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About the Author

Randall Bush has always had a large dose of the Christmas spirit.  “My first semester as a freshman in college was hard,” he recalled, “because my father had passed away the previous summer at the age of forty-five.  By the time the Christmas season had arrived, I was homesick and in desperate need of some Christmas spirit, so I went to an area supermarket, bought a single strand of Christmas lights, and used it to decorate a lamp.”  Returning home for the holidays to find the tree already up and decorated, he used his strand of lights to spell out “noel” in the window.  “Unfortunately, the rest of the neighborhood saw the word, ‘leon.’”

As he grew older, his enthusiasm for the holiday remained, and in 1992, during a living Christmas tree service at his church, an idea started forming for a story that would allow adults and children alike to experience the true magic of Christmas.  The idea eventually developed into Gabriel’s Magic Ornament.

Randall Bush was inspired to write in the fantasy genre while working on his first Ph.D. in the area of symbolism.  “I especially admired the styles of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.  Later, when I was a student at the University of Oxford, I was delighted to discover that my college adjoined The Eagle and the Child, the famous pub where Lewis, Tolkien, and their fellow Inklings met to discuss their work.”

Bush went on to earn a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford.  He is now Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Interdisciplinary Honors Program at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee where he lives with his wife, Cynthia, his son, Chris, and his daughter, Laura.  Among other life experiences, he has lived and traveled abroad extensively, done social work in a Houston barrio, lived on a Texas ranch, served as a part-time minister in a British church, and taught ninth-grade English in an inner-city Houston School.  He is also an accomplished pianist, organist, and vocalist.