The LegendHaven Manifesto: We’re Building the Gray Havens for Story Lovers—Want In?
This Is for Everyone Who Stayed Up All Night Reading and Never Got Over It
What LegendHaven Magazine Dreams To Do
We dream of a world where readers and writers meet around a living campfire. A signal flare. A tavern at the edge of the map.
Our team of volunteers is building the magazine we wished we’d had as teens:
Bring you book reviews that spark curiosity and interest
Shine a light on new authors with voices—those writing not for trends, but for truth.
Open doors to new worlds of imagination, filled with purpose, beauty, and danger worth facing.
Help us find each other and stay connected—as penpals and pilgrims, geeks and scribes, friends and fans.
It’s about finding a home.
We want to build the kind of creative culture where people read a story and know: I am not alone.
This magazine is our invitation to belong to something beautiful.
We believe life needs meaning, we all build a moral imagination, and we are heirs to reality greater than ourselves. A mythic world.
Do we have all the answers? No. But we know that stories help us share a way forward, through fandom and fellowship and fun.
Why we still believe in story
We need to take back storytelling—because books and stories are things we absolutely love:
We’ll stay up late and lose sleep over a good read.
Heck, we will sacrifice days, nights, weeks for a sequel.
Then we’ll gather in book clubs, demand movies be made, turn them into games, create fan clubs and websites and private groups.
These aren’t just books.
There’s something deeply real here.
These stories give voice to things inside us that are so deep and real we don’t know how we lived without that story. They become a pillar. A cornerstone in our psyche. They uphold our interior world.
The Problem? Storytelling has been hijacked.
We are tired of timeless tales being co-opted by all kinds of viewpoints we don’t agree with.
We’ve endured reboots of remakes that don’t live up to the hype, and dunk on a future we believe in.
We’re tired of corporations taking over storytelling and weaponizing it to sell merch and push ideas that guilt you into taking their stand.
We’re tired of book reviewers and social celebrities spamming content for likes and for algorithms, and none of it being real. They’ll do anything for reach. But they’re not doing the work.
We’re tired of people doing the equivalent of interpretive dance on stories that has deep meaning for millions—leaving us with meaningless stuff we never asked for. Just more content motivated by money, not purpose.
We’re tired of a culture that says meaning is meaningless. That the only thing that matters is how much you buy or contribute to an economy, instead of building a human family that solves problems and creates a better future.
It all comes down to the stories we tell ourselves. And the stories we unite around.
We want to end the slop thrown at us by elitist creators who think their existence demands your dollars. We need to get back to creators earning the right to attention.
The Fandom is Bigger Than the Brand
We want to gather in conventions and comic cons. We want to keep it alive. Whether it’s Tolkien or Hogwarts or Percy Jackson or Star Wars—fandom is bigger than the corporations.
It exists in our hearts. It is an idea. It is a reality.
It is mythic.
Meaning has to matter. Because people are dying from being denied any meaning to their lives, or purpose for their suffering.
Life is hard. Stories make it matter.
What we want from writers
We need a culture that values story—not as an escape, but as a meaningful way to have fun, field test ideas, and build a future.
We need storytellers who understand story as a field test of moral imagination. As a way to give voice to powerful instinctive imaginations and feelings we can’t express any other way.
We need media creators to be bold—to tell the stories they are passionate about. But also humble—to treat storytelling as a craft worth mastering.
We need communication between people, not noise.
We need honest authors.
We need authors to get real. To be problem solvers, imagineers, dreamers, foragers of the wells and wilds of our psyche and spirit—so our souls can breathe again.
Fiction doesn’t exist to browbeat or preach. It exists as an intermediary—a vessel for experience. To help you see from a different point of view.
Your fiction is a byproduct of the journey you are on. It is not the point. You are the point. Who you become.
Maybe you won’t know that for a long time.
What Readers Deserve
We need to get back the ability to share what we love. To find people who love and think like us.
And we need to do it fast—because there are plenty out there who’ll take your money, and skip town. They use filters to seem like they’ve got it together, but the chaos of their lives bleeds into their fiction—and it bleeds into our lives.
That’s not healthy.
Today, people think there are too many stories. But there aren’t. The demand has never been higher. The tools to create and share have never been easier. And we’re at a breaking point.
Gatekeeping is going away. The old guard who made millions off the creativity of others are losing their grip.
And we—creators—are stepping up. We’re learning how to connect one-on-one with fans. We’re building a revolution, with snacks and bookmarks.
We’re returning to the old days, when authors wrote for their community—with their community.
What LegendHaven Believes
Legend Haven is seeking to be honest about who we are. About what we want out of life.
Creativity isn’t just a firehose into the void. It’s life.
When you cage it, it breaks out—like Jurassic Park—in ways you won’t expect. It will inspire and terrify. But it must have purpose.
You don’t need religion to believe that creativity serves meaning. Life must have purpose—even if you create until you discover it.
We must find ways to live together.
Over and over again.
So we tell stories about how to live, on the edges, on the frontiers. To build habits. To shape mindsets. Because the world is changing fast.
And we have to avoid cult-based thinking and purity cultures.
We have to be real humans.
“It’s hard to think of yourself as better than someone else when you’re holding their dirty feet in your hands.” —Pope Francis
It’s the same with writing. As authors, we hold our characters—and our readers—in our hands. We serve them.
And we do this through fun. Through cozy fiction. Through bold action. Through thoughtful prose.
Because the future matters.
You matter.
Fiction matters.
It matters because the stories we tell ourselves about who we are—are the stories our children will live in.
They will become the founding myths of future peoples.
Join the Storytelling Rebellion
📚 Read stories that build a future we believe in
🛠️ Support indie authors and creators
🛍️ Share what you love, not what’s trending
What You Can Do Today
Subscribe to this magazine
Writers: Join the LegendFiction community
Comment and share your thoughts
Bring a friend
A Manifesto for the Storytellers
Through LegendHaven, we can build a haven for legends. Like the Grey Havens. Like the Last Homely House. Like a wayfarer’s inn.
A place for the tired, the wise, the hungry to gather.
We’re a tiny group. A few volunteers.
Maybe it stays small. Maybe it doesn’t.
That doesn’t matter.
We’re doing something good. Because it is good.
If you believe that—stand with us.
Have fun with us.
And tell us what you think!
Note: Payment plans are still being built out, and will be shared in the coming months, as we get closer to our first issue!