Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week
November 15, 2017

Florida furry dead, police hunt serial killer.

by Patch O'Furr

Anthony, AKA James Firefox, was age 20. As a furry fan, he shared fandom creativity through music.  As a person, media reports say he was autistic, but reaching for independence. Public buses in his neighborhood in Tampa, Florida took him to his job where he was packaging hurricane relief supplies.  A light glance at his online profiles shows that he expressed frustration about social difficulties, but seemed to find a lot of happiness with music, cartoons and furry art.  Sometimes it was edgy but other parts showed self awareness like criticizing memes about the las vegas shooting out of sensitivity for others.

On October 19, he got on an unfamiliar bus line when his usual one was shut down. He ended up in the proverbial wrong place at the wrong time and became an unlucky statistic. He was the third victim of a series of shootings in Tampa’s Seminole Heights neighborhood that appear to be done by a serial killer.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a comment
November 14, 2017

Q&A with Kazul of Kazplay, first place winner for cosplay at Blizzcon.

by Patch O'Furr

Kazul G. Fox on Twitter – on Wikifur – Other social media links

Congrats on the win, Kazul! Who is Hogger, and how did the concept happen?

Hogger is an NPC from the World of Warcraft. He is the first elite mob that human characters encounter in Southern Elwynn Forest. Hogger has the reputation for being particularly dangerous and deadly because new players aren’t expecting him to be so strong. I chose this character because the unique body shape offered a good challenge, it was my goal to make this a very animated, highly mobile costume so that I could put on a good performance. I documented my process using #WantedHogger so people could catch up and see my progress quickly, anyone who stumbled upon one WIP, could quickly get caught up on the story of what was going on. I also have a few youtube videos that go into depth about the whole concept, design and build. I have plenty more footage and more parts to cover, more videos will be coming very soon.

Youtube channel: Kazplay Videos

I started building in April 2017, through some life challenges and an across the state move I was able to finish and attend Blizzcon 2017 and take first place in the costume contest.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a comment
November 7, 2017

Felicia: The Night of the Basquot, by Chas. P. A. Melville – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

Felicia: The Night of the Basquot, by Chas. P. A. Melville. Illustrated by the author.
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, September 2017, trade paperback, $12.00 (257 pages), Kindle $9.99.

“‘So!’ crowed Felicia happily. And then she frowned. ‘So,’’ she repeated, more uncertainly. And then, in puzzlement, ‘So.’ Her ears flicked as she turned to stare at the rising sun. ‘So, what’s a ‘Basquot’ anyway?’” (p. 86)

Felicia cla di Burrows, the vixen renegade sorceress blackballed from the Magic Council, is thirty years old this year. She first appeared as an enigmatic background character when Melville began self-publishing The Champion of Katara comic book, #1 dated August-September 1987. Now she has her first novel.

Spiteful and egocentric, all that was really clear was that Felicia had been horribly mistreated as a child. She began studying sorcery — including forbidden black magic — to gain revenge against those who had destroyed her family. But her heart was not really in being evil, and she kept using her magic to help others while postponing her vendetta against her family’s enemies. As a flawed ‘good guy’ and a colorful, charismatic character, Felicia became the most popular of Melville’s anthro animal cast when he moved to Seattle and became active in the furry community there, and he resumed his comic-book stories for Edd Vick’s MU Press in the 1990s. Felicia’s most dramatic and complex adventure was the 184-page graphic novel Felicia: Melari’s Wish (August 1994). Later in the ’90s, she starred in three lighter stand-alone stories as a sorceress-for-hire without the dark background of her vengeance goal, written by Melville and drawn by Bill Schmickle, in MU’s anthology comic-book ZU.

Melville later brought Felicia back in a series of text novelette booklets, with illustrations every few pages, published by CaféPress. These continued the lighter stories in ZU. Felicia became a professional sorceress-for-hire/detective who got involved with finding and dispelling ancient evils, or preventing their escape to wreak havoc in Katara and its neighboring animal kingdoms of Dogonia, Bruinsland (bears), Scentas (skunks), Rodentia (mice), and others. Melville wrote five of these, from Felicia and the Dreaded Book of Un (February 2004) to Felicia and the Border Collie Patrol (January 2008). One, Felicia and the Tailcutter’s Curse (June 2004), won that year’s Ursa Major Award in the Best Short Fiction category. All five were republished as a single book, The Vixen Sorceress (CreateSpace, December 2008).

Melville began producing a Felicia webcomic, Felicia, Sorceress of Katara, in December 2007, but for the last nine years there have been almost no Felicia text adventures. Now Felicia is back in a 257-page novel.

