Furry Writers' Guild

1. Tell us about your most recent project (written or published). What inspired it?

The Goat: Building a Perfect Victim is both one of my most recent and my one of my oldest works. I lost the original files during the decade of hiding. Phil Geusz, always a supportive creature, reminded me that there was a copy in the archive of TSA Talk, an email-based group of writers.

I had an online friendship with a Fur I’ll call My Goat as I haven’t gotten his permission to talk about him in relation to this novella. It was quite intimate and heartbreaking as he’d found his true self in Furry Fandom… and there just wasn’t a way to get that in real life. I’d been sorta slumming in Furry before I met him. He was like a stubborn classical Greek Hero. Eventually, he had to give up Furry to build his life back. I was one of the things he had to give up, too.  And I had to let him go. In real life, I could never be the master he needed (besides the
fact that I was in a committed RL relationship). As I started to let him go, I tried to imagine what type of master would make him happy.  Frank was a very wrong answer; but I felt some sympathy for him.

2. What’s your writing process like? Are you a “pantser,” an outliner, or something in between?

I’m a “pantser,” except when I do a mystery or crime story.  I outline mysteries and crimes so I don’t cheat, trying to be witty. Otherwise, I let my characters pull me along. Last fall, I tried writing two pieces for Munchkin’s Fragments of Life’s Heart… both contained a lot more death than I had planned. Seriously, I write the worst love stories.

3. What’s your favorite kind of story to write?

I like writing TF (transformation) stories.  I like exploring form and function. I like writing Metamor Keep stories, even if most of the Keepers think I’m trying to break the MK universe when I do so.

4. Which character from your work do you most identify with, and why?

Greyflank, from the Tales of the Blind Pig, is a Mary Sue, so he doesn’t count. Wheeler and Clay, from my Metamor Keep stories, are two halves of my soul. Wheeler, the seasoned fighter and former sex slave, represents the part of me that knows what he wants and is looking for. Clay is younger and sheltered, his whole world shattered about him, forced to be the stronger partner. He represents that part of me that only suspects what he wants and how he is to fit that into his life.

5. Which authors or books have most influenced your work?

Piers Anthony. Stephen King. Phil Geusz, Charles Matthias. Alan Dean Foster. Richard Matheson. Alan Moore. I don’t think I write like any of them; but I know I stole some good moves from each of them. From Anthony, I learned sex and attraction needs no moral compass. Actions will tell. From King, I learned the threat of a bludgeoning was more frightening than the bludgeoning itself.  From Geusz and Matthias, I learned how to build serial characters that readers will care for. From Foster, I learned a well-written character can stomp out any plot hole. From Matheson, I learned a living character can explode the slightest story concept into living art. From Moore, I learned to build on the past, twisting it as we go. I also may have picked up a great deal of wordiness from Moore, too.

6. What’s the last book you read that you really loved?

Mindtouch by M.C.A. Hogarth was the last novel to floor me. It put asexual relations in perspective for me and changed my outlook.

7. Besides writing, how do you like to spend your free time?

I like food. I cook, I eat, I stalk the aisles of Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. I’m a tubby pony.

8. Advice for other writers?

Write.  Write about people. Don’t write, except for kicks, to please anyone. Be pleased when you do. Don’t feel rejection when you are rejected. 9/10 of this stuff is timing. And you’ll never ever see the clock.

Yes, even if you’re writing about badgers and foxes building a better tomorrow, write about people. Hide a statement in your piece. Make Easter eggs for your readers. Give them something they can claim as their own.

9. Where can readers find your work?

The Goat: Building a Perfect Victim is a naughty m/m novella that will be available this summer or fall from Red Ferret Press. This takes place in my “2×4” universe where a few of my stories take place. If I can remember how to build a website, those other stories will be on Xepher.net in a few months. “Brooklyn Blackie and The Unappetizing Menu” appears in Inhuman Acts from FurPlanet. This takes place in a universe I call Aesop’s Planet.  Except for Captain Carrot fan fiction, this is the only published work in that universe. My Metamor Keep stories can mostly be found at the Metamor Keep Story Archives, although my Ursa Major Award nominated short story “The Good Sport” was recently reprinted in An Anthropomorphic Century, also from FurPlanet.

10. What’s your favorite thing about the furry fandom?

I like how it transforms people. I like how it transformed me. It helped me to accept that I’m bisexual. I like that being a horse gave me a framework to hang my anxieties on. I like, most especially, the acceptance that I receive. It’s not universal, but it’s enough.

Check out Bill Kieffer’s member bio here!

The Critique Masochist

by Frances Pauli

 

As an art school veteran, I am no stranger to criticism. When I create something, I not only expect critique, I immediately crave it. Critique is necessary, it’s useful, it is required. And the more brutal the better. In essence, I have become a critique masochist. How could this have happened? Let me explain.

Art majors at the college level spend their week something like this… Monday through Thursday are filled with studio classes–three hour sessions of drawing and/or painting in the classroom. Sometimes, it’s a clever arrangement of old knickknacks, vases, and Styrofoam balls and sometimes an assortment of nude models which is not nearly as exciting as you might imagine when you’re trying to get the lines right.

Friday, however, is critique day. On Friday, you gather your week’s work, tack it to a wall, and wait for the guns to start firing at you. You learn to love Fridays or you aren’t going to be in art school very long. Freshmen feared the week’s end. Those with tenuous egos invented reasons to be ill on Friday. You could try to dodge, but no matter how clever you were, eventually, it was your work on the wall.

There were only two rules in a peer critique and they are very good ones. First, you must remain absolutely silent while your work is being trashed–er, examined. Second, a critic may not say “I like it” or “I don’t like it” unless the statement is immediately followed by a detailed explanation of “WHY”.

Fridays were fun days in the school of art. If someone wasn’t crying in the halls between classes, it wasn’t Friday. I’m serious. People fled critique day, people sobbed. Some stomped straight to administration and switched majors. But, no matter how you look at it, Friday was a good day. It was Friday that turned me into a critique masochist.

So, back to writing…and critique. Critique is a good thing. It is the single most vital tool to becoming the best at any creative endeavor. We cannot be our own critic. We can try, and please do try. It’s required, you HAVE to learn to look at your work objectively. On the flip side, you will never, ever be as objective as your reader in Connecticut who’s never met you. Seek out the guns. Please. As you do, remember a few things to nurse a happy relationship with criticism. It will find you eventually anyway. If not before publication, then after.

DETACH: Your work may be your baby, but it’s not your baby. Any discussion of your work is not a personal attack. It is not your job to protect it. It is your job to let it be ripped to shreds and reassembled into something better, and golden, and closer to perfect.

EGO AWAY: Put it in a box, lock it in its room, whatever. Your ego will be needed later (when the rejections roll in and make you want to quit) but while receiving and giving criticism, it’s dead weight and will only botch up the whole process.

LISTEN: With both ears and the whole mind. Listen and consider the slim possibility that the critic may be right. Don’t waste time disagreeing or mentally arguing, listen. Listen and pretend they’re a genius–just for now.

SALT: When you have listened, considered and absorbed, THEN remember the grain of salt. This is an opinion–one person’s opinion or a whole class’ opinion, but still an opinion. Do you agree with it? Try. If not, stick to your guns and trust that you know your own goals. Don’t ever think that a suggestion is a rule, that you must change and adapt to every criticism or you will never stop fixing and changing things back and forth. Do change what you agree with. Do give serious thought to any suggestion that comes up more than once, or over and over again from different sources. But in the end, you decide.

Remember the two rules–they are good ones. Don’t interrupt. Never argue during the critique. If anyone ever says, “I like it” or “I don’t like it” insist on a detailed “why.” Embrace the horror–that is, the process– and learn to love it. Laugh at your mistakes and yourself often. Eventually, you might find yourself craving it, needing it. Personally, I’m suspicious of anyone who reads my work and doesn’t pick it apart, at least a little. Don’t trust the “I loved it” or the “It’s great” without further discussion! With a little practice, you too can be a critique masochist.

 

This post first appeared on Speculative Friction.

1. Tell us about your most recent project (written or published). What inspired it?

Right now I’m working on a serial story for Patreon, told in weekly installments, then bundled up once a month or so and posted to various websites. I’m really excited about the opportunity and challenges presented in telling a story in these episodic bursts; I think it really allows you to experiment with the plotting and structure in ways that maximize the impact of how things roll out.

This first serial is something I’ve been developing for a while, called “The Cult of Maximus”. Two mismatched police officers — a large, gentle wolf and a small but aggressive rabbit — are investigating the disappearance of various homeless people within their jurisdiction of Fog City. The discovery of what’s been happening to them pulls them both into a sprawling conspiracy that has designs on guiding the kaleidoscope of sapient species to the next stage of evolution. Now, this pair has to find a way to discover just how deep this cult goes and how to stop them while being in over their heads every step of the way.

I hope that the serial will give me the ability to arc out a deep exploration of these characters and how their experience with this mystic, impossible problem changes them — both inside and out. Of course, those changes manifest in ways that affect the people around them, and this serial will explore that as well. I’m really fascinated by how personal changes become community changes, and how those become bigger socio-political changes given enough time and momentum. We don’t exist in a vacuum, and I’m really jazzed about the opportunity to show that step by step.

All of this will be taking place in the context of a story with an erotic nature, which is also exciting and really tricky. I’m going into this with the idea that erotic stories can discuss serious and interesting topics; they can be arousing, thrilling and thoughtful at the same time.

2. What’s your writing process like? Are you a “pantser,” an outliner, or something in between?

Definitely “something in-between”. I’ve found that it really helps me to pull through a story if I have signposts that can lead me to the next big thing, so I really love having an outline that allows me to see the rough shape of a story. However, the story almost never turns out to match the shape of the outline I’ve given it.

When a story “grows legs”, it’s a sign that you’ve really tapped into something but it can also throw all of your plans out of the window. Characters end up doing things you’d never expect, pulling new characters from the ether that you never planned for; or a character will resist a certain plot point because there’s something about their personality that makes a necessary action impossible for them to take, so you have to back up and get to know this person in your head a little better.

So while the outline is definitely a big help for determining the joints of the story where things pivot, you might find that you need to reconstruct it on the fly fairly often.

3. What’s your favorite kind of story to write?

I think I really love telling stories about outsiders. People who resist type a little, perhaps, or feel that they don’t belong for one reason or another. I love digging into a character to figure out how they work, what makes them feel disconnected from their environment, and then writing the story that moves them a little closer to the world they inhabit.

Most of the stuff that I end up showing is erotic in nature, just because I’m a big fan of macro/micro stories as well. There’s something about the way physical transformation necessitates a shift in your mentality that I love exploring too; when you gain or lose physical power, it changes the way you see yourself and your place in the world. It’s more than simply lording power over someone else, it’s also dealing with this real, physical difference that separates you from your world and what that does to your psyche.

4. Which character from your work do you most identify with, and why?

This might just be because it’s what I’m working on now, but Officer Tom from “The Cult of Maximus” is someone I’m having a lot of sympathy for right now. He’s this sort-of average guy who holds strong beliefs without necessarily voicing them, who feels in over his head with his job most of the time, who is trying to balance the demands of this difficult profession with his home life. And just when he feels like he’s getting his feet under him, something else comes along to pull the rug out from under him! It happens all the time in life, and I think that’s what makes it such a fun story to write.

