Mysterion publishes thought-provoking Christian speculative short stories, and I’m grateful that that includes two of mine. Now, as soon as I say “Christian speculative stories” I find myself wanting to add an asterisk. Mysterion’s tales aren’t the kind where all the good brave loving upstanding people are Christians and all the other people are occult horrors (unless they become Christians before the story ends), or where Having Faith is a simple solution to every problem. Not the kind where all the Christians are narrow-minded bigoted hypocritical sadists (unless they leave the faith before the end of the story), either. These stories take place in the mysteries and paradoxes and tensions of faith and doubt, and they often include more questions than answers.
All the stories they’ve published since January 2018 can be read free at their website. But they’ve just released a book version of twenty-four stories, originally published in 2018 and 2019, for those of us who like real solid books to curl up with. Mysterion 2 includes my tale “Whatsoever Ye Shall Ask,” in which three girls in a medieval English village discover that they have the gift of perfect faith which causes all their prayers to be granted–and in which they and their neighbors struggle to deal with the dangerous consequences of such a gift. It also includes Rebecca Birch’s lovely historical tale “A Relic Most Rare,” which sparked the idea for Whatsoever Ye Shall Ask, and Elise Forier Edie’s hope-haunted contemporary psychological horror story “The Orderly,” and Wendy Nikel’s story “Plain Jane Learns To Knit Wormholes” which strikes me as funnier each time I reread it (and it was pretty good to start with), and a wide variety of other stories to make you think, laugh, cry, and marvel.
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