Felicia: The Night of the Basquot is her origin story, and an introduction to her world (which might be described as Tolkien lite, with funny animals). It begins when Felicia emerges in Katara from a mysterious seven-year disappearance, crackling with magic energy and ready to join the all-powerful Magi Council (a.k.a. the Brotherhood of the Candle) as its newest and youngest sorceress. Instead, she is shocked and infuriated to learn that she has been rejected.

Read the rest of this entry »

1 comment
November 6, 2017

Griffin Ranger. Volume 2, The Monster Lands, by Roz Gibson – book review by Fred Patten

by Patch O'Furr

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

Griffin Ranger. Volume 2, The Monster Lands, by Roz Gibson. Illustrated by Cara Mitten, Amy Fennell, and Roz Gibson.
Dallas, TX, FurPlanet Productions, August 2017, trade paperback, $19.95 (557 pages), Kindle $2.99.

Griffin Ranger. Volume 1, Crossline Plains, 369 pages, was published in January 2015.   It ends on a cliffhanger. This book is not so much a sequel as the conclusion of a single 926-page novel. There is a 3-page What Has Gone Before, but you really need to have read Volume 1 and then continue directly with this Volume 2.

To condense what I said about Crossline Plains:

“Griffin Ranger is set in a totally alien alternate universe. The land masses are the same as on our Earth, but the life forms and civilization that have evolved are dominated by birds. (The reader will have fun identifying both geographical features such as the Twin Continents, the Alpha River, the Five Lakes, and the Endless Ocean, and the cities and towns like Defiance, Flatlands City, and Foggy Bay.) Since birds don’t have hands, the main intelligent landbound mammals are the raccoon/lemur-like ‘hanz’ that are their symbiotic partners, and two species of canines: the wild wolfen, and the more domestic herders that have evolved from them. This Earth’s civilization is dominated by the griffins, who are the principal inhabitants of what the reader will recognize as the Americas, Europe, and Asia. But in the last few hundred years the greenies, an aggressive bird species, have erupted from the Emerald Isles (New Zealand) to spread over the world. The griffins of the Northern Continent have allowed the greenies’ partial settlement there under strict supervision, but there are suspicions that the greenies are preparing to take over totally.

“Griffins during their adolescence traditionally go on a continent-wide ‘wander’ of exploration. Harrell, the Griffin Ranger in charge of an area north of Earthquake City, learns that his daughter Aera, who is on a joint wander with four companions, is a week overdue. They went missing near the central Northern Continental agricultural city of Crosstown Plains, populated about equally with griffins and greenies. Harrell is worried, but not enough to abandon his territory to search for the missing youths, until his ex-mate Vaniss, the Ranger in charge of Earthquake City and his organizational superior, assigns him to find them. To aid Harrell, Vaniss gets him two assistants: Kwaperramusc (Kwap), an exotic griffin from the islands north of the Dry Continent (Indonesia and Australia) and the Rangers’ best Investigator, and Tirrsill, an inexperienced but willing young female hanz.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a comment
November 4, 2017

The Fox of Richmond Park, by Kate Dreyer – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

The Fox of Richmond Park, by Kate Dreyer
London, Unbound, July 2017, trade paperback, £11.99 (287 pages), Kindle $1.99.

“If the Animals of Farthing Wood had lived in London and hated each other a little bit more, their story may have been a lot like this one.

‘Get out of the way or get an antler up the arse, yeah? I’m sick of these glorified donkeys.’” (blurb)

Almost all the (British) reviewers have compared this British novel to Colin Dann’s 1979 classic The Animals of Farthing Wood. In it, the woodland community of Farthing Wood is paved over by human developers. The wildlife inhabitants, led by Fox, undertake a dangerous trek to the safety of a distant nature reserve.

The Animals of Farthing Wood is a Young Adult novel. All the animals act together in brotherhood. No one eats anybody.

The Fox of Richmond Park is an Adult novel. Richmond Park is a large wildlife park in London that Wikipedia says is known for its deer. In this talking-animal novel, the deer are the arrogant elite class of the Park’s fauna. When the deer decide they want the lakeside area where several foxes have had their dens for generations, they just tell the foxes to move out. Most accept the order without protest. Vince does not.

“‘Why I should leave,’ Vince snarled as he prowled back and forth in the semi-circle of bare earth that marked the entrance to his den, black ears flat to his head, ‘just because some over-entitled deer want to be near the lake?’

‘It’s not like that. And you can dig a new, bigger den in a day or two. I don/t see what the problem is. Other animals have moved without a fuss.’ Edward tilted his antlers towards the small skulk of foxes several leaps away, who had gathered at the edge of the woodland to wait for the sun to set. ‘And your friends are being very cooperative.’

