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Welcome once again to the FWG Awareness Week! To help us in our goal of highlighting minority culture and writers in furry literature, we’ve reached out to editors, authors, and publishers in the fandom to bring you a short reading list of works both from and about our region in focus: Southeast and East Asia. While this is by no means an exhaustive list of titles, we hope it serves as a good jumping-off point and gives a rough starting view of the cultures and people from this area.

From the region:

Allison Thai (who we interviewed earlier this week) is a Vietnamese-American husky who has been published in several furry anthologies, including Symbol of a Nation, ROAR 8, and Arcana – Tarot. Readers may be interested in her story, “A Time For Giving“, from Arcana, about an injured, stranded Russian wolf who is given hospitality by a family of Mongolian horses, despite her deeds as a treacherous NKVD agent. Her entry for ROAR 8, “Hope for the Harbingers“, sees God lift up damned souls from Hell to appoint them as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, while Death finds a glimpse of redemption in doing his duty.

Al Song, a Laotian-American kangaroo with a degree in German literature from University of Washington, writes in “Serenity in Blue” (from FANG 8) about a fresh college graduate unhappy with his employment as a security officer, and his attempt to seek out a better future for himself. In “Tempus Imperfectum“, to be published in Tales from the Guild – World Tour 2, a young Italian otter newly immigrated to Germany finds friendship and romance through his high-school orchestra.

Singaporean artist and writer MikasiWolf writes in “Adversary’s Fall“, from Gods With Fur, about the mythical Monkey King, who, with the help of a drunk merlion and an old comrade, seeks vengeance against the most powerful demon of all. His story, “Fathers and Sons“, found in Dogs of War, talks about a young recruit who, despite his disastrous first day in military service, eventually learns the experience gained by generations of servicemen.

About the region:

Faolan provides “Instinct“, the closing entry to the Species: WOLVES anthology – an account of a lupine K-Pop idol pack of the same name, as they attempt to maintain group cohesion despite their individual egos and feelings for one another.

Takaa Silvermane‘s story collection, Closer Than Brothers, examines gay relationships throughout history. “Sparring Session” follows fox Gichoi and cat Daejung in in 667 CE South Korea. Following Korean funeral rites of the time, the two soldiers take a respite from battle and find intimate comfort in each other despite the knowledge it is forbidden love. In “Kamogawa“, three-tailed fox Akio abandons his guard post in Sekigahara, Japan (1600 CE) to find his childhood playmate, white cat Hideki, in a nearby stream. Not your typical “Romeo and Juliet” story, the two are now on opposite sides of the war. What will they do to preserve themselves – or sacrifice for love of the other?

In Kyell Gold‘s “Unfinished Business“, from Heat #13, as private investigator Jae Kim visits supernatural Wolftown Detroit, he runs into his former boyfriend and some issues from his Korean family.

Edited by Fred Patten, the Symbol of a Nation anthology consists of eleven short stories and novelettes featuring the anthropomorphized animal symbols of nations, and exploring their significance and the ideas they represent in their cultures.

Though himself not a furry author, the origami animals in Ken Liu‘s short story “The Paper Menagerie” (read) come to life as magically as our own furry characters do. This poignant story, about a young Connecticut boy, his Chinese mother, and the cultural tension of immigration, is the first work of fiction to win the Nebula, the Hugo, and the World Fantasy Awards.

Special thanks go out to Ocean Tigrox, Thurston Howl, Makyo, and Dark End for their suggestions and assistance in putting this list together.

Discuss this article on the Guild forums, or check out the profiles of our FWG members.

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Arcana: A Tarot Anthology, Madison Scott-Clary, ed. Illustrated by Joseph Chou.
Lansing, MI, Thurston Howl Publications, November 2017, trade paperback, $17.99 (xi + 423 pages).

The tarot cards, according to the Preface by editor Scott-Clary, were introduced to Europe in the 15th century. They have been used for fortune-telling since the 16thth century, if not earlier. There are four suits of 14 cards each, plus 22 “major arcana” cards. The arcana have individual names: The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess, The Hierophant, and so on. Arcana: A Tarot Anthology presents 22 stories, one for each arcana card, featuring anthro animals. Each is illustrated by a full-page portrait in the style of an anthro arcana card by Joseph Chou.

The first story, “The First Step” (The Fool) by editor Madison “Makyo” Scott-Clary, is less a story than a tutorial on how tarot fortune-telling works. Avery, a shy young mountain lion, is sent by his mother to a nameless older badger fortune-teller by his mother. Avery, the narrator, is just about to leave home for college, and his mother insists that he find out from the tarot cards what the future will bring. The motherly badger is as much a lay psychologist as a fortune-teller. “The First Step” is unusual in being narrated in the present tense:

“She leans in close to me, stage-whispering, ‘I’ll let you in on a secret. None of the cards in the swords suit – in any suits – show blood. Death, yes. Change, definitely. But no blood.   It’s hardly hacking and slashing.’

‘But they’re still –‘

She holds up a paw. ‘They’re still swords, but they’re tools. Swords show work. Strife, sometimes, sure; striving toward a goal. But what they is show work. These swords aren’t working right now, they’re just standing there. So where is the striving?’

‘Behind them?’ I ask. “They figures are all facing away from something.’

‘Or toward something.’

‘So,’ I say hesitantly. ‘I’m going to go on a journey?’” (p. 11)

“Cat’s Paw” (The Magician) by Mut is narrated by a nameless desperate were-dog who accosts a lion-man wizard and his date in a bar to get his curse removed. But nobody is what they seem. Very sardonically amusing:

“So here’s the secret to spotting a wizard: look for the one with a body that’s just too perfect. There’s a stud who’s six three, muscles fighting to escape his shirt, not a hair out of place? Wizard. Or a porn star, maybe, but probably a wizard.

[…]

I’d been trawling through bars for a wizard all evening, ad it was getting close to the deadline. I’d found a couple of almosts and one obvious poseur, but nobody with real magic. This guy, though, he was unmistakeable. He hadn’t even bothered to keep it human – too green to know better, or too powerful to care. He was a lion, with a mane and golden fur and whiskers and everything. There was even a tail flicking away under the barstool.” (pgs. 21-22)

“Catalyst” (The High Priestess) by Kristina “th ‘buni” Tracer is good, but it suffers from being too similar to “The First Step”. The narrator, unnamed until the last page, gets stinking drunk and into a fight at the Unicorn Chaser nightclub. His date, an impala named Ndidi, walks out on him. He is sobered up the next day at the nearby home of an also-unnamed porcupine “spiritual consultant”. She uses the tarot, but her “fortunetelling” is more lay psychiatry than anything else. Her counseling solves the narrator’s emotional problems that led to his drunkenness. A feel-good incident.

“Domestic Violence” (The Empress) by Frances Pauli features a modern domestic home of dinosaurs; George & Anni Raptor, and their daughters Ellie & Emily. Were raptors really this short-tempered?

“Anni peered through the glass oven door and tapped one oversized sickle-claw against her linoleum tiles. Her casserole bubbled happily away on the rack inside. One half pound of gooey melted cheese almost near perfection, and George was late getting home again.

It would be cold, ruined, by the time he finally dragged his tail through the front door.

She squinted at the bubbles and raked her claw against the tiles, digging an angry rut in the floor that George was bound to notice. That, he’d see. Her new nail polish or the dress she’d picked out for their anniversary, however, he’d likely never even acknowledge.” (p. 51)

“George warbled deep in his throat and walked into his house to see a ring of disapproving expressions. They sat around the dining table, in the alcove just off the kitchen, and it looked like they’d fully stuffed themselves without him.

You’re late again,’ Anni snapped. Her toe tapped an irritating staccato against the flooring and he could already see a spot where she’d damaged it again. More remodels he could barely afford.” (p. 53)

Two angry, frustrated raptors.   A perfect recipe for domestic violence.

“Domestic Violence” is the first story here that has no obvious connection to the tarot arcana. Anni is certainly the Empress of the Raptor household, though. Arcana or not, this is one of the most wickedly humorous stories in this anthology. Pauli never lets you forget that these are ferocious, hissing raptors in a business suit and a dress.

