Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Category: Media

October 20, 2016

Interview with #FurryBookMonth Creator Huskyteer

by Pup Matthias

fbm-logo-800Through out the month of October you may have been seeing a special hashtag around twitter of people talking about Furry books more then usual. That is because we are in our first official Furry Book Month. A way to both celebrate the Furry writer community as well as promote just how diverse the community has gotten. You would be amazed how some people still only view the fandom with only three publishers: Sofawolf, Furplanet, and Rabbit Valley. But we have expanded to around eight with newcomers like Thurston Howl Publications, Goal Publications, and Weasel Press; bringing with them new voices and new stories with the same fluffiness or scales or feathers we love.

The Furry we have to thank for getting this event off the ground is Husykteer, a well-known and active member in the writer community since 2010. She began by posting stories on SoFurry, but by 2012 got published in both Roar 4 and Heat 9. Since then she has continued to put out quality work.

So far, I’ve had short stories and poems published in a number of anthologies; most recently Gods with Fur, Claw the Way to Victory and Inhuman Acts. My short story ‘The Analogue Cat’, which appeared in The Furry Future, won the 2015 Ursa Major and Cóyotl awards for short fiction.

I’d love to get some books out there with my name, and mine alone, on the cover! A novella, Peace & Love, should be coming out from FurPlanet soon.

But how did the idea of Furry Book Month come about? Anyone who has been around the FWG forums knows that the writer community, while growing, is still under appreciated in many aspects. So there has been a growing want to promote the community more to get people to check out their work.

In 2015, Furry Writers’ Guild member Rechan challenged the FWG forum to read a furry book, or several, during October. This grew into the idea of promoting books in the wider furry community during October 2016.

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October 19, 2016

SITE UPDATE – The first fursuiter, and Otaku Trucker: Furry Road.

by Patch O'Furr

You might see less posting here for a week – I’m busy writing for a book. That’s Furries Among Us (part 2) from Thurston Howl Publishing. (The Ursa Major Award went to Howl’s first book of essays about the fandom, so they made a new “nonfiction” award.)

My chapter is “The Furclub movement – independent furry night life is thriving!” Furry dance parties happen around the world, so if you see new dances start anywhere, please send info for the list.  (To San Francisco furs, I can’t say anything now, but expect some good news soon.)

It’s Furry Book Month, so check out some more of the fandom’s awesome creativity. Flayrah finally started approving new posts about that. Their slowness might have to do with a big rise in great reader comments here.  And so does this…

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October 18, 2016

Dawn [and] Edward by Marcus LaGrone – book reviews by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

product_thumbnail-phpDawn, by Marcus J. LaGrone. Illustrated by Minna Sundberg.
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, December 2011, trade paperback $14.95 ([1 +] 192 pages), Kindle $3.95.

Edward, by Marcus LaGrone.
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, January 2013, trade paperback $9.95 (314 pages), Kindle $2.99.

The Highlands of Afon series must be science-fiction since the novels are set on the planets Afon and Ramidar in the far future, when humans have spread throughout the galaxy. But they read more like adolescent funny-animal dramatic fantasies featuring Afon’s dominant felinoid “race”, the Taik. (They aren’t just on Afon; they too have spread through the galaxy. See the complex “Introduction to the races and cultures”.) There are also the Shukurae, oversimplified as huge (9’ tall) muscular warthogs, intimidating but loyal to Taik leadership, and the Gelkin, short, squat, bearlike, and militaristic; both also spacefaring peoples.

Dawn is the story, in flashback, of Dawn Winteroak. She’s the Taik teenage schoolgirl in the middle on Minna Sundberg’s cover. Besides other adolescent problems, she’s embarrassed because her fur is “boring. Black and plain, not a spot or stripe to be seen. All her sisters had wonderful coats with spots and rosettes, a fact they used to take some pride in pointing out to her.” (blurb)

Dawn has worse problems. Her story begins: “As Dawn cracked open her eyes, she realized one thing immediately: she hurt. From the tip of her pointy ears to the end of her fuzzy tail she hurt. Even her fur hurt. How does fur hurt? she wondered. Well she wasn’t sure, but it certainly did. She sat up only to find that it was possible to hurt even more! Her ears rang and her head throbbed as she straightened up her spine. Looking down she noticed her jet black fur was horribly tousled and her dress, a gift for her fourteenth birthday all of a week ago, was now in tatters. Shredded and charred, it still stank of smoke.” (p. 3)

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October 13, 2016

A welcome new category for the Ursa Major Awards: Best Anthropomorphic Non-Fiction.

by Patch O'Furr

WHY DON’T FURRIES RECOGNIZE GOOD JOURNALISM?