‘That’s because you’ve told them a load of scat about how great the cemetery is.’ Vince said, the copper fur on his back bristling. He’d had every intention of talking this through civilly with the stag, but his temper had other ideas. Just like last time.” (p. 1)

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a comment
November 3, 2017

Announcing Crimestrikers, a Furry RPG Supplement, plus chat with author Mark Lungo.

by Patch O'Furr


Mark Lungo, thanks for chatting. What’s your game about?

Crimestrikers, an RPG supplement set on the futuristic furry word of Creaturia, will be published in November by Spectrum Games as part of their Cartoon Action Hour series. Soon you can enter a new world of fun and adventure, as a colorful team of heroic agents protects Creaturia from the crime syndicate Outrage and other supervillains. Crimestrikers is created and written by Mark Lungo, with game stats by the Spectrum staff and illustrations by various artists (including Cindy Ramey of Ringtail Cafe Press, Derek Van Deusen, Jon Kemerer, Alishka Jolitz, and Rick Yurko). Stay tuned to http://www.spectrum-games.com/ for further announcements.

Read the rest of this entry »

5 comments
November 2, 2017

Magnificats: Return of the Demon Wind, by Gwyn Dolyn – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

Magnificats: Return of the Demon Wind, by Gwyn Dolyn. Illustrated, map by the author.
La Jolla, CA, Plowshare Media, January 2017, trade paperback, $15.95 ([11 +] 239 [+ 9] pages), Kindle $3.95.

Magnificats is an unusual mixture of Young Adult fantasy and several specialized ethnic vocabularies, beginning with both faerie mythology and commonplace Irishisms; not to mention Big Words that aren’t in most Young Adult novels. 13-year-old redhaired Aoife “Apple” Standish, taunted as Red Apple Stand by her classmates in today’s Dublin, is blown by a sheegee wind to where a Magnificat is watching.

“Meanwhile, just down the street and past the cheese shop where her brother worked, Tak, the lanky old cat who lived under the ancient parish church on Apple’s route to school, sensed something awry in the autumn air. This sheegee was a concern. Sniffing, he tickled the air with his whiskers, then remarked, ‘Hmm. Interesting autumn wind; deliberate, with a stench of malice.’

While Tak was indeed a cat, he was not your everyday, meowing, rodent-chasing, scratching-up-the-furniture sort of cat. He was the leader (to be exact, Littern) of a clandestine order of numinous nine-life cats, known far and wide in creature kingdoms as Magnificats – keepers of sacred knowledge and masters of the winds.” (pgs. 1-2)

Dolyn peppers her novel with obscure words, Irish at first and later Egyptian, then others. “The strange sight of a girl caught in a whirlwind caused car screeching, men’s caubeens flying, and children diving for cover under their mums’ waving skirts.” (p. 4) Wikipedia defines a caubeen as an Irish peasant beret. “Gwyllion” is another Celtic magical word used a lot in just the first chapter – strangely, Wikipedia says it’s from Welsh mythology, not Irish. (It’s all Celtic.) Some other Irishisms in Chapter 1 that aren’t mythology-based are hooligan, shamrock, shenanigan, Finn-McCool, and gobsmacked. But when Apple goes to Egypt with other students on an archaeological dig, the vocabulary switches to Egyptian. “‘Hey App,’ Dan’s voice echoed across the flat sand, ‘we’re going to wrap this up. The winds are getting bad; looks like a haboob coming.’” (p. 29) You’ll learn more about cultures, winds, and mythologies (especially Irish) than you wanted to know:

Read the rest of this entry »

2 comments
October 30, 2017

Cinéma Anthropomorphique – the monthly movie meet for furries of Oslo, Norway

by Patch O'Furr

There’s lots of furry movie outings, and sometimes they even rent a theater for a special occasion, but I’m not aware of many permanent furry movie clubs. Oslo’s Cinéma Anthropomorphique isn’t just well established, it seems to be the premiere fur meet for the capital of Norway. I’m going purely on stereotype about the frozen northlands of Scandinavia, but I imagine that in between good cold weather fursuiting and, I dunno, pulling sleds with husky friends under the Northern Lights, indoor movie time has to be a great pastime there.  I’m also assuming that the fur community there must be close-knit, making this an inviting gateway to fur stuff. Here’s what I learned about it from TF Baxxter – founder and administrator of the Norwegian furry community Norwegian Paws and department head for NordicFuzzcon. Extra questions are further down. (- Patch)

TF Baxxter continues:

Cinéma Anthropomorphique started in December, 2012. We were only four people. Now we average at around 20 – 25 (maybe closer to 20; our record was 27 attendees). The event is held in someone’s home in the Oslo-area (which means it can get really cramped); we have main hosts, but like to vary it when we can.