“Joseph and the Technicolor Fur Coat” (The Emperor) by Stephen Coughlan is a sweet tale of confronting modernity:

“It used to be that he [Joseph T. Macintosh, a human] rented a bull from one of his neighbors for a month or two, got most, if not all, of his herd pregnant and then sent the bull back to its home on a trailer.   Nowadays, Joseph had to contact the breeder industry and then within hours of ordering a stud, a half-human/half-cow creation, a recent creation of science, would pull up in a fancy automobile, lurch his way to the field, and commence, ahem, ‘meeting’ every cow in the vicinity.” (p. 63)

Joseph, sixty years old, is the Emperor of his farm, but he’s resigned himself that he’s behind the times. He’s satisfied that his three “wayward children” have created modern lives of their own. Peter will come home to take over the farm. Susan is a university graduate with a good job lined up, and a reliable fiancé. David … well, Joseph has a hard time accepting David’s lifestyle, but at least David is a successful hair stylist. Joseph is even ready to grit his teeth and accept David’s homosexual marriage to another man. Then he learns that Felix is a hybrid:

“‘Yeah I’m sure.’ Felix finally purred. His voice was deep and guttural. He was a cross between human, black leopard, and Himalayan housecat. His dark fur shone n the morning light, and painted highlights, which had been lovingly applied by his fiancé and covered his body from head to foot, sparkled in a brilliant Technicolor display.” (p. 73)

Can Joseph accept Felix as David’s “husband” or is this Too Much?

“The Lunatic” (The Hierophant) by C. M. Averin may be the most subtle story in this anthology. “‘I need it,’ she whispered. ‘Kill him.’” (p. 85) Rafael, a wolf in a bar, hears her voice and follows a coyote out into the snowy forest to the river to kill him. Who is Rafael, the coyote, listening to? Who is “her”? Consider the title and the meaning of “hierophant”.

In “Love Not Misplaced” (The Lovers) by Hypetaph, Annette (cheetah) confesses her doubts about her husband Keiran’s love for her and the stability of their marriage, in the cathedral’s confessional. Father Joseph (fossa) reassures her. The story has a stinger at the end.

In “Avoiding the Subject” (The Chariot) by TJ Minde, the chariot is the car that Robert (rabbit) and Danny (pika) drive to Robert’s Midwestern childhood home for a family reunion dinner. As they drive back to the city afterwards, Robert asks Danny why he never talks about his family.   Danny tells him. A nice slice-of-life story.

“Chasing the Dragon” (Strength) by Baxil is narrated by Regan, a dragon suffering hoard-withdrawal in Pangaea, where he’s lived for 18 days on a visa granting asylum. Regan’s native Draconia is on the verge of declaring war on Pangaea, and Regan, a pacifist, has emigrated. Pangaea is a herbivore nation, but determined not to back down in the face of Draconian aggression. Regan can take the prejudice of most Pangaeans against dragons, but he’s afraid of succumbing to addiction to his hoard of coins, which he had to leave behind in Draconia. Will Regan have the emotional Strength to survive in Pangaea without it?

The Hermit in “While It Lasts” (The Hermit) by John Kulp is Curtis Vintner, a southern possum (presumably an American opossum, not an Aussie possum) living alone in a cabin with his shotgun. The narrator is his nephew Trevor, a gay teenage punk full of piercings who has been sent to his uncle for a week for punishment for having been caught with weed. Trev hates his uncle’s redneck lifestyle, but he hates government bureaucracy more. When the government tries to seize Uncle Curtis’ land for non-payment of taxes, Trev plans to fight the government’s lawyers in court. But first he has to convince Uncle Curtis not to fight them from ambush with his bear traps and shotgun. A nice funny-animal tale of two different generations and lifestyles bonding.

“The Dragon of Volcano Island” (Wheel of Fortune) by Madison Keller is a short-story prequel to her Dragonsbane Saga series. Riastel, a dragon youth, is turned out of his mother’s cave to find his own home. His search leads to a perfect cavern on a volcanic island, already occupied by a larger dragon who has amassed a hoard of gleaming gold. He just has to figure out how to get rid of the older, deadlier dragon. Riastel’s story leads to Keller’s The Dragon Tax, where he meets Sybil Dragonsbane.

In “Red” (Justice) by Searska GreyRaven, four lycan (wolf) teens dare each other to call Bloody Mary, a supernatural lamb whose fleece is soaked with blood, who (according to urban legend) comes through a household mirror if summoned at midnight on Halloween. So they call her through the bathroom mirror at Jason’s house. Is this supposed to be a Halloween horror story? The writing is okay, but the mood is just of four teens goofing off on Halloween night. Totally un-scary. What’s more, this is the most “funny animal” story in the anthology. The “lycans” and lambs never feel like anthro animals instead of modern urban humans.

The Hanged Man means reversal. In “Unbound” by Chris “Sparf” Williams, is Finn (wolf) gay or transgender? Finn feels fucked up several ways. His father hates “queers”. His mother doesn’t care what gender he is; she just wants him to become a successful corporate office climber instead of the independent artist he wants to be. Finn’s older brother Blair is supportive, but he’s ultra-straight and Finn can tell he doesn’t really understand what Finn wants. What does Finn want? He doesn’t know himself. In “Unbound”, Finn struggles to discover what he really is.

“Unbound” is a really strong story, but it kept flagging my hangup about funny-animals vs. real anthropomorphs. Mentions of anthro wolves, foxes, otters, and other species shopping at IKEA, drinking beers or martinis, eating meat loaf, “a pine marten chewing on his morning pastry” (p. 231) at a coffee shop, kept me seeing them as just animal-headed humans despite Williams’ frequent mentions of fur and tails. (Would a wolf order a Caesar salad at a restaurant?) “Unbound” is great if little details like this don’t bother you.

“St. John’s Bridge” (Death) by Rose LaCroix also has a transgender theme. The first-person focus is developed through back-and-forth incidents in Allen’s/Erica’s life between 2014 and 2010. Death is involved, but how? Again, this is a better story if you aren’t bothered by hangups about foxes, deer, hyenas, and ocelots living together in real cities like Las Vegas, driving cars of real makes like Mustangs, and so on.

“A Temper for Order” (Temperance), a second story by Frances Pauli, is set in a seaside community of birds. Piper, a sandpiper, is a herbalist. Trudy, a neighboring shopkeeper, is a weaver bird. Dash, a stork, collects and sells pretty seashells. Trudy, a matchmaker, is trying to set up a romance between Piper and Dash, but Piper is a neatness freak and Dash appears to be a sloppy drunk. “A Temper for Order” dramatizes that Temperance means moderation in all things, not just drinking.

“Faux” (The Devil) by Atrum is highly unusual in never saying specifically what the protagonist is. The reader has to piece together clues in the story: “The practice opened at seven, closed at six, five days a week; he spent months becoming primarily diurnal, there weren’t enough nocturnal species in that area to cater to.” (p. 296) Ian, a doctor (Chou’s arcana portrait shows him as a raccoon), has built a successful practice, but he’s obsessed with displaying that success. He works longer hours to make more money to buy flashy signs of wealth for his home and office. Iker (husky), his receptionist, argues that he should get more rest, hire more help; Iker is less worried about Ian’s health as that he’s starting to make mistakes from overwork. But Ian can’t cut back because that might look like he was less successful. The Devil is a symbol of obsession with material things.

“The Storm” (The Tower) by J. S. Hawthorne is so vividly written that you don’t need Chou’s illustration to see the action:

“The rat called Paladin – the only name left to him – stood at the end of the craggy pass, staring up at the tower. It was a huge monolith, and its black-marble façade was alive with blue-green light from the electric sensors embedded in its surface. Sparks and electrical arcs lit the night from the Tesla generator on top, and threw him into sharp relief against the obsidian around him.” (p. 315)

Paladin is part of a team of revolutionaries attacking a major bastion of the oppressive government, a tower disguised as a Weather Monitoring Station. He fights his way to the top despite fierce resistance wielding both swords and electric weapons. A tense, exciting story.

In “No Peas in My Garden” (The Star) by Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, narrated by a nameless priest, it is the Church that is bioengineering Nhab experiments like Lucia the lioness assistant curate, and the public that protests against them. After all, the Church teaches that we are all – all – God’s children, and it was a priest who first discovered the laws of genetics with pea plants. The priest is about to soothe the crowd, but Lucia asks to speak for herself. This is a different viewpoint from one often heard in furry fandom, but quietly, powerfully expressed.

In “Who Fights With Monsters” (The Moon), Kyell Gold packs a novel’s worth of plot into a sixteen-page short story. Czoltan, a teenager, has been a werewolf for eight months. The U.N. has ruled that the werewolves in the Balkans should have their own country, but the armies of the former Yugoslav nations try to “ethnic cleanse” the area of werewolves before that can happen. There is silver dust as a weapon to kill werewolves, and the “fact” that if a werewolf stays in wolf form for too long, it becomes normal wolf permanently. Czoltan wants to fight for the werewolf nation, but should he do it as a human, a half-wolf, or a full wolf?

In “Remembering Sisyphus” (The Sun) by George Squares, Salim (Tiger), Chrissy (Border Collie), and Victor (Yellow Labrador) are attending an endless party throughout the resort city of Cape Carolyn. They pick up the nameless narrator (Spathy, a Squirrel), alone, and he and Salim go off together.

