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Bonus Video for today! We get just a bit more mainstream! Congrats SonicFox! "Fighting game player SonicFox accepts the award for Best Esports Player at The Game Awards 2018."
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Imaging how messy this place is going to get the day cats arrive here? "Set in a contemporary society of mice and rats, Hubert, a young observing rat, recites slam poetry full of hope within his head as he passes by individualistic strangers in the Parisian metro. Hubert´s poetry remains optimistic and persistent, despite the harsh reality of the world he lives in."
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Found this thanks to Animation World Network: “Netflix has announced that it will produce the animated feature film, Escape From Hat, from two-time Academy Award-nominated director Mark Osborne (Kung Fu Panda, The Little Prince) together with writer Adam Kline (Artemis Fowl, The Clockwork War)… The screenplay is by Kline and Osborne, based on the book of the same name by Kline [illustrated by Brian Taylor — ye ed-otter], a new middle-grade novel that will be published by HarperCollins in Winter 2020… Escape From Hat brings light to the ancient mysteries of magic. In a fairy tale where black cats are bad and magic rabbits are good, balance is threatened when one such rabbit is cast into a mysterious realm of danger and shadow. There, our desperate hero rallies an unexpected band of allies and undertakes an impossible quest to escape from inside a magician’s hat – and return to the human boy he dearly loves.” Netflix say they plan to release the film in 2022.

image c. 2018 HarperCollins

Looks like we have another go Richard Adams Watership Down full of cute bunnies, danger and death. All praise Lord Frith! This is a A co-production between the BBC and Netflix. https://www.netflix.com/title/80107989
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Once again the International Animated Film Society (ASIFA) have released  their list of nominees for the 2018 Annie Awards — the Oscars of animation, to many folks. And once again, we’ve had a banner year for animation with Furry content — so there are lots of anthropomorphic movies, TV series, short films, and other goodies among the Annie nominees. By far the furriest film among the nominees for Best Animated Feature is Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs — which is also nominated for Character Animation, Production Design, and Voice Acting (Bryan Cranston as Chief). But nominees Early Man, Ralph Breaks The Internet, and even Spiderman — Into The Spiderverse (yes!) had their own Furry content — and each of them are nominated in several categories too. Among the nominees for Best Independent Feature is Tito & The Birds, while one of the nominees for Best Animated Special Production (limited release) is The Highway Rat. England is well-represented in the Best Character Animation in a Live Action Production category (whew!), with both Paddington 2 and Christopher Robin receiving nominations. In the Best Animated Short category check out Lost & Found by Wabi Sabi Studios, while the brand new Best Virtual Reality category includes Crow: The Legend by Baobab Studios and the game Moss by Polyarc. Over on the television side of things, the category of Best Commercial includes four nominees that are very Furry! The rest of the Television categories include a parade of familiar and new Furry titles, including The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Bojack Horseman, DinoTrux, Disney’s Mickey Mouse, Hey Duggee, Hilda, Kung Fu Panda: The Paws of Destiny, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Tumble Leaf. Needless to say there are too many cool nominations to list them all here, so head on over to the Annie Awards page and check them out for yourself! The Awards will be presented on February 2nd at UCLA.

image c. 2018 Fox Searchlight Pictures

Just getting ready for the holidays. Also I really need to see an anthro version of that candy cane deer.
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This one goes out to all the bug furries out there.
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December brings to a close another year at MFF, where several of our members had a great time, and an incredible amount of attendees in general were!

 

Guild Newsroom

First and foremost, as you probably all know, furry historian Fred Patten has passed away. The number of accomplishments in his life were immeasurable, and he will be missed by many. A memorial for Fred took place at Midwest FurFest a few days ago.

In a more lighthearted tone, our fallible VP has somehow lost entire access to the fwgblog email! We are gathering info for our next member spotlight, to be picked in the next week, so if you have work to be featured or an upcoming project to announce, you’re a great candidate! Email tralekastelic[at]gmail[dot]com with the following questions answered:

• Have you been featured before? (If so, when?)
• What are you working on? (Give us a couple of sentences about it.)

If you emailed fwgblog[at]gmail[dot]com after October 28th, we did not receive your email, so please resend it here! We are looking for a member to feature for January 2019.

 

Member Highlights

Some highlights from last month, as featured from our FWG Member News section on the forums:

• Dreams of Refugium, Sasha Fox‘s sequel-adjacent to Theta, has been released in paperback.
• Mary E. Lowd has had her story “Ecto-Café” accepted to The Daily Grind
• Renee Carter Hall‘s novelette Signal has been released, and is available from Goal Publications in both ebook and print formats.