5. Which authors or books have most influenced your work?

It’s a huge list. Furry-wise, I’ve gotten my sensibility from Kenneth Grahame and Alan Dean Foster, who both do this really great job of rooting their furry characters in the real world and marrying instinctive urges with sentient, reasoned expression. The Wind in the Willows and the Spellsinger series are so much fun because the societies that have been imagined in them feel really lived-in and true. I love furry stories that lean in to the distinctive habits of various species.

Otherwise, I’m a sucker for books that are poetic, but simple. I’m a huge fan of Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King and Johnathan Lethem; they have this deceptively conversational style that hooks you well, but there’s a lot going on underneath word choices and sentence rhythm and how they’ve built their paragraphs. It’s really fascinating. I think I break for people who can tell great stories while still aiming to be accessible and really connecting to their audience. I’ve found I don’t have a lot of patience for those folks who act as gatekeepers; stories are for everyone, and they should be treated as something special that almost anyone can find something worthwhile in.

6. What’s the last book you read that you really loved?

I just finished book three in The Last Policeman trilogy, called World of Trouble. It’s written by Ben H. Winters, and it tells the story of this beanpole of a police detective who insists on doing his job even though an asteroid is getting set to crash into the planet and end life as we know it. In the last novel he’s looking for his missing sister, just days before the world is going to end.

What I love about it is how Winters treats Hank Palace (the titular policeman). Hank is clearly running a fool’s errand, and in a way he absolutely knows it. But he’s compelled to do it, to spend the rest of his days doing his dream job to the best of his ability. The most fascinating aspect of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction is watching what emerges from within people when the constraints of society are removed. When you’re faced with this very real existential threat and a lot of the ideas we’ve all agreed to buy into are discounted, who are you? Hank knows who he is, even though he’s reluctant to let go of the old world that’s crumbling down all around him. It’s so great.

There are a lot of other books I’ve read that I genuinely love, but they haven’t been published yet so I won’t talk about them. I’ll just say I’m really excited to see them released.

7. Besides writing, how do you like to spend your free time?

I’m a pretty hard-core geek, so there’s a lot of television and movies that I love to watch. I’m a big fan of The Leftovers, Agents of SHIELD, Game of Thrones and Supernatural; I love watching movies in different genres, but nothing quite thrills me like a great horror film.

Dungeons and Dragons are a big draw for me; right now I’m running a Pathfinder game and playing in two Star Wars games as well as a Dresden Files game, and that’s a lot of fun. I really do tend to spend most of my free time awash in stories; either participating in them, or enjoying them.

8. Advice for other writers?

In so many ways I still feel like a baby writer who has no business giving advice to other writers. I guess my best piece of advice is to find a way to make writing fun enough that you’ll want to do it every day and serious enough that you’ll want each story you tell to be better than the last. Passion and dedication really are the things you need to pull you through your writing career.

9. Where can readers find your work?

I’m everywhere! I have a personal/storytelling blog over at http://www.jakebe.com.

My writing is on FurAffinity, Weasyl and SoFurry: just look for “jakebe” there.

My Patreon is here, where I’ll be posting parts of The Cult of Maximus in 2016: https://www.patreon.com/jakebeserials

10. What’s your favorite thing about the furry fandom?

I love that the furry fandom is so BROAD. No matter what you’re into — writing, video games, art, comics, performance, music — you can find a scene within the fandom that you will fit. It’s really great to see so many people pursuing so many different passions all within the same community. What’s more, we really support each other’s projects in great ways. It’s just a lovely thing to see.

 

Check out Jakebe’s member bio here!

RAWR: Year One Review

by Skunkbomb

 

Earlier this year, I paid to stay up late critiquing roughly 1,500 words a night from talented writers while teetering toward a panic attack as I wrote my first sex scene. I loved every minute of it.

This was the first year of the Regional Anthropomorphic Writers’ Retreat (RAWR) led by Kyell Gold (Out of Position, Green Fairy) with associate instructor Ryan Campbell (God of Clay, Koa of the Drowned Kingdom) and facilitated by Chandra al-Alkani. After an icebreaker dinner, the next five days would begin with lectures from Kyell, Ryan, Watts Martin (Why Coyotes Howl, Indigo Rain) and Jeff Eddy of Sofawolf Press. They covered world building, setting, character, structure, and publishing while some of the attendees were still drinking coffee in their pajamas. It was helpful advice to keep in mind as we moved into critiques.

Critiques swallowed up most of my time at the retreat whether I was critiquing the work of my peers or writing notes on the feedback the other writers provided for my stories. Listening to the other writers point out what’s working and what isn’t in my stories was both intimidating and exhilarating, but that may be my inner masochist (that explains why I applied for this retreat). Despite my fears, getting that feedback was invaluable. Not only could I trust the other writers to give me honest feedback, they always had something positive to say. Above all, RAWR is all about helping writers grow.

Each writer got two critique sessions. Some of us edited the first story and submitted it to be critiqued a second time after revisions. Some of us had two different stories to be critiqued. One of us even submitted a long story in two parts. I went with option two after I told Kyell about the second story I was working on and he encouraged me to submit it despite not being halfway done with the first draft. If you ever need a kick in the pants to finish a story, having a deadline due in less than 24 hours works wonders. There are times when I want to procrastinate, but being in such an environment got me to work on more writing than I’d done in a month.

One of the highlights of the retreat was the opportunity to meet one-on-one with Kyell and Ryan to ask them anything I wanted. I brought a paper with questions to mask the fact I was essentially word vomiting whatever came to mind. This ranged from serious discussion of my writing (How often should I put out new writing to grow my audience?) to the self-indulging (What tips do you have about writing anthro skunks?)

It wasn’t all work. We’d eat together at the private residence where the workshop was held … while finishing a draft before the submission deadline for critiques. We’d watched movies … while critiquing stories. Okay, so work bled into our downtime, but at least we weren’t bringing our laptops to restaurants when we ate out.

By the time the final day of the retreat arrived, I didn’t have peers. I had friends who I would root for whenever they submit work for publication. I had a renewed resolve not only to improve my writing, but also give back to the furry community. This was one of the most exhausting five days of my life that I wouldn’t trade for a spot on the bestseller list.

February’s Book of the Month, Claw the Way to Victory, is edited by Sean Rivercritic of AnthroAquatic and includes stories from several FWG members.

We’ve all watched sports played by humans, or have participated in sports with our human limbs and senses.

What would happen if the sporting events we loved were played by animal people?

Claw the Way to Victory looks to answer that question with a variety of stories, each showcasing a different sport and just how the instincts of an animal matched with the intelligence of a human can help or hurt a player.

Scratching? Biting?

Against the rules?

Not this time.

 

Cover art by Pac.

Parental rating General/Mature (possible violent content). Available from Jaffa Books.

New Members

Welcome to our newest member Frances Pauli!

Member News

Book news: Fred Patten’s latest anthology, Cats and More Cats, was released at Further Confusion and will soon be available for order from FurPlanet‘s website. The first furry anthology from Jaffa Books, Claw the Way to Victory, was released at Anthro New England and is edited by Sean Rivercritic of AnthroAquatic. Bill Kieffer’s novella The Goat: Building a Perfect Victim is forthcoming from Red Ferret Press.

Short stories: You can read Madison “Makyo” Scott-Clary’s story “Milkshakes and Foxes” in the Further Confusion conbook, and Mary E. Lowd’s flash fiction piece “Dealership with the Devil” is online at Theme of Absence. (Check out their interview with her as well.)

Rechan has been accepted as an Associate Editor at EMP Publishing, for their online horror magazine, and in crowdfunding news, Joel Kreissman has begun a Kickstarter campaign to fund illustrations for his novel.

Congratulations, everyone!

(Members: Want your news here? Start a thread in our Member News forum!)

Market News

Upcoming deadlines: The second issue of A Glimpse of Anthropomorphic Literature is reading through February 15, and Fur the ‘More is seeking “Cubicle Jungle” submissions for its conbook until February 15 (maximum 2000 words, full info here). FANG Volume 7 and FurPlanet’s science fiction horror anthology both close on March 1; see guidelines for both anthologies here.

Remember to keep an eye on our Calls for Submissions thread and our Publishing and Marketing forum for all the latest news and openings!

Guild News

We’re seeking an editor for the next volume of our Tales From the Guild anthology! See this post in our forums for more information, and if you’re interested, please get in touch by February 21.

Want to hang out and talk shop with other furry writers? Come join us in the forum shoutbox for the Coffeehouse Chats, Tuesdays at 7 p.m. Eastern and Thursdays at 12 p.m. Eastern. More info on the Coffeehouse Chats is here. (Remember, our forums are open to everyone, not just FWG members. Come register and join the conversation!)

Elsewhere on the Internet, we have a Goodreads group with a bookshelf featuring books by our members. Feel free to add any members’ books we’ve missed so far (see the instructions here on how to do that). We also have a Telegram group, and you can find more info on that and a link in this thread.

Remember, we’re always open for guest blog post submissions from FWG members — it’s a great way to help out fellow writers. See our guidelines for the details.

Have a happy and creative February! If you have news, suggestions, or other feedback to share, send an email to furwritersguild (at) gmail.com or leave a comment below.

 

1. Tell us about your most recent project (written or published). What inspired it?

Thousand Tales: How We Won the Game is a SF novel about saving what’s important. In the 2030s a game-obsessed AI invents brain uploading technology, making it possible to (arguably) live forever as a digital ghost in her game world. The heroes are the people who befriend or oppose the AI, all with good reasons.

I was troubled that “science fiction” bookstore sections seem to consist of fantasy, far-future space opera, and game/TV tie-ins. I really wanted to write something (1) set in a near future, (2) with plausible technology, (3) that didn’t terrify or depress me.

I’d been interested in artificial intelligence and game design for years, even dabbling in AI programming. I also studied animal intelligence, including college work with the world’s most over-educated parrots. These things didn’t come together as a good story until years later, when to my embarrassment I got pulled into the fandom for a certain cartoon. Among the fanfiction for that world, was a setting called “Friendship Is Optimal”, only tangentially related to the show. “Optimal” involves a runaway AI who’s superficially nice but who deliberately crashes civilization to upload everyone to her cute video-game world. That shared setting got me and other writers arguing creatively about the setting’s implications. I wanted to write about a nicer AI, in a better-developed future, with a different focus.

So, I used the basic premise of “Optimal”, my own take on AI, some world-building about the near future, and even a loose recycling of my first novel as fuel for National Novel Writing Month in 2014. The book sparked enough discussion that I still haven’t run out of stories I want to tell in that setting, so I’ll be releasing a 20K-word novella (“2040: Reconnection“) probably in December, and a longer work early next year.

2. What’s your writing process like? Are you a “pantser,” an outliner, or something in between?

I like to plan, and don’t feel comfortable unless I can shoot an arrow ahead and say “there’s my destination”. Planning doesn’t mean knowing every scene before I start, but knowing something about the characters, setting, and the conflict that needs resolving. Despite planning, I get surprised by details or even plot twists that I didn’t consciously expect. I love it when that happens.

3. What’s your favorite kind of story to write?

Most of what I write is furry, and a lot involves transformations of some kind. I’d been reading something recently contrasting “grimdark” fiction where any victory is personal and costly in a frightening world, versus its opposite of “noblebright”: stories where heroes and villains can make a real difference, and the setting provokes wonder more often than fear. I’d much rather write the second kind.