“I took him to the pier which held the biggest Ferris wheel in the city. Its lights dazzled in day glow vivacity that sparkled and shined as a spinning medallion. The twilit horizon line of the ocean made the wheel appear god-like, Aztec, holding attentions immeasurable as they passed us, shrieking with delight and rapture. A dapper weasel in a boater hat handed us change and two ticket stubs as we entered our cart.” (p. 375)

Will Salim ever realize that they are trapped in a sunny, endless party that really does go on forever?

“A Time for Giving” (Judgment) by Allison Thai focuses on Sonya, a Soviet wolf who awakens from a freezing wintry train wreck in the tent of Batu and his family of Mongolian horses. As Sonya heals and the weather improves, she has time to compare the worlds of the ruthless NKVD with that of the peaceful nomadic peasants.

Diamma, in “The Unification of Worlds” (The World) by Mary E. Lowd, is one of a party of hybrid spacemen; a lion-lizard. Others are Aggem, a deer-bird, and Mundo, a turtle-elephant. They are sent to the perpetually pink-snowy world of Snomoth, inhabited by a tiny, mouselike civilization.

“‘Wait,’ the mouse squeaked. ‘Take me with you. The universe is ending: take me with you!’” (p. 404)

What can Eip, the yellow Snomoth mouse, teach the galactic civilization?

Arcana: A Tarot Anthology (cover by Joseph Chou) contains 22 stories. Only “The First Step” and “Catalyst” are visibly tarot-arcana oriented; the others are related to the theme in more subtle ways. Some stories are naturally better than others, but almost all are worth reading; some are unforgettable. The anthology may be better than I make it seem by emphasizing my own prejudice against “funny-animal/animal-headed human” stories; if you don’t mind these, Arcana is really good. The 22 arcana-card illustrations by Joseph Chou, each featuring the protagonist of its story, are almost worth the price of the anthology alone. Do not just glance at them; study them. Arcana will bring you reading pleasure for days.

– Fred Patten

• Buy on Thurston Howl

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Furry Nation is the book on furry fandom written by greymuzzle Joe Strike, published on October 2017. Several years in the making, it is an enthusiastic, comprehensive and detailed account of customs, trends, and activities, within the fandom. As thorough as it is stylistic, it feels a joy to read from start to finish. There is an underlying approach to the narrative that’s well underlined in the preface. Joe’s first draft on a book on anthropomorphic culture, as shown to a publisher, was acceptable, but their response was, “what about you & other furries?” And so, Joe in his final published work describes the fandom through the personal experiences of other furry fans, and his own, which is an excellent choice that pays off.

 

It is often said that a different understanding of the fandom exists for every fan. The overall theme is the same, easily defined with the terms ‘animal anthropomorphics’, but these words often mean nothing to the newcomer who has no context. Within that theme, furry fandom is drive, is being creative, is meeting people, discovering oneself and discovering others, having new experiences, having fun! In the book, an accurate explanation seems effortless when told through the eyes of so many different people that have interesting and valid insights of their own, invariably linked to their personal life affairs, finely connected together. You get the input of aficionados, artists, fursuit makers, cartoonists, convention admins, performers, journalists…

The book manages to fit almost everything related to general furry culture I’d expect a furry fan to know, and more. Had I been given 10 years and unlimited resources to write a similar book, I wouldn’t have done it any better. It’s all-encompassing, and well researched, but not overwhelming. There’s a natural flow in the inquiries that step by step bring curious knowledge to the table. The writing is skillful, tasteful, bordering spicy a limited number of times; Joe occasionally allows himself to be slightly elegantly erotic to make for a more alluring read. His personality shines through his words, he’s a playful talented author that’s invested in the real story he’s telling. Through the development of the fandom as told by him there’s a perception of growth and maturity acquired, as chapters go by he successfully reflects the sense of constant wonder and fulfilled belonging that we longtimers have come to embrace in the fandom.

 

Some objected to the book being US-centric, but really there is no drawback to it. The fandom was born in the US, and the location of the narration is merely incidental. The experiences told by furry fans are universally relatable, and that’s what’s important. Furry fever is a human thing, a human-animal thing, wherever the location. The tome gets its points across; adding even more information could have made it unattractively thick. This is it, this is the book. You can recommend it to anyone either non-furry or furry, and as long as they like reading, both types of people will learn and enjoy reading Furry Nation.

There’s an English saying that goes ‘Home is where the heart is.’ Joe hasn’t just beautifully described home to anyone willing to listen. He’s also made it clear why anyone would call it their home. All that’s left, is to buy the book yourself, and read it!

You can purchase Furry Nation at several bookstores listed on its website (link⇒)

The entry ‘Furry Nation’,</br> Review of Joe Strike’s</br> Masterful Book appears first in FurryFandom.Es.

From Previews: “Collected for the first time, The Howling: Revenge of the Werewolf Queen Vol. 1 picks up where the cult-classic 1981 film left off: Three weeks have passed since Chris Halloran revealed on national TV that werewolves walk among us. No one believed him. Now Marsha Quist has returned for revenge–and now there is no colony to hold back her blood lust. This collection includes The Howling: Revenge of the Werewolf Queen issues 1-4, and a cover gallery— featuring Bill Sienkiewicz’s supreme cover!” Written by Micky Neilson and with art by Jason Johnson and Milen Parvanov, it’s available now as a full-color trade paperback from Space Goat Publishing. [And with that, we’ll see you all after we get back from Further Confusion!]

image c. 2018 Space Goat

New short by Felix Colgrave ... that is all.
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Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Myre: Chronicles of Yria, volume 1, by Claudya Schmidt and Matt W. Davis
Berlin, AlectorFencer, January 2017, hardcover €35,00 (unpaged [172 pages]), softcover €29,00. Shipping to North America: add €8,00 for the hardcover; €5,00 for the softcover.

Claudya Schmidt and Matt W. Davis are better-known in furry fandom as the artist AlectorFencer and the stand-up comedian 2, the Ranting Gryphon. They, primarily AlectorFencer with 2’s help in plotting and writing, have been working on Myre for seven years. Now, thanks to long work and the financial aid of many Crowdsourcing supporters, the first volume of a planned trilogy is out. It’s only available from AlectorFencer at her home in Berlin, but they have published the English edition first. A German edition will be available in 2018 at the same prices.

Myre is a monumental undertaking. The hardcover edition is 13” x 9”; the softcover is almost as large at 12” x 8”. It is in full glossy color, 160 pages of story and 12 pages of concept art. Both editions come wrapped in cellophane. The hardcover has a sewn-in ribbon bookmark. The total price (book + shipping) is about $US55.00 for the hardcover or $US40.00 for the softcover.

Myre is a cigarette-smoking, hardbitten maned-wolf wanderer who comes out of Yria’s desert. She rides her dragon-mount Varug. Obviously, “dragon” here means something other than traditional flying, fire-breathing reptiles, although just what Varug is will be developed in the story. She is more than a Yrian horse, though. She and Myre are close friends. Yria is a huge world. This part of Myre’s adventure takes place in Yria’s desert wastelands; there is much more elsewhere.

(Well, AlectorFencer says in the FAQ on yriachronicles.com that Yria is a fantasy world. Many characters look like anthropomorphic Earth animals, and many are completely original. So calling any of them a maned-wolf, a badger, a lion, or any other Earth animal is too simplistic. For practical purposes, though, Myre is a red-haired anthro maned-wolf.)

Chronicles of Yria begins with a creation myth. “Long ago, when all was verdant and alive, there lived a race of people who were as old and as wise as the lands in which they lived. They were the children of the Ylducian, the dragons of old, and they lived in peace when Yria was vast and green.” Here are the winged, fire-spewing dragons that we are familiar with. The myth goes on to tell how Yria fell from glory, the dragons disappeared, their treasure was lost, and today the world is dry and desolate.

“Who will carry on seeking for what we almost forgot? Who will begin the journey that will restore the life of Yria? It was her.”

Myre doesn’t know where she came from, except the desert. “I lived in the desert with my uncle. He raised me. One night, the bastard just walked out… left me. I woke up and the only thing left was footprints into the desert. That’s the last I saw him. So, I left too. Didn’t have anyone to stay for.”

The world through which Myre wanders carries “a wretched hive of scum and villainy” to a new low. She is alone except for Varug. The only two supporting characters who might be important – they aren’t yet, but they may return – are Boozer, a wise old (when he isn’t drunk) badger, and Lutz, a young street urchin. Myre wanders from place to place, each worse than the one before, until she meets the legendary monsters of whom everybody is afraid: the Dwellers. Volume II will be The Lore of the Dwellers.

But the plot is just an excuse for AlectorFencer’s fantastic art. Myre: Chronicles of Yria is not available from Amazon or any standard bookstore. She drew and published it herself, and is selling it herself. See the yriachronicles.com weblink. In addition to the books, there are collectable cards, art prints, and gift-wrapping paper. There will be more in the future, including Haunter of Dreams, a comic book about “the tales and lores of Yria”.

