Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Category: Books

February 19, 2024

Author Jess E. Owen: Soaring to crossover success in fantasy and mainstream YA fiction

by Patch O'Furr

Welcome to Jess E. Owen, author of noblebright fantasy, and optimistic contemporary Young Adult writing (as Jessica Kara), whose book A Furry Faux Paw caught the notice of Dogpatch Press with a 2022 Ursa Major Award for Best Novel. It’s the story of a teen girl artist with a hoarder mom, facing isolation and family complication with the promise of a forbidden trip to a furry con. It stood out for reaching outside a typical insider science fiction/fantasy audience, with gateway appeal by using fandom as a setting for character building. It stood out even more as a furry teen story in the face of conservative backlash at books. A Furry Faux Paw was seen on a mainstream channel, before it was obvious that she was a furry insider — that’s well-rounded exposure! In fact, she laughed about her pen name maybe being too successful at separation from her best known fantasy series starring gryfon characters, The Summer King Chronicles. Here’s a creator worth interviewing about how her work gets around, one you might see soon at Anthrocon 2024.

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November 13, 2023

Book review – Furry Planet: A World Gone Wild is an enjoyable tour of furries around the world.

by Dogpatch Press Staff

Welcome to guest writer Grubbs Grizzly.

Furry Planet is an Interesting Complement to Furry Nation – by Grubbs Grizzly

Six years ago, author Joe Strike released Furry Nation: The True Story of America’s Most Misunderstood Subculture (Cleis Press), a nicely comprehensive history of the furry fandom. Being very interested in the fandom, I naturally bought and read it. So, when Strike released Furry Planet: A World Gone Wild (includes History, Costumes, and Conventions) (Apollo), I of course purchased it as well.

The book is not what I expected.

Reading the title, I thought it was going to be more history, expanding upon the U.S.-focused first title with a history of conventions and furry culture in Europe, Asia, and other continents. In the book’s introduction, Strike even writes: “Furry Planet: A World Gone Wild remedies Nation’s oversight of the global furry community and in the following pages you’ll meet furs based worldwide who have been inspired by our misunderstood subculture….”

The first chapter, “It’s a Furry World,” starts off promising to stick to what I thought was the book’s premise with a brief look at the U.S. before moving on to a 28-page whirlwind tour of fandoms in the U.K., Europe, Russia, Singapore, China, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. Most of the book after this, however, is about furriness outside the fandom. That is, how anthropomorphic arts have pervaded world cultures in everything from sculpture and paintings to film and performance arts.

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September 5, 2023

Peter S. Beagle warns fans not to trust The Last Unicorn movie page on Facebook

by Patch O'Furr

Peter S. Beagle created The Last Unicorn, made millions of fans happy, then got dragged through elder abuse and had to go to court to stop it.

In his 70’s, Peter was supposed to be making his magic and enjoying the golden years. Instead he had to spend years of battling his former manager, Connor Cochran, who was found liable for financial elder abuse, fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, and defamation.

Before his disgrace, Cochran would sue critics for saying what he was doing, and wanted to shut me up that way. He failed when I sued him before Peter did. Peter issued a support statement during my legal battle for vindication, and I prevailed in 2019 with a judgement in my favor for $32,000. Peter sent me a signed Last Unicorn hardcover with a hand-written thank you for helping him.

Now Peter is back in control of his career. His official Beagleverse site has an FAQ about his battle with the court judgement showing the black-and-white truth.

But the Beagleverse site warns: “Unfortunately, there are still several websites controlled by Peter’s former manager. Beagleverse® is the best source for all things Peter S. Beagle.”

Peter doesn’t control a Last Unicorn Facebook page with an official check mark. It was made in 2008 before Peter sued Cochran, and is now being used to manipulate 182,000 followers.

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January 31, 2022

Origins of an urban legend: “litter boxes for furries” joke gets revived for moral panic

by Patch O'Furr

Update: Thanks to The Daily Beast for linking this and quoting me. – Patch

No school ever had litter boxes for students who identify as animals. So how did the rumor explode into mainstream consciousness, like bad diarrhea from a diet of concern trolling and right-wing blogs?

In January 2022, the malodorous myth rose from local news in Michigan to the New York Times: Litter Boxes for Students Who Identify as Furries? Not So, Says School Official. Furries in the Times is a rare achievement. (Check the 1996 example at bottom of this story.) That isn’t simply debunking, it also has cultural potency for a post-truth era full of flat-earthism and Qanon cults.

I can’t count how many headlines there were about one incident. One is just absurd, but it keeps happening. That shows cynical calculation by Otherphobes. They’re demonizing minorities by proxy, with a target behind the target. It’s a cousin to transphobic memes like “I sexually identify as an attack helicopter” using weirdos to make it easier to swallow. But before we digest that, let’s go to the splatter zone and trace the patterns.