 

A little light on reported information this month! Our usual reminder to all our member that have had something exciting happen in the past month not featured here: be sure to keep up with you Member News thread on the forums! Not only is this how we get our information, but these threads are able to be viewed by any person logged into the forums. Share your achievements with the rest of the writing community! http://www.anthroaquatic.com/forum/index.php?board=12.0

 

The Marketplace

For those of you looking to submit, keep an eye on the open markets on our website. For those of you who just forget, The Marketplace is your reminder for all things open for submissions!

 

Short Story Markets:

Publisher Title Theme Deadline Pay Fanged Fiction Thrill of the Hunt Furry erotica featuring a predator/prey dynamic December 14th $0.0075/word + one copy of the anthology Zooscape Zine Zooscape Excellent furry stories N/A (continually open at this time) $0.06/word (maximum $60) for original, $20 for reprints Thurston Howl Publications Species: Bunnies Furry stories featuring bunnies January 1st One copy of the anthology (non-paying) Thurston Howl Publications Breeds: Bunnies Furry erotica featuring bunnies January 1st One copy of the anthology (non-paying) FurPlanet Inhuman Acts 2 Furry noir stories February 1st $0.0050/word + one copy of the anthology Thurston Howl Publications Even Furries Hate Nazis Furry stories against Nazism February 15th One copy of the anthology (non-paying) Thurston Howl Publications Movie Monsters Stories featuring monsters have/ could be in movies March 1st One copy of the anthology (non-paying) Thurston Howl Publications Sensory De-tails Furry stories relating to strong animal senses April 1st One copy of the anthology (non-paying)

 

Novel Markets:

• Thurston Howl Publications is open to novel/novella submissions, with no planned date for submissions to close.

 

Special Events and Announcements

Books flew from MFF, and furry stories are in the hands of several readers. That’s always a success! Though what’s bigger news? Another writer GoH for Midwest FurFest! Our own Mary E. Lowd will be an honored guest at the 2019 Midwest FurFest!

 

Wrap-up

 

Our forums are open to all writers, not just full members of the FWG. Check them out here and join in on the conversation. While you’re there, check out how to join our Slack and Telegram channels. Before joining any of these, though, we ask that you please read up on our Code of Conduct! With all the negative going around in the world these days, both furry and non-furry, we want to make sure the guild feels like a safe place to all its participants, free of threats and hate speech.

We have two weekly chats, called our Coffeehouse Chats! Our first one is Tuesday at 7:00pm EST in our Slack channel, and our other is Thursdays at Noon EST on our forums in the shoutbox on the main page. Both of these chats feature writers talking about writing, usually with a central topic. As with the above, these chats are open to both members and non-members, though you must be registered for the forums.

Here’s an interesting art and comic project we came across at CTN Expo: Sillycan Vale, created by Lewei Wang. Current there’s a Kickstarter Campaign for the project, that explains it like this… “Sillycan Vale is a town where each animal villager is the personification of a tech company from the real world. The goal of this project is to develop the whole concept into a comic series. The characters & story-lines are inspired by what’s happening between the real tech communities especially in Silicon Valley, California.” Currently the plan is to release the comic in three separate volumes, introducing new characters and development art in each, and then release the actual complete comic in September of 2019. As of this writing they have already exceeded their initial funding goal, so go check them out and see what’s coming next.

image c. 2018 by Lewei Wang

Welcome to the first full issue of Zooscape!

The first question most people ask about furry fiction is, “What about reptiles?  Do they count?  They don’t have fur!”  But furry fiction isn’t just about having fur — it’s about empathy, most often with animals, but sometimes anthropomorphic literature reaches even further into the unfamiliar and finds ways to make it familiar.

For our first issue, we offer a journey that will take you from the familiar to the very fringe of furry fiction.  From a dog experiencing the apocalypse and two fables about cats and boots, we’ll take you to eerie places where humans don’t quite belong, and finally end on a beautiful prose poem that stretches anthropomorphism almost to its limit, exploring the question:  can we empathize with empathy itself?

* * *

Charlie at the End by Frances Pauli

The Turn of the Year by Gerri Leen

The Mountain Farmer’s Bootlace by David Sklar

Zoo by Ellen Denton

The Far Side of the Ocean by Lena Ng

Sentient Tears by A Humphrey Lanham

* * *

Reminder, we’ll be back again in three months with more stories!  If you want to help us explore the Zooscape as one of our writers, we’d love to see your submission.  Check out our guidelines and come explore!