AlecterFencer is a very popular German furry artist. She has done furry art commissions for years. Her art can be seen on DeviantArt and FurAffinity, including a photograph on DeviantArt of herself holding a printer’s proof of a sheet (4 pages) from Myre.

– Fred Patten

• Myre’s Goodread Page
• Buy on Yria Chronicles

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

Sometimes you just gotta admit when other people say it better. This is direct from Comics Alliance: “Over the past few years Zac Gorman has made a name for himself paying tribute to his favorite video games with his comic Magical Game Time. This October the cartoonist will be spreading that same magic into his first graphic novel, Costume Quest: Invasion of the Candy Snatchers, a companion narrative to Double Fine’s 2010 Costume Quest RPG. While Costume Quest followed a human kid and their friends as they battled candy-stealing monsters called Grubbins to recover their kidnapped sibling from another dimension, Invasion of the Candy Snatchers will flip the script and see what the non-evil Grubbin Klem got up to that Halloween.” What he got up to, it seems, is joining up with some of his fellow young Grubbins to sneak into the human world and try and steal candy — for their own sugar-starved world. Costume Quest: Invasion of the Candy Snatchers is out now in trade paperback from Oni Press.

image c. 2018 Oni Press

So a bit of Fear and Loathing mixed with Neil Gaimen? No clue when this comes out but when it does and it's available I'll post it here.
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Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Project Anthro, by Dallin Newell
Raleigh, NC, Lulu Press, October 2017, hardcover $28.80 (264 pages), trade paperback $12.00, Kindle $9.00.

I am confused. This book says both that it is printed by Lulu Press and by CreateSpace in North Charleston, SC. It also says “First printing, 2017”, but the Barnes & Noble website shows it with a different cover (but the same blurb), published by Page Publishing, Inc. and dated December 2016. Newell has a Facebook page devoted to Project Anthro, where it is described as “A Book Series”. Newall says, “Project Anthro 2 is written and ready to go out to publishing,” and that it is a planned quartet.

Whatever. The premise as described in the blurb seems furrier and more exciting than the novel itself. “During the Cold War, a project that was introduced during WWI has been revived, which involves weaponizing and creating anthropomorphic animals to become operatives, known as anthros. Chance Logan is a red fox, standing at five eleven, born in Australia [Newell says on Facebook and in the novel that Logan was born in London and raised in Canberra], and worked for ASIS (Australian Secret Intelligence Service). […]”

Chance learns that a high-placed American CIA executive, John Lance, has gone rogue and is planning to use America’s secret agentry “to completely obliterate the two world superpowers, the USSR and the USA.” Lance is also a human supremacist who believes that all anthros are bioengineered to “do nothing but kill.” Logan recruits “a whole team of anthros” to stop Lance and prove that anthros are more than killers dominated by their animal instincts.

That’s a great premise. Unfortunately, Newell develops it as a substandard Mission Impossible action thriller with funny animals. It’s wacky enough without wondering why funny animals? Chance Logan is introduced in the midst of a firefight with the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. He’s one of only two anthros (the other is a cougar) in a U.S. Army unit caught behind enemy lines. They don’t do anything that human soldiers (like John Rambo) couldn’t do, plus Chance gets his bushy fox tail caught and he has to be freed. Under what conditions is a bushy fox tail an asset in jungle warfare? This also makes the reader wonder if Chance is wearing a complete Army uniform with a tail hole, or (as the cover implies) only a helmet and Army jacket, and nothing below the waist?

Whoa! Here’s the answer. “‘By the way,’ he [a human lieutenant] said, ‘you guys may want to try on some pants when we get back to the States. Just try it.’

‘Nah,’ Kay [the cougar] said as he swiped the air with his paw. ‘We’ve got fur to cover our junk, right Chance?’

‘Yeah, right,’ I agreed with a forced chuckle.

All of us anthros never wore pants; it was a lot more comfortable to go without them. Even Katie [Chance’s girl friend, an Army nurse; also a red fox] wouldn’t wear them.” (p. 15)

But cougars don’t have much fur over their junk. Even an anthro fox standing up might want to wear pants when closely mixing with humans in social situations. It’s especially unlikely that anthros would go nude below the waist and not wear shoes or boots in jungle combat conditions.

“The cool water felt so good as it ran down my body. After sweating for many long hours in the hot and humid weather of Vietnam, nothing felt better than a cold shower. I scrubbed myself with a strong-smelling men’s shampoo that made my nose tingle whenever I smelled it.” (p. 19)

This is a furry red fox taking a cold shower. I may be obsessing too much about this, but to me Newell’s constant switching from calling attention to his anthros having fur and tails and not wearing anything below the waist, then being described as having smooth skin and apparently nobody noticing that they’re pantsless animals, keeps destroying the believability of the situation.

Oh, Chance has a flashing device that he shines in civilians’ eyes to make them not remember him as a fox. I think Newell has watched too much Men in Black, but that might enable anthro foxes with bushy tails and not wearing any pants to go about unnoticed in big, crowded, human metropolises. Maybe?

Whatever. Chance, Katie, Kay, and several regular soldiers are air-rotated back to the USA.

“‘Chance,’ Katie said, breaking the silence between us. ‘I really want to know; do you love me?’

I smiled, put my arm around her, and gave her a kiss on the cheek.” (p. 23)

Are fox muzzles capable of kissing? Licking, maybe. But to bioengineer the foxes to talk normally, the muzzles would have to be eliminated entirely … I get a headache trying to reconcile all the differences.

Whatever. During their plane’s stopover in London, Chance and Katie are warned by a friendly MI6 agent that someone is trying to maneuver the USA and the USSR into declaring nuclear war on each other, and America’s CIA is ready to make Chance its scapegoat. Chance decides to stay in London instead of returning to America (I thought he was Australian), but “they” come after him:

“‘You can’t come in!’ I said, blocking his way. That was when he pulled a pistol on me.

I quickly and vigorously slammed the door on his hand and he dropped it, then I kicked him against the wall. He hit his head on the wall and was knocked unconscious.

I began to walk out when someone with a pistol came out of the room across from me. I grabbed his arm with my left paw as he fired a wild shot, punched him in the gut with my left, and kneed him in the head as he bent own from the impact on his stomach.

Another guy came from behind me. He hit me in the back of the head and kicked […]” (p. 27)

It goes on and on. “[…] He screamed in pain as he fell […] another man came out […] Another came out […] yet another guy was waiting […] Another guy came from behind me […] I began to run down the hall, and a guy with a pistol came out of the next room […]” Even James Bond usually only faced one adversary at a time.

How about this:

“I looked at the [bullet] wound, carefully examining it. ‘It missed the heart,’ I said, ‘you’ll be fine.’” (p. 29)

Presumably getting shot anywhere except through the heart is only a mild flesh wound.

People keep coming out of rooms or down halls or staircases after Chance with pistols and knives for another three pages. All are human secret agents except a one-eyed anthro tiger with a big red star on each shoulder. Guess which country he’s from.

And I’m only up to page 34. Project Anthro (cover uncredited) reads like a James Bond movie scripted by the Three Stooges. Is it worth reading? Hey, the Three Stooges are popular.

If you don’t read Project Anthro, you’ll miss the scene where Chance and his team of anthros hide out in Disneyland disguised as Robin Hood and other animal characters, with their Berettas, Walther PPKs, Kalashnikov AK-47s, Uzis, katana and shuriken out of sight. Chance/Robin, of course, can carry his bow & arrows openly.

“‘Oh, my God,’ the girl said, ‘your costume is so cute!’” (p. 213)

Project Anthro comes to a definite, satisfying conclusion, but Newell says that there are three more volumes coming.

– Fred Patten

• Buy on Page Publishing
• Buy on Barnes and Noble

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

Our Patreon! www.patreon.com/thedraggetshow Telegram Chat: t.me/draggetshow 184 - Furry Royal Rumble - Our Patreon! www.patreon.com/thedraggetshow Tele…

It's CES 2018 and I thought I would share at least 2 furryish products out there. First we have A new Aibo dog with cute oled eyes and also would you also believe Aflac has a robot duck for sick children? https://youtu.be/U62POyi0tOk
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Guest post by KJ Kabza

Back when my schedule allowed, I enjoyed participating in the FWG chats every week. (Which you’ve tried and enjoyed too. Right?) Occasionally, a furry writer would mention that they hoped to someday sell one of their borderline-furry stories to a Regular Science Fiction or Fantasy Market.

Funny thing, that. Because I’ve been writing stories in the wider science fiction and fantasy field for 15 years, and I hope to someday sell one of my borderline-furry stories to a Definitely Furry Market.

Writing for furs versus the larger speculative fiction community can be very different experiences—so different that one switch-hitting author once told me, “You’d think that my furry fans would buy my non-furry work and vice versa, but that’s not the case at all.” When you have stories to tell that could fall in either camp, what’s the best way forward?

