Brian Lee Cook’s Allasso Furry book series/magazine was started in 2011, announcing two volumes per year. (He and I had argued over whether this meant semi-yearly or bi-yearly. He says bi-yearly and I say semi-yearly.) Vol. 1 was published in November 2011 as a 116-page trade paperback with 14 stories and poems [review], and vol. 2 in May 2012 as a 134-page trade paperback with 11 stories and poems [review]. Frequent contributors include Mary E. Lowd, Renee Carter Hall, and Tristan Black Wolf.

Vol. 3 was promised for December 2012, but never appeared, and e-mails to Cook were not answered. It was assumed that this was another “little magazine” that had ceased publication almost as soon as it had started. But vol. 3 has finally appeared without fanfare, dated by Amazon.com as May 13, 2014, in a 140-page trade paperback edition for $8.00 (Amazon.com’s discounted price is $7.20) with 12 stories and poems, all Furry.

“Hey, wolf moon! Come cast your spell on me!”
- Type O Negative, Wolf Moon (with Zoanthropic Paranoia)

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was the first The Legend of Zelda game to be released with a brand new console (in this case, the Wii, though it was also a GameCube release). It also instantly became the furriest entry in the series, as the newest incarnation of Link had the ability to transform into a wolf with the help of his new sidekick, Midna.

Twilight Princess tells the story of a race of people who live in a twilight realm that is a separate world from the main series setting of Hyrule. They are apparently invading Hyrule, and the land is covered in a magical twilight, which causes Link’s lupine transformation. He eventually meets a mischievous imp named Midna, who offers to help Link, but appears to have ulterior reasons. Freeing Hyrule, and unraveling Midna’s mysterious past and her connection to the titular “Twilight Princess”, is the driving force behind the plot of the game.

Wait. Oh, dear. This is embarrassing. Turns out, I was supposed to be reviewing Shout!Factory’s My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic "Princess Twilight Sparkle" DVD, not The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Uh, moving on …

Just running at first. Nothing before that. No memories of childhood and family. No early struggles. No career. No friends. No opinions. No country, city, neighborhood, no home where I laid my head at day’s end. No idea how I spent those days.

Running. One minute oblivion and the next I’m in a forest, shafts of the dying day falling through the trees and dappling the ground with patterns of light and dark. Quail scurry, small animals freeze as I pass. I have no questions about my place in the scheme of things. The wind is in my face and nothing seems more natural than running. It’s the beginning and the end and everything in between.

But there’s something wrong. I detest exercise. If it didn’t send the wrong message, I’d step from the Rolls and ride a sedan chair across Wall Street to the lobby elevators. The times what they are, my bearers would be a multicultural lot, a rainbow of muscular young men raising me above the mob. So some fragments of memory flash like strobe lights in a vast and dark chamber.

The flicker of feet beneath catches my eye. But they aren’t feet. They are paws. Something soft and wet bangs the side of my face. My tongue. The realization slowly dawns as I run. I’m a dog, a huge dog. (Top Dog, p. 1)

One day, William B. Ingersol sat in an office high above Wall Street conducting corporate takeovers.

The next day, he was a big dog, surviving by instinct alone in a strange new world.

Same difference. (Top Dog, back-cover blurb)

William “Bogey” Ingersol is a notoriously ruthless financier under investigation by the SEC; a corporate raider who has bought companies to gain their assets then closed them, sending hundreds of people out of work. His guiding interest has always been, how can I make the most out of this? So when he becomes a mastiff-sized feral dog in the wild, he is too busy trying to survive at first to spend time worrying about what has happened to him. His human mind combined with canine instincts enables him to come out on top in fights with wolves and other predators.

Top Dog; NYC, Ace Books, September 1996, 0-441-00368-0 trade paperback $12 (330 pgs.)
Dog Eat Dog; NYC, Ace Books, February 1999, 0-441-00597-7 trade paperback $12 (297 pgs.)
A Dog’s Life; Garden City, NY, Science Fiction Book Club, April 1999, SFBC #18131 hardcover $12.98 (490 pgs.)

Isiah reviews Watts Martin's 2013 novella, "Indigo Rain", set in the author's Ranea universe.

Indigo Rain can be purchased at FurPlanet. See also: Review of Indigo Rain by Fred Patten.

Furry art community Fur Affinity has announced restrictions on the use of automated watching scripts, which they termed "watchbots".

While staff had been "addressing botters on a one-on-one basis for several weeks", to the tune of "roughly two dozen" accounts, they faced a growing number of users who were unaware of their position. Some also became concerned upon being watched by "TheNSA".

The trend appears to have been started by Mishka Burr, who claims to have watched over 160,000 users using a script on a Raspberry Pi. Several other accounts running a published watch script inspired by Mishka's work had over 40,000 on their watchlists prior to clearing.