4. Which character from your work do you most identify with, and why?

On a bad day: Peter the Dragonlord from “Ivan and the Black Riders” (ROAR #6). He’s introverted and thoughtful, has cool magic powers, and is determined to do great things… but your freedom means nothing to him. On a good day: Garrett Fox from Everyone’s Island. He’s an engineer at heart, learning to deal with more and more responsibility even if he’s not sure where he’s heading.

5. Which authors or books have most influenced your work?

Years of reading and participating in the TSA-Talk mailing list and Anthrochat IRC have been great sources of stories and discussion, so I point to writers Phil Geusz, Michael Bard (RIP), and Jon Sleeper from there. Outside the fandom, there’s L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time, Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy and Tunnel In the Sky, Asimov’s “Foundation” series, Bradbury’s short story “The Toynbee Convector”, and too many worldbuilding-heavy tabletop RPG books such as Bard and Victoria Bloom’s memorable World Tree.

6. What’s the last book you read that you really loved?

Weir’s The Martian, for being hard science fiction set in the near future with an upbeat tone. Besides that, Vinge’s A Deepness In the Sky.

7. Besides writing, how do you like to spend your free time?

Reading nonfiction, sometimes. (The history of an ordinary thing like cargo containers can be surprisingly interesting because it cuts across a lot of other topics.) I’m also an avid board/tabletop/PC gamer who plays or runs games like Pathfinder. I program games for fun as well.

8. Advice for other writers?

Seek out critique and be profusely grateful toward anyone who offers reasonably polite explanations of what you’re doing wrong. It’s okay to read comments on your work and go sulk, but then you should come back and write something better. Critique groups (like Critique Circle) can be helpful, especially if you make it clear you can handle serious criticism. Besides that? Save old scraps of ideas, because they might spark something years later. Challenge yourself with projects like NaNoWriMo. Try completely rewriting a scene without looking at the original, to knock new ideas loose. Try taking apart stories you like by writing down exactly what’s cool about them, and adapt those elements into something original.

9. Where can readers find your work?

http://kschnee.deviantart.com/ and http://www.furaffinity.net/user/krissnow for galleries. Amazon for my novels.

10. What’s your favorite thing about the furry fandom?

At a furry convention, I asked some idle question about why there’s no such thing as vintage cola, like wine. The room launched into a detailed discussion of things like pressure storage vessels and chemistry. The fandom has people with varied backgrounds and a lot of knowledge about obscure subjects, who’re ready to think creatively about anything!

 

Check out Kris Schnee’s member bio here!

1. Tell us about your most recent project (written or published). What inspired it?

Let me get to that in a moment.  This’ll make sense when I get down to it, trust me.

Up to this point, just about every story I’ve written has been in one of two categories.  In one, I was writing for submission.  Just about every anthology has at least a broad theme, so just to start with I’m working under thematic limitations.  Even in situations where the theme either coincided with my own interests or was broad enough that I could do my own take with it, there were always word limitations, or content limitations–things I had to include, or things that I wasn’t allowed to include.  Not that I’m saying they’re restrictive, mind you.  If you’ve read a few of the anthologies out there, I think you’ll find that the stories included are usually quite diverse.  It’s just that while going in, I’ve always got this image in mind that’s pretty tightly boxed.  The story must be about this long, and it must contain these themes, and here are the lines in the dirt across which I must not put a toe.  Anthologies are great for keeping the writing juices flowing.  There are even a few stories I’ve written that wouldn’t exist if it hadn’t been for these themes.

In the other category, I’m writing just for my own enjoyment–quick pieces to post online, or longer challenges I came up with for myself to hopefully make myself a more adept writer.  These are usually don’t conform to any particular limits, and in the past I’ve explored some rather more extreme topics in them.  I’d like to think that these pieces are what I use to really grow as an author, but I’m not fooling myself.  They lack focus.  They wander through the plot.  When I read back through them, they’re little morsels of golden prose, linked by an otherwise mediocre framework.  It’s the type of work that any competent editor would take a big red pen to–and on the few occasions that one’s gone into print, that’s exactly what happened.

So back to your question.  Over the last year, I’ve spent a lot of time working on my first full-length novel.  Unlike the anthology submissions, it’s really unbound by any particular limit–except that it needed to be long enough to be a novel.  And unlike the ones I’ve written for my own enjoyment, I’ve taken the time to give it a good polish.  At the time of answering your question here, it’s done and sitting in a slush pile.

2. What’s your writing process like? Are you a “pantser,” an outliner, or something in between?

I think I’m about as far as you can get from being a pantser.  In fact, I’d like to state for the record that I “pants” as little as possible.  I prefer my stories with no pants at all!  Before I torture this metaphor too much further, I’m actually telling the truth.  My process for story writing is to think up the world, plot, and characters, and then tell myself their story over and over and over in my head until I feel it’s ready to come out.  The process of writing for me only really starts once the story is done.

That said, the process of writing is a bit of a battle for me.  It’s a combat between ‘the way it sounded in my head’ and ‘the way it reads best on paper’.  I know what needs to happen, so the hours I spend at the keyboard are primarily spent looking for the most clear, concise, and beautiful way to tell the story that’s running through my head.  If there’s any “pants” to be had in my process, it’s the struggle to fit the whole scene in my head into as few words as I can manage in print.

3. What’s your favorite kind of story to write?

Absolutely sci-fi.  I grew up with (and still love) fantasy, but I’ve slowly grown out of the world of magic and wizards.  I think at this point I’m too much of a desk chair scientist to be happy with an answer of “It works that way because it’s magic.”

4. Which character from your work do you most identify with, and why?

Oooh, are you tempting me to reveal my dirty secrets of self-insertion?

Well, I do have a few characters I’ve written that I can identify with.  As many of my friends were quick to point out, the fox in the story “On the Bright Beach” is quite clearly my own attempt at wish fulfillment (You can find that one on my SoFurry).  Okay, fine.  I admit it.  I wrote the story as if I were there personally.  But really, it was meant to be just a fun romp, and I didn’t see any harm in it.

But that doesn’t really answer the question well.  It’s a bit of a cop-out to answer ‘With whom do I most identify’ with ‘Myself.’  I think if I had to pick a character in another story that I tried to put the most ‘me’ into without settling for self insertion, that would be Taj from “Seducing the Sky.” (This one’s in Hot Dish from Sofawolf Press.)  I don’t think I really have the credentials to claim to be what he is–a trained symbiote-pilot from a super-advanced predatory alien species–but the personality I drew from experience.  I really like the concept of a warrior-philosopher.  Even though my analytical side calls it complete bunk, the idea of a soldier that follows the mantra of Sun Tzu’s Art of War intrigues me.

5. Which authors or books have most influenced your work?

I think there’s three authors who’ve most heavily influenced my writing.  First, I grew up reading books by Mercedes Lackey.  She has a way with characters that makes me care about them so passionately that I’ll get genuinely angry or sad or elated for them.  Even though I have some difficulty going back to those books now, I remember how they made me feel–and that’s exactly what I aim for when I’m writing my own characters.

Second is Terry Pratchett.  Besides being a thoroughly enjoyable read, his novels have taught me one thing: A character is made more vivid by their flaws than by their strengths.  Every one of his memorable characters are truly flawed people–and because those flaws are more than skin-deep they’re so much more lifelike to me than popular media’s endless crusade of grizzled marines.

Third, and I think most importantly, is an author named Paul Kidd.  I bought his book A Whisper of Wings way back when it first came out.  I saw an advertisement for it in something–I can’t remember what it was, maybe Yarf?  I was young enough that I had to have my mom cut a check and mail it off to get it.  Even though I can deconstruct it now and see a lot of the character archetypes for what they are, at the time it was an inspirational read.  Since then, I’ve collected a good amount of his novels and quite thoroughly devoured them.  I think that it was his book Fey that convinced me that not only could I write, but I should.

6. What’s the last book you read that you really loved?

I read Ready Player One on the plane flight over to the states for Rainfurrest this year.  I really should have tried to get some sleep.  By the time I arrived, I was absolutely shattered.  I blame the book entirely for this, because it was fantastic.  I didn’t want to stop reading.  By the time I arrived in Seattle, the book was done, I was tired and about ready to collapse, and I didn’t regret even a single minute of it.

7. Besides writing, how do you like to spend your free time?

Gaming!  I know that’s a pretty general answer, but I’m a pretty general gamer.  Sure, I like the bog-standard vidja games like any good child of the nineties, but I also love tabletop gaming, both board gaming and roleplaying games.  I’d say that a vast majority of my free time is spent playing games with friends–that’s the time I have to carve my writing time out of.

8. Advice for other writers?

Write.  I know, that’s a bit of a no-brainer, but I have to think that it’s less obvious than it seems.  I run panels at Eurofurence and Confuzzled in Europe, and even though attendance is great, I get lots of guilty looks when I ask people about what they’ve recently written.  Too often I hear people talking about this story they wrote this one time a while back, when what I really want to hear is about one of the many stories they’ve written recently.  Writing is a skill that degrades with time.  If you’re not writing, then at some point in the future, you will no longer be a writer.

9. Where can readers find your work?

Best bet is to check out kandrel.sofurry.com.  I do upload stories to a few other places, such as Weasyl and FA, but I maintain that SoFurry is currently the best platform for reading stories.  In addition, keep an eye on @Kandrel over at Twitter.  I’ll talk about recent projects and things I’ve been published in.  Hopefully, sometime in the near future I’ll get off my ass and mock up a site with my full book list.

10. What’s your favorite thing about the furry fandom?

No matter where I go, there are friends there.  I’ve had the opportunity to travel around the world, and it seems that no matter where I travel, just a few pokes online finds me locals to visit, and I know that going in we’ve already got something we share.

 

Check out Kandrel’s member bio here!

Just a reminder for those of you headed to Further Confusion this weekend that there are two FWG-sponsored panels on the schedule:

Furry Writers’ Guild Reading
Friday, January 15, 5:00 – 6:30 PM
Hilton: Santa Clara
(Members: If interested in participating in the reading, please contact Mary E. Lowd.)
The Furry Writers’ Guild has a wide range of members who write in all different styles. Come listen to members of the FWG read from their work.

Furry Writers’ Guild Meet & Greet
Friday, January 15, 9:30 – 11:00 PM
Marriott: Almaden
The Furry Writers’ Guild exists to support and connect members of the furry writing community. Come meet other writers and talk about the future of furry writing. Open to all — both members and newcomers!

Thanks to Mary E. Lowd and Chipotle for hosting the events!

January’s Book of the Month, Civilized Beasts, is a furry/animal-themed poetry anthology with proceeds benefiting Wildlife Conservation Society. The book features work from a wide variety of poets and artists, including:

Larry D. Thomas
B. H. Tang
Kevin Gillam
Chris Wise
BanWynn Oakshadow
Arian Mabe
Marge Simon
Jason Huitt (Lunostophiles)
Eduard Dragomir Szabo
Sandi Stromberg
Renee Carter Hall
Edwin ‘Utunu’ Herrell
George Squares
Ceò
Amy Fontaine
Alice “Huskyteer” Dryden
Winston Derden
Carolyn A. Dahl
Kenket
Dwale
Joyce Parkes
Stefano “Mando” Zocchi
Dominique Goodall
Televassi
David Andrew Cowan
Altivo Overo
Kits Koriohn
Denise Clemons
Jack Warren
Lynn White
Bruce Boston
Laura “Munchkin” Govednik
Weasel

Published by Weasel Press and available from major retailers in print and ebook formats.