I’m sure your opinion gets colored by where you start. I find myself working in general SF and fantasy circles, but then again, I began selling my work well over a decade ago, when I barely even knew what furry was. Besides, when I started, some of my early work sold for one cent a word, which is comparable to what is considered professional rates for writers in the fur community today, 15 years later. And nowadays, when I can sell some pieces for what SFWA defines as professional rates (at least six cents a word), it seems hard to justify sending a borderline-furry story to a furry market that will give me a fraction of that pay.

On the downside, however, it took me many years to build my current network of other writers and editors. In contrast, I suspect that someone who starts off selling fiction in the smaller fur community will likely find it much easier to connect with fellow creators and fans and feel supported at every stage of their career. Sofawolf, one of the most prestigious publishers in the fur community, has a booth at Anthrocon, one of the most prestigious cons in the fandom, that’s staffed by friendly people who are happy to explain their submission process to you. I can’t imagine having the same conversations at a Penguin Random House booth at San Diego Comicon.

The best way forward is also colored by the degree of furriness in what you write. I doubt that Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine would be interested in an erotic love story about a kangaroo male model and a misunderstood muscle tiger, but those borderline-furry stories are definitely another matter. In 2013, I sold my story “The Color of Sand,” which features a single mother and a forgotten human civilization—but also talking sandcats and outright furry TF—to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Never say never.

If your motive is to write strictly for fun and not for profit at all, the considerations get even blurrier. I’ve written and posted fan fiction under other names, both on Fur Affinity (as a fur) and on Fanfiction.net (as a hopeless human weeb). Both experiences have been very positive, with far more feedback given to me than I’ve ever gotten from a general SF or fantasy piece published in any professional venue.

This month, my first print collection of short fiction, The Ramshead Algorithm and Other Stories, releases on January 16. It comes from the world of Regular Science Fiction and Fantasy, but you’ll find several of those borderline-furry stories within. A young man in a damaged family learns of his non-human heritage. A securities lawyer has a double identity as a cat-like being that can fly. And a race of talking sandcats reveals themselves to be powerful magicians to a mother in need.

I suspect that Ramshead will be interpreted and accepted as a not-furry book among the not-furry crowd, the same way some of its component stories have been accepted. However, my next project, a novel I’m going to finish drafting after Ramshead launches, can’t be interpreted that way. That project is unambiguously furry, to the point where I’ve had to explain it to general SF fans as, “Redwall, but with pre-literate, non-Western cultures.” I’ve told so many other stories in the borderline-furry category, I want to see what it’s like to take the plunge.

I’m not sure about Penguin Random House, but maybe Sofawolf would like it.

KJ Kabza has sold over 70 stories to venues such as F&SF, Nature, Strange Horizons, and more. His debut print collection, The Ramshead Algorithm and Other Stories, is available for pre-order now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Indiebound.

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Jack Wolfgang. T.1, l’Entrée du Loup, by Stephen Desberg (story) and Henri Reculé.
Brussels, Les Éditions du Lombard, June 2017, hardcover €13,99 (62 [+ 2] pages), Kindle €9,99.

Thanks, as always with French bandes dessinées, to Lex Nakashima for loaning this to me to review.

The Jack Wolfgang series looks like it’s designed for the Blacksad market. The main differences are that John Blacksad is a private investigator, and his cases are crime noir with excellently drawn anthropomorphic animals. Jack Wolfgang is a C.I.A. secret agent, and his adventures are, well, too light and too exaggerated for the James Bond market. Say they’re Kingsman clones, with a mixture of funny animal and human secret agents saving the world from megalomaniac funny animal and human villains.

The introduction states that the four Brementown Musicians in the late Middle Ages were the first animals to be recognized as having human intelligence. “They were the first animals to receive a charter from the local authorities guaranteeing their autonomy and freedom among humans.” (my translation)

 

Jump to the 21st century. Humans and animals are social equals. Well, not quite. The carnivores still have to eat meat, and this creates problems with the herbivores, who can eat only a vegetarian diet. The humans are omnivores, and some of them feel that this makes them superior to the animals.

But in the 20th century, true equality was established with the development of Qwat, a food based on tofu that both the carnivores and herbivores, and humans could eat. Finally, all animals and humans could live as equals.

Jack Wolfgang is a young C.I.A. agent with the cover identity of a famous food critic for the New York Times. Enter the Wolf begins when he is assigned to infiltrate a large, exclusive party at the estate of mega-rich Wilbur Carnavon. He’ll be told his real mission by his recruiter & trainer, Rocky Dakota (puma), once he’s past Carnavon’s armed bodyguards and inside. It’s to get Carnavon’s guest list of those invited – but a mysterious panther-woman is also after the list.

You can count on lots of laser booby traps, gunshots, explosions, and an eagle with poison-dipped talons. Rocky Dakota is killed, and whatever is going on is so top-secret that the C.I.A. fires all its animal agents and reassigns their cases to humans only. But Jack feels that he has to avenge Rocky, so he continues alone in secrecy. The adventure takes him from New York to Paris to Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India, with car chases, muggings, gunshots, furbreath escapes, and a deadly cooking contest.

To give away a major spoiler, the “Mister X” has gained control of the world’s manufacture of Qwat by turning it into the popular and tasty Super Mega Tofu. He plots to spike it with a deadly addictive drug, so everyone has to eat it – on his terms — or die. The villains Jack faces on a daily basis are Podny, a Russian-French rooster turncoat, a giant one-eyed polar bear called just the Bear, and Sissy and Dave, two laughing-hyena assassins.

If you like Kingsman-type only-the-secret-agents-can-save-the-world adventures, with the main good- and bad guys being anthro animals, you’ll like Jack Wolfgang. The French is simple. Jack is wearing shoes on the cover, but is bare-pawed inside. The adventure comes to a definite conclusion, but the last page promises that “Jack Wolfgang reviendra dans “Le Nobel du Pigeon”. There are several trailers for Enter the Wolf on YouTube.

– Fred Patten

• Buy on Amazon
• Preview Jack Wolfgang
• Buy on Le Lombard

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

Wow, what have we been missing? Turns out there’s an internet sensation named Johnny Wu (aka Sgt Bananas) who has made quite a name for himself with photography and stop-motion animation, featuring his impressive toy and action figure collection put together in some truly imaginative comic book style adventures. Now Mr. Wu has hooked up with comic book publisher Dynamite to bring us Ten Frames Per Second: An Articulated Adventure, a new full-color hardcover book highlighting some of Sgt Bananas’ best Instagram work. Outright Geekery has an article about it as well.

image c. 2018 Dynamite

I believe they will be pulling this short but I thought I would share it while I can. "In Tonko House’s first short-form series, written and directed by Erick Oh, we see how Pig remembers becoming the Dam Keeper. Seen through Pig’s youthful perspective, the visuals are abstract and surreal, but the source of his pain and his joy are clear. Produced in both Berkeley and Tokyo by a variety of international and domestic artists, the series showcases Tonko House’s global community through a story featuring universal themes, such as family, grief, responsibility, and growing up. The series is made up of over 31,000 frames, all individually hand drawn and painted."
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Welcome to the first FWG Awareness Week! This is a bi-monthly event, run by the moderators in the FWG Slack group (Searska GreyRaven, ritter_reiter, and George Squares) as a way to bring focus to minority culture and writers in furry literature. Through features such as interviews, reading lists, and author AMAs, we hope to provide ample material and a safe, respectful setting for inter-cultural dialogue within our diverse community.

The highlight for January 2018 is Southeast and East Asia, as well as their respective diaspora/immigrant cultures. To launch Awareness Week, we’re happy to present this spotlight interview with Allison Thai! A Vietnamese-American husky with the heart of a dragon, when Allison is not studying for medical school or delighting in all things science, she likes to bury her nose in a good book, scribble in a sketch pad, learn her target languages, swim laps, or spend 99% of her writing time pressing paws to her head trying to think of words to put down. Her anthro stories can be found in Symbol of A Nation, ROAR 8, Arcana – Tarot, and Infurno: The Nine Circles of Hell. She has dug out a den for herself on Twitter as @ThaiSibir.

Author disclaimer: While I am happy and honored to be involved in the awareness project through this interview, I am just one voice. I am just one face on a sociological polyhedron. I don’t claim to represent each and every opinion within my demographic. What it means to be me may not be so for someone else, simply because they are not me.

Tell us briefly about yourself as an author. How long have you been writing? What made you want to start and eventually pursue writing seriously?

I have been writing for as long as I can remember. I remember my first complete work, in third grade, was a comic shamelessly ripping off Treasure Island and Treasure Planet (a movie I still love dearly), only with bugs. I had called it “Treasure Grasslands.” It wasn’t good at all, of course. The doodles were bad. The handwriting was even worse. In middle school I ventured into fanfiction, and enjoyed entertaining readers without pay for the next 10 years. This provided an important foundation and built up my confidence to take the craft and my ambitions to the next level; in 2016 I began to write and get paid for original fiction.

