Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Category: Books

December 20, 2016

Goddess, by Arilin Thorferra – book review by Greyflank.

by Patch O'Furr

Goddess by Arilin Thorferra – guest review submitted by Bill Kieffer, AKA Grayflank (author of The Goat: Building a Perfect Victim.)  See also Fred Patten’s review of Goddess.  Guests are invited to submit articles to: patch.ofurr(at)gmail.com.

GoddessA childhood full of monster of the week movies made me into the horse I am today. As a horror fan, giants hold a very special place in my heart. Giants played no small (ahem) part in helping me see monsters as more often dangerously misunderstood creatures than outright evil figures.

And, yet, I don’t particularly find myself attracted to the giant mythos. Not that I’m against Macrofurry stuff. I do like transformation stories and I do like submissive characters; so there’s quite a bit of overlap there with size shifting.

In this tale, set in a furry universe in a vague period prior to Hawaii’s statehood, Russel the cougar is looking to become a literature professor at a very posh American University in San Francisco. It’s probably in the 1950’s, even if the villain of the piece, Cornelius Bennett, is known as a “rail baron.” The first few pages felt nearly as staid and boring as any academic event that one might expect, but when the curvaceous otter Kailani enters the scene, things to pick up. I enjoyed every scene Kailani was in; even the scene where they are discussing The Great Gatsby. She is simply one of those people who are larger than life. *ahem*

And it’s to the authors credit that Kailani’s robust presence doesn’t overshadow the other characters in the scene with her. Russell becomes a bigger personality when he’s with her and, later, trying to be with her. Often in stories with this type of transformation from quiet protagonist with a plan to hero of the tale, the author relies on the cast to tell the hero/heroine that she changed. Here, I felt it.

No one had to tell me.

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December 19, 2016

Artists and authors, be in the book Furry Nation – January 6 deadline!

by Patch O'Furr

Here’s a special announcement from Joe Strike.  Joe’s a writer and reporter about animation for the New York Daily News and Animation World Network. His website shows work with TV cartoons you may know. He’s a first-wave furry “greymuzzle.”  And he talks like a velvet alligator on the phone.

Joe has an incredibly exciting book coming out.  He’s putting the story of furry fandom in print from an established publisher.  He wants your help.book

I want to tell your story in Furry Nation.

I’m in the final stages of writing Furry Nation, the first book to chart the birth and growth of furry fandom and its relation to the anthropomorphic instinct that’s been part of civilization from prehistoric cave paintings of animal people and animal-headed Egyptian gods to the modern day. Furry Nation will be published fall 2017 by Cleis Press. To learn more visit www.furrynation.com

Furry Nation will include a handful of profiles of furry artists, published authors and craftspeople. (Furry sculptures, clothing, accessories, etc.) If you’d like to be in the book, please contact me by December 26 at info[at]furrynation[dot]com. I want to hear about your work, your first interest in anthro characters, and how you found the fandom; please include links to your work. (Sorry fursuiters but that section of the book has already been written.)

Thanx much!
– Joe Strike

Write to info[at]furrynation[dot]com, by January 6.

 

Personally, I have been urging the creation of a coffee table furry book for years – from the history and graphics, to fursuit fashion photography.  Like the kind of beautiful but info-packed bibles that Taschen is known for.  (I even outlined such a book – but what a big project that is!)

Now I’m delighted to hear that Joe has a contract with Cleis Press to publish Furry Nation in fall 2017.  Cleis has an eminent 36-year history as “the largest independent sexuality publishing company in the United States.” Don’t get too mad about being grouped with erotica; emphasize independent.  It’s a chance-taking, open-minded platform that can do justice to an alternative subculture.  They explain on LinkedIn:

Cleis Press publishes provocative, intelligent books across genres. Whether literary fiction, human rights, mystery, romance, erotica, LGBTQ studies, pulp fiction, or memoir, you know that if it’s outside the ordinary, it’s Cleis Press.

51561577Don’t overlook more cool books! Dogpatch Press’s own star guest poster, Fred Patten, has Furry Fandom Conventions, 1989-2015 from McFarland Press.  (That’s an academic/reference publisher where you’d find the book in a library.  So you might consider Joe’s the “first” as a narrative history on the shelf at an indie or alternative bookstore.)

Fred’s Publishing for Furries article helps to show how special these are in the publishing world.  Until now, there’s been almost nothing at book stores.  Whatever you’re looking for in a furry book, these are extremely cool happenings.

And I can’t wait to see more. Grubbs Grizzzly (of Ask Papabear) has The Furry Book on the way, too.

