Fantastical Answers to Questions
What’s the mission of Lorehaven?
Lorehaven helps fans and families explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, and the Lorehaven Guild guide fans through the best Christian-made fantastical stories.
Subscribe free to join our community and access the Lorehaven Guild.
What do you mean by Christianity and the gospel?
Explore our Sacred Scrolls faith statement. All Lorehaven staff creators and guest writers as well as Lorehaven Guild quest guides must agree with this faith statement.
Christian authors whose novels we list or review may affirm a comparable orthodox faith statement, though not necessarily our statement.
What is the Lorehaven Guild?
The Lorehaven Guild serves a community of fans who gather (via Discord server) to celebrate Christian-made fantastical fiction with delight and discernment. Members of the Guild will explore their favorite creative works in these genres. We will focus on Christian-made stories, yet occasionally include general market books. Either way, we explore these stories’ beauty, goodness, and truth (and opposites!), applying their meanings to the real world of our ultimate Author.
Meanwhile, members can also join occasional Side Quest parties that travel into other books, such as older Christian-made stories or general market novels.
Subscribe free to join our community and access the Lorehaven Guild.
Who creates content for Lorehaven?
Staff creators at Lorehaven stand on the historic faith of biblical Christianity.
They’re biblical local church members and parents. Some of us homeschool our kids. A few of us create our own fantastical stories, professionally or as hobbyists.
How does Lorehaven choose books for review?
Lorehaven releases new novel reviews on Fridays.
To be chosen for Lorehaven review, novels must be Christian-made, fantastical in genre, and professionally published (either independent or traditionally). Our volunteer team matches qualifying books to the best reviewer. We also prioritize newer novels, so we will consider release dates, including pre-published titles.
Read more about the Lorehaven Review Team, or request a review yourself.
Can authors send print copies of books?
Lorehaven accepts only digital copies of Christian-made fantastical fiction. That way, we can ensure the best reviewer can read the best-matched novel.
What books do you list in the Lorehaven Library?
The library lists any submitted novel that is Christian-made, fantastical in genre, and professionally published (either independent or traditional).
Learn more about the Lorehaven Library, or add a qualifying novel.
Does Lorehaven offer a print magazine?
When we started Lorehaven in 2018, we offered a quarterly print magazine. Free subscribers could download PDF copies, or purchase print copies from a third-party vendor. We showcased these products at homeschool and writers’ conferences.
Then, everything changed when the 2020 pandemic lockdowns attacked.
In 2021, we shifted away from quarterly print issues and moved to a monthly all-digital model. Anyone can still subscribe to updates, yet anyone can read our articles, news, reviews, and other content. We feel this open-access approach is the best way to grow interest in excellent Christian-made fantastical novels.
You can find our twelve magazines (including nine PDF versions) archived here.
What was Speculative Faith?
Speculative Faith was the volunteer-led website that preceded Lorehaven. From 2006 to 2021, hundreds of Christian fantastical writers added their voices to this team blog. Many of those creatives now continue this work at Lorehaven.
This archive preserves all the original SpecFaith articles and reviews. You may find some outdated bios and missing images as well as occasional formatting glitches!
Where can I find a publisher or writer training?
In the Lorehaven community, we help gather and train fans of the best Christian-made fantastical novels. Many fans are writers, but not all of them. (Otherwise, how would these stories grow their audience?)
For fantastical creators, join Realm Makers and attend one of their annual conferences!
Can I write articles for Lorehaven?
Lorehaven and its staff creators work to grow and serve the community of Christian fans. Naturally, this will include a lot of aspiring writers!
For now, however, we don’t have the resources or time to offer an open articles submissions policy.
A single article requires many hours for ideas, first draft, edits, and image creation.
Guest articles do appear on a limited basis. We usually arrange these with an author we know and/or whose book appears on our Fantastical Truth podcast.
A day may come when we God grants us the resources and time to offer an open submissions policy. But it is not this day.
Until then, we’d like getting to know you as a fan. Subscribe, listen to the podcast, and join book quests at the Lorehaven Guild!
Can I join the Fantastical Truth podcast?
At this time, Fantastical Truth guest appearances must be invitation-only. Again, this is because of time limits. Cohosts E. Stephen Burnett and Zackary Russell create at least fifty Fantastical Truth episodes each year. Once upon a time, they may have feared a potential lack of ideas. What a silly notion. If anything, they constantly labor to balance every episode topic and guest novelist.
And, of course, we like to share stories only with podcast guests who are professing biblical Christians. (Here’s what we mean by that.)
Aspiring guests can increase their chances of future podcast appearances by:
- Publishing a great novel that our review team could read,
- Subscribing to Lorehaven and getting involved with our community,
- Proving their podcast skills. This includes expertise on fan-centered themes at the corner of biblical truth and fantastic imagination.
Remember to share qualifying novels to the Lorehaven library and for possible review!
Will you read my novel manuscript or short story?
No. Although our staff creators also publish their own novels, Lorehaven is not a manuscript review service or fiction publisher. Here are quick tips for creatives:
- Start by asking trusted creative friends for feedback.
- Join the fantastical writers’ organization Realm Makers.
- Read, read, read! Before you’re a creative, you’re a fantastical fan.
For creators of short-form fantastical fiction, check out Havok Publishing.
I think this site is fantastic, but I was trying to find somewhere to ask a site related question, but my sole source of solace was this form, so I beg your humble forgiveness for potentially mis-using it.
When adding a book to request a review at https://lorehaven.com/author-resources/#requestreview, there is a question: Published (traditional or indie)? Is the question about being ‘published? (traditional or indie)’ as it doesn’t matter, or does an applicant need to specifiy ‘(traditional or indie)?’ in which case, does ‘traditional’ equate to ‘yes’ and ‘indie’ equate to ‘no’? Or is the question mark just in the wrong place? 🙂
We count as published either a traditionally published book or an indie published book.
[…] At Lorehaven, we’ve spent years reviewing the best Christian-made novels across all genres: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Our creative team explores these stories for God’s glory. We apply these stories’ meanings to the real world ruled by Jesus Christ in hopes of serving Christian fans, families, and kids. […]