Getting Started: Who is Allen Steadham?

I'm the Christian fiction author of Mindfire, the Jordan of Algoran Series, and The Former Things. I've also had four short stories published in different anthologies since 2021. First and foremost, I'm a Christian (non-denominational) then I'm a husband and father of three.

I've been writing since I was ten years old in 1980, starting out making hand-drawn and lettered superhero comics as labors of love. I made my own original superhero team called The AR-MEN (no relation to the X-Men, though I admit that was a big influence). I also played around with some comic book fan fiction here and there until my mid-teens. I continued making AR-MEN comics until the year 2000 (with a final issue in 2006).

In 1996, I gave my life to Jesus Christ. I made a YouTube video of my testimony and faith journey (it's worth your time). That has shaped everything in my life since then. In 2003, my wife and I began a slice-of-life webcomic called Due East that we co-wrote and I drew. It was originally published from 2007 to 2009. In 2008, Due East was a finalist for Most Profound Comic and won Best Christian Webcomic on The Duck Webcomics. It now resides there and on Comic Fury.

By the way, you'll see that I love making trailers.

By November 2013, I made the decision to switch from webcomics to novel writing. Before participating in National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo), I prayed and handed over all of my creativity to the Lord and asked Him to give me my first story idea. I committed to only writing Christian fiction. And He surprised me by taking one of my AR-MEN comic storylines and revising it to the present day as a fully Christian fiction novel that I would name Mindfire after the main character, the daughter of a superhero father and supervillain mother. I initially self-published Mindfire on Amazon but after a 2018 Twitter pitch event called #FaithPitch, I was offered a traditional publishing contract from a small Christian publisher called Ambassador International. After I pulled it from Amazon and the book went through new edits, Mindfire was traditionally published in April 2019 (on Good Friday).

In the trailer below, the sound starts five seconds in.

My next novel was Jordan's World, the first book in a science-fantasy trilogy called The Jordan of Algoran Series. It was published by Ambassador International in July 2019. The next two books in the series, Jordan's Arrow and Jordan's Deliverance, were published in February and October 2020.

During the Covid lockdown in 2020, the Lord inspired me with a story I hadn't planned to write. It would be my most ambitious novel to date, the faith journey of a 24-year-old male atheist named Sean Winter. It also dealt with abuse, bitterness, loss, deception and Christian hypocrisy. The Former Things was published in July 2022 by Ambassador International and was a finalist for the 2023 Ames Award in fiction.

In future posts, I'll tell you more about my short stories, including the one I wrote for Choosing Life: A Pro-Life Anthology (which I independently released in April 2026) and my many works-in-progress. Things are looking really exciting for the days ahead!