New Members

No new members this month, but if you’re interested in joining, you can find all the info here.

Member News

In book release news, the furry poetry anthology Civilized Beasts is now available in print and ebook formats, including poems from Renee Carter Hall, Huskyteer, and many more. The erotic anthology Will of the Alpha 3, edited by Rechan, has also been released, featuring fiction from Laura “Munchkin” Lewis, Ocean Tigrox, Dark End, and others. (It’s also available as an ebook from Bad Dog Books.) Renee Carter Hall’s holiday story collection Wishing Season has been released in paperback for the first time, and Phil Geusz’s novella Cheetah’s Win (first published in ROAR) is now available as a standalone ebook. Finally, Searska GreyRaven’s story “Reynard and the Dragon” (also first published in ROAR) has been reprinted in the mainstream anthology Swords of Darkness, available now for pre-order.

In periodicals, the new magazine A Glimpse of Anthropomorphic Literature made its debut last month, with the first issue available to read free until February 15, featuring stories from Ocean Tigrox and Amy Fontaine as well as reviews of several furry books. Mary E. Lowd has started a new ezine, Deep Sky Anchor, to feature her short fiction, and Dark End has now completed his murder mystery “The Missing Motive,” with the full story now up on FurAffinity.

In nonfiction, associate member Madison “Makyo” Scott-Clary’s article “On Postfurry” was featured in an episode of Culturally F’d.

Finally, in other member news, Fred Patten celebrated his 75th birthday last month. If you missed Phil Geusz’s interview with him, you can check it out here.

(Members: Want your news here? Start a thread in our Member News forum!)

Market News

Upcoming deadlines: ROAR #7 closes on February 1, and the second issue of A Glimpse of Anthropomorphic Literature is reading through February 15. (More info on both on our Paying Markets page.)

For conbooks, Fur the ‘More is seeking “Cubicle Jungle” submissions until February 15 (maximum 2000 words, full info here).

Remember to keep an eye on our Calls for Submissions thread and our Publishing and Marketing forum for all the latest news and openings!

Guild News

Want to hang out and talk shop with other furry writers? Come join us in the forum shoutbox for the Coffeehouse Chats, Tuesdays at 7 p.m. Eastern and Thursdays at 12 p.m. Eastern. More info on the Coffeehouse Chats is here. (Remember, our forums are open to everyone, not just FWG members. Come register and join the conversation!)

We’re always open for guest blog post submissions from members — good exposure and a great way to help out fellow writers. See our guidelines for details.

Elsewhere on the Internet, we have a Goodreads group with a bookshelf featuring books by our members. Feel free to add any members’ books we’ve missed so far (see the instructions here on how to do that). We also have a Telegram group, and you can find more info on that and a link in this thread.

Have a happy and creative 2016! If you have news, suggestions, or other feedback to share, send an email to furwritersguild (at) gmail.com or leave a comment below.

 

Setting Effective Writing Goals

by Renee Carter Hall

 

For many of us, a new year brings a feeling of a fresh start — a blank slate ready for new habits, new goals, and new accomplishments to celebrate. But after the novelty wears off and all the responsibilities, obligations, and distractions of day-to-day life rush back in, it’s easy for writing to get pushed back to the bottom of the to-do list. Here are a few tips to help you set goals that won’t set you up for disappointment.

1. Consider what you really want. That may sound obvious, but it’s easy to accept other people’s ideas of goals instead of your own. Do you want to write the first draft of a novel to challenge yourself, or because everyone else in your writing group is working on a novel instead of short stories? Consider, also, whether you want to set goals that deal with process (“write 3000 words a week,” “write for 1 hour every weekday”), goals that deal with projects (“finish 2 short stories a month,” “finish the first draft of my novel”), or a mixture of both.

2. Choose goals that are under your control. You might want the end result to be “find an agent” or “get a short story accepted to Magazine X,” but you can’t control whether agents or editors accept or reject your work. Instead, consider goals that are based on your own actions, like “query 10 agents” or “send at least 1 submission to Magazine X.”

3. Find the balance between challenge and realism. Some writers like the challenge of setting big goals and pushing themselves to achieve them; others would rather set the bar lower, get the confidence boost from achieving a smaller goal, and build from there. Consider your personality, your experience level, and your situation, and decide what’s right for you.

4. Write it down. Whether it’s in a private journal or posted online, a written list gives you a visual reminder to focus on — plus the fun of checking off your accomplishments. If it motivates you to share your goals with others, feel free; if not, keep it private.

5. Check in. Once a week, once a month — on whatever schedule works for you, glance over your goals and re-evaluate them. What steps you can take now to work toward each goal? Which ones have been accomplished? You may find that some goals are no longer relevant to you or may need to be reworked, and you might find others to add.

6. Celebrate accomplishments large and small. It’s easy to get disappointed by the goals that don’t get checked off, but try to keep the focus on what you do achieve. Celebrate your progress along the way, no matter how small that progress may seem, and reward yourself with something you love — an hour with the newest video game, the latest book from your favorite author, or a decadent dessert. (Just don’t derail any goals you might have for your health!)

I hope these tips help you make 2016 your most successful writing year yet. What are your goals — writing or otherwise — for 2016? Feel free to share them in the comments!

 

1. Tell us about your most recent project (written or published). What inspired it?

The ‘Portals of Infinity’ series is my most recent project. It’s about a guy who discovers these portals that link all of these different realities together and his adventures as he deals with different realities, gods, goddesses, and champions. Book six just came out in October.

I can’t point to any one thing that inspired it, as it was actually inspired by a lot of different things. Mainly I was looking for a story that could be serialized and this was what I came up with after a lot of thought. I’ve been rather surprised by how well it has been received.

2. What’s your writing process like? Are you a “pantser,” an outliner, or something in between?

I guess something in between; when I start a story I usually have the beginning, the end, and a scene or two written down. But somewhere around the second or third chapter, once I have a feeling for the story, I’ll sit down and write a full outline. However, I do update the outline if necessary. Only the original plot points I started with don’t change.

3. What’s your favorite kind of story to write?

I actually prefer to write first person singular (and yes, that probably wasn’t what you meant when you asked that, right?) I guess I prefer stories with action and adventure, but it’s really hard for me to narrow it down, because many of my stories rarely have a single ‘kind’ to them, I tend to mix it up. I write SciFi or Fantasy predominately, but I’ve written Urban Fantasy, Paranormal Romance, and even a few odder things.

4. Which character from your work do you most identify with, and why?

This is actually a tough question, partially because I’ve got a lot of stuff out there now, as I have a few pen names. I guess I identify a little with Raj, from my book Children of Steel, because we’re both pilots, and we’re both martial artists (though I don’t teach or fight anymore), but I also identify a bit with Mark from The Hammer Commission as that story did come from a dream I had many years ago.

5. Which authors or books have most influenced your work?

That’s a very long list. Roger Zelazny definitely influenced my writing style; Robert Heinlein influenced my love of science fiction and the idea of capable heroes. But also Tolkien, Asimov, Roger Sterling, Lackey, Webber, Dickson, Capote, Zahn, Norman (Lisanne, not the Gor guy), McCaffrey, Correia, and the list goes on. I used to read a lot and I had a lot of authors who I really liked.

6. What’s the last book you read that you really loved?

I guess the last one I read that I really loved was Off Leash by Daniel Potter. It was a ‘Rollicking good yarn’ (sorry, but how often do you get to use the word ‘rollicking’ these days? Couldn’t pass it up). I write full time now, so I don’t get to read as much as I used to, but I came across this book via the board here after talking to Daniel, and I really had a great time reading it.

7. Besides writing, how do you like to spend your free time?

Right now? Fallout 4. Though I do wrench on my motorcycles and ride them whenever I can. I also play bass guitar, pretty much every day. I keep a couple set up next to my writing desk with a practice amp for when I take breaks.

8. Advice for other writers?

STORY! Always put the story first. People want to read a good story; they don’t want to be preached at. This isn’t to say you can’t have a viewpoint, or a ‘message’ you want to convey, but the story must always come first. If you don’t have a good story, you won’t sell any copies. The next piece of advice? GET PAID. As Larry Correia says, make that the first line in your business plan.

Another thing I would say is don’t overprice your work. No one is going to pay bookstore prices for an unknown ebook author, especially a self-published or micro-press one. 5.99 is too much, you should all be looking at 2.99 to start. Yes, you make more money on a 5.99 book, but 70 percent of 1 or 2 sales is a lot less at 5.99 than 70 percent of a thousand sales at 2.99.

Last of all, SciFi is not a big market; it’s actually a tiny market. Fantasy is bigger, but Romance is the biggest. If you like writing Romance, then you should write in that market, as you’ll find success a lot easier than in the other markets, and you can charge higher prices for your work. Furry is a very tiny, microscopic market, so it’s no wonder that the only authors doing well in it are writing Romance. There is also a huge prejudice against anything remotely furry in mainstream fiction, except for Paranormal Romance, which if it isn’t vampires, it’s pretty furry.

9. Where can readers find your work?

Amazon. I went exclusive with Amazon last year, because being in the Kindle Unlimited program was a good financial decision for me. I may start going ‘wide’ in 2016, depending on what Amazon does with that program going forward, but right now Amazon is THE place to buy and sell books. The other booksellers out there on line don’t understand the business, and are failing at it.

10. What’s your favorite thing about the furry fandom?

The friendships mainly. Back when I first got started in the fandom and was more active I made a lot of friends with a lot of the other creative folks. I still know quite a few writers and artists and talk to them occasionally. These days I’m not very active in the fandom anymore, I show up at a con or two, maybe log into a muck for a few minutes to check my mail, and that’s about it.

 

A Conversation with Fred Patten

by Phil Geusz

Tomorrow, December 11, 2015, Fred Patten will celebrate his 75th birthday. If you don’t already know who Fred is and why it’s important that the fandom (and especially the FWG!) should honor him, well… Perhaps the best way to learn more about who Fred is and what he’s done for us both as furries and as authors would be to read on.

 

1) You’re often credited as being among the handful of founders of the furry fandom. Can you give us an idea of what it was like, who else you personally knew that was involved, and generally tell us how it all came together?

I remember attending the 1980 Worldcon as a regular s-f fan, one of several from the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society. I was particularly close with Mark Merlino at the time; we had recently created the C/FO and “invented anime fandom”. One of the favorites of both Merlino & I was Kimba the White Lion, though most of the other early anime fans preferred the giant robot cartoons. At the 1980 Worldcon, Merlino & I and Nicolai Shapero were intrigued by a painting in the Art Show of a cat-woman in a military flight suit standing next to a realistic futuristic fighter plane. The artist was nearby and introduced himself as Steve Gallacci, a USAF technical illustrator. The painting was a standalone illustration from a series that he’d had in mind for years, about a star system of artificially-evolved animal peoples who had forgotten their past and rediscovered it during a space war between the cat and rabbit nations. He had a manila folder full of rough notes in cartoon form that he offered to show us. We didn’t just glance at it; we studied it in detail. At the convention’s Art Auction all three of us got into a bidding war for that painting. None of us got it; I don’t know who did.

