After a flu-spawned delay of a few days,¹ Lorehaven magazine’s winter 2019 issue is ready for reading.

Head over to Lorehaven.com, free-subscribe if you haven’t already, and download the entire issue.

Here’s what you’ll get.

Captain’s Log

E. Stephen Burnett

This year I’m resolving to rest better, even among all this fantastic work.

The End of the Magi, Patrick W. Carr

Book Reviews

The Lorehaven review team reviews eleven Christian-made fantastic novels.

Sponsored Review

• Skinshifter, Alycia Christine

Following the Star

Patrick W. Carr sets his sights on Bethlehem and beyond.

Featured Review: The End of the Magi

Lorehaven review team

For these wise but motley men, it’s no easy feat to follow the star.

You’re A Character in God’s Ultimate Story

Paeter Frandsen

Let’s recap how the Author becomes the Hero to save his enemies.

How Do We Discern Good and Bad ‘Magic’?

Marian Jacobs

Scripture shows us the true source of magic’s corruption, and the cure.

Lest we seem a veritable powerhouse of creativity, here’s a clip from my captain’s log:

It takes one talented crew to keep a small magazine running.

And it takes just one terrible flu to stop the production cold.

Target: the editor. Timeline: just a week before this issue’s original press date.

No magic memories, radioactive-nosed reindeer, or any other Christmas corniness would serve up a Holiday Miracle to get me out of this mess.

In Christ, however, it wasn’t a mess. Not really.

Too often I try to guess the Author’s goals for me. But I’m likely right to discern that God knew only a flu would force me to stop and rest at this time of year.

But God! You’re being unfair. The magazine! the Lorehaven Gift Guide! the podcast! the book! the—

“Hush, son,” he may have been saying, “or it’s a sinus infection next.”

(I got that, too.)

In such moments, I face the same lesson: that I don’t “deserve” some life without delay and with endless creative productivity. All I have is what God has given me.

And all those creative ideas?

They’re to our Creator’s credit, and thus will also arrive only in his timing.

Lorehaven’s 2020 vision

Speaking of which, I also tease the (in retrospect, seemingly inevitable) Lorehaven podcast that we’ll launch early next year:

My friend Zackary Russell and I have begun recording episodes. Watch our website for more information. For now I can say that we’re focusing on the fantastical truth we love to explore as well as the books we review.

The Pop Culture Parent releases May 4, 2020 from New Growth Press! Now available for preorder at Amazon.

And more:

Third, new issues will feature some changes. We’ve already made improvements to covers and layout. In 2020, the cover stories themselves may change a little …

Fourth, next year, my first book arrives. It’s not a novel. It’s a nonfiction work, with my friends and co-authors Ted Turnau and Jared Moore. On May 4, 2020, you will finally get to read The Pop Culture Parent: Helping Kids Engage Their World for Christ.

That’s exciting. And challenging.

But whether through Lorehaven magazine, this new book, or my fiction projects, my mission remains this: to help all Christ’s people glorify him through fantastic stories.

And to do more resting this year. After all, that’s what stories do—help us rest.

With that, I’m off for a rest. Ye shall likely not see me until next year. (Unless I’m feeling productive on Christmas Eve day and/or have something to say about poor J. K. Rowling that I haven’t already said here.) But I already have a feeling that 2020 will be an even more epic year for Christian fantastical fiction than 2019 has been. . . .