Finally, we’d like to dedicate this issue to Fred Patten who passed away a few weeks too early to read it.  He was a legend in the furry writing community — a prolific editor, reviewer, and historian.  He was furry fiction’s biggest fan.  We hope he would have loved the stories in Zooscape.  Rest in peace, Fred.

by A Humphrey Lanham

We rolled out of our cave, grouping at its red rim. One by one, we rushed down, over the peak of the hill, leaping across the soft-edged crevasse to land on the pointy cliff at the edge of the world. There we hesitated, waiting.

“This is it,” said our leader. The first out of the cave. The first off the edge of the world.

And one by one we leapt, falling down, down, down in a slow, steady beat onto the soft world below, bleeding into the fibers. Our salt comingling. Our five-second lives sacrificed in the name of sorrow.

 

* * *

About the Author

A Humphrey Lanham is a fantasy, science fantasy, and YA writer. They read and write a wide range of fiction but prefer strong female characters who refuse to cater to patriarchal social structures, expectations of romance, or cultural gender norms and stereotypes. They are chair of Wordos, an internationally renowned writers’ group based in Eugene, Oregon.

Ru, their cat, is an anthropologist studying humans and their strange proclivities. They speculate that Ru is actually an alien xenobiologist, but everyone keeps telling them that he is just a common Earth cat.

You can follow their adventures on Twitter @ahumphreylanham and @thecupcakebeast.

by Lena Ng

“Meyxtle held the bag with three tentacles and closely studied it. The corners were crisp, no scuffing on the sides, no bite-marks or bruises.”

“Let me refill your cup, dear,” said Meyxtle, as she poured from the refined bone china teapot. The smell of seaweed from the warm, salt tea wafted into the room. “Take a snack as well.” She moved the bucket closer to the edge of the table.

Crystix studied the pile of moving crabs as they clumsily climbed over each other. “Looks delicious.” She delicately wrapped a tentacle over the top crab—since manners dictated she didn’t dig into the middle of the pile and pick the fattest, reddest one hiding beneath its brothers—slipped it under her mantle, and into her beak. “Sorry about the mess,” she said as she crunched down, leaving bits of shell on the oyster couch.

“Never mind,” said Meyxtle, as she crunched on her own crabs.

The doorbell rang. Meyxtle slithered off the couch and slimed her way to the door. She signed the clipboard using a jet from her ink pouch and brought the package into the lovely sitting room. Her suckers gripped the box and she easily tore through the packaging. “Finally, it came.” She showed off her purchase.

“Nice,” exclaimed Crystix. Reverentially, she touched the handbag. “Baby soft skin.”

Meyxtle held up the handbag to one of her large eyes of her mantle. She examined the handbag from every angle. The skin was thin and a pale pinkish-white in colour. “I got a good one. No moles, no scars…wait…” She noticed a subtle discoloration. “Looks like a birthmark.” She opened the handbag and read the accompanying card. “Since each bag is made from a unique skin, individual variations in skin tone and texture may occur.”

“How did you ever afford it? Designer leather bags are expensive enough, let alone an exotic.” Crystix grabbed a crab that was scuttling on the seaweed-carpeted floor. “Aren’t they endangered?”

Meyxtle held the bag with three tentacles and closely studied it. The corners were crisp, no scuffing on the sides, no bite-marks or bruises. “Oh this one wasn’t wild. It was farmed.”

“They can farm humans now?”

With the tips of her tentacles, Meyxtle twisted the bag’s turn lock and looked inside. “Actually, I heard it’s pretty easy. You throw a bunch of them in an enclosure and nine months later, you have more of them. If you feed them, they continue to multiply. Whereas, in the wild, there’s more of a chance of damaging the skin at harvest time.”

Crystix’s eyes glowed with envy. “Their skins are so soft. Like a pig’s. But more delicate.”

Meyxtle rested the bag on the coral coffee table. She crunched on another crab. “I heard they taste pretty good, too, when they were abundant enough that we could eat them. I hope they don’t just take their skins. It would be waste of the meat to dispose of it.”

Crystix nodded with her bulbous mantle. “A big waste.”

The two females cooed as they sipped their tea and admired the human-skin handbag.

 

* * *

About the Author

Lena Ng is from Toronto, Ontario. Her 2018 publications include: Polar Borealis, Spectacle, Enchanted Conversation, ARTPOST, NonBinary Review, Amazing Stories, and the anthology We Shall Be Monsters. “Under an Autumn Moon” is her short story collection. She is currently seeking a publisher for her novel, Darkness Beckons, a Gothic romance.

by Ellen Denton

“The deer, in unison, stopped what they were doing and lined up in a row across the front of the house. They stood there looking directly into my eyes.”

