Welcome to the Christian Fiction Scavenger Hunt! If you’ve just discovered the hunt, be sure to start at Stop #1, and collect the clues through all the stops, in order, so you can enter to win one of our top 5 grand prizes!

• The hunt BEGINS on 4/10 at noon Mountain with Stop #1 at LisaTawnBergren.com.
• Hunt through our loop using Chrome or Firefox as your browser (not Explorer).
• There is NO RUSH to complete the hunt—you have all weekend (until Sunday, 4/13 at midnight Mountain)! So take your time, reading the unique posts along the way; our hope is that you discover new authors/new books and learn new things about them.
• Submit your entry for the grand prizes by collecting the CLUE on each author’s scavenger hunt post and submitting your answer in the Rafflecopter form at the final stop, back on Lisa’s site. Many authors are offering additional prizes along the way!

Hallo. E. Stephen Burnett here. Once I was a journalist, now I’m a novelist. I’m also publisher of Lorehaven.com, a mission to explore fantastical stories for God’s glory. Our reviews and articles as well as our Fantastical Truth podcast ministers to fans and families. We help them enjoy the most excellent and trustworthy Christian-made stories in fantasy, science fiction, and beyond.

Personally, I love fantastical stories in all those genres. Yet my first novel is a sci-fi adventure, Above the Circle of Earth, which just launched from Enclave Publishing.

Brock Rivers never wanted to be a repairman on Mars. Years ago, he failed to protect his family, and now he labors across a frontier planet to keep his children alive and escape CAUSE. But the spacefaring humanist regime is taking over Martian colonies, forcing all to join the secular state. Now, Brock’s isolated people on Earth plan to restore missions for the 22nd century, voyaging beyond Earth to share the gospel in space. Brock must find a ship and recruit a team of misfit believers. They expect opposition from the formidable CAUSE, but not from one adversary that attacks from the shadows to destroy the faithful. Others unify to oppose the project. Brock and his family must fight to resist these enemies of the space mission or else return to exile forever.

Brock is an engineer, whereas I’m a fantastical fiction fan. So if we met, I’m guessing the only books we both enjoy would be the Bible and some nonfiction. My office shelves on board Alpha Omega would hold a few select titles.

What books would you bring on a missionary spaceship?

First, as a Christian, I’d bring the Bible; as a fantastic fiction fan, I’d bring my well-worn copies of The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. And now that the obvious choices are mentioned …

Second, I’d take Randy Alcorn’s big yet accessible book Heaven. I talk about Heaven a lot, and not just around Resurrection Sunday season. Heaven is a nonfiction work that gently challenges folklore Christians have accepted about Heaven, such as “we can’t know about Heaven” or “Heaven will be a timeless realm so unlike Earth that we won’t even care about material things.” Alcorn, a pastor and author, calls this “Christo-platonism” and shows from Scripture what God truly promises, not just about Heaven, but the New Heavens and New Earth! Without this book, I would not have devoted much of my life to fantastical stories; all those things would have seemed eternally useless.

Third, I would pack whatever book (in early form) that I’m writing now. Sure, I might not have time to work on that, especially in my missionary crew is landing on distant asteroids and bases, or outrunning the secular CAUSE. Perhaps in such a science-fiction world made real, I would finally try writing that cozy mystery Amish prairie romance (yo ho ho ho ho!).

Bonus: I would stow away whatever books I’m now reading. Who wants to leave Earth on a space mission with such a task undone?

Here are the Stop #16 Basics:

If you’re interested, you can order Above the Circle of Earth on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or the Enclave Publishing store (20 percent off hardcover retail).

Clue to Write Down: a new

Link to Stop #17, the Next Stop on the Loop: Jaime Jo Wright (click here), author of Tempest at Annabel’s Lighthouse

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