 

This topic has come up before: “Bay Area Furs find out why there should be a Furry award for Best Journalism” (see some good articles within) – and – “VICE looks back on the Midwest Furfest attack, earning kudos for thoughtful journalism.”

The simplistic answer is – back around 2001, this little fan group was mistreated by Vanity Fair, MTV and CSI.  Forevermore, “The Media” was a thing to hate.

But it’s not so simple. In a chicken-or-egg way, “The Media” deserves some credit for creating furries. (It’s a FANdom!)  That usually means fiction media, but there’s much more than that. There’s the “science” part of science fiction; transhumanism, animals and nature, and anything about growing a self-defined subculture. There’s info coming from the Anthropomorphic Research Project.  A top selling nonfiction book (from Thurston Howl publishers) is the fandom-essay collection Furries Among Us.

Nonfiction is a big deal in fandom for anthropomorphic animals.

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October 12, 2016

Call for submissions: The Symbol of a Nation, a new anthology edited by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer. This goes out a little late (sorry). You might also be interested in others announced here at Adjective Species. 

Goal Publications is announcing its first original short story anthology.

Title: The Symbol of a Nation. Theme: national animals. Deadline: December 1st, 2016.goal-publications-full-white-bg

Wanted: original short stories (no reprints) of 2,000 to 15,000 words, featuring furries that are the national animals of countries, such as Afghanistan’s snow leopard, Algeria’s fennec, Australia’s red kangaroo, Bangladesh’s tiger, Canada’s beaver, Denmark’s swan, Eritrea’s camel, France’s rooster (fighting cock), Germany’s black eagle, Honduras’ white-tailed deer, Italy’s wolf, the U.S.’s bald eagle … There are over 200 countries and most of them have a national animal.

For this anthology, we are extending the theme to the official animals of provinces and states. There are several animals such as the koala (Queensland) and platypus (New South Wales) of Australia, or the giant squirrel (Maharashtra) and red panda (Sikkim) of India, or the coyote (South Dakota) and raccoon (Tennessee) of North America that are not national animals, but are the official animals of provinces or states.

But: this is limited to the officially adopted animals (including birds) of national or sub-national entities only. No sports team mascots, corporate mascots like the NBC peacock, political party mascots, or breakfast cereal mascots. No fictional official animals or countries like Transylvania and vampire bats. However, some countries have both a national animal and a national bird, such as Chile – its animal is the huemal, an Andean deer, and its bird is the Andean condor. We will accept stories featuring either or both.

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October 11, 2016

Is this news editorial cartoon about furries making fun of a tragedy?

by Patch O'Furr

Please help children of the tragedy in this post: Support the Yost family and In Loving Memory Of Billy Boucher.

News tip thanks to Spottacus.  Below is his post about an editorial cartoon in the OC Weekly about a triple homicide in Southern California.

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Spottacus Cheetah: “Making fun of murdered family is so offensive.”

“…I imagine the family, somewhat devastated by the murder, seeing two people in costume speculating with happy smiles about what the killers were wearing. That just seems to belittle the tragedy.

In contrast, consider the post-massacre Hebdo cartoon, of a saddened Muhammed grieving over the deaths there.

(Paris, 2015: “4 Cartoonists Killed In Attack On Charlie Hebdo Newspaper“.)

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October 10, 2016

A brief history of who ruined furry.

by Patch O'Furr

fritz-the-cat-movie-poster-1972-1010196225Many people are to blame for ruining furry. This list isn’t comprehensive, and some of the jerks on it caused multiple problems at the same time.

1960’s – 1970’s:  Artists ruined furry.

Underground comic artists made a plan to stigmatize fans of funny-animal comics by putting adult stuff in ones like Robert Crumb’s Fritz The Cat and Reed Waller’s Omaha The Cat Dancer.  It worked well enough to keep fans from openly using the “furry” name until the 1980’s.

1985-1988: “Skunkfuckers” ruined furry.