Last week, herds of deer started coming to my yard. They’re not afraid of me; when I tap on the window to get their attention, they don’t act startled or nervous even though I’m only a few feet away. When I speak to them through the glass, their ears twitch and they look at me with intelligent, almost friendly eyes.

When they’re not there, I can still see their tracks, like words of a secret code written by hoof prints in the snow. I like to think they’re telling me, in a winter language spoken with their feet, “We’re still here.  We’re watching over you.” They make me feel less alone and remind me of all the ethereal beauty in the world.

One morning, I was looking at them through the big picture window that faces out onto the yard. They were scattered around, some of them reclining in the snow, others nibbling leaves from the lower branches of evergreen trees, a few nuzzling the ground in search of buried vegetation.

I left for a while to finish reading a book. I was saddened by it because it was a love story and both the hero and heroine were killed at the end. After I closed the book, I walked back to the window in tears. The deer, in unison, stopped what they were doing and lined up in a row across the front of the house. They stood there looking directly into my eyes.

* * *

This type of thing started about a month ago. Living creatures of all kinds would come and interact with me.

The first time was when a spider descended from the ceiling on a thread-thin filament of silvery web. I was sitting in a recliner reading, raised my eyes, and it was inches from my face. I lurched backwards with momentary disgust and fear. It was light brown in color and large enough for me to clearly see the spindly segments of its body.

I was going to duck below it so that I could get out of the chair without touching it and go get a vacuum cleaner to suck it and the web strand off the ceiling, but its dot-sized black eyes turned green – a reflective green like a mirror – and this snagged my attention.

It then started spinning around at the end of the thread. Then it faced me again and began waving its legs up and down as though they were fingers on a keyboard, then it spun around again and continued going through that alternating sequence for about two minutes. I know it sounds silly, but at the time, I felt like the spider was doing a happy dance at the sight of me.

It finally rose back up to the ceiling by absorbing the strand of web back into its body. I didn’t know spiders could do that.

“My initial thought was to get a broom and gouge it out of the corner, but it was pretty, like a shimmering circle of snow crystals or jewels, and it wasn’t really doing any harm, so I decided to leave it for the time being.”

The ceiling was well lit by a carousel of bulbs, so when I looked up, I could clearly see a bridge of silken strands stretching across it. The spider traveled along one of them towards the corner, which contained a beautiful, circular web. There were other spiders on the web too, gliding back and forth along the strands and making more.

My initial thought was to get a broom and gouge it out of the corner, but it was pretty, like a shimmering circle of snow crystals or jewels, and it wasn’t really doing any harm, so I decided to leave it for the time being.

I was curious though about the odd motions of the spider when it hung before my face and the way its eyes turned green, so I grabbed a book on insects I remembered seeing in the other room. I didn’t find anything that talked about those things, but did come across an interesting chapter called “Strange and Amazing Facts About Spiders.”

I read through it. It had things like:

“Spiders have blue blood.”

and

“The silk in a spider’s web is so strong, that a web just a few inches thick could stop a cannon ball in flight.”

and

“Spider webs are not passive traps. Instead, because of electrically conducive glue spread across their surface, webs spring towards their prey.”

As I read further and further down the list, with each new fact getting creepier rather than more interesting, I would glance nervously up at the ceiling, trying to decide if the web had gotten larger or was moving towards me since the moment before when I last looked at it. It really hadn’t, but I did feel compelled at that point to get that broom.

The next day, there was an occurrence with a big cockroach-like thing. It was crouched over a crumb, but when it saw me, skittered across the kitchen counter toward the very edge of it, stopped dead in its tracks, and just stood there facing me. The antennae on top of its head started vibrating so fast, they became a solid blur of gray. I felt sick to my stomach at the sight of it, but it finally skittered off somewhere.

Later that same day, a butterfly landed outside on the window glass.  When I came up real close to it so that I could get a better look, it started dreamily wafting its wings back and forth as it clung to the glass.

There were other things with insects over the next few days, some of it creepy, some of it just strange – like a thick ant trail that poured into my house through a crack in the wall. Normally, when I’d come across one of those, they’d be traveling in a line from the outside to some bit of food on the floor or in my trash, but these ants came in and formed strange, swirling designs and shapes out of the thousands of their combined tiny bodies.

I stood over them with a can of insecticide in my hand, my finger ready to push down the button and release the death spray on them, but I hesitated when I saw what they were doing. A few minutes later, they formed a trail again and went swarming out of the house through the same crack from which they’d entered. They had funny little blue dots on their backs that I’d never seen before on ants.

The following week, it started to happen with larger life forms.