Book by Grubbs, cover art by Charleston Rat

Book by Grubbs, cover by Charleston Rat

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December 15, 2016

The Art of Moana, by Jessica Julius and Maggie Malone – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

9781452155364_flatcoverThe Art of Moana, by Jessica Julius and Maggie Malone. Preface by John Lasseter. Foreword by Ron Clements and John Musker.
San Francisco, CA, Chronicle Books, November 2016, hardcover $40.00 (160 pages), Kindle $16.19.

Moana is a 103-minute 3D computer-animated comedy fantasy feature film from Walt Disney Animation Studios, released on November 23rd, 2016. The Art of Moana is a coffee-table, full-color art book describing that film, and its making, in detail. Jessica Julius and Maggie Malone, the book’s authors, are both veteran executives at Walt Disney Animation. Julius wrote The Art of Big Hero Six and The Art of Zootopia. The preface is by John Lasseter, the director responsible for turning the Pixar and Disney studios into the powerhouses of theatrical feature animation in the last two decades. The foreword is by Ron Clements and John Musker, the co-directors of many other Disney features including The Little Mermaid and Aladdin.

The Art of Moana is a de luxe art book about the film and its making, with detailed visual samples and background information. For those interested in the film, this book is worth getting for the names of all the characters alone. The rejected preliminary designs of the main characters will be fascinating, also.

The film’s plot is summarized in its official blurb.

“Three thousand years ago, the greatest sailors in the world ventured across the Pacific, discovering the many islands of Oceania. But then, for a millennium, their voyages stopped—and no one today knows why. From Walt Disney Animation Studios, Moana is a CG-animated adventure about a spirited teenager who sails out on a daring mission to prove herself a master wayfinder and fulfill her ancestors’ unfinished quest. During her journey, Moana meets the once-mighty demi-god Maui and together they traverse the open ocean on an action-packed adventure, encountering enormous fiery creatures and impossible odds.”

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December 9, 2016

Tales From the Guild 2: World Tour is OPEN FOR SUBMISSION

by Pup Matthias

tales-from-the-guild-music-to-your-ears-edited-by-anthroaquatic-67102“Our world is one rich with diversity and culture, but how would civilized animals change that?”

That is the question Ocean Tigrox asks for you to write about in the upcoming anthology, Tales From the Guild 2: World Tour. Building from Tales From the Guild: Music to the Ears, the purpose of Tales is not just to have another outlet for Furry stories.

…we want to showcase great furry stories and show what we as a guild support. In addition to that, we want to help fund the guild while paying authors for their hard work. Thirdly, we’re using the anthology to help teach others about what goes into working a slush pile and editing an anthology.

This is what the Furry Writers Guild uses to help support themselves and showcase what they are all about.

In the words of the Guild itself, “The purpose of the Furry Writers’ Guild is to promote quality writing in anthropomorphic fiction and to inform, elevate, and support its creators.” The guild is there for others to come together to learn and support each other in our craft as well help promote our work and what we love about furry literature.

But how did the theme World Tour come about as the next entry for the book?

Because it was the guild anthology, we let the guild help out in choosing what theme to use. We had members of the guild suggest themes and voted on it. It was a very close vote with the runner up being “The Beast Within – Species issues within a modern world” which could be used for the next Guild Anthology theme.

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December 2, 2016

Wishing Season: Holiday Tales of Whimsy and Wonder, by Renee Carter Hall – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

51nkl1nx7zlWishing Season: Holiday Tales of Whimsy and Wonder, by Renee Carter Hall
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, December 2015, trade paperback $7.99 (125 pages), Kindle, December 2014, $2.99.

This little collection presents seven gentle short fantasies “for all ages” about the Christmas spirit. The title implies that these may cover the different holidays of the year, but they are all about either a snowy Christmas, a snowy winter, or Santa Claus – in any case, stories to read while relaxing in a warm home during a snowy December. If you want to read them aloud to small children; why, some of these were originally heard as broadcasts of the Anthro Dreams Podcast. Two tales, “The First Winter” and “Santa’s Summer Vacation”, are written especially for this booklet. Wishing Season itself was published as an e-book for the Christmas 2014 season, and as a trade paperback for Christmas 2015.

Hall’s tales are imbued with a modern Christmas mythology – that of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the Grinch, It’s a Wonderful Life, and all those animated movies and TV specials showing Santa’s elves as having automated the North Pole.

In “The Gingerbread Reindeer”, Santa’s eight reindeer are having trouble pulling the sled of presents on Christmas eve because Rudolph has broken a bone and can’t lead the others. Boreas, the spirit of winter, enchants a little girl’s reindeer gingerbread cookie into Cinnamon, a gingerbread real flying deer to replace Rudolph. When the Unmaker, the anti-Christmas, attacks, it’s Cinnamon who saves them all.