I don’t know who else joined the “Gallacci group” to look at his notes at the 1980 Worldcon, but Tim Fay and John Cawley were early members. Gallacci was just getting out of the USAF; he settled in Seattle, and came to most of the s-f and comics conventions on the West Coast during the 1980s. We used to gather around Gallacci at these conventions to see his latest addition to his notes, and the group gradually grew. Many of us were cartoonists, and traded sketches in the ever-present Black Sketchbooks. During conversations with each other, we discovered that we all particularly liked the stories that featured intelligent animals and animal-like aliens; Watership Down and Animal Farm, Kimba the White Lion and Bambi, and so on. During 1982 Don Bluth’s The Secret of NIMH came out and was a big topic of discussion.

As a separate matter, Vootie, the fanzine of the Funny Animal Liberation Front started in 1977. I had tried to join, but was turned down because I wasn’t a cartoonist. It was an APA for comic-book fans who didn’t like costumed superheroes and could draw. One of its members was Marc Schirmeister in L.A. During 1981 and 1982 it became obvious that Vootie was dying because of apathy among its organizers. Schirm tried to keep it going but he failed; the last Vootie was in February 1983. Schirm then organized Rowrbrazzle as its replacement, but he made an interest in funny animals rather than an ability to draw cartoons as the criterion for membership. I could write about them so I was accepted, as were several members of the Gallacci group, ex-Vootie members, and others who could draw funny animals; some friends of members. Schirm went on a recruiting drive among the 1983-84 Cal Arts students and made several of them Rowrbrazzle members whether they wanted to be or not. Most of them never contributed; Bruce Timm provided a “Duck Savage” drawing that he’d already done.

Rowrbrazzle #1 appeared in February 1984. By that time, early furry fandom was dividing between those who were in Rowrbrazzle and contributing to its quarterly issues, and those who gathered at conventions who were organized more by Mark Merlino & Rod O’Riley. Gallacci was concentrating on finalizing his story into publishable form as the comic book Albedo. The members of Rowrbrazzle #1 were Marc Schirmeister the Official Editor, Greg Bear, Jerry Beck, John Cawley, Dave Bennett, Jerry Collins, Tim Fay, Jim Groat, Richard Konkle, Brett Koth, Steve Martin, Bruce Timm, Ken Sample, Taral Wayne, Deal Whitley, Colleen Winters, and me. Some like Bruce Timm weren’t interested in furry fandom and dropped out right away. Jerry Beck got interested in animation. Deal Whitley was as active in furry fandom as his health would permit, until he became the first furry fan who died. John Cawley shifted over to Merlino’s group which evolved to putting on parties at conventions. Merlino’s Furry Parties, advertised on flyers throughout the convention, were responsible for the fandom coming to be called furry fandom. Other early furry fans were Roz Gibson, Mike Kazaleh, Stan Sakai, Tracy Horton who married Mike Kazaleh, Edd Vick, Diana Vick (no relation), Monika Livingston, and Kjartan Arnorsson. Merlino & O’Riley expanded the Furry Parties at s-f & comics conventions into the first furry conventions, the ConFurences, in 1989.

One of the early discussion topics in Rowrbrazzle was what was happening in the fandom. This is why I say that Rowrbrazzle wasn’t responsible for furry fandom, but it does prove that furry fandom existed by 1984. It was more than the Vootie membership and the Gallacci groups at conventions.

 

2) You’re also credited in a similar way with the founding of the anime and “My Little Pony” fandoms. Have you any comments on how they came to be and your role in the matter? And… Just how did it come to pass that you’ve been at center of so many important cultural movements?

I may have co-founded furry fandom and anime fandom, but I’ve never watched My Little Pony. You can’t blame that on me.

I joined the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society in 1960, which meets every Thursday evening, and I was an active s-f fan from 1960 until I had my stroke in 2005. I credit many of the LASFS members of the 1960s through the 2000s with helping me get established as an active fan who was on s-f convention committees, helped organize s-f theater parties, etc. I attended some of the first meetings of mystery fandom and Oz fandom, but I never became a leader in those. I was active early in comics fandom — I had an article on Mexican comic book superheroes in Alter Ego, one of the first comics fanzines, in 1965 — but I was not very interested in the costumed superheroes that most comics fans concentrated on. That’s why my interest ran more to the funny animals, the French bandes dessinées, and later the Japanese manga. I’ve always had a habit of volunteering, usually as a Secretary. When anime fandom and later furry fandom began to coalesce, I used my experience from the LASFS in organizing anime and furry clubs that wouldn’t fall apart in a few months.

 

3) All of the fandoms you’re involved in can in at least some fairness be described as a bit “geeky”. (Keep in mind that I’m saying this as a proud, card-carrying geek myself.) Do you consider yourself a bit of a geek? Do you have any observations or comments on geekdom in general?

Yes, I’m a geek and proud of it. I was never interested in the social life of high school or college. I’m a lifelong bachelor. My mother wanted me to become a doctor or lawyer or something prestigious, but I’ve always liked books and became a librarian. I became nervous about what would happen to me when I graduated from college, and I joined a fraternity to force myself into a social life, but I hated it. When I discovered s-f fandom, they were my kind of people.

 

4) You’re a bibliophile and book-reviewer of note. About how many reviews do you suppose you’ve written over the years? Care to share some happy memories of the very finest or otherwise outstanding works you’ve read or reviewed?

I’ve probably written over a thousand reviews of furry books alone. Probably over 2,000 all told. My earliest review was of an arguably furry book; H. Beam Piper’s Little Fuzzy, in a 1962 fanzine. I’m depressed to read today a list in ISFDB of the reviews that I wrote in the 1970s; I don’t remember many of the books at all, much less what I said about them. From 1975 to 1977, I was the publisher, co-editor, and a major reviewer for Delap’s F&SF Review, a monthly s-f reviewzine; about 28 regular issues. Richard Delap & I argued about the direction that it should take, and he “fired” me to edit & publish it himself. It only lasted two more issues.

The review that I remember best was of Stephen King’s The Shining. I said that it was a very suspenseful horror novel, but there were several of what seemed like buildups to horror subclimaxes that were aborted and didn’t go anywhere. I got a letter from King saying that was all his editor’s fault. His original manuscript had been twice as long, and all those buildups had led to horror scenes that the editor had edited out; like the ominous firehose on a wall of the hotel that had attacked the boy before the scene had been cut.

Another is of Forest Wars by Graham Diamond; a truly awful novel that I had fun tearing apart. It had a vast empire that it took a man on horseback three whole days to gallop across. Since a galloping horse can only cover about 20 miles a day, that’s about 60 or 70 miles across. Some vast empire. Retreating farmers cut down their fields of grain rather than leaving it for slavering hordes of wild dogs to eat. Were the dogs expected to harvest the grain and bake it into bread for themselves?

5) What advice would you give to someone who seeks to review books today? Or, just someone who loves them?

Furry fandom needs more book reviewers. Say why you like or don’t like something, not just that you like or don’t like it. Remember that your review is just your opinion, and that usually for every opinion that you have, someone intelligent will have a different opinion; so say “I liked because” or “I didn’t like because” rather than “This is good because” or “This is bad because”. But if a novel is truly bad, don’t spare the sarcasm; but make clear why it’s bad. Try to read widely so you will recognize allusions or references.

 

6) You also have a long, intimate history with the SF fandom. What are some of your happiest memories in association with it? What was the fandom like when you were young? How have things changed?

In the 1950s and 1960s, s-f was taken much less seriously than it is today. That was the period when the general public thought that s-f fans believed that Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon were real people, and that rocket ships to the Moon were ridiculous fantasies. I wrote a book report on one volume of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in high school, and my teacher didn’t bother reading it because she said that no flying saucer book could be worth reviewing. S-f fans in that period had a saying, “It is a proud and lonely thing to be a fan.” Fans identified with Slan by A. E. van Vogt, about hidden mutants who were really superior to ordinary humans. In the 1950s it was theoretically possible to read every s-f book ever published, and several fans tried to. In the 1950s original s-f paperbacks began to be published, which libraries wouldn’t buy; and several s-f fans started collections of “the s-f that the libraries won’t touch”. After I joined the LASFS while at UCLA in 1960, I had my first experiences away from home or a college fraternity. I had never been outside California before; I went to the Worldcons in Seattle in 1961, Chicago in 1962, and other cities, eventually going to Heidelburg, London, Melbourne, and other cities on other continents in association with Worldcons. I was part of a carful of LASFS members who drove cross-country to the Worldcon in Washington D.C. in 1963. We visited Robert Heinlein outside of Colorado Springs one day and slept overnight in his bomb shelter; “Farnham’s Freehold”. I was in another LASFS caravan to the 1966 Worldcon in Cleveland. We visited national and state parks on the way, and slept in sleeping bags under the stars. We stopped in Zion National Park for lunch. There were signs around the lunch area, “Do not feed the animals or encourage them to come close. They carry rabies and plague.” As soon as we unpacked our sandwiches, the chipmunks came running from nowhere, raced up our legs onto our arms, bit our fingers to make us drop the sandwiches, dived after them, and were out of sight with the sandwiches in less than a minute. In another park around Illinois where we slept in sleeping bags, in the morning the other fans pointed out that I had dusty raccoon pawprints all over me. When I went to the Worldcon in Heidelburg in 1970, I joined a group of French and Belgian fans driving to Brussels after the con. We drove in Claude Dumont’s car; he was known as the only s-f fan who had served in the French Foreign Legion. In Brussels I got into what I called “The Mystery of Lambert Lamont”. I was the only American in a group of four or five Belgian s-f & comics fans. I noticed one day that the Belgian paper money we had had a picture of a man in Medieval clothes captioned Lambert Lamont. I asked who Lambert Lamont was. “Who? Some actor? Never heard of him.” “Well, he’s on your paper money!” “So he is. I still never heard of him.” We spent the whole day asking shopkeepers and waiters and everybody we met who Lambert Lamont had been, and nobody knew him. It wasn’t until I got back to Los Angeles and looked him up in an encyclopedia that I found that he had been a 16th-century minor Flemish artist. I can probably come up with other memories if I think about it a while.

 

7) Your long and distinguished career involves contributions to and involvement in both film/TV and more literary pursuits. Do you favor one over the other? If so, which? How do you feel they differ artistically?

I favor the literary pursuits. I’ve been in some colorful film/TV moments, but somehow the literary moments seem more serious and lasting. I do remember that the first meeting of the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization, the anime club that started within the LASFS, was lightly attended because most of the s-f fans had been lured away by the coming premiere of the first Star Wars movie. George Lucas & company was very unsure of how the public would react to it, and Charles Lippincott, its publicity agent, wanted to pack its premiere with hardcore s-f fans who would be guaranteed to like it. I think that Lippincott was rehearsing the fans to act enthusiastic. He hardly had to; we were probably more enthusiastic about it than he was. But in general I remember going to little-theater productions of plays adapted from Ray Bradbury’s short stories; Harlan Ellison getting furious when we kept asking how, in a future where nobody knew what jellybeans were, a huge heap of jellybeans was valued at $150,000 worth; and so on.

 

8) What have you learned in a long, distinguished life? Have you any advice for young people just discovering the fandoms?

No advice. The world seems so different from what it used to be that I’m more inclined to ask young people for advice than to give it to them. I remember writing a comic-book script that had a scene where one character steps into a phone booth to call another; the artist changed it to the character pulling a cell phone from a pocket and calling the other. When Streamline Pictures licensed the movie Akira in 1989, it was the hottest and most cutting-edge anime feature around. When Streamline’s license expired in the mid-’90s and we had to renew it, the average anime fan’s reaction was, “That’s such an old movie. Why are you spending money on an old movie instead of getting one of the hot new titles?” I’m still insisting on paper books and avoiding Kindle.