There was, for instance, an occurrence with a woodpecker. It tapped on the ledge right outside my window, then fell silent as I tapped back at him. We kept taking turns tapping back and forth to each other before he flew off.

Once, a whole flock of blackbirds in flight descended and circled my house over and over, before taking to the sky again. They flew low enough to the ground for me to see them through the window, and their muffled wing beats sounded like a magician shuffling a deck of cards.

Following this were instances with chipmunks, squirrels, a few rabbits, a raccoon, and some animals I’m not familiar with.

* * *

My house is in the woods, with no one who lives close by, at least that I’ve ever seen, so I was genuinely surprised when dogs and cats started showing up. Domestic animals normally don’t wander about in the woods.

The first one sort of looked like a French Poodle and she had three puppies with her. They sniffed around in the snow and at the door, and then ran to the big picture window. The puppies all started barking at me.

Last week the deer showed up for the first time, lingering long through the day or sometimes just stopping briefly before moving on. Often a doe would come right up to the window with a fawn and look into the house at me, their faces just a few inches from mine with only the window glass between us.

* * *

Two days ago, I regained my memory. Previously, I had very little recollection of my life prior to about five or six weeks ago, but the other night, I glanced upwards, and the shock of more glittering webs scattered across the ceiling and making their way down the walls snapped me out of the amnesia.

The only thing I can’t recall is how I got here. I’m hoping that comes back to me too,  but even if it does, I won’t write about it, since I don’t think there’s much of a chance anyone will ever get to see it, or see any of this that I’ve already written. I’m pretty sure I know now though why the only window in the entire house is the one that faces front, and why it will not break. I tried smashing a chair through it, and the chair broke instead of the window.

The deer are gone now too. Late yesterday, a large, strange-looking creature with a horn at the center of its head came lumbering by and scared them off.

The thing that concerns me more than anything else though is that the spider webs are getting larger and so are the spiders.

Yesterday, the webs started stretching down towards the bottom of the walls and each spider is now about the size of my hand, covering the ceiling in a sickening blanket of spider torsos and legs. If I get too close to one of the webs, it bulges out at me. Whenever that happens, the spiders in the room stop skittering around all at once and turn to me, as though watching to see what’s going to happen next, so I have to quickly get away from the wall. They then resume swinging from web to web, like little eight-legged monkeys.

If I try to gouge one of the webs away with a broom, all the spiders converge on that one spot and quickly spin another. One even came down the wall and scrambled across the floor toward my foot. I smashed it over and over with a cast iron frying pan until it was nothing but mush. None of them tried to approach me again after that; they just hang there from their webs on the ceiling and up and down the walls.

I’ve searched every inch of this house looking for a way out of it, but there is none.

* * *

Today, a horror beyond my wildest dreams occurred, and I have lost all hope.

There was a terrible blizzard overnight, which blew down a sign that must have been attached to the front of the house. There were three words on it, but I could only make out the word “The” at the top and “House” at the bottom. The middle word was covered over with snow.

I was terrified that when the wind blew off that bit of snow, the whole sign would read “The Human House”, and my worst and craziest fears would be realized – that I had somehow been abducted and placed in an intergalactic zoo of some sort where animals were the observers and humanoid-type entities were the displays – that I’d been placed in only a replica of a real house, the same way that animal habitats in zoos are often made to look like they do in nature – that the creatures that came to my window, or crawled in and out through cracks in my walls, considered me no more than a dumb, strange looking beast, the way children on field trips gape at things – that I would have to adapt to living the rest of my life in this cage, the way prisoners serving life sentences do.

I wondered why, if I was supposed to be a display, those horrible spiders were let in here, getting bigger by the minute, and now dripping this awful white mucus from their mouths as they hover above me from their webs.

* * *

Things turned out to be far worse though than I could have ever conceived in my wildest imaginings, and I have never felt as paralyzed with fear, as small, or as utterly unimportant and insignificant as I do right now.

The sun warmed the woods up enough for that little patch of snow to melt off the sign.

This isn’t “The Human House” exhibit. It’s “The Spider House” one!

 

* * *

 

About the Author

Ellen Denton is a freelance writer living in the Rocky Mountains with her husband and three demonic cats who wreak havoc and hell (the cats, not the husband). Her writing has been published in over a hundred magazines and anthologies. She as well has had an exciting life working as a rodeo clown, a Navy seal, and an exotic dancer in the crew lounge of the starship Enterprise. She was also the first person to scale Mount Everest to its summit. (Writer’s note: The one-hundred-plus publication credits are true, but some or all of the other stuff may be fictional.)