At Dogpatch Press, I’m obsessive about tracking media mentions and memes, and we also do debunking — like for a misinterpreted “nazi furries” photo — and I’d been asked to trace the old litter box myth before. So I dug deeper than the mainstream news. Furry News has the real shit.

The oldest mainstream source I found is in this 2008 photo from Anthrocon in Pittsburgh. He’s a broadcaster named Bob who likes furries, although it’s complicated. More on Bob in a minute.

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August 13, 2021

A Call for Preservation of Sources for Furry Fandom History

by Dogpatch Press Staff

Guest post by Gamepopper, an indie game maker and animation fan in the UK.

As a British furry who was interested in the history of the furry fandom, I couldn’t help but notice most of the subject was centred around the United States. This was the case in all the articles and convention panels I could find, and most blatantly in the book Furry Nation: The True Story of America’s Most Misunderstood Subculture by Joe Strike. This United States focus continues to this day with videos and documentaries such as The Fandom by Ash Coyote discussing the history of the fandom from the beginnings at science fiction and comic book conventions in California.

As a result, I took it upon myself in 2017 to look into my own country’s perspective of the fandom. This part-time hobby of mine culminated into a lecture at ConFuzzled 2019, The History of the Furry Fandom in the United Kingdom, which focused on the growth of the fandom from the earliest known gathering of twenty fans in 1987 to the present day conventions of over two thousand furries. I spoke about the housecons and fanzines in the nineties, furmeets and mailing lists in the noughties, and the British furry conventions and the difficulties getting them off the ground. I also allowed audience members to make comments and ask questions throughout, which you can listen to in the recorded version uploaded to YouTube.

Watching it in retrospect, I’m still proud of the amount of content in the work, in spite of a few factual errors and omissions that a few people have noted. On the day itself, it went over better than I ever anticipated, with a full room of attendees giving a huge round of applause at the end and many furries coming up to me to appraise my work. One of those people thought that the full history should be written down, and, given the amount of work I had already done, I felt up to the task.

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March 25, 2021

Peter Beagle recovers rights to The Last Unicorn and his body of work

by Patch O'Furr

VOTE HERE for the Ursa Major Awards! From March 1-31, support furry creators.

A long road

In 2014, Peter’s manager was accused of fraud. The criticism led to a public relations and legal battle including me (see comment below story); Peter supported my defense, and followed me in suing the manager in 2015. It was a triangle and we both prevailed.

In 2019 I took dismissal of the manager’s claims against me and a judgement of $32K.

Peter proved he was a victim of fraud, elder abuse, and defamation by the manager. He was awarded $332K in damages.

Peter’s creative rights were still tied up, until his team just sent the news he is entirely free with a message for Peter’s supporters.

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March 9, 2021

The Captain’s Oath, by Rick Griffin — book review by Gre7g Luterman

by Dogpatch Press Staff

VOTE HERE for the Ursa Major Awards! From March 1-31, support furry creators.

Welcome to Gre7g Luterman, science fiction author reviewed here. Find him online at his site or Twitter.

The Captain’s Oath is book two in an epic science fiction trilogy about a struggle against oppression, featuring illustrations by author and artist Rick Griffin. [Full disclosure: I’ve been a beta reader on this project since the trilogy was a novel-length draft.]

What would you do to escape from slavery? It’s not as simple a question as it might seem. For although the crew of the White Flower II are definitely slaves, it’s not like someone stands over them with a whip, watching them pick cotton. The krakun (an alien race that look like dragons) indoctrinate the geroo (an alien race that look like anthropomorphic kangaroos) from birth into believing that they are willing employees. Additionally, they let the geroo live in just enough comfort to keep the crew from considering any form of revolt.

Ateri, the captain of the White Flower II, has been considering escape his whole life, and when a ship of pirates offers him a chance at freedom (a do-or-die offer, admittedly), they enter into a conspiracy that can only lead to freedom or the execution of every man, woman, and child aboard. The plan has three parts, which roughly correspond to the books in the trilogy.

Step 1: Trick the krakun into believing that a newly discovered planet can be terraformed into a new home world.

Step 2: Lay low while the krakun bring in a terraformer (the single most expensive machine in the known galaxy).

Step 3: Steal the transformer and sell it.

The first book in The Final Days of the White Flower II trilogy was called Traitors, Thieves, and Liars (published February 2019). It followed Gert and a pair of pirates as they snuck aboard a krakun survey ship to plant doctored data.

The second book, The Captain’s Oath (published February 2021), largely abandons Gert to follow the ship’s science officer, Tesko. I’ll admit that I was leery of this decision initially, but as this book has become my favorite novel of all time (furry or mainstream), clearly it was a good choice on Mr. Griffin’s part.

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December 15, 2020

Fans get new shows, but who profits? #DisneyMustPay demands fairness for Alan Dean Foster — and a ConFurence founder remembers him as guest of honor.

by Patch O'Furr

Via an author I follow.