I was raised by my grandmother (my mother’s mother) during World War II since both my mother and father had jobs. I started elementary school just after the war, when many of my classmates’ fathers had just returned to civilian life from the Army or Navy. The other kids had lots of stories from their fathers about The War. I didn’t know what they were talking about, because I had learned from my grandmother that The War had ended when the Union Army occupied New Orleans. When my mother found out about that, she brought me up to date; but my grandmother never accepted that the occupation of New Orleans by the Yankees wasn’t The End Of The World. (One of her complaints was, “Everybody in New Orleans used to be so polite, until the Union Army moved in and started enforcing the laws against dueling!”) I feel like my grandmother today; increasingly out of touch with the present.

 

9) What do you see for the future, both of furry specifically and the “geeky” fandoms in general?

I’m encouraged that what was “geeky” in my youth is no longer geeky, but a bit saddened because it’s no longer “special”. For furry, I don’t know. I’m a bit alarmed that what was a literary interest has been taken over by the fursuiters and the lifestylers. I hope that I last long enough to see.

 

So do we, Fred! May you be able to enjoy the fandom you did so much to create for many, many happy and productive years to come!

 

(In celebration of Fred’s 75th birthday, FurPlanet is offering six of Fred’s books on sale for 75% of their cover price, from Friday, December 11 through Sunday, December 13. You can find a full list with links here.)

December’s Book of the Month, Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard, is by member Lawrence M. Schoen. From the publisher’s website:

The Sixth Sense meets Planet of the Apes in a moving science fiction novel set so far in the future, humanity is gone and forgotten in Lawrence M. Schoen’s Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard

An historian who speaks with the dead is ensnared by the past. A child who feels no pain and who should not exist sees the future. Between them are truths that will shake worlds.

In a distant future, no remnants of human beings remain, but their successors thrive throughout the galaxy. These are the offspring of humanity’s genius-animals uplifted into walking, talking, sentient beings. The Fant are one such species: anthropomorphic elephants ostracized by other races, and long ago exiled to the rainy ghetto world of Barsk. There, they develop medicines upon which all species now depend. The most coveted of these drugs is koph, which allows a small number of users to interact with the recently deceased and learn their secrets.

To break the Fant’s control of koph, an offworld shadow group attempts to force the Fant to surrender their knowledge. Jorl, a Fant Speaker with the dead, is compelled to question his deceased best friend, who years ago mysteriously committed suicide. In so doing, Jorl unearths a secret the powers that be would prefer to keep buried forever. Meanwhile, his dead friend’s son, a physically challenged young Fant named Pizlo, is driven by disturbing visions to take his first unsteady steps toward an uncertain future.

Available for pre-order from Amazon and other retailers, to be published December 29.

 

(First, apologies for this post being a little late — due to some health issues, my computer time had to be limited this week. The Book of the Month for December will be posted tomorrow, December 7, and then the regular blog schedule will resume, except for skipping the Member Spotlight on December 25.)

New Members

Welcome to our newest member Jenora Feuer!

Member News

In short stories, Renee Carter Hall’s “The First Winter” appeared in a special bear-themed flash fiction episode of Podcastle,  Carmen K. Welsh, Jr’s short story “Night Sounds” is in issue 9 of Prick of the Spindle, Tarl “Voice” Hoch has a story in Will of the Alpha 3 (in the company of several other FWG members), and Mary E. Lowd has new fiction in Ember, Daily Science Fiction, and Luna Station Quarterly.

In serial fiction, Patrick “Bahumat” Rochefort’s serial From Winter’s Ashes continues, with chapters 7.0 and 7.1 now posted, and Dark End has begun a murder mystery, “The Missing Motive“.

In novels, Baumarius has just released Victernus; Paul Kidd’s second GeneStorm novel, Fort Dandelion, is now available; and as of this posting, T. S. McNally’s novel Light: A Tale of the Magical Creatures of Zudukii is free on Kindle (through tomorrow).

And in review news, check out this roundtable review of Kristina Tracer’s Bonds of Silver, Bonds of Gold over at [adjective][species].

(Members: Want your news here? Start a thread in our Member News forum!)

Market News

Upcoming deadlines: The adult anthology Knotted has extended its deadline to December 11, so you still have a few days left to get your submissions in! In conbook news, VancouFur seeks fiction on the theme of Atlantis.

Remember to keep an eye on our Calls for Submissions thread and our Publishing and Marketing forum for all the latest news and openings!

Guild News

Want to hang out and talk shop with other furry writers? Come join us in the forum shoutbox for the Coffeehouse Chats, Tuesdays at 7 p.m. Eastern and Thursdays at 12 p.m. Eastern. More info on the Coffeehouse Chats is here.

We’re always open for guest blog post submissions from members — good exposure and a great way to help out fellow writers. See our guidelines for details.

We have a Telegram group! More info and a link in this thread.

On Goodreads? Don’t forget we have a Goodreads group and a bookshelf featuring books by our members. Feel free to add any members’ books we’ve missed so far (see the instructions here on how to do that).

Need a beta reader? Check out our critique board (you’ll need to be registered with the forum in order to view it).

Remember, our forums are open to everyone, not just FWG members. Come register and join the conversation!

Have a great month! If you have news, suggestions, or other feedback to share, send an email to furwritersguild (at) gmail.com or leave a comment below.

1. Tell us about your most recent project (written or published). What inspired it?

I am currently working on a novel in between short stories. With the time I have between work and other hobbies it is progressing gradually. I would, however, like to shift the focus to one of my stories recently accepted by AnthroAquatic for his sports anthology Claw the Way to Victory back in June, entitled “A Leap Forward”.

Sometime last year, I had the idea for a story featuring Parkour (PK) a physical discipline which emphasizes the use of one’s body to circumvent obstacles in the natural and physical world. There had been few stories written on Parkour, and they, alongside the numerous videos to be found on YouTube, tend to focus more on the more action-intensive aspects of the sport. Although the benefits of PK are obvious, especially to people largely dependent on set paths and roads for getting around, I wanted to explore the social aspects of the discipline, and what makes its practitioners tick. Like any high-intensity sport, the adrenaline rush is there, but for some, it is also a way to entertain oneself in the absence of other means, and even a means to earn a living.

Although PK looks glamorous in film and video, there are also other aspects of it that has been largely forgotten and passed over in favour of its more colourful and exciting visuals. Aspects such as the philosophy of the discipline, and the importance of bettering oneself for self-growth over the need for competition. Because PK finds its place not just in Europe where it had hailed from, but also in unlikely places such as Brazil and the Gaza strip, there are countless reasons why one would choose to take up the discipline, cultural and social differences aside. I believe that for people to truly understand a lifestyle, one has to go into the mind of those who do as they do.

And in the case of “A Leap Forward”, my African Civet protagonist Lesaut.

2. What’s your writing process like? Are you a “pantser,” an outliner, or something in between?

I used to pants-write every story, given that it is extremely liberating in terms of feel. However, as was often the case, things don’t always fall seamlessly together, especially when there’s a lot of detail like a novel would have. Without a layout or plan, the ending may not be known, which can give rise to conflicting events in the story itself.

I now plan the layout of my stories on paper, unless they’re for shorter works, in which freewriting generally works best for me. I don’t always refer to the layout step-by-step and the ending can be different from what was originally intended, but at least I have a direction to work the story towards.

3. What’s your favorite kind of story to write?

Stories with a message, themes people can relate to. We may not be living in a futuristic world fifty years ahead of now, but some themes remain universal. Finding our place in a society that rejects others simply for being weak or different, for one. I also try to fit some action scenes in my stories, both to give the thrill of the chase and allow characters the chance to fight for their goals. I find it enjoyable to work on humourous stories, but because some themes don’t work well with humour, I don’t do many of them. “Kenyak’s Conquest”, my story in the Anthrocon 2015 conbook was one of the few. Most people may think of Vikings as a bloodthirsty people who conquered other territories, so I thought it would be interesting to have the concept of “conquest” redefined for the protagonist, a swiving warrior.

4. Which character from your work do you most identify with, and why?

Mikasi from my second novel. Although Mikasi started off as the least confident of the other three apprentices he was travelling with, he was their mediator and unofficial leader despite the efforts of the most stuck-up apprentice. Despite being a mage apprentice, he favours the skill of the blade over spellcraft, much as how I prefer all things mechanical over electronics. :) Lesaut from “A Leap Forward”, however, represents my free spirit.

5. Which authors or books have most influenced your work?

Before having read books by Kyell Gold, with Waterways being the first, I was focused more on the action-based and adventure aspects of the story. Kyell’s work reminded me, however, that with people being complex creatures, how they interact with each other can determine the outcome of one’s life as much as other events. Anthony Horowitz had taught me the importance of giving personality to objects, such as calling a vehicle by its make rather than simply a car.

6. What’s the last book you read that you really loved?

Shadows in the Snow, the second volume of Stories of New Tibet. There are few books that provokes my thinking when I’m not reading them, and this was definitely one of them. Most of the stories are dark and depressing in nature (though it seems more of that case in the first volume), but somehow it makes you think about the fragility of life. Although the stories take place on a planet an untold number of lightyears away, they still relate to situations in the human condition. I think the most important theme from the book is that leaving for greener pastures is not always be the best option. And sometimes, the only meaning in a planet and city so crime-ridden and bleak is that someone to share one’s life with, the someone you protect and hold dear.

I really wish Sofawolf would release another volume.

7. Besides writing, how do you like to spend your free time?

I sometimes do crafting, probably one reason why I’m interested in technology. I also enjoy video games as long as the story and/or game mechanics are interesting and require some player consideration to solve its missions. Poetry is also something I had started recently, and I also do the occasional art piece which I upload to my FA account. Art was a major introductory for me into the fandom, and I’m still inspired to do it. I used to work on a gag strip, but for now, the Way of the Word takes priority.

8. Advice for other writers?

Give characters a reason for their actions, and make them likable in the process. If you have a protagonist who is a jerk simply because that’s his innate personality rather than it having been motivated by other stronger factors (such as a troubled past, betrayal, etc.), readers are going to be tired of him pretty quick and drop the book fast.

Last of all, a story is about something happening, something different from normal events. A situation in which the characters work towards their goal, coming out better in the process. I believe something different has to happen in the story’s challenge or characters by the time the story ends, otherwise there is little reason to be reading it. I had read quite a few stories, in which two characters get together only to depart without really gaining anything life’s experiences. I believe there’s got to be more to differentiate a story from real life.

9. Where can readers find your work?

I have a story out in Fred Patten’s The Furry Future, and stories in the Punked and Claw the Way to Victory anthologies (to be released in January 2016). My stories had also appeared in several conbooks such as in VancouFur 2015 (Noir), What The Fur 2015 (Time Travel) and Anthrocon 2015 (Viking Invasion). I will continue writing stories for conbooks if their theme interests me, so that’s another venue you may find them in.

And of course, I maintain a FA and twitter account as follows:

http://www.furaffinity.net/user/mikasiwolf/

https://twitter.com/mikasiwolf

10. What’s your favorite thing about the furry fandom?

We all come together for a common interest; all things anthropomorphic. I had tried speaking with non-furries about anthropomorphic characters in writing and literature, and the most common answer I get is “Why do you make them animals instead of humans?”, often with a inscrutable expression on their face. Being in the fandom allows us to talk about possibilities otherwise impossible to do so in the real world. We even have people coming together from across the world to conventions just for this common interest. Whether we’re writers, artists, fursuiters or just fans, we’re united in that way. It doesn’t matter if you’re a cougar or a lion; the other guy who’s a mouse will still get along with you. Colours, patterns or hues don’t matter; if you can dream, you can have it! The choice to choose what character or species you wish to be gives members of the fandom the sense of fulfillment otherwise fixed in other subcultures.