Read the rest of this entry »

5 comments
October 27, 2017

Furry Nation: The True Story of America’s Most Misunderstood Subculture, by Joe Strike – review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

Furry Nation: The True Story of America’s Most Misunderstood Subculture, by Joe Strike. Illustrated.
Jersey City, NJ, Cleis Press, October 2017. Trade paperback, $17.95 ([ix +] 342 pages), Kindle $10.99.

Yes!

Here it is! What we’ve all been waiting for! The book about furry fandom!

Full disclosure: I’m quoted by name on a back-cover blurb, and cited as “a founding father of furry fandom”.

Is it perfect? No, but it’s probably better than any of us could have written. I gave up writing a book “all about” furry fandom long ago. If I may be permitted a moment of “I told you so”, I told those who asked me to write such a book in the late 1990s that it would take me around ten years to fully research and write such a book. They turned from me to find someone else who could do it right away. They couldn’t.

Joe Strike has been in furry fandom since the 1980s. He has been working on Furry Nation for at least fifteen years. It’s full of both his own knowledge and the interviews that he conducted. He has interviewed not only all the earliest furry fans, and the current leaders of furry fandom – Mark Merlino, Rod O’Riley, Jim Groat, Mitch Marmel, Dr. Sam Conway, Boomer the Dog, leading furry artists like Heather Bruton and Kjartan Arnórsson, fursuit makers like Lance Ikegawa and Denali, academics like Dr. Kathy Gerbasi, and so on – but those outside the furry community who have impacted it. The writers of newspaper and TV news stories about furry fandom? He interviewed them. The executives of Pittsburgh’s tourist bureau? He interviewed them. The directors of TV programs and theatrical animation features that have used furry themes? He interviewed them.

What Furry Nation covers: a definition of furry fandom, the influences that gave rise to it back to prehistoric times, the history of how it started, profiles of the earliest furry fans, how the rise of the Internet affected it, a description of furry fandom in North America today, with emphasis on its conventions and a profile of Anthrocon in depth, its artists and furry art, its fursuits, its public perception, an acknowledgement of its seedier side, and how it has grown from a tiny, unnoticed subgroup to an important influence on popular culture today. The book has 189 footnotes throughout it. There are over two dozen photographs and samples of furry illustrations from the 1980s (early fanzines and Furry Party flyers) to the present.

Read the rest of this entry »

4 comments
October 26, 2017

Civilized Beasts Poetry Anthology, volume II – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

Civilized Beasts, Poetry Anthology, volume II, editor-in-chief Laura Govednik. Foreword by Jonathan Thurston Howl.
Manvil, TX, Weasel Press, August 2017, trade paperback, $8.00 (126 pages).

Well, this is a bargain. The 2015 Edition, volume I, was $8.99 for only 86 pages. This is only $8.00 for 126 pages. Let’s hope this trend continues.

This poetry anthology contains 84 poems of mostly one page or less. Several authors have two or more poems. There are many familiar furry fan names among the poets: Makyo, BanWynn Oakshadow, Thurston Howl, Televassi, Donald Jacob Uitvlugt, Thomas “Faux” Steele, Altivo Otero, Searska GreyRaven, Dwale, and Frances Pauli, among others. It is another charity for the Wildlife Conservation Society. “All proceeds from this anthology go towards the Wildlife Conservation Society.”

The poetry ranges from classic couplets to scintillating stanzas; from imaginative iambic pentameters to sparkling sonnets; from fantasy free verse to honorable haiku. (But do “rules” and “school” really rhyme?) The poems are divided by animal species: “The Carnival of Canids”, “The Festival of Felines”, “The Bolero of the Beasts”, “The Rally of the Rodents (and Rabbits)”, “The Aria of the Avians”, “The Circus of the Scales and Fins”, “The Interlude of the Insects and Arachnids”, and “The Menagerie’s March”.

As with the first volume, these are mostly not poems about anthropomorphized animals. They are more about the beauties of nature, or the probable thoughts of real dogs, cats, horses, deer, and others. In fact, only one is clearly about an anthropomorphic animal: “The Natural Order Disordered” by J. J. Steinfeld.

“What more evidence do you need?”

the well-groomed articulate fox says

to the slovenly tongue-tied hunter

with the newly-purchased rifle.

[excerpt]

Except for featuring a fox rather than a rabbit, it reminds me of an old Warner Bros. cartoon.

Anyhow, whether the animals – that’s any beast that isn’t a vegetable or a mineral – are anthropomorphized or not, for only $8.00, how can you go wrong? The cover by Darkomi is worth $8.00 by itself. And it’s for the Wildlife Conservation Society. Buy copies to send to your relatives and friends (like my sister did).

Full disclosure: I have two poems in this.

– Fred Patten

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.

1 comment