October approaches, and something is scratching at the margins of the manuscript.
For more than twenty years, Shoggoth.net’s OctoberNomicon has spent the Halloween season filling the world with things that ought not exist: monsters drawn from folklore and urban legend, forgotten horrors recovered from weird fiction, original creatures dragged screaming from the imaginations of our contributors—and stories documenting what happened when somebody encountered them.
Now we need your help to open it again.
We are seeking submissions for this year’s OctoberNomicon. We want creatures that frighten us, disgust us, fascinate us, or leave us wondering what kind of damaged mind could have conceived them. We want supernatural predators, impossible ecologies, regional legends, alien intelligences, cursed objects, forbidden rituals, sinister organizations, playable horrors, and unsettling fiction.
Your submission can be:
- Original weird or horror fiction
- An original Mythos creature or entity
- A horror drawn from folklore, legend, or the neglected corners of weird fiction
- A new interpretation of an existing monster
- A spell, ritual, tome, artifact, or other dangerous item
- A cult, conspiracy, or organization
- A scenario, encounter, location, or collection of gameable hooks
- Artwork depicting any of the above
For gaming submissions, the important word is gameable. Give Keepers something they can use. Tell us how the horror behaves, what it wants, how investigators encounter it, and why learning the truth will make everything worse. Statistics are welcome where appropriate, but a compelling idea matters more than perfect arithmetic.
For fiction, give us a story; not merely an encyclopedia entry wearing a trench coat. Show us the human cost of encountering the impossible. Make the familiar treacherous. Make the incomprehensible briefly, horribly visible. Traditional Mythos fiction is welcome, but so are modern, experimental, comic, cosmic, folkloric, scientific, historical, and deeply personal approaches to weird horror.
Do not convince yourself that you must be an established writer, professional artist, folklorist, occultist, or marine biologist specializing in carnivorous abyssal blasphemies. The OctoberNomicon has always thrived on strange ideas from people willing to develop them and share them. First-time contributors are welcome. So are returning offenders.
Polished articles and stories are wonderful, but enthusiasm is not disqualified merely because it arrives with rough edges. If you have a strong concept, write it down. If you have been carrying the same unsettling creature around in your skull for fifteen years, this is your opportunity to evict it. If you have ever muttered, “Someone should really do something horrible with that,” congratulations: you are someone.
We hope to publish new material throughout October, but eldritch publishing machinery requires time to edit, arrange, illustrate, and hose down between entries. Please submit early rather than waiting until the stars are nearly right.
Open the local folklore books. Search the newspaper archives. Revisit the nightmare you still remember from childhood. Look beneath the porch, behind the wallpaper, between dimensions, and into whichever corner of the room your pets refuse to approach.
Then send us what you find.
The OctoberNomicon is hungry.
Help us feed it.