 

Check out MikasiWolf’s member bio here!

(From the Rather Disorganized Desk of the FWG President.)

While the FWG is a relatively small organization right now, as writers’ organizations go, it still takes work to keep us going and growing steadily, both in our membership and in our resources for writers. If the guild has been helpful to you in your writing, here are a few ways you can pay it forward. (Know of other suggestions? Add them in the comments!)

1. Start a conversation. Post a thread to our forums. (You don’t have to be a member to register and participate there.) Members, make a thread for yourself in the Member News forum to tell us what you’re up to. Chat in the shoutbox. Add a member’s book to our Goodreads shelf, or start a conversation there. The more members and future members we have adding their voices, the better.
2. Write a blog post. (Yep, this thing I’m posting on right now.) Members, we’re always looking for blog posts on any aspect of the writing life. Full guidelines are here, and remember, we’re also happy to take reprints from your own blog/journal.
3. Signal boost. This is something everyone can do. Retweeting or reblogging good stuff from our feeds takes just seconds, and signal boosting never hurts. We’re on Twitter as @furwritersguild.
4. Name drop. Mention in your contributor bios that you’re a guild member. Or link to your member page in a forum signature. (If your member page needs updating, just send the new info to furwritersguild at gmail.)
5. Help keep markets (and our website) updated. Here’s another one everyone can do. If you run across a publication that might be open to furry-themed fiction or just one you think might be of interest to our writers generally, post it in the Calls for Submissions thread or email me at furwritersguild at gmail. If it’s specific enough to furry writing, I’ll add it to our website’s market pages. Same goes for conbooks — if you know of a convention coming up that’s open to conbook submissions but isn’t yet listed on our Conbooks page, just make a post or send an email, and I’ll get it added ASAP. And if you have any other resources to add to our website, anything from a link to a story generator or writing software or a great writing blog, just let me know. I want to keep adding as many good resources to our website as I can.
6. Host a panel. Members, consider submitting a FWG-themed panel to cons you’re attending. This could be an informational panel about the guild, a group reading with several FWG members participating, an informal meet-and-greet, or some combination. Or, if you’re already doing other panels, mention in your introduction that you’re an FWG member. We’ve gotten a lot of help from just that type of simple, casual word-of-mouth advertising.
7. Distribute swag. Another item open to everybody. I still have plenty of FWG bookmarks on hand and can mail out batches wherever they’re needed. You can also print our PDF flyer or our business-card-size ad, and more home-printable resources are coming soon. (And by “distribute,” I mean “leave them on the flyer tables, or where the writing panels are held, or wherever won’t get you or us in trouble.” You don’t have to hand them out personally, though that’s great if you want to.)
8. Help with advertising. If you know of an advertising opportunity, especially free or low cost, drop me a line. Add one of our images to your website — or design us something new.
9. Buy our anthology. In print or ebook. Or buy a copy as a gift. Already read it? Write a review on Rabbit Valley or Goodreads (or both, or wherever else). Profits from the anthology’s sales directly benefit the guild, and reviews help visibility.
10. Make a donation. If you want to know where your money’s going, we have a treasury thread that keeps things transparent. Donations help fund our website; advertising, printing, and postage costs; and current and future projects like the Cóyotl Awards and anthologies.

And as a bonus #11, check out our volunteer wish list for more info on specific items where you can lend your skills.

Thank you to all our members and supporters who help make the FWG such a great resource for furry writers!

1. Tell us about your most recent project (written or published). What inspired it?

I completed the final edits on The Byrd books– Early Byrd, Nestling Byrd, Jail Byrd, War Byrd and Angry Byrd— probably sometime late last August; they took me about eighteen to twenty-four months (interrupted by two bouts in the hospital with heart issues) to write and edit. Four of the five have now been published, with the last one due out any day now.

The Byrd series, though set sometime in the near future, is based on history that dates back to and just before the reign of Augustus Caesar. During this period the Romans were suffering from interminable and expensive border raids undertaken by the tribes of what is now Germany. While the Romans during this era were invariably able to beat back the raiders after the fact and even undertake powerful punitive invasions, their political and military system wasn’t up to the challenge of taking and holding the (to them) cold, alien forests. So, in an attempt to bring about a better cultural understanding and relationship that might lead to the development of Germany as a sort of self-ruled Roman client state and better neighbor, after one of their more successful punitive raids the Romans demanded that the tribal “kings” of Germany turn over their sons to be raised by high-ranking nobles back in Italy essentially as Romans themselves, with the intention that they eventually be restored to their German thrones as “uplifted” barbarians worthy of trust and properly appreciative of all the good things that Roman civilization had to offer.

Things of course didn’t turn out at all as planned, either in my books (where aliens play the part of the Romans) or in actual history…

I’m very proud of the Byrd books; though they’re only marginally furry. (The aliens, who play major roles throughout, are best visualized as anthro wolf-bears both physically and mentally.) While the Byrd books are essentially ‘escapist’ or ‘fun’ stories and never aspired to be Great Literature, they mark a major turning point for me as an author in that despite many failed efforts I was never been able to write convincing aliens before. This time I think I succeeded at long last, and have the skills I learned writing furry stories to thank for it.

2. What’s your writing process like? Are you a “pantser,” an outliner, or something in between?

Somewhere in between is the best answer, though no truly sane person would ever approach writing the way I do.

I began writing in a serious way on the Transformation Story Archive Mailing List (TSA), and I owe all of what success I’ve had as an author– and many other Good Things in my life– to my fellow members there. This background deeply shaped my techniques. There, I gradually developed the habit of writing a story-part (usually 1-2k words) pretty much every day in a disciplined manner. I soon learned that the best way to attract and hold readers– and receive highly-prized feedback– on the TSA is not only to post near-daily, but also to make sure that each and every story part leaves the readers eagerly awaiting more. This is a very high– sometimes impossible– standard to meet in Real Life, and particularly so in longer works. Yet, it’s clearly what’s not only what’s called for in order to succeed in a mailing-list environment, it happily also results in a finished book with that “impossible to put down” quality that suits the action-adventure genre so well. Therefore, in pursuit of these goals I developed a sort of hybrid ‘in-between’ approach to story planning that still serves me well. On the one hand, it’s absolutely impossible to plan ahead a hundred or so “mini-cliffhangers” to hold a reader’s interest during a book’s multi-month writing process. If anyone were to attempt plotting out or outlining a story in such detail, well… I think it’d be easier to just write the thing and be done with it. On the other, you can’t do proper justice to things like plot arc and theme without at least the broad strokes of a master plan. So, I spend weeks and months and sometimes even years thinking about a book– usually while simultaneously writing one or more others– thinking about not plot details but rather the grand sweep of things. For example, before writing Freedom City I spent weeks thinking about and mentally probing the limits of all the major aspects of human freedom I could think of– political, economic, social, sexual, scientific, and (being at heart a transhumanist) physical form. Then I thought some more and came up with a plot and setting where I could explore them in depth. In the end, the exploration of each of these forms of freedom became its own subplot, parts of a greater whole all “singing together” as part of the larger theme.

(By the way, I’d like to note here that though many interpret Freedom City as a political novel, it was never for a moment intended to be anything of the sort. I created the setting solely because it was the best place I could come up with to explore to the limit all the freedoms listed above. Am I a Libertarian? Yes, in many though not all ways. And this certainly colors what the final novel became. But Freedom City never was– and isn’t now– a personal political statement. I meant to create art, not an Atlas Shrugged-style rant. One of my greatest regrets as a writer is that it’s so often taken as such.)

3. What’s your favorite kind of story to write?

The quick, easy kind that makes lots of money!

In all seriousness…

The vast bulk of my work was written solely to divert the reader’s tedium and entertain, because that’s mostly what I personally seek as a reader. It features lots of action, potent imagery and outright violence in world-shaking quantities, all structured over what I hope is a thought-provoking exploration of provocative concepts and irresolvable moral dilemmas. I happen to like to think and to confront new ideas, you see, and assume my readers feel the same way. But what gives me the greatest satisfaction of all is to attempt a genuine piece of literary art, a story that stands more on craftsmanship and symbolism than big ideas and ray guns. I’ve written only a handful of these, and less than half of this handful are furry. When the attempt is successful– and it isn’t always– the resulting stories actually give me a sort of “artistic high” for days and even weeks afterwards.

“Cheetah’s Win”, which is both furry and an attempt at “high art”, was perhaps the most satisfying writing experience of my life to date. Certainly, in literary terms it’s the most “perfect”.

4. Which character from your work do you most identify with, and why?

That’s tough, for several reasons. I write mostly in first person, which I suspect means I “live in the heads” of my protagonists more completely than most. Plus I’ve been writing in a serious way for almost twenty years, having finished over twenty-five books and god only knows how many novellas and short stories along the way. I’m very much not the person who wrote Transmutation Now! (my first novel) circa 1997 anymore, but at least in certain respects I certainly was then. Each and every protagonist I’ve ever written— and most of the supporting characters as well— contains an element of me, from the washed-up action-adventure actor Jack Strafford (who, like me, was confronting middle-age and then found new meaning in a new life– his physical transformation into an anthro-rabbit was a metaphor for my own discovery of the furry fandom) to David Birkenhead (whose struggle against evil and prejudice was fought as much against his “friends” as his putative enemies, and which reflects my own hugely-frustrating career working for a Big Three automaker and experiences in UAW politics) to Lawrence Hightower, a homicide detective who loses his soul in a society where it’s absolutely unavoidable that absolute evil be employed to fight absolute evil. (He also reflects my experiences in UAW politics– this was not a fun time in my life.)

Identity being such a mutable thing– and as a transformation fan I’m of course obsessed with hacking the concept of self-identity— the correct answer to your question has to be “Whatever protagonist I’m writing on any particular day.”

5. Which authors or books have most influenced your work?

I was raised on a steady diet of unsteadiness. As a boy I’d read literally almost anything, from the car and gun magazines in my grandfather’s barber shop to my mom’s (for the day) racy murder mysteries to (allegedly) non-fiction books on everything from economics to unexplainable mysteries and UFO-men building the pyramids to mainstream best sellers to the entire 1968 World Book encyclopedia. I mean, anything! From about age eight to age twenty-two I averaged reading a book a day (counting a newspaper or magazine read cover-to-cover as a book-equivalent, and allowing two hundred pages as a “book-unit” as well. (Thus, the Lord of the Rings trilogy counted for about eight books, if memory serves.)

