Convention Book submissions are open!

Shorah b’shemtee everybahro and space pinecone lovers!

2014 is shaping up to be an awesome year for Mysterium, and we want to celebrate the amazing community that makes it possible by bringing back the Mysterium Convention Book for our 15th anniversary.

This year, we’ll be printing a 5.25″x8.25″ book for better portability. As with our older books, it will be a magazine-quality, full-color glossy publication printed through an on-demand print service. You can see examples of our older publications (and order your own copies if you want!) in our MagCloud store.

If you have a piece of artwork or short story that you’d like to see featured, check out this page for submission guidelines. You will be fully credited in the book, and you absolutely retain all rights to your work. The submission deadline is May 31st, but space in the book is limited, so get your submissions in soon! As a reminder, our theme this year is Riven, and it’s our 15th anniversary. You don’t have to follow the theme to have your content included, but if you need ideas, that’s a good place to start.

The convention book will be available to everyone who purchases a full weekend pass by July 4th as part of your ticket price. If you haven’t already, be sure to register, and while you’re there, check out our awesome t-shirts!

See you at Mysterium!

Hotel, Registration, and T-Shirts, Oh My!

Shorah Myst fans!

It’s been a little while since our last update, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy behind the scenes. In fact, we’ve got four big announcements for you today!

Hotel Reservations Open

We’re pleased to announce that we will be returning to the Comfort Inn University District hotel next year. The Comfort Inn was our gracious host in 2009, and we’re looking forward to seeing you all there again. We have a limited number of rooms available for $89.95/night, so get your reservations in now! See our Location page for more details.

Pre-Registration Open

Why not register to attend the convention while you’re booking your hotel room? That’s right, pre-registration is open! Weekend registration is $25 per person, which includes a convention book and a couple of extra goodies. Pre-registration closes on July 4th, 2014, but why wait? Register now!

Logos for 2014

We are absolutely thrilled to announce the winner of this year’s logo contest: Jeston Tigchon! He submitted a marvelous proposal for both the front and back designs that celebrates our 15th anniversary and our Rivenese theme this year, and it completely blew us away. Here’s the back:

Mysterium '14 Logo

Mysterium ’14 Logo

 

And here are the five front designs!

All of which leads us to our next announcement…

T-shirts Available for Pre-Order

Jeston’s amazing artwork is now available for pre-order in shirt form, and there’s an added bonus: you can pick which design will go on the front of your shirt! Yes, you can get any one of the front logo designs mentioned earlier on your Mysterium 2014 t-shirt (pre-order quantities permitting, see the link below for more information). If you can’t decide, we’ve got you covered with a 5-pack of shirts at a $10 discount versus buying them separately.

This year is pretty important to us, and we want to make sure that everyone who’s ever been a part of Mysterium can have a chance to pick up a 15th anniversary t-shirt. Now, even if you can’t make it to Mysterium in 2014, you can pre-order a shirt to commemorate 15 years of fun, friends, and community hijinx.

T-shirts are available in sizes from Small to 3XL, and for the first time, we’re also pleased to announce that we’re offering them in a women’s cut as well! For more information about pre-ordering, please visit check out our t-shirt information page.

More to Come

That’s all we have for now, but we hope it was worth the wait! We’ll have more announcements coming in the next few months as we get closer to convention weekend.

2014 Logo Contest Now Open!

We are pleased to announce that the Mysterium 2014 logo contest is now open for submissions! Next year marks the 15th anniversary of our little convention, and our Age theme will be Riven (since 15 is divisible by 5, and Spokane is high desert country, you see ;)). While it isn’t a requirement, we would absolutely love to see designs that both incorporate Riven and commemorate our anniversary.

Submissions must be received by November 30th, 2013. You can submit either a front design, a back design, or both. More information about the design requirements, as well as where to send you entries, can be found on the contest details page.

We look forward to seeing your artwork!

– Alahmnat

Mysterium 2014: Shorah from Spokane!

Shorah b’shemtee! This is Alahmnat, your 2014 committee chairman, reporting for duty.

I am thrilled to announce that planning for Mysterium 2014 is already underway! Next year we’re going back to where it all began: Spokane, Washington. We are still nailing down the last details on the hotel itself, but I can say for certain that we are looking forward to seeing you here in Cyan’s home town from August 1-3.

As with any year we’re in Spokane, there is the question of how (or even if) Cyan will be involved. Unfortunately we don’t have anything definite to announce at this time, but we are talking with them, and are hopeful that they can participate in at least some fashion.

I am very excited to be chairing next year’s Mysterium. I strongly believe that establishing a regular location on each coast will help make each year’s event better, by giving the planning teams some much-needed down time every other year, and enabling us to establish stronger relationships with local businesses, like hotels, that will make the hard work of location planning much simpler. The less time we have to spend reinventing the wheel each year, the more time we have to promote the event and do awesome things for you guys!

Over the next few weeks we hope to finalize a few more plans and get some important announcements up, so watch this space!

– Alahmnat, Mysterium 2014 Chair

Wrapping Mysterium 2013!

Shorah!

Mysterium 2013 is over and done, so now it’s time to wrap the event with some final words.

If you have photographs of Mysterium 2013 in publicly-viewable places, please email links to them to web@mysterium.net (or post them in comments). We’d love to post a showcase of people’s event pictures up on the blog and Flickr.

The recordings of the panels can be found on our YouTube channel. This is great for attendees who want to hear them again and non-attendees who want to know what happened. There will also be transcriptions of the panels within the next week.

Capella would like to take a moment like to thank the rest of her convention committee this year. Making a successful bid to host Mysterium in a new city is always a ton of effort and research. Odo’s a long-timer, and Capella has helped the committee before, but the rest of 2013’s committee was entirely new to the Mysterium planning game. Let’s thank estelendur, Kaelri, and Lutra for stepping up to the plate!

See you in the Drift – I mean, around the Cavern –

Capella