Anthology Announcement! Volume 4: Unearthly and Ungodly

It’s time, once again, for another Paw&Claw Anthology! A week from today, on September 1st, submissions will open for the fourth volume of our anthology series—and gang, we’re really excited for this one.

Unearthly and Ungodly: A ‘tome’ of the Eldritch, the Cosmic, the Old, and the Weird will be looking for submissions relating to… well, what’s on the tin: The eldritch. The cosmic. The old. The weird. The horrors of the universe and beyond; those of Earth and the things that came before us. Eldritch creatures outside our boundaries and ancient beings who lie just below the dirt. The inhuman, the incomprehensible, the unearthly and ungodly.

We’re calling for writing and art that call upon (or fall into):

Eldritch horror
“Old Gods”
Cosmic horror
The ideas around “the thing from beyond (our world)” or “the thing from before (our time)”
The incomprehensible and inconsequential
Weird, with a capital W, horror
Lovecraftian tales and creatures
Mythology
The unearthly and ungodly

Submissions will close on October 30. You can find the form to submit on our anthology page.

Still struggling for some inspiration? Here’s a brief list some media we think calls upon the potentially incomprehensible unearthly and ungodly:

The curated volume four playlist on Spotify (;

Root Rot by Saskia Nislow

“Come meet The Liar, The Secret Keeper, The Crybaby, and the rest.

Nine children travel with their families to their Grandfather’s vacation property, where strange things begin to happen: eyes blink from the bottom up, mushrooms ooze blood, people’s faces don’t hang right anymore—except they do, once you look more closely. Transformations warp the children’s sense of time and place, the very land itself seeming to encroach upon them…”

This is a short book, more of a novella, and yet Nislow managed to pack so much into under 200 pages (or just over 3 hours if you listen to audiobooks). Every page is worth it and positively haunting. (This was Lyn’s first five star read of the year and she still hasn’t stopped thinking about it.)

Frozen Hell by John Wood Campbell, Jr.

Frozen Hell is the unabridged version of Campbell Jr.’s novella Who Goes There?, which followed a team of scientists in Antarctica while they are terrorized by a monstrous, shape-shifting entity. Sound familiar? It’s the novella that inspired John Carpenter’s The Thing and an absolute cornerstone of cosmic horror.

The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers

Speaking of cornerstones: if you’re into eldritch horror, you know The King in Yellow. The first four short stories of this collection orbit a two-act play of the same name that drives people mad. It’s old and Weird and the inspiration for a lot of popular eldritch horror media like Malevolent, one of Mikey’s favorite podcasts, and the YouTube series Searching for a World that Doesn’t Exist.

The working title for Unearthly and Ungodly was actually The Book in Yellow.

Into the Unbeing by Zac Thompson and Hayden Sherman

Graphic novel! This Dark Horse Comics serial is, to start, absolutely breathtaking. Sherman’s art is stunning and Thompson’s writing phenomenal as we follow a team of scientists in Australia as they explore an impossible landform. It’s been described as a mind-bending eco-horror and cosmic body-horror, and boy is that right on the money.

Iron Lung dir. Mark Fishbach

The stars are gone. The planets have disappeared. This is the Quiet Rapture. The only things left in the universe were the people on starships or space stations… until they discovered a remote moon with an ocean of blood. And something is lurking in the red.

Based on a videogame of the same name, the movie taps more into cosmic horror than it’s predecessor but both are a truly great time and really tap into this volume.

This list is, of course, no where near exhaustive and during the submissions window we’ll be posting unearthly inspirations and ungodly ideas on our Instagram and Tumblr so keep an eye out and happy writing!!

Unearthly and Ungodly