2016 marks Pseudopod’s 10th Halloween. Just about this time in 2013, we were weeks from shutting our doors and turning the lights off. Thanks to contributors like you, we were able to not only survive, but thrive. While we have always paid our authors, last year we raised our pay for full-length original fiction to professional rates. This year we adjusted this policy to cover all original fiction. That makes us one of two regular fiction markets that exclusively runs short horror while paying SFWA professional rates, and original sales also count towards membership requirements for the HWA. Now we’re asking the listeners to help chip in so we can compensate all of our content creators.

We want you to have a stake in the longest running horror fiction podcast on earth. As part of this campaign, we’re going to be raising the capital to pay our narrators for a number of years; both for our bonus monthly content as well as our regular weekly episodes.

Since the primary mission at Pseudopod.org is the promotion and preservation of the short horror fiction format, we want to assemble a companion anthology to celebrate what we’ve done over the last decade. This includes reprints of stories we’ve run as episodes of Pseudopod, as well as some original fiction from authors we’ve run a number of times. We are also working with the fine folks at Horror in Clay to produce a tiki mug that celebrates a decade with Pseudopod.

The Anthology: For Mortal Things Unsung 

This anthology is not just “A Decade of Pseudopod.” In addition to reprints both familiar and new to the Pseudopod audience, the anthology will include brand new stories from Orrin Grey,Damien Angelica Walters, and A.C. Wise. We have a new Coyote Tale from Jim Bihyeh, a Tale from the White Street Society by Grady Hendrix, and a Tale of the Guru Keresh by Tim W. Burke. Editor Alex Hofelich has woven a thread of Pacific Ocean resonance throughout the anthology, to go along with our exquisite tiki mug.

The Mug: Pseudopod Tower 

The Pseudopod Tower 10th Anniversary Mug is a 9-inch tiki totem. The production edition funded by this Kickstarter campaign will be around 16-ounces, and will come in a gruesome glaze—purple as the bruises of love. No more than 1,000 will be produced of this 10th Anniversary edition mug.

We’ll let Jonathan M. Chaffin of Horror in Clay tell you more about the mug in his own words. Not-so-coincidentally, Jonathan also designed our very first logo and t-shirts:

“The Pseudopod Tower tiki mug (as even I’ve started calling it) was originally called “The Eye of Kanaloa.” (It was only called that in my head, and it didn’t catch on.) The front depicts a Kanaloa totem, rare for a tiki mug. In the mythology of the old Hawaiian gods, Kanaloa is symbolized by the squid or by the octopus. He exists in complement to Kane, the god of creation, and guides the way to hidden springs . . . which I thought was appropriately symbolic for the dark places horror writers mine for inspiration. Unique among representations of the old god, statues of Kanaloa have round eyes. According to Kauai tradition, if you could look into the eye of Kanaloa, you would see a mystic pattern and be healed. Peering deep into the eye of OUR Kanaloa may turn out differently . . . there appears to be a fanged, tentacled and clawed beastie inside. Use your own best judgment.  

The microphone is a Shure 55 vintage mic similar to the one I used to borrow for narrating. 

The obverse of the mug shows one incarnation of Pseudopod Tower—from noxious catacombs beneath to soaring spires and roofs above; existing both in and between worlds. The Tower is composed of as many categories of horror as I could cram together. This mug is one of the truest examples I have ever created of the architectural confusion of pop culture references that is my brain. It is jammed with allusions and homages to horror, tiki, radio, and eldritch lore. Deep in the bowels of Pseudopod Tower, we see the ghastly-organic engines and servers (and beasties) tended by one of our dedicated Slush-masters. What horrors will be brought forth next?” 

Limited edition mugs available at the higher donor levels (We have included a limited run of 10 – one for each decade) will be the same size, but will be hand glazed in a multi-step, multi-tone process. All mugs will be high-fired ceramic, food- and alcohol-safe, and ready for you to carry through the darkest dreamscapes and murkiest dungeons.

The mug has already been designed, modeled, sculpted, and molded. We just need to know how many to make. The master sculpt is already completed, and we have designed most of the other rewards.

After funding is successful, we will place the final order for the mugs. Time from signing the paperwork to having the mugs in hand should be around 150 days, so we should begin shipping these out in May.