How did you encounter the furry fandom, and what spurred you to contribute to it?

I grew up on Warriors and Redwall books. When I was young I had a hard time making friends and getting along with others, so I turned to books, tales of feral cat clans and brave mice swinging swords. I also grew up on Pokemon and Digimon. These worlds entranced and swept me away beyond the point of return, so my love for talking animals and monsters continues to be a huge influence in my work. Twitter provided me a proper encounter with the term “furry,” as well as the community who pours their love, creativity, and effort into this genre. I wanted to be a part of that community.

According to the creation myth, Vietnamese people are descended from a dragon lord and a fairy queen, and call themselves “children of the dragon.” That makes you/your fursona a dragon, right?

Indeed. I may have the (online) face of a husky, but I am a dragon by blood and heart!

Who are your favorite authors in general? How about your favorite furry authors?

In general, my favorites are C.S Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Ken Liu, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Khaled Hosseini, Octavia Butler, George R. R. Martin, Ursula Le Guin, Elizabeth Bear, and Anthony Marra. Within the furry genre (or, at least, what I interpret to be furry), I would say Brian Jacques, Erin Hunter, Richard Adams, David Clement-Davies, and have recently enjoyed reading stories by Ursula Vernon/T. Kingfisher and Mary Lowd.

Your fiction covers many settings and genres, from fantasy to sci-fi to historical fiction, but you often return to Eastern locations in your stories: Russia, Mongolia, China, and of course Vietnam. Have you encountered any challenges in conveying these cultures to an audience which is largely better-versed in Western themes?

Being a diasporic Asian puts me in somewhat of a dilemma. I feel like I am both in and out of the culture I was born into and raised on. There’s always that nagging doubt telling me that being diasporic Asian means I’m not “Asian enough,” or a “real Asian.” Some Asians in Asia, believe it or not, voice that accusation. These mental, internal struggles may be invisible to the reader, perhaps not relatable to someone who’s not an immigrant or a child of one, but they are very real to me.

Regarding Russian and Mongolian history and culture, I’ve been fascinated with them partly because they’re so different from my own. I face the challenge of pulling off a compelling and believable story with this setting, and worry if I did it right. That’s why hearing good feedback from Slavic and Central Asian acquaintances, telling me that they can believe and relate to what the characters are doing, is very satisfying.

As a genre with strong foundations in sci-fi and fantasy (SF/F), furry fiction is well-equipped to explore situations and cultures beyond the norm. Like SF/F, furry fiction can also deal well with stories about diversity and cultural, as well as personal, identity. What has your experience been like writing for a furry audience?

Animals have served very important roles not only as sustenance for our physical and emotional health, but as sustenance for our tales throughout history. Giving animals human-like qualities, making them talk, think, and feel as we do, and making them the stars of their own stories, gives me the opportunity to immerse them in the history and culture that had defined us humans. In these stories, they’re more than beasts of burden or for slaughter. They are the warriors, the heroes, the villains, masters of their fate. I like that the furry audience can accept this without reservation or judgment, and I write freely and have fun knowing that.

You’ve written several historical fiction stories in a furry universe. How was it, integrating historical/cultural themes with anthropomorphic themes? Were there drastic similarities or differences?

When you write about anthropomorphic animals, you take species identity into account. This is what I love most about furry fiction. I love determining what species my characters will be during the outline stage. I love making those traits play a part in their stories, how they perceive events and the world around them. You take body language to a whole new level when you need to consider how the paws, claws, fangs, tails, and fur reflect how the characters think and feel—an editor once offered me to revise and resubmit my piece with this advice in mind, so I can’t stress the importance of the worldbuilding enough. If you don’t put this into effect, make it matter, then you might as well write a story about humans instead. I find this thought process remarkably similar to constructing cultural identity that strongly and plausibly weaves into a story. A furry story works for me when the plot and worldbuilding answers the question “why animals, and not humans?” In the same way, a non-furry story works when it answers “why this voice, and not someone else’s?”

You describe yourself as an “aspiring polyglot,” and you’ve learned Russian, Mandarin Chinese, and Spanish. How has learning these languages enriched your understanding of these cultures and their literature/folklore? How does it influence the stories that you tell?

I’ve always had an interest and passion in learning foreign languages. I took on Spanish because it would be very useful, Russian simply because I love the sound of it, and learned them together when I found many striking similarities between the two. Because of my foundation in Vietnamese, spoken Mandarin was more intuitive to me and, contrary to the opinion of many Westerners, somewhat easy to pick up. The challenge is making sure I don’t mix up the pitches and words of these very similar languages! I say “aspiring” because I still have some ways to go. Of the three I’m learning, Russian is the most challenging. If I ever get to master these three, maybe I’ll pick up French or Korean.

Living in a bustling, ethnically diverse city, and with my goal to be a physician, I want to use my language proficiency to break down barriers and provide better, efficient care for patients who can’t speak English. Interpreters can be used, yes, but translating can be cumbersome, and I’ve seen that patients tend to trust and comply more readily with a provider who can speak their language. In terms of literature and storytelling: though I can read Spanish, Cyrillic and pinyin (Romanized Chinese), I have not gotten to the point of understanding original classic texts, though I very much look forward to the day I can. I already know from reading in Vietnamese that you can pick up beautiful prose, rhythm, and nuances that would be lost in English translation.

I don’t factor in languages every time I write a story, though I can think of one I did. I’m working on a short sci-fi that revolves around the way Russians use grammatical rules and different words to talk about animate/living and inanimate/nonliving nouns. The protagonist is a girl who hears voices from her hands and feet, and she talks to them as if they’re animate, but the Russian language dictates that they are inanimate. She (correctly, yet unknowingly) talks to the aliens in her hands and feet as if addressing people, not just body parts.

You often draw on your cultural heritage when writing stories. How has your personal experience as a minority in the US influenced your fiction?

Culture and setting is a core element in my work, whether I’m drawing from my own identity or not. Characters are a product of the people and environment that surround and shape them. I try to keep this in mind as I take them on a journey. Identity doesn’t exist in a vacuum. I don’t just make a fleeting mention of a character’s background and never mention it again, or never have it contribute in some way to the story. That’s not how people in real life think, especially POC. Even as I live in a country no longer bound by laws of segregation, I am constantly aware that I am a POC, for better or worse.

You must have read stories which inaccurately portray Vietnamese culture, or Southeast Asian/East Asian culture in general. Are there any points you’d like to draw attention to for fellow writers to be more aware when portraying these cultures?

I don’t think the problem is so much inaccurate portrayal, but rather not enough portrayal. I just don’t see enough southeast Asian stories as I’d like, and certainly have not seen enough growing up. I feel that southeast Asian culture is often shunted to the side, overshadowed and overlooked compared to the the more prevalent and popular east Asian narrative, cultures and settings, or the white lens. With Vietnam in particular, too often I’ve seen it reduced to some exotic, hostile, degenerate backdrop for Vietnam War stories. I keep seeing in these stories, told from the American perspective, how strange and ugly Vietnam is and how they’re aching to finally get home after blasting those Vietcong scum to kingdom come. Honestly, reading about any departure from this would be welcoming.

I can’t speak for the huge spectrum of Asian culture, but I can speak with more confidence regarding Vietnamese culture: people are constantly relating to themselves and addressing others according to age. Perhaps you know about Japanese honorifics. Vietnamese’s complex pronoun system is somewhat like that. In Vietnamese, there’s no single word for “I” or “you.” The use varies based on who you’re talking to, if they’re older or younger than you or your parents. As my parents get older it’s getting harder to tell which adults are their senior, and wrongly addressing them by accident have made for several funny bouts of embarrassment. It’s like the military, where you almost always end your sentences in some form of address to be proper and respectful. Definitely take age dynamics and respect for that hierarchy into account.

Also, if you want to try your hand at diasporic culture: consider disparities in language and attitude between the overseas and mainland communities. Language and attitudes change over time, right? Sometimes they’re preserved. My mom told me that the Vietnamese-American community, many of them refugees who fled Vietnam in the 70s-80s, continue to speak Vietnamese used before the fall of Saigon. They pass that way of speaking to their children, and so on. Meanwhile in the mainland, standardized Vietnamese continues to change and evolve, with some words falling out of fashion and others coming into popular use. Northern dialect prevails in the mainland, while the southern dialect stubbornly persists among the refugees. We on the other side of the world aren’t really “keeping up with the times.” Geographic distance maintained this difference. If my family were to visit Vietnam now, we likely wouldn’t understand half of what the mainlanders are saying.

Which of your works are you proudest of?

