Mysterion's July submission period is coming to a close

If you've been following Mysterion at all, then you know that we're in our July submission period. Well, or submission period is coming to an end tomorrow, when the month of July ends (Boston time). We're paying 8 cents per word for science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories up to 9,000 words long that engage with Christianity. If you have a story you'd like to submit, the submission guidelines are here.

Mysterion opens for submissions in a week

Well, 2018 is almost over, and it's on to 2019. And with the new year comes Mysterion's first 2019 submission period. If you have any stories you want to submit, now's the time to get them ready. We look forward to reading them starting in January.

Mysterion

It's been a while since I've posted here. The good news is that I haven't completely dropped off the map. I've just been focusing nearly exclusively on Mysterion.

The better news is that our hard work on Mysterion is about to bear fruit. Our first story goes up this month--in fact, Patreon supporters can read it now. I'm delighted that we'll be publishing "We Have Discerned a Potential Deal" by J.P. Sullivan. Aliens want to buy the Vatican, but what's really impressive is what they're offering in payment.

In the meantime, we've been publishing nonfiction on the site regularly. Since January, we've been publishing reviews and interviews.

In January, Kristin reviewed Jerome Stueart's The Angels of Our Better Beasts, followed by an interview with Jerome himself.

In February, Donald reviewed Andrew Klavan's The Great Good Thing, and followed that up with an interview.

And in March, Stephen Case reviewed Centipede Press's latest collection of R. A. Lafferty stories, The Man with the Speckled Eyes. Unfortunately, since R. A. Lafferty is dead, we can't interview him; March's interview was with author Maurice Broaddus, who also co-edited two of the anthologies that inspired Mysterion, Dark Faith and Dark Faith: Invocations.

New Mysterion website

When our Kickstarter didn't fund, we mentioned that we had a plan B. Well, have a look at the new Mysterion webzine:

Yes, Mysterion has gone online. We'll be publishing reviews, interviews, and columns, starting in January, which is also when we'll open to fiction submissions to start publishing later in 2018.

The Kickstarter Ends

Our Kickstarter has reached its end. While we reached $4183 in funding, that was short of our $5000 goal, which means that we don't get any funding, and Mysterion 2 won't be happening any time soon.

Don't worry, though. We do have a plan B.

We also have some lessons learned, which we talk about here.

Kickstarter nearing its end

Our Mysterion 2 Kickstarter is in its last hours, with 57 left. As we're only 56% funded it looks like we're not going to make it. There's still time to contribute at www.mysterion2kickstarter.com.

Mysterion is here

Mysterion: Rediscovering the Mysteries of the Christian Faith was released yesterday, August 31st, and you can now buy the anthology as an ebook and paperback at Amazon, and as an ebook at iTunes, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. The paperback is $16.99, the ebook $9.99.

We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. And once you read it, consider writing a review.

Here's how we describe our anthology:

The Christian faith is filled with mystery, from the Trinity and the Incarnation to the smaller mysteries found in some of the strange and unexplained passages of the Bible: Behemoth and Leviathan, nephilim and seraphim, heroes and giants and more. There is no reason for fiction engaging with Christianity to be more tidy and theologically precise than the faith itself.

Here you will find challenging fantasy, science fiction, and horror stories that wrestle with tough questions and refuse to provide easy answers or censored depictions of a broken world, characters whose deeds are as obscene as their words and people who meet bad ends—sometimes deserved and sometimes not. But there are also hope, grace, and redemption, though even they can burn like fire.

Join us as we rediscover the mysteries of the Christian faith.

"A fascinating look at Christianity through the prism of speculative fiction."

—Nebula Award-winning author Eric James Stone

"The stories in Mysterion ranged from the dusty preachings of a devout Roomba to a meditation on empty houses in heaven. I thoroughly enjoyed them all. General readers will appreciate the anthology for its diverse, entertaining tales, while those who enjoy provocative questions of faith and morality will find the collection especially rewarding."

—Livia Blackburne, New York Times Bestselling Author of Midnight Thief

Mysterion's coming soon

Mysterion is coming out on August 31st!

That's the day that it will be available for purchase in both paperback and ebook from Amazon amd other retailers.

Meanwhile, if you'd like to get it early, you can support us on Patreon. A $5 pledge will get you the ebook on July 29th, while $25 will get you both the ebook and the paperback, with free shipping, sent in early August. But you have to pledge by July 28th. After that, we'll be shutting down the Patreon campaign.

Mysterion's full cover flat, for the paperback.

Mysterion Table of Contents

Kristin and I are pleased to announce the table of contents for Mysterion. You can find it on the Mysterion website here.

We're currently working on putting together all the pieces of the anthology, after which we'll send it to the copyeditor and then the layout artist.  We hope to have the anthology available for purchase by July. In the meantime, you can preorder a copy at our Patreon site.

Mysterion is now open for submissions.

The title gets at the most important point: Mysterion is open for submissions, from now until December 25th.

There's more, though. Mysterion also has cover art (shown above), and will be fundraising via Patreon.  Have a look at the website for more.

Enigmatic Mirror Press

This post is a slightly-modified version of a post originally appearing on the Mysterion website.

The small independent press producing the Mysterion anthology--basically Kristin and Donald and whomever they can subcontract work to--now has a name. We're calling ourselves Enigmatic Mirror Press.

This is a reference to 1 Corinthians 13:12, which says, "For now we see through a mirror in darkness, but then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." In Greek, the part that says "through a mirror in darkness" reads:

δι’ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι

ἐσόπτρου transliterates to esoptrou, and means mirror, while αἰνίγματι transliterates to ainigmati, which means obscurity or darkness; ainigmati is the origin for the English word enigmatic. The verse itself is about the difference between our limited, mortal understanding here in this life, and the truer, fuller understanding that we will have later. In the ancient world, all mirrors obscured, since they relied on polished metal rather than the metal-backed glass of modern mirrors. The difference between the distorted reflection in one of those mirrors and seeing someone face-to-face would have been obvious to the ancient reader. And the imagery reminds us that the understanding we lack is not only of concepts, but also of God, and that we do not yet know him as he fully knows us.

Our anthology's name speaks to the mysterious in the Christian faith; our press's name reminds us of the limits of our understanding--at least for now.

Mysterion

So I promised an announcement in my last post.  Here it is.  My wife and I have decided that we have too much free time, so we're starting a speculative fiction anthology.  We're calling it Mysterion: Rediscovering the Mysteries of the Christian Faith.  We are paying professional rates (6 cents a word) for stories that meaningfully engage with Christianity, meaning that they contain Christian characters, themes, or cosmology.

We’re not necessarily looking for unambiguously pro-Christian stories: we want to be challenged as much as encouraged. Thematically, we're looking more for Flannery O'Connor than C.S. Lewis. You can read more about it at www.mysterionanthology.com, especially in our Submission Guidelines and Theme Guidelines.

We open for submissions on October 15th.