“The visitor bore the form of a frost-elf, slender and sharp, with knowing eyes, but his body faded like silver fog at the edges. Boreas was winter given shape, the power by which the run was made each year, by which time was frozen for a single night while magic was worked for the young. It was not often that he appeared.” (p. 11)

Hall’s evocative writing makes you wish that her original characters like Boreas and Cinnamon were permanent parts of the Christmas spirit – though we could do without the Unmaker.

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November 22, 2016

The Right to Arm Bears, by Gordon R. Dickson – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

51icewnyell-_sx327_bo1204203200_The Right to Arm Bears, by Gordon R. Dickson
Riverdale, NY, Baen Books, November 2016, trade paperback $16.00 (384 pages).

Several years ago I had a review published on Flayrah of The Right to Arm Bears, by Gordon R. Dickson. It wasn’t a new book then, being published by Baen Books in December 2000. It’s gone through several printings so it’s remained available (with a slightly modified cover), but I don’t know how many furry fans have sought it out.

Guess what! Baen Books has reprinted it again this November, as a large trade paperback with a new cover by Kurt Miller. My old review will become pertinent again. Here it is.

The Right to Arm Bears, by Gordon R. Dickson
Riverdale, NY, Baen Books, December 2000, paperback $6.99 (431 pages).

This “novel” collects Dickson’s three light space-opera adventures about humans, the bearlike Dilbians, and the jovial-but-sinister Hemnoids: Spatial Delivery, first published as a novel by Ace Books, November 1961, 123 pages; Spacepaw, first published as a novel by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, February 1969, 222 pages; and “The Law-Twister Shorty”, a novelette in The Many Worlds of Science Fiction, edited by Ben Bova (E. P. Dutton, November 1971, pages 51-105).

Back-cover blurb: “Planet Dilbia is in a crucial location for both humans and their adversaries, the Hemnoids. Therefore making friends with the Dilbians and establishing a human presence there is of the utmost importance, which may be a problem, since the bearlike Dilbians stand some nine feet tall, and have a high regard for physical prowess. They’re not impressed by human technology, either. A real man, er, bear doesn’t need machines to do his work for him. But Dilbians are impressed by sharp thinking, and some have expressed a grudging admiration for the logical (and usually sneaky) mental maneuvers that the human “shorties” have used to get themselves out of desperate jams. Just maybe that old human craftiness will win over the Dilbians to the human side. If not, we lose a nexus, and the Dilbians will learn just how unbearable Hemnoids can be….”

These three adventures betray their Cold War time-period. The Humans (Americans) and the totalitarian Hemnoids (Soviets) are both expanding through the galaxy, trying to win over the unaligned planets like Dilbia to their spheres of influence. “‘We must influence Dilbians like that chap or the Hemnoids are going to get the inside track on this planet. And the Dilbian system, as I’m sure your hypno training didn’t omit to inform you, is absolutely necessary as a supply and reequipment stage for further expansion on any large scale beyond the Belt Stars. If the Hemnoids beat us out here, they’ve got the thin end of a wedge started that could eventually chop our heads off.’” (pgs. 6-7) The problem is that the Dilbians resemble nine-foot-tall lanky Kodiak bears, and while they prefer to stay neutral in the rivalry between those whom they call the Shorties and the Fatties, they naturally feel more akin to the eight-foot-tall Hemnoids:

“… John saw, a sort of enormous robed, Buddha-like parody of a human being. The Hemnoid was a good eight feet in height, enormously boned, and while not as tall as the Dilbians themselves, fantastically padded with heavy-gravity muscles.” (p. 5) Compared to the Dilbians and the Hemnoids, the humans look like puny weaklings. Also, humans smell bad to Dilbians. The Dilbians’ attitude to the humans is one of friendly but condescending superiority.

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November 8, 2016

War of the Third Demon, Part 1: Parents of a Savior by Casey Thomas Lehman – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

61dsiewbbslWar of the Third Demon, Part 1: Parents of a Savior, by Casey Thomas Lehman.
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, July 2016, trade paperback $7.99 (288 pages), Kindle $2.99.

I’m not sure quite what to say about this book. The cover, which appears to be by crayon, gives an idea of its quality. The title is taken from the cover; the title page says Part 1 is Raising a Savior. The Copyright Notice, usually on the back of the title page in small type, is two pages in boldface leading with “1. Monetary gain directly from fanfiction or fanart is STRICTLY PROHIBITED unless you have received permission and verification from the authors!!!” There are five such rules. The Dedication is three pages ranging from to Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, the creators of Dungeons and Dragons®, down through Hayao Miyazaki and James Cameron to his mother. There are 11 pages of Glossaries at the end explaining the Japanese, draconic, and science-fictional terminology used in this book.