But what I loved best fit into several distinct categories, all of which are reflected heavily in my own work. The books I cherished most of all and spent the most time with were either Golden Age SF, especially Clarke, Niven, Bradbury, Asimov and Robert Heinlein (who was probably Influence Number One, though I freely grant that Clarke had the better novel concepts, as a rule, and that Bradbury may well have penned the finest prose ever written.) Outside of Golden Age stuff, C. S. Forester and some of Kipling’s works— especially parts of the Jungle Books— are faves. I probably spent– and still spend today– even more time reading twentieth-century military history than on fiction, especially personal memoirs of World War II. I also, in order to better understand these memoirs, read enormous amounts of stuff on World War IImilitary hardware, strategic concepts, and (most rewarding of all) how these concepts came to be developed. (It’s revealing that most anticipated book currently awaiting my attentions is an obscure work on the development of USN fleet logistics— supply and repair services, in other words— in the Pacific theater of war.) While I still read a little of everything, this latter category makes up about nine-tenths of my consumption today, at least in large part because for some strange reason on almost the very day I began authoring novels in a serious way I lost the ability to enjoy almost all fiction. For some strange reason, with rare exceptions any story written after about 1940 feels like broken glass in my brain. Reading such fiction is actually painful no matter how good it is— I recently experienced this phenomenon with a Hemingway novel— and the harder I try the worse it gets. If I wait about ten months between books I can usually read one– and only one!– long modern work without much “pain”, and these days I generally save this for a work by a fellow furry author.

For what it’s worth, I consider my early wide and voracious reading to be a treasure beyond price. I draw upon its width and breadth quite regularly as a working author, and being mostly an action-adventure writer it’s been enormously useful to understand the difference between a sichelschnitt-style blitzkrieg and kesselschalct, for example. Or, more pointedly (to those who’ve read what is perhaps my best-known work) it’s been very beneficial to be at least passingly familiar with how a Graves Registration unit approaches and goes about its deliberately-quiet business. Too many authors write unconvincingly about war, in my opinion. And they also ignore all the really interesting bits. This is most often, again in my opinion, a reflection of their deep ignorance of the subject. It’s been my avowed goal to do better.

6. What’s the last book you read that you really loved?

I hate to admit it, but whatever it was– if you mean “last novel” and I suspect you do– it’s been a very, very long time. In fact, what really stands out in my memory is a re-read of Lucifer’s Hammer (1977) by Larry Niven about two or three year’s back.

Historically, the books I’ve loved best combine a compelling plot and memorable characters with Big Ideas. As examples, take Clarke’s Childhood’s End, Heinlein’s Orphans of the Sky, Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, and Niven’s older Known Space books, taken as a body. These were the fodder of my youth, and they all share something two important things in common.

All are classic examples of golden-age style SF. And all were written before about 1980.

<sigh>

The sad fact is that something’s gone very badly wrong, and I’m not sure exactly what or where. But circa 1993 or so, I finally gave up on what I loved most in the world– reading SF novels– and abandoned it utterly for lack of good, readable books. It wasn’t for lack of trying– at that time I subscribed to both Analog and F&SF, and continued actively reading them out of sheer hope and stubbornness long after their contents turned into (to my taste at least) highly-concentrated crap. I also continued to buy and read SF novels long after I found them to be worth actually reading, mostly out of sheer force of habit. But they kept getting worse and worse and worse, and….

Well, the truth is that I haven’t read a truly excellent or compelling novel– one that hit me with new, important ideas or really gripped me and made me lose sleep because I couldn’t put it down– since about 1988.

Honest. Really. Swear to god. And you wouldn’t believe how badly I miss the experience!

Perhaps it’s a matter of age– I’m fifty-five now, and it’s been said that the real Golden Age of Science Fiction is about twelve. Or perhaps it’s a matter of profound cultural changes– I was a huge original-series Star Trek fan as well, yet can’t stand the Next Generation or anything else that’s come along since. Recently I read a Golden Age-style furry short story in a book I reviewed, and liked it very much, perhaps at least in part due to decades-long starvation for the stuff. Yet when a “real” SF-person who apparently likes the more modern approach also reviewed the same work, he referred to it in essence as obsolete.

So maybe that’s the problem– I’m obsolete and completely out of touch with current literary (and nearly all other, though that’s not relevant here) styles, trends and conventions. (How odd for a member of the age-cohort that invented the generation gap!) But the simple truth is that the complete dearth of what I consider to be ‘readable’ books was a huge factor in persuading me to try my own hand at the art. I told myself that I certainly couldn’t do any worse, because by the time I started (in 1996 or 1997) mainstream SF had decayed so badly (in my own eyes, at least) that ‘worse’ was virtually impossible.

By the way, if anyone knows where the daring godlike visions, fearless uncompromised characters and unlimited dreams that defined Golden Age SF and made it an artform worthy of respect wandered off to, can you please drop me an e-mail or something? I’ve been looking for decades now, and the hole in my life grows ever-greater…

7. Besides writing, how do you like to spend your free time?

For most of my writing career, I didn’t have a lot of free time because I was pumping out almost two books a year on the average, plus a whole boatload of short stories, etc. Writing was my free time, you see, as I also had a full-time job and a house to maintain. I retired about a year ago, however, and am finding that, as much as I’d like to, I just can’t spend any more hours per day writing than I did before—the limiting factor is Good Ideas, and they don’t come any more often just because I’m not working forty hours a week. So today I travel more frequently. My most recent trip– a once-in-a-lifetime affair, given the cost– covered most of the Pacific Northwest, plus Colorado and a few other places coming and going. It was costly as hell, but worth every penny. Go see the Northwest— you won’t regret it, and the places you stumble across by accident are best of all!

I’ve always made time for furcons, as well. I’ve been attending Mephit Furmeet since about 1998, and have been to four RainFurrests, two Anthrocons, at least five MFFs and I don’t know how many smaller events. As an aside, if I’ve learned one thing about cons it’s that “who” is a lot more important that “what” and “where”.

8. Advice for other writers?

Be tough and stick to it. I got lucky and published my first novel, but most writers don’t. The more you write, the more you learn. That’s true no matter what level you begin at.

Also, don’t listen to discouraging voices. Everyone and their brother will tell you that you’ll never get published or get likes or follows or whatever else it is you’re after. The only sure thing is that if you listen to them and give up, they’ll be right for sure.

9. Where can readers find your work?

I’m fortunate in that I not only have a very rare last name, but have chosen to publish under it as well. So, searching “Geusz” with the engine of your choice will get you everywhere you need to go. In addition to my published works, available at Amazon and most other online outlets, you can find my earlier, unpublished stuff online for free. It’s not as polished as my “commercial” work, largely because I learned the craft of authoring “on the job” as I wrote it. But (among many others) I wrote at least twenty-five stories of varied lengths in the mostly-furry “Blind Pig” storyverse, most of which I still consider readable, that are available for free online. (I consider several of them to be among my best work, period, though I never get around to editing them because it’d eat up a lot of time that I’d never be paid for and keep me from working on New Stuff.) I’ve also written numerous non-fiction columns (mostly on writing and the furry fandom) for the defunct TSAT and Anthro online magazines, as well as several for the still-very-much-with-us Adjective Species. Those can all be found the same way, and are free too.

10. What’s your favorite thing about the furry fandom?

Absolutely the people! The simple truth is that I’ve never met such an unreservedly fine group of human beings (or whatever) in my life as I have among the fandom. While some critics claim my work isn’t anthro-centric enough to be considered truly furry– though I beg to most energetically disagree!– I’m a fur to the bone and, based on my experiences so far, wouldn’t want to be anything else.

Check out Phil Geusz’s member bio here!

Advertising Statistics and ROI for Authors: Part 4 by Patrick “Bahumat” Rochefort

 

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]

 

This week, we’re once again looking at major advertising channels I’ve used in promotion of my webserial “From Winter’s Ashes“, and analyzing them one by one for the ROI and needs of an author and publisher. Today’s focus is one of a kind, with 316 million active users, Twitter!  

The first thing out of the gate that I REALLY liked about advertising with Twitter was the very comprehensible targeting. Of course you had your usual demographics analysis, but there was some spectacular other options, like: “Advertise to your followers” and “Advertise to the followers of the people you list here”, the latter option was FANTASTIC for targeting. If you know the twitter handles of, say, five or ten authors who write things like you do, targeting their followers means that you’re probably planting on fertile ground.

The next thing that I liked was that Twitter encouraged you to have more than one tweet as an advertisement. If you want a great experiment in honing your pitches to 140 characters and below, this is a fantastic exercise. I created four tweets that advertised the story, and saw some very different response rates from each of them, which I’ll detail further down this article.

  We’ll begin this week with the raw statistics, this time provided in a big beautiful infographic here: http://i.imgur.com/0W9Abfz.png   Budget: $35.00   Days: 7 ($5.00/day)   Impressions: 43,800   Clicks: 27 / 92* –> 27 clicks directly through to site. Retweets, favorites, or clicking on the “WebCard” of From Winter’s Ashes resulted in upping that total to 92 interactions.   CTR: 0.06% / Engagement Rate: 0.22%   CPC: $1.30  

Analysis:    

Overall, $35.00 bought me 43.8k impressions, with (27/92)* clicks. Why the asterisk? 27 of those clicks were directly to the site, while the total of 92 included people who went to my Twitter, clicked on the website card, favorited, or retweeted. Twitter does some pretty good granularity that way, but they don’t always explain it well.

Overall click-through rate: 0.06%. Devastatingly low. This is one-fifth the rate that Reddit offered me. On the upside, I served a lot of impressions, but overall it’s clear that on Twitter, people generally don’t want to click ads, even less so than they want to on other sites.

Engagement rate: 0.22%. Not terrible, here, when we factor in people engaging with the tweet or otherwise interacting with it. As we’ve covered in prior entries, 0.2-0.4% is the average you’ll find most non-targeted advertisement fall into. The fact though that this was targeted advertisement, is another black mark on Twitter for adverts.

And finally, our almighty Cost-per-click: $1.30. Pricey. I’m paying Facebook cost-per-clicks for a response rate that’s considerably lower. The impression rate is pretty awesome, which is nice for building brand awareness, but overall if people aren’t clicking, they aren’t buying.

I wouldn’t use Twitter again unless my goal was new brand establishment, or to bring in a wave of new eyes and awareness on a story product.

 

By the tweet:

So this was a part of Twitter advertising that was really, really valuable for me. Finding out which tweet I wrote had the most engagement, and drew the most interested eyes to the story.

My top performer, at 0.25% engagement rate: “Does the necromancer who butchered her husband and son deserve a Detective’s justice, or a mother’s revenge?”

In retrospect, it’s an obvious choice. It’s powerful, engaging, leaves the reader with a compelling question, and people clicked through a little more there than any other one. As a result, I’ve included the line in other marketing and synopsis of the story since.

Tied for 2nd place, at 0.22%:

“Heather Blackthorne once hunted down necromancers, until one hunted down her family. Now he’s come hunting for far more.”
“From Winter’s Ashes – A Detective with nothing left to lose, against a Necromancer with the world to gain.”

And my last-place finisher, in 4th, at 0.19%:

“In a world where everyone possesses magic, a Detective seeks justice on the Necromancer that butchered her family.”

 

 

In conclusion:

Twitter, at this expense level per engagement, is probably prohibitively expensive for a webserial’s conversion rates. The ability to finely target other authors followers is very nice, but is countered by the fact that Twitter users are particularly ill-inclined to engage with advertisement there.

The only uses Twitter will have for a webserial’s and publishers economics may be starting up a new brand/story, getting people interested in a new book or e-book release, and generally getting your brand name out there. If so, I would recommend including your name in the tweet, so that even if the title doesn’t stick, your name hopefully does.

I won’t use Twitter again for From Winter’s Ashes, I think, but if nothing else, the $35.00 spent was valuable to see, in stark statistical payout, what one-line summaries of the story were more effective at hooking people.