As of this interview I’m quite proud of writing “Malebolge,” a short story about a female Vietnamese-American pathologist who can hear microorganisms talk. They speak on behalf of Death, who takes advantage of the protagonist’s depression and grief for her dead brother and tries seducing her to its side permanently via suicide. It’s probably my weirdest, experimental, and most personal story to date, combining microbiology, Dante’s Inferno, and American Pie. Submitting this story got me accepted into Viable Paradise, a science fiction + fantasy writing workshop akin to Clarion and Odyssey with the rigorous selection process, curriculum, and how it fosters a sense of community among writers.

“Solongo,” a story about a Mongolian wolf, also has a special place in my heart. It won first place for fiction in my university’s writing contest. Winners presented their entries at the English Honors Society induction ceremony, so I got to read my story loud. Then it went on to get published in Wolf Warriors III.

Any parting words of advice for other aspiring writers, especially minority writers, in the fandom?

If I may borrow the invaluable insight Ken Liu had shared with me: don’t get confused between goals and milestones. A goal might be, among endless possibilities: “x words a day,” “complete NaNoWriMo,” or “at least one short story per month.” A milestone could be winning an award, or getting accepted and published in your dream venue, or signing up with your dream agent. If the milestone happens, great! But that’s not where you should focus your energy and sights on. Milestones are not within your control. Awards often have voting committees. Editors and agents are, well, not you, the author. Work on your goals: something you can reasonably achieve within your power. It doesn’t have to be big. And don’t make it too ambitious. You’ll set yourself up for disappointment that way.

For the marginalized and the minorities: Be true to yourself, believe in yourself, and have the confidence that you know yourself best. Listen carefully, appreciate, and learn from valid thoughtful criticism regarding craft, but don’t let others police the imprint of your identity in your work. Don’t let others say that your characters and setting “aren’t x enough,” or “if you did this and this, that will satisfy my idea of your background” or “it’s too y for the x audience to relate to.” Furthermore, you will get criticism even from those who share your background. That can hurt. But be ready for that, and keep in mind that there’s no one-size-fits-all voice for a community defined by ethnicity, faith, clinical condition, gender, or sexual orientation. You can never please everybody. Might as well stay true to your vision and how you want to make your voice heard.

 

Discuss this article on the Guild forums, or learn more about Allison on her website.

This article went out in January 2017 titled “Yiffing for Dollars”. Here’s a re-edited update a year later, to coincide with a bump in notice and a concerning situation. 

Fek announces becoming a full-time, well-paid pro yiff artist.

Furries have built their own small industry on creativity worth millions. Their membership is rising and it’s likely to see the “furry economy” grow with it. You can see what’s up by watching the small slice who are devoted enough to make a living in the fandom – Profans.

Adult art can have an edge in dollars because it has more of a niche quality. Clean art is perfectly valid, but perhaps the mainstream is where it succeeds most – making an apples/oranges comparison. This look at indie art business will focus on the naughty stuff, but doesn’t exclude other kinds, and it applies outside of fandom too.

Check the list of top creators on Patreon and play Find The Furries!  

When first looked at in January 2017, fandom member Fek was earning $24,000 per month for making furry porn games. (Quote: “Ditch the dayjob and live the dream.”)  He had the stat of #2 best-paid per-patron on all of Patreon.  (See his art on Furaffinity.) Others were in or near the furry ballpark (dogpark?) Most of the NSFW entries in the top 50 had furry content. #12 was the Trials in Tainted Space NSFW game, earning $27,000 per month. #30 was the kinda-anthropomorphic-NSFW artist Monstergirlisland, earning $20,000 monthly.

I haven’t checked these numbers since early 2017, and I think the list changed from “amount of money” to “number of patrons” which knocks furries down the list, but… Artists are getting rich from this, no joke.

Older news:

• Cracked – We Draw Furry Porn: 6 Things We’ve Learned On The Job. “Every artist agreed it would have been impossible to make a living doing this as recently as 10 years ago. But today they constantly have multiple projects going and portfolios with hundreds of completed works, and they find themselves in ever-increasing demand.”

• NYMag: The Secret Furry Patrons Keeping Indie Artists Afloat. “When it comes to commissioning original works of art, nobody can match the furries.”

• Vice: How Cryptocurrencies Like Bitcoin Could Save the Indie Porn Industry (featuring furry artists.)

• Vice: Offbeatr, the Kickstarter for Porn, Is a Furry Playground. (Old news about a defunct site.) More at Flayrah: Furry porn sweeps Offbeatr; their CEO, project leads explain. That business didn’t succeed, but the trend continues.

Since late 2017, Kotaku has given strong attention to adult art on Patreon:

• There’s A Website Dedicated To Stealing Furry Porn From Patreon Artists.
• Sex Game Cancelled After Taking In Five Figures A Month On Patreon.
• Patreon Starts Enforcing Stricter Rules On Sex Games.

These show growth being overshadowed by trouble. They aren’t just about furries, but notice – the first one is about a theft site that targeted furry porn first, then spread to any and everyone. Theft, instability, and creator-hostile regulations are looming. It even involves politics.

A tiny slice of Profans having positive success is also vastly outweighed by those who do it for less than a living – but more than a hobby. Competing as business with lower-expense hobbyists makes things complicated. Fandom is full of young, struggling artists who are figuring out how to use their talents, and deserve all the support they can get. Making money from art has never been easy, and this makes me think about the current state of things.

There’s a lot to say about being an artist in troubled times.

The planet is in trouble and every species has a complaint, so let a dog bark about politics for a minute.  If I had a crystal ball to see into a future with Trump in power, I bet it would show nothing but murk with occasional mushroom clouds. Expect isolationism, extreme nativism, and turmoil.  He gives lip service to bringing back jobs, but has no plan beyond drunkenly slashing and burning everything – corporate regulations, facts, and the social contract. Don’t be surprised when it simply helps rich people hoard money and leaves burger-flipper work and a Limbo-game race to the bottom for wages for everyone else. What I’m saying is, Millenials are facing poverty and instability beyond what their parents faced.

This space needed a graphic so have Old Economy Steve.

It’s scary, but even downsides contain opportunity. Not like in the old economy before they had robots doing all the jobs, but if nobody’s hiring for jobs worth doing – what’s better than making your own career?  Look at the indie level.

This business article caught my eye: “Can This Startup Reinvent How Doggie Portraits Are Sold?” Forbes explains that pet industry spending hit a record $60.28 billion in 2015, and MyPoochFace.com got a half million. It’s “the first venture launched by Niche Digital Brands”, who target “massive markets with specialized and differentiated products”, according to the owner: “‘Basically, if Amazon sells it, or has the ability to sell it, we are not interested.'” The part that stood out is “specialized and differentiated” and “Amazon can’t sell it”. Robots and Chinese manufacturing aren’t such a risk for that.

Doggie portraits? Isn’t that familiar to furry commission artists who make unique custom art for every client?  They do all kinds from Disney to dirty, and you can’t lump everything they do together, but there already is a Disney. What people don’t have is a stable business for adult media companies. (Even the weird kind is having trouble, like Kink.com closing shop.) The centralized production studio concept is going away, in general.

That’s why furries are poised for a little opportunity on the naughtier side. A modern “go west, young man” is “go yiffy, young furry.” Any person can get naked and it’s not very special when people do it – but who does “specialized and differentiated” better than fantasy artists?

Appreciate furry porn because it’s hot and cute and fun, and you can commission your own to match your desire – but also because it’s so independent. You can complain like hell about being broke and having no health care, but it may even be one of the few places to still find the American Dream.

Why this matters:

Does furry erotica even fight modern entropy? (Slate: How Can Literature Resist Islamophobia? One Writer Answers: Gay Muslim Furry Romance.) My feeling is a subtle yes – in ways like expressing queerness that lets individuals gain confidence to break barriers – and in being countercultural against stifling values that pit people against each other. In times when fear of strangers is fired up to the point of war, if you can say “hugs are the furry handshake” – hugging a stranger is a statement.

Free love and expression may not be overt “politics,” but it matters. It especially matters to people who make a living from this. We can find a small vision of a kinder, happier way to treat each other, in the fantasy and international conspiracy of fandom.

With risks on the rise, how can furries look out for themselves?

Furry artists should think of a guild or trade compact for group interest. Forget arguing "that's the internet", this is basically about thoughtless people using others. One solution - pooling info about who runs this site for group response. Send tips. https://t.co/QlzHRQTLkY

— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) January 6, 2018

I had hoped Patreon would do exactly this but so far their silence has been deafening...

