyth blog. Some of you may have visited the Royal Academy through the pages of Tales of the Unanticipated, or Year’s Best Fantasy #3, but most are probably wondering “Say what?”
Well, the Royal Academy is fictional. You cannot sign up for a course in Demonology, more’s the pity. I made the academy up a few years after graduating and starting my first full-time faculty job, and have been writing stories about it ever since.
The fact was, I missed graduate school. I certainly didn’t miss the research, but I missed everything else about it; the sheer size and variety, the physical setting of a university campus, discussions of research, grants, and conferences … the general social milieu of a big, busy science department. Yet I knew that once I had committed to work at a small teaching college — which was always my career goal — it would be a bad idea to hang around local universities trying to insert myself where I did not really belong.
Therefore, I created the Royal Academy at Osyth and began writing stories about its inhabitants. The first Royal Academy of Osyth novel, Advice From Pigeons, is due in spring from Double Dragon Publishing. 
The Royal Academy is a modern university. It’s large, with schools of Wizardry, Sorcery, Natural and Social Magic, Arcane Arts, and Alchemy. Its faculty do all the things modern academics do, from serving on committees to writing grants and surfing the web. That’s why I’m hoping it will interest and amuse other academics.
I have an ulterior motive, however — to gather ideas for future Osyth stories. I’m hoping this blog will become a place where we can imagine what it would be like if magic were unleashed on our own campuses.
So, welcome! And please bear with me as I learn how to get the most out of WordPress.
