October 2024

If all goes according to plan, Donald and Kristin will be in Japan en route to Japan by the time you read this. (All did not, in fact, go according to plan, and the trip now includes an unexpected overnight layover in San Francisco due to mechanical issues with the plane that was supposed to fly us to Tokyo.) We're planning to go for two weeks: the first time since our honeymoon that we've gone anywhere together for longer than a week except to attend a science fiction convention or visit family.

We do hope to make use of the reportedly good wifi on bullet trains to read Mysterion submissions on our phones while there, so hopefully this won't delay our progress in responding to them. Much.

After a few years where we didn't travel much at all for some reason, we seem to have a lot of trips planned (even apart from Donald's very extensive work travel for his day job, which has been going on since March 2023). In early September, we visited Kristin's mother in Nova Scotia for a week. And we're planning a weeklong trip after Christmas to see Kristin's brother and his family in Calgary. (Kristin hopes that this trip will include skiing in the Rocky Mountains. Donald hopes that the ski lodge will have good wifi.)

Anyone know what weed this is? It's invaded Kristin's mother's garden in Nova Scotia.

As you can see from our landing page, we just switched out our featured artwork for the next three months. The latest piece, Psychopomp, is from Greek artist John Tsilikas, whose work we've used in the past. There's no obvious connection to any of the stories we're planning to publish over that period (unlike John's Death and the Lady, which was a perfect fit for A.J. Cunder's "The Cure" back in 2021). But we were drawn to the eerie ambiance, especially as we move into fall and winter.

We're open to art submissions year round, and now pay $150 to license existing artwork to use on our site and for e-book covers. Keep in mind that we only license three or four pieces a year and won't know what we're looking for more than a month or two before we want to switch to new artwork, so we can't give you a yes or no answer right away. We do keep all art submissions, and review all the portfolios of artists whose work we liked whenever it's time to search for new artwork.

What Sorts of Stories Should Authors Write?

Sometimes it seems as if fiction writers spend more time arguing about what other authors should or should not be writing than they spend working on stories. One of the latest targets appears to be morally ambiguous fiction. At the risk of grossly oversimplifying, there's a conservative Christian critique, and a socially progressive critique. 

Conservatives want to know, whatever happened to heroic stories about uncomplicated heroes doing heroic deeds? Why does every protagonist need to be an antihero? Why can't it be clear what the right thing to do is, vs. the wrong thing? Meanwhile, progressives seem concerned about the potential for morally grey fiction to teach readers that no one is truly evil, hindering them from learning the important "truth" that some people can't be redeemed.

At heart, we think both of these critiques distill to the same complaint, which centers on a broader debate about whether the purpose of fiction is to help us understand the world as it is, or to inspire readers to work for a better one. At first glance, this might seem to fit the conservative complaints better, but the progressive concern is also tied to the question of whether stories are conveying the proper message and values.

Attempting to show the truth about the world we live in, and presenting an imagined vision for a better one, are not mutually exclusive goals, whether an author's focus is on the bigger picture of how societies work, or the more intimate work of characterization. We actually find ourselves more inspired and motivated to try to make the world a better place by stories that give us deeper insight into what the world is now, than by those that try to lecture us about the author's vision for what it should be and how to get there. Perhaps that's because we're more likely to agree with a wider range of perspectives when an author is only trying to tell the truth about the world, and leaving it to us to figure out what to do about it.

Returning to the original questions about characterization, our problem with both the conservative and progressive strawman arguments we set up to knock down is that neither approach resonates with us as presenting an honest perspective on human nature. We like stories about morally ambiguous protagonists here at Mysterion because we believe that everyone is morally ambiguous. The only hero in the Bible is God, and no one is unredeemable until they're dead.

Readers who don't share our perspective on human nature may not like the same stories we like. And that's fine! One of the things we find most frustrating about some of these online discussions is the insistence on turning one's own aesthetic preferences into moral judgments against those with whom different sorts of stories tend to resonate. There's nothing wrong with expressing a desire for more of the stories you enjoy and are inspired by. But why does it have to be expressed as a denunciation of stories you don't like and the people who write them?

Stories about flawed protagonists who make bad choices and sympathetic antagonists who remind us of the darkness in our own hearts will always have a home here. Though we don't want to give authors interested in having us publish their work the idea that we're only interested in moral ambiguity, either. The villain in our most recent story, Hannah Onoguwe's "One Two Three", is pretty bad, and the story doesn't concern itself too much with trying to understand or sympathize with him. Conversely, the android protagonist of "Soulman" is unfaltering in his decency and quiet heroism.

Consider The Lord of the Rings. The most obvious traditional hero in that story (behaving heroically, etc.) is arguably Aragorn, but he's relegated to supporting character status, commanding the forces of good in the big, climactic set piece battle that's just a distraction to keep Sauron from figuring out what they're really up to. The protagonist, Frodo, fails, corrupted by the ring. And the only reason everything isn't lost is because Frodo heeds Gandalf's admonition that it isn't up to him to decide that Gollum is unredeemable.

Coming Soon

We have something dark and eerie scheduled for the week of Halloween, appearing here on October 28th. L.G. McCary's "The Willow" is about a mysterious, undying tree that can take away all the sadness of an entire town. How could it not be a gift from God?

Patreon

Please consider subscribing to our Patreon! We're currently at $251/month. If we reach $275/month before we finish selecting stories from the July submission window, we'll be able to accept eight instead of seven.

There are several subscription tiers to choose from, starting at $1/month. $3/month gets you early access to all the stories we publish, and $10/month gets you early access in convenient e-book form, but even $1/month comes with additional subscriber-exclusive non-fiction content from us, and access to our Discord.

Feline Update

Our trip to Japan will be the longest we've ever left our cats alone. We do have a friend coming by every day or so to check on them, but we still can't help worrying.

We were initially drawn to Maxwell because of a cute video we saw of him and his sisters as two-week-old kittens, where he kept putting his paw over his eyes to block the light. He still does it three years later:

Marie is all about light, especially sunlight.

We hope to have a few Japan pictures for next month's update, assuming United Airlines actually manages to get us there at some point. Until then, please enjoy L.G. McCary's story when it comes out, and please support us on Patreon if you aren't already a subscriber!

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