— Canada's #1 Counterfeit Pronoun Trafficker (@RewhanPottinger) January 6, 2018

The article is missing a key detail, IMO. The owner of yiff[.]party doxxes artists who file DMCA takedown requests as retaliation. It's not just about stealing art. It's about a systematic attack to ruin the lives of mostly marginalized artists. https://t.co/WudF8LuPKA

— Izzy Galvez (@iglvzx) January 6, 2018

It's worse. A wide variety of artists/content creators is affected. Bot accounts scrape paywalled content and post it to that site. Since it's run by 8chan, aka guys who thought 4chan wasn't Nazi friendly enough, they dox creators who speak up and incite harassment.

— Fence for counterfeit pronouns (@gryphoneer) January 6, 2018

I honestly can't believe in that article about yiff party it quotes the creator saying he doesn't know if it hurts the artists
That was the whole damn point

— Corgi Queen Liz (@Lizombi) January 6, 2018

I was actually around when that site was first discussed. It's original purpose was "a way to give middle finger to all the artists who hide all of their content behind paywall", essentially meaning they were going only after artists who made their stuff Patreon exclusive...

— Cr0nicallyInsane (@AngryCr0Bar) January 6, 2018

From a source.

See, politics. The theft targeting small, indie artists is being done with reprisal against remedies to attack them as a class. That’s one reason for them to consider organizing for their interest. They may be their own bosses, but still deal with various kinds of exploitation.

It gets more feasible with growing amounts of money involved. There’s an active Furry Writers Guild, loosely modeled after the Science Fiction Writers Association (which had a furry V.P.!) The SFWA exists to represent creators to (or vs.) publishers, as well as connect members for mutual support. Indie furry artists don’t deal with bosses or formal industry relations, but in a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps situation, there’s still the issue of what the downward forces are and how organization helps; stuff like dealing with abuse or figuring out standards among those competing with a semi-hobby level. Let’s not get into differing costs of living for international members.  Basically, Furry art is an incredible bargain for the skill involved – enjoy it, but don’t take it for granted. (My related article: Tip Your Makers! Why to pay more for art to improve commissioning and spread the love.)

I’ll leave these thoughts as a start for new topics to come. If you have tips on the theft situation, please get in touch.

UPDATE

Ever hear complaints about FurAffinity, but network effect keeps artists from leaving, despite alternative sites? There's a solution I've never heard anyone say - An independent artist guild (or trade compact) coordinating work stoppage or migration.https://t.co/PHgRDApiYh

— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) January 10, 2018

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

In a nutshell, is my brother right about me liking something wrong?

From 2012 to 2014, I dabbled in the Brony scene after being influenced to see the first few seasons of "Friendship is Magic". Since then, I've regretted it a little based on the fact that it's still at its core a toy franchise for little girls, and forming a fandom really still isn't socially acceptable for a mix of both valid concerns and unfounded fears. When I spent the holidays with my younger brother, and I just happened to joke ironically, in a clearly unfavorable light, about the fandom, he upstaged me with the question "Why do you talk about it so much?" Then he went on with "I don't know why anyone older than 12 would like that show. I think it's a case of psychological infantilism," and "Twenty years from now, they'll wonder what they were doing with their lives". I almost had a heart attack because I could have been among the objects of his scorn. If I watched MLP: FiM again and reentered the fandom, the fujoshis (look it up), Rule 34 artists, bad costuming, those Bronies who use feminism/civil rights/the LGBT cause as analogies to their fandom, and the obsessive crossing over of things that have nothing to do with Hasbro's property, WOULD NOT help my case. And my uncles and grandmother would have a field day putting down someone interested in something simultaneously child-oriented and effeminate. Worse, I still feel a soft spot for, plus attraction to, the main characters whenever I find images of them. My best defense argument for my personal enjoyment of it would be “I also like my share of mindless fun, just like millions of other people.”

Addendum: It's just stupid entertainment, but I’d have to pursue it secretively to save my hide socially.

With Regards,
 
Joaquin the Boar (age 25)
 
* * *
 
Dear Joaquin,
 
When it comes to questions such as yours, I always fall back on the Wiccan Rede: “An it harm none, do what ye will.” (If you aren’t hurting anyone, do whatever you like.) There is nothing inherently wrong in your liking My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Lots of young men do.  Who are you harming by doing so? The only people who are doing any harming around you are your brother and, possibly, other family members by making you feel bad about liking something that is just a television show.
 
Why do people do such things? Because they allow themselves to be told what to do and what to believe by society. Thus, they are told that MLP is not “manly” and, therefore, you, as a male, shouldn’t like it. When you do like such things, it threatens their comfortable worldview of how people should behave, which then inspires fear and anxiety, which then leads to anger and hate. That is, sadly, how most human minds work.
 
What is cool about Furries and Bronies is that they dare to enjoy something (gasp!) that isn’t a social norm. That is a very brave thing to do.  But whenever people like you or me do that, the first thing that often (not always) happens is hate, and the second thing that happens is ostracism or dire predictions that the world will come to an end if we allow such things to continue. A great example of this is gay marriage in America. Conservatives and religious rightists issued Hellfire and brimstone warnings that if gay people were allowed to marry it would, literally, be the end of America and possibly the world. Well, we’re still waiting and nothing bad has happened.
 
Don’t allow yourself to be manipulated by small minds. People like your brother are the ones that hold society back, keep it from progressing.
 
It’s a sorry state of affairs that you feel like you have to hide being a Brony, but I understand. You still have to function in society and within your family, so if you feel that is something you must do, then okay.
 
But do not feel like you are doing something wrong or immoral. You aren’t. It is the people who are criticizing you who are the damaged ones. You’re fine.
 
Hugs,
Papabear

Whoops! A little present from the holidays we missed: Boom! Studios and Nickelodeon have announced the first Rocko’s Modern Life full-color comic book series. It’s “…a new ongoing comic book series based on the popular animated show about everyone’s favorite wallaby! Writer Ryan Ferrier (Regular Show, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers) and artist Ian McGinty (Adventure Time, Bravest Warriors) team to launch the first comic book in the series… Each issue will also feature bonus short stories by different illustrators, including Tony Millionaire (Sock Monkey), KC Green (Invader Zim), and David DeGrand (SpongeBob Comics). Rocko, Spunky, Heffer, Filburt, the Bigheads, and the entire cast of O-Town are back, but all is not well. The town is facing a job shortage and Rocko is hit hard. With unemployment and potential homelessness on the horizon, Rocko’s problems are just beginning. But with help from his best friends Heffer and Filbert and his faithful dog Spunky, Rocko is (mostly) ready to take on the world (maybe).” The first issue is already on the shelves.

image c. 2018 Boom! Studios

Quite a packed episode! We kick off with Fox Amoore & Pepper Coyote joining us for a fun interview about their new BLFC Musical album. Then we run through a massive link roundup, read about “normal iguana activities” and churn through plenty of news.

Download MP3

Watch Video Interview:

Two wonderful collaborative music artists Fox Amoore & Pepper Coyote joined us to talk about their latest upcoming album “BLFC: The Musical!” which was written for Biggest Little Fur Con’s 2017 con theme and will premiere at the convention. We played some preview unmastered concept tracks of the performance & chatted for a good hour.

Fox Amoore:

• Twitter: @FoxAmoore
• FA: foxamoore
• Website: www.foxamoore.com

Pepper Coyote:

• Twitter: @peppercoyote
• FA: peppercoyote
• Website: lookleft.us

Biggest Little Fur Con:

• Website: goblfc.org
• Twitter: @BiggestLittleFC

Link Roundup:

• SuperDelux tweet about Hoof Shoes
• How Dogs Move
• Raffle for wearable Dragon Scales
• Cool “ref sheet” website
• FurSquared taunts user who pre-registered with the name “Con Chair”
• Further Confusion announces free anonymous HIV testing
• Rin’s Dance Drills Video
• KnotCast podcast renames to “Southpaws”
• Kurzgesagt retweets furries with 12,018 calendar
• Majira’s laundry pods video
• Flayrah’s “Are furries trying to poison your kids with laundry pods”
• CollegeHumor’s laundry pod video
• Denny’s laundry pod tweet
• ArcticSkyWolf & Fractal’s laundry pod video
• Kotaku post about a website that steals furry art off patreon
• Darkpaw & Nikolai are getting married
• New US Customs guidelines around personal electronic devices
• ArcticSkyWolf’s MidWest FurFest 2017 Con Video
• Revit’s “Supercut” video

News:

• Florida Confused After Frozen Iguanas Start Raining From Trees, Only To Come Back To Life
• Canadian Zoo Brings Its Penguins Indoors Because It’s Too Cold Out Even For Them Right Now
• Snoop Dogg Jack in the Box
• Dog Breathing Underwater
• There’s A Website Dedicated To Stealing Furry Porn From Patreon Artists

FC-289 Fail Until It Stops Hurting - Quite a packed episode! We kick off with Fox Amoore & Pepper Coyote joining us for a fun interview about their new BLFC Musical album. Then we run through a massive link roundup, read about "normal iguana activities" and churn through plenty of news.