It was just starting to be OK to be furry in public. Then some bad apples got us kicked out of respectable science fiction fandom.  Look at these 1980’s convention room party flyers from Lance Rund and Sy – this is the kind of thing that made furries get isolated apart from other fans, with our own private shame-cons.

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October 7, 2016

Spirit Hunters Book 3: Tails High, by Paul Kidd – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

51jdimr-pplSpirit Hunters. Book 3: Tails High, by Paul Kidd. Illustrated.
Raleigh, NC, Lulu.com/Perth, Western Australia, Kitsune Press, September 2016, trade paperback $26.59 (423 pages), Kindle $7.90.

Here are four more of Paul Kidd’s witty tales of the Sacred Isles, the land of Japanese mythology; about a hundred pages apiece. The Spirit Hunters are a quartet who venture throughout mythical Japan hunting inimical yōkai (supernatural spirits) to exorcise or kill them. They are Lady Kitsune nō Sura, a fox woman, and her companion Tsunetomo Tonbo, a huge human samurai, who hope to be paid for their services; Asodo Kuno, a young low-ranking human samurai who has joined them to gain a reputation and higher status; and Nezumi nō Chiri, a shy rat-spirit who Sura has invited to join them. Sura and Chiri, and any other animal-people who the quartet meet, can shift among three forms: human except for animal ears and tail; anthropomorphic, looking human but with an animal head, full fur or feathers, and tail; and fully animal but still able to talk.

Book 3: Tails High is a bit darker than the first two. The first tale is light, but it turns ominous in its final paragraphs. These four are set a little later than 900 or 1000 A.D. The Emperor is faced by rising powerful regional lords (daimyō). He must decide whether to fight to retain his authority and have the Sacred Isles rent by civil war, or to appoint a warlord as his supreme general – his shogun – and submit to becoming a mere figurehead. We know how this turned out in our Japan. But in the Sacred Isles, with the Spirit Hunters’ aid …?

Book 3 contains the Eighth through Eleventh Encounters. In “Eighth Encounter: The Art of Being Koi …”, the Spirit Hunters come to an entire community of friendly animal-spirits:

“The main house had a great, broad porch shaded by a maple tree. A fine maiden dressed in white priestess’ robes sat in the shade, comforting a desolate young wife.

The weeping young woman was startlingly beautiful. Skin covered in magnificent golden scales, her face was that of a golden carp, with a delicately fanned fish-tail peeking out beneath her robes. Utterly exhausted from weeping, the carp spirit’s long sleeves were wet with tears.” (p. 26)

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October 6, 2016

Return of the Wild Things – San Francisco’s unique adult furry fetish party, November 2016.

by Patch O'Furr

citadelIt’s another event from the WILD THINGS crew – producers of sexy, gutsy, creative happenings for boundary-breaking expression.  There may be no other formal events in the world like this!

With their previous events, Dogpatch Press asked: is furry a “sex” thing?  NO, but there’s overlap… nothing wrong with that.  There are all kinds of other hobbies like that.  If you read the naughty history of their events, don’t overlook the tags:  BDSM, cat box cake, controversy, fetish, furries, kink, murrsuits, petplay, porn, sex… Wild Things!  

Now here’s the new one everyone’s been waiting for. (NSFW poster below.)

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October 5, 2016

October 2016 is Furry Book Month!

by Patch O'Furr

Huskyteer of the Furry Writers’ Guild sends a super cool announcement for fandom book lovers.  Furry Book Month is an initiative to promote anthropomorphic literature. Please give some love to the authors and publishers of the fandom – not just established ones you know, but also newer ones like Thurston Howl and Weasel Press.  Learn more in Fred Patten’s recent article, The State of Furry Publishing.

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Furry Book Month logo by Ultrafox

October 2016 is Furry Book Month!

This October, we’re raising the profile of anthropomorphic literature and bringing it to a wider audience.

The Furry Writers’ Guild has joined forces with some of our fandom’s great authors and publishers.  They will offer special deals during the month, from free shipping and discount codes to free books.

Even if you don’t read furry fiction yet, try the special offers for a furry book in October.

Already a reader? Give a book to a friend, try a new author, or write a book review!  Reviews on Amazon and Goodreads can be short, and really help authors. Got lots to say? Submit a review to Flayrah, Dogpatch Press, or Claw & Quill.

What will you do this Furry Book Month? Please spread the word on social media using #FurryBookMonth!

Visit furrywritersguild.com/furry-book-month/ for the list of offers.

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