The principal characters are dragons. Here is the main villain:

“A monstrous dragon had just awoken, opening his four sunken eyes, allowing their red glow to illuminate a small area front of him and his six-goat like horns respectively. His jagged, sword-like black scales made a scraping sound as his legs dragged against the purple-tiled floor. He rose to his six legs, letting his rapier-like claws click against his gray, embroiled, rune-encrusted bed. He stretched, letting his saggy, dark-red underbelly stretch like an aged balloon as his six thin, bonelike, pale, sickly green wings spread menacingly. He finished by letting his pitchfork-like tail-blade slam against the colossal ruby roman-style pillars of his chambers – the demon dragon, also known as Rayburn.” (p. 11)

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November 4, 2016

The Art of Trolls, by Jerry Schmitz – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

61-xqtq3zl-_sy455_bo1204203200_The Art of Trolls, by Jerry Schmitz. Foreword by Anna Kendrick.
Petaluma, CA, Cameron + Company, October 2016, hardcover $45.00 (160 pages).

Trolls is a 92-minute 3D computer-animated musical comedy fantasy feature film from DreamWorks Animation, released on November 4th, 2016. The Art of Trolls is a coffee-table, full-color art book describing that film, and its making, in detail. Jerry Schmitz, the book’s author, is a Hollywood PR, marketing, brand management, and awards consultant veteran who has written several other The Art of animation books before. The foreword is by Anna Kendrick, the voice actress of Princess Poppy, one of the film’s two stars.

From a furry viewpoint, Trolls and this book are dubious subjects. No anthropomorphic animals appear in either. Yet the trolls aren’t human, either. If you consider humans to be a species of animals, then trolls qualify as anthros. Anyway, here it is. You decide if it is of interest to you.

The Art of Trolls is a de luxe art book about the film and its making, with detailed visual samples and background information. For those interested in the film, this book is worth getting for the names of all the characters alone. The rejected preliminary designs of the main characters will be fascinating, also.

The popular troll dolls as a merchandising phenomenon were created by Danish woodcutter and fisherman Thomas Dam in 1959, when he could not afford to buy a Christmas gift for his young daughter Lila. She showed the wooden dolls to her friends in Gjøl, Denmark; they all wanted troll dolls; Dam realized their potential; and he and his family created the Dam Things company to mass-produce them in plastic. Troll dolls became one of the biggest toy fads in the U.S. from 1963 to 1965, and have never stopped selling well. DreamWorks Animation licensed the rights to feature them in a movie in 2013. Here it is.

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November 3, 2016

Conventional Wisdom, by Arthur Drooker – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

cw_cover_scConventional Wisdom, by Arthur Drooker. Foreword by James Wollcott.
NYC, Glitterati Inc., August 2016, hardcover $50.00 (191 [+ 1] pages).

This is a de luxe coffee-table art book of photographs by Arthur Drooker, an award-winning documentary and fine-art photographer/author whose work has been exhibited since 1980, and whose studies have been called “visual poetry”. For ConventionalWisdom, Drooker spent three years up to 2015 visiting “quirky” conventions throughout the U.S. “held by some unusual interest groups”. Each convention has about twenty pages devoted to it.

Drooker claims in his Introduction that a Convention Industry Council study shows that there are 1.8 million conventions, conferences, meetings, and trade shows in the U.S. every year. This book presents some of the most photographically exotic of these. As you have doubtlessly guessed, furry fandom is one of these unusual interest groups. So are the Bronies. Each is covered by Drooker; Anthrocon at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, and Bronycon at the Baltimore Convention Center. Each convention has an introduction of about four pages by Drooker.

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October 31, 2016

The Goat: Building a Perfect Victim, by Bill Kieffer – review by Howl.

by Patch O'Furr

Howl of Thurston Howl Publications sends this guest review.  Thanks Howl!

REVIEW OF THE GOAT: BUILDING A PERFECT VICTIM BY BILL KIEFFER

goatShock. From beginning to end. If you ever want a book to slap you in the face as hard as possible, this…this is for you.

Frank is a car worker. He is not gay. To verify this, he would not hesitate to glare you down. He would not hesitate to hit you. He would not hesitate to force you into his car. He would not hesitate to force your head on his cock and eventually force you to swallow. This is how he started to develop a relationship with Glenn.

Glenn is a cybermancer, strong with technological pseudomagic but not so great at wards like Frank. Loving the utter dominance Frank forces onto him, Glenn enters into an S&M relationship with the mechanic. However, the main story arc occurs when Glenn reveals that he is species-dysmorphic: despite being born in a human body, his natural identity is that of a goat. Unable to pass the necessary ani-mage tests, he can only dream about becoming a goat. However, Frank is a little better with magic…

This book is by NO MEANS a kinky romance. This is, as the author claims, horror erotica. Even as a Stephen King and Clive Barker fan, I was cringing so hard from the beginning and ending of the book, and I’m not sure I will fully recover in the next week. I might have to read My Little Pony fanfiction to survive in fact.

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