I almost forgot my own report about Alan Dean Foster, the accomplished science fiction author who is being cheated by Disney.

It was buried by news about shows and movies with extra furry appeal. Irish animated feature WolfWalkers is just out for streaming. There are deaths to remember: Thomas “Tiny” Lister (voice actor in Zootopia) and Richard Corben (comics artist whose ROWLF was pitched for a furry feature by Hayao Miyazaki.) There’s announcements from Disney and Pixar — an animated TV series, and a feature of incredible furrybait.

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November 23, 2020

#DisneyMustPay Alan Dean Foster — A fight with furry fandom influence.

by Patch O'Furr

I LOVE THAT SONG

First published in 1983-1987, Alan Dean Foster’s Spellsinger fantasy series struck a chord for a burgeoning fandom. It features a law student, Jon-Tom, with janitor work and rock and roll dreams. He wakes up in a strange land after smoking something weird to escape mundanity, where he meets a rabble-rousing otter (Mudge) and turtle wizard (Clothahump). His new talking-animal world sets a stage for learning to channel magic with music… but only once per song. Playing Pink Floyd’s Money on his “Duar” guitar can solve a problem once… if he even gets it right.

Loaded with epic fantasy, humor, cartoonish characters, and even moments to make an imaginative reader read extra hard (hot tiger-women and gay unicorns!) — It was the right kind of story that reached the right fans at the right time. The animals weren’t just for kids; they drank, stabbed, screwed, and swore! It made me a 90’s furry before I knew there was a fandom for it.

Foster’s writing was pure fun, spiked with a threat of apocalyptic invasion and a race to defeat it in classic quest mode. I’d assume this was mid-list bookstore fare; not bestselling but solid original work for a productive author. Bigger pay would come with franchise adaptations — his novels for Star Wars, the Aliens movies, and Star Trek.

Making canon work for such big properties should earn secure income for a challenging career of genre writing. That is, if Disney would honor what Lucasfilm agreed to owe, after they acquired the company in 2012 for several billion dollars.

SOUR NOTES FROM DISNEY

Disney isn’t paying Alan Dean Foster his due. Foster shouldn’t have to sing a magic spell to get what he’s owed. It sounds like plain power abuse because they can afford to run up expenses in court (we’re all familiar with Trumpian bullying now, right?) It’s a story with a roots creator as David vs. a corporate Goliath for the fandom today. This should hit a nerve for anyone deeply in tune with the Furry Thing. (I wish fandom founder Fred Patten was around to comment.)

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June 17, 2020

The Sprawl volume 1-3 — graphic novel review by Roz Gibson

by Dogpatch Press Staff

The Sprawl was reviewed with a creator interview a year ago: “my favorite furry webcomic and certainly ranks among my favorite webcomics of all time” — so enjoy a fresh take. Welcome to Roz Gibson, furry artist and animator in Southern California. Roz was guest of honor at Confurence and created the Jack Salem comic character that first appeared in Rowrbrazzle in 1987. Roz is a community access guest and contents are hers. See Roz’s tag for more reviews.

The Sprawl volume 1-3 
Written and Illustrated by Snowdon
Published by Ringtail Café productions

I picked these three volumes up at AnthroCon last year. There are not a whole lot of new furry comics coming out, particularly if you’re looking for something other than porn, slice-of-life or gay interest, so I decided to give this series a try.

The back blurb describes this as “Sci-Fi/Horror meets Dark Fantasy on a dead world. It’s only inhabitants are  the descendants of an ill-fated colonization mission, now huddled together in an ever-growing mega-city known as The Sprawl.” But the story turns out to be closer to Bladerunner meets The Thing, with something from the original Heavy Metal movie thrown in for good measure.

Volume 1 is pretty simple: a survey team is sent to a distant part of the dead planet (referred to as the “South Pole”) to look for another survey team that vanished. You see boobs early on, as the female characters are either topless or wearing really skimpy clothing. The two female surveyors are apparently along solely to hump the guys, which they get to doing as soon as they leave on the mission. When there’s an explosion on the ship and they have to evacuate, the guys are all fully dressed, but the bunny girl bails out wearing nothing but bikini panties. When they arrive on the frozen, snowy surface of the South Pole, someone gives her a jacket that she never bothers to zip up, so she’s wandering around Antarctic cold in panties and an open jacket with her boobs hanging out. I think this is known as ‘pandering to the audience,’ which might have worked if the bunny girl was attractive, but all the characters are squishy lumpy with big Bugs Bunny-type feet.

While I waited for the bunny girl to either die of hypothermia or her bare feet to turn into frozen blocks, the team reaches the prerequisite spooky mysterious abandoned ruins with dead bodies. The previous survey team is dead and one of the characters– without even touching or examining the bodies–declares that they killed each other.

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