With his very first article for Black Gate, Richard C. White shot right to the top of the charts with the most popular article for the month, “World Building 101: The Village.” Here’s a sample:

Just because you have water doesn’t mean you can put any number of people in an area. The Cahokia Mounds in Illinois were believed to have held up to 40,000 people which would have made it the biggest city in North America until the 18th century. However, archeologists now believe the reason that Cahokia was abandoned was not due to warfare but because they had so many people that the water became too polluted to support the population. Even pioneers in the 19th century soon learned you can only dig a well so deep before it doesn’t provide enough water. An overabundance of people/livestock/ irrigation can cause a drought as easily as Mother Nature. So, when planning your village for your story, think about how do your people get their water and how they deal with waste water.

Coming in second was Fletcher Vredenburgh’s look back at one of the most popular fantasy novels of the 20th Century, “You Can’t Go Home Again: The Annotated Sword of Shannara: 35th Anniversary Edition by Terry Brooks.” The third most popular article last month was Derek Kunsken’s interview with Christopher Golden, Co-Author of Joe Golem, Occult Detective.

Rounding out the Top Five for the month were Goth Chick, with her look at Sony Pictures’ Freaks of Nature, and M Harold Page’s catalog of tips for those trying to write a novel this month, “NaNoWriMo is coming!”

The complete list of Top Articles for September follows. Below that, I’ve also broken out the most popular overall articles and blog categories for the month.

The Top 50 Black Gate posts in October were:

1. World Building 101: The Village
2. You Can’t Go Home Again: The Annotated Sword of Shannara: 35th Anniversary Edition by Terry Brooks
3. Talking Over the Drowning City: An Interview with Christopher Golden, Co-Author of Joe Golem, Occult Detective
4. Goth Chick News: Sony Dumps Freaks of Nature All Over Us Next Week
5. NaNoWriMo is coming!
6. Why Novellas? Tor.com‘s Stellar New Fantasy & SF Releases
7. Discovering Robert E. Howard: Morgan Holmes on Armies of the Hyborian Age: The Cimmerians
8. Try the First Chapter of Swords Versus Tanks 1: “Armored Heroes Clash Across the Centuries!”
9. Mindjammer Returns
10. The Search for Perry Rhodan 50

     

11. Future Treasures: The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak, Volumes 1-3
12. Take a Peek at The Art of Horror: An Illustrated History
13. Vintage Treasures: The Great White Space by Basil Copper
14. Armored Rampage!
15. The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: After the King
16. Sam Spade and the Pursuit of Empty Dreams
17. Win a Copy of Carter & Lovecraft by Jonathan L. Howard
18. Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Pro-Tips From Alyssa Wong
19. A Gentle Introduction to Unspeakable Horrors: A Picnic at the Mountains of Madness

     

20. How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition
21. Future Treasures: She Walks in Shadows, edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles
22. Quick and Dirty Outlining for NaNoWriMo
23. Time Flies: Reflections on Reading Fantasy
24. Hey! Let’s Not Get TOO Cozy
25. Dr. Strange, Part I: Establishing the Mythos: Master of the Mystic Arts in The Lee-Ditko Era
26. Scrolls of Legendry #1 is Your Source for Old-School Fantasy Reviews
27. The October Fantasy Magazine Rack
28. Vintage Treasures: The Cú Chulainn Novels of Gregory Frost
29. Needling at Society’s Wounds: Horror in Pop Culture, From the 1950s to True Detective

     

30. Springald! The Medieval Eighty-Eight
31. The Morbidly Beautiful Art of Chris Mars
32. Victorian Horror: Rippers Resurrected
33. Celebrating the Arrival of Matthew David Surridge’s Reading Strange Matters: Collected Reviews, Vol I
34. Comedy in Fantasy: The Ebenezum Trilogy by Craig Shaw Gardner
35. Hearing Gulf: A Conversation With Allyson Johnson
36. Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Wrath of Fu Manchu, Part One
37. The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Tying in the BBC Sherlock Special
38. Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Choosing Your Narrative Point of View, Part 2: Who is Your Point of View Character?
39. Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1952: A Retro-Review

     

40. Vintage Treasures: The Ballantine Paperbacks of Vincent King
41. Cover Reveal: Dark Run by Mike Brooks
42. Vintage Treasures: Pamela Sargent’s Women of Wonder
43. The Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaklava, October 25, 1854, Part I of II
44. Call For Submissions: Mysterion
45. New Treasures: The Silent End by Samuel Sattin
46. Blogging Sax Rohmer… In the Beginning, Part Six
47. Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: A Closer Look at Some POV Styles Commonly Used in Fantasy
48. October/November 2015 Asimov’s Science Fiction Now on Sale
49. New Treasures: The Incorruptibles and Foreign Devils by John Hornor Jacobs
50. Halloween Reads: The Best Spooky Short Fiction

There were plenty of older articles popular lat month as well. The dozen most popular blog posts written before October were:

1. The 2015 Hugo Shortlist, Short Fiction: A Review by Rich Horton
2. AD&D Figurines: Youth In a Box? by Mark Rigney
3. The Exploding World of Castles and Crusades by John O’Neill
4. Death Knight Love Story: WMA meets WTF by M Harold Page
5. Goth Chick News: Getting A-head at Airport Security by Sue Granquist
6. A Proposal: An Award for SF Storytelling by Jay Maynard
7. Come Into Callahan’s, Said the Spider by Violette Malan
8. Out With the Old, In With the New: New Versus Vintage Treasures by John O’Neill
9. Conan is My Spirit Guide by M Harold Page
10. Art of the Genre: Top 10 Fantasy Artists of the Past 100 Years by Scott Taylor
11. My Inspiration: Black Canaan by Elwin Cotman
12. Heroic Fantasy with the Sharp Edge of Reality: A Review of The Sacred Band by Janet Morris and Chris Morris by Joe Bonadonna

The top categories last month were:

1. Books
2. Blog Entry
3. Art of the Genre
4. Art
5. Magazines
6. BG Staff
7. Comics
8. Black Gate Goes to Summer Movies
9. Vintage Treasures
10. Conan
11. Convention Report
12. Contest
13. Pulp
14. Editor’s Blog
15. Essays
16. Reviews
17. Future Treasures
18. New Treasures
19. Game Reviews
20. Discovering Robert E. Howard

The Top 5o Black Gate blog posts in September are here, and you can see all 149 posts we made in the month of October here.