November 2026

Fall is here! We've passed peak foliage season, and leaves are starting to drop. We've also had a few light frosts, though Kristin's cherry tomato plant and beans are still flowering (they're hardier than most people realize).

Pre-frost harvest from Kristin's garden. No, we probably won't use all those hot peppers.

We're still reading stories from the July submission window. As of last Tuesday, 61 remained unread (out of 317 received), 15 had been read by one editor but not the other, and 7 had advanced to our short list. 

As of right now, it looks like we'll be able to accept 7 stories. We were able to accept 8 from the previous submission window, but our Patreon funding has dropped since then. 

If you'd like to see us publish more fiction, please consider subscribing to our Patreon! You can sign up for an "email subscription", where stories are sent to your inbox before we publish them here on our website, for only $3/month; or, for $10/month, you'll also get the bimonthly ePub and PDF editions of our magazine. And even $1/month subscribers get access to our Discord, where we host monthly hangouts for authors and subscribers; and the monthly non-fiction supplement to Mysterion that includes book, movie, TV and game reviews and a "behind-the-scenes" look at our experience in publishing.

While Patreon is our primary income stream right now (after "our savings"), if you're not ready for a monthly commitment but would like to make a one-time donation, we are able to receive these through PayPal. You can also buy individual bimonthly issues of the magazine from Amazon or our Patreon page (from our Patreon landing page, search posts for "e-zine").

And, of course, our three anthologies (Mysterion: Rediscovering the Mysteries of the Christian Faith, Mysterion 2: Stories From the Online Magazine, and Mysterion 3: Stories From the Plague Years) would all make wonderful Christmas gifts for the fiction lovers on your list!

COMING SOON

We have two stories for you in November, and one in December. First up is Kevin Singer's hopeful post-nuclear-apocalypse story "A Prayer to the Lord of Everlasting Chains", with survivors working together to rebuild. Then, toward the end of the month, Nigerian author Miller Ed Frank blends near-future science fiction and supernatural elements in his story "Tech Pastors", as small-town pastors are tempted to use illicit sources of knowledge--either traditional or high-tech--to build up competing congregations.

Our December story isn't really a Christmas story, but it does go deeper into questions of Christian faith than many of our stories do. In Matthew P. Schmidt's story "Going Native", Starlight Mosaic is a fallen member of a near-immortal alien species of which most members have never sinned. She finds Christianity's promise of a restored relationship with God deeply compelling; but despite not doubting the existence of God--she used to talk with him directly, after all--she still finds herself unable to quite believe in it.

FELINE UPDATE

It's a good thing none of our cats saw this trespasser!

We seem to be the exception in our neighborhood for not letting our cats outside. Maxwell gets quite agitated whenever he sees a strange cat roaming around his territory (i.e., anything he can see out the windows), and will start yowling and attacking Marie. (Marie has taken to preemptively hiding under the coffee table as soon as she hears the first territorial vocalizing from him.)

They do have some semi-outdoor access via this window box, which we've mentioned here before.

Maxwell is also territorial about the window box, and has been observed driving Marie out of it by going in with her and biting her until she leaves; but she's been using it more and more often. Especially if he happens to be in another room.

Marie, meanwhile, looks forward to laundry day so she can climb into Kristin's empty laundry hamper.

Thanks for stopping by, and we hope you enjoy the rest of our fall fiction lineup!

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