I.
I remember once—in seminary, I think—some adult talked about the relentlessness of entropy, that the laws of physics would inexorably grind the universe into smaller and smaller particles until every quark was as far as possible from every other quark. (The point, pulled from the D&C in verses I wish I could find now, was that Christ specifically promises to take care of entropy. Boom. Atonement!)
I have been editing Irreantum for about five years now. My first issue was the original Fearreantum. In that time, entropy has begun its work. I don’t know why and I don’t know how, but if you go to the bottom of any poem or story or song, you’ll see that the little images of children’s faces have exploded into monstrous pixelated blobs. That’s entropy, baby.
Autumn, of course, is when Mother Earth most directs our attention to entropy. Leaves fall and rot, pumpkins are cut into faces then left to melt on porches, facepaint smears and spreads through the house, candy devolves from pure potential bliss to mere plastic cluttering gutters and hours of nervous jittering.
And so it’s appropriate to celebrate Hallowmas and its eve here at the year’s volta, whether in honor of saintly relics or in the form of dancing skeletons, because entropy is real. And no matter where you stand in terms of faith or doubt, hope or dread, up or down, we must brace ourselves to stare death in the face.
And to contemplate the possibility of redemption.
II.
One of those first-issue children has returned in Fearreantum II. Ross Ramsey, Jr. (who was eleven in 1951 when Alice Bartlett Woolf painted this portrait, and who is, I believe, still alive—do you know him?) stars again in this issue’s (recolored) nameplate and in our simplified (to slow entropy) navigation.
The art you’ll find at the bottom of many of this issue’s pages were made by Kurt Madsen as he celebrated Archtober, the annual online artfest sponsored by The ARCH-HIVE.
Speaking of art, since going online, the nameplate art featured on our homepage has been by LDS artists just eleven of twenty issues. I’d like to do better. Tell your artist friends that I can pay them what I pay writers. Which…ain’t much.
III.
But that reminds me.
When I announced Fearreantum, I was overwhelmed with submissions. I think there were a few reasons for that. We were just six months into the pandemic and people were pent up. It had been a couple years since our last issue. Horror’s fun.
But another reason is this: the ecosystem for Mormon literary arts was less healthy then than it is now. Back then, zero outlets focusing on Mormon lit paid money. It was basically us and Dialogue and Sunstone. No disrespect intended, but they still don’t pay in 2025. We don’t pay a lot (you can help!), but we do pay—and we’ve been paying every issue since 18.1.
But you know who else pays for fiction and poetry and such? Wayfare. Further Light will be paying soon. A couple other paying outlets have appeared and disappeared in the last five years.
This isn’t every publisher (check out Other Places on our submissions page), but my point is that the Mormon literary market is much more robust than it was five years ago. Competition is good! But it does mean writers need to step up. We all got spaces to fill. Write and then share like, you know, candy on Halloween.
IV.
October begins with General Conference and ends with Halloween.
Perhaps this is important.
Perhaps not.
V.
You’re going to die someday.*
Perhaps that fact is ugly, perhaps it is not, who can say.
But die you will.
Might as well look it in the eye and feel something.
Welcome back to Fearreantum.
Theric Jepson, since Fearreantum, has seen the publication (or republication) of his books Byuck, Just Julie’s Fine, Tomorrow Will Be Longer, and Thubrina. These books have a pleasantly low bodycount.
Kurt Madsen is a long time friend of Irreantum and was, for seven years, a UX designer for the Church. He welcomes your conversation.
