Most of my stories are science fiction/fantasy, and a lot of them feature anthropomorphic animal characters. About a dozen are set in a fantasy world called Ranea, where humans and “animal people” live in a loosely-federated empire with a magic-based technology roughly akin to late 19th century America’s industrial level. There’s also a couple non-fiction pieces. The majority of these are not available online; some of these were collected by Sofawolf Press in the collection Why Coyotes Howl (January 2005).

On this Site

• Kitsune: Coyote of the Orient is non-fiction, an informally written overview of Japanese fox lore done for “Fuzzy Logic,” an online fanzine that later transformed into the furry community website Flayrah.com.
• Shattered Stone is a Ranean vampire story, but about “classic” vampires, not the vampire bats who’ve appeared in some other works I’ve done. It’s not a White Wolf gothboy angst-fest, and tends to get gratifying “I don’t like vampire stories, but this was pretty cool” comments.
• Otter Summer is quiet magic realism.
• Rabbit Pens is, at 35,000 words, the longest complete piece I’ve ever done; it was starting to be serialized in “Touch” but they only printed the first third before going under. This is a revised version. It deals with sexual situations and decidely mature themes; it’s definitely not for the easily discomfited.

There are several other older stories of mine at The Belfry Archives, including the novella “A Gift of Fire, A Gift of Blood,” which introduced Revar the vampire bat. Revar may be the most popular small-press character in all of “furry fandom” (an informal name for fans of anthropomorphic animals), in large part due to the adoption of the name and character by the Belfry Archives’ maintainer—also very well-known as the author of the MUCK server and clients Fuzzball and Trebuchet, respectively.

Bibliography

The observant will notice that I haven’t been publishing much in the last few years. This isn’t quite true—I belong to an APA (“amateur press association,” essentially a closed-membership small press co-op)—but there hasn’t been much out in the public eye. I hope to address that as time goes on and I get back into the swing of things, but no promises. Stories marked with a dagger (†) are in Why Coyotes Howl, all of them in revised form from original publication (if any).

• “Why Coyotes Howl” (unpublished†)
• “The Moon in Water” (unpublished†)
• “Daughter of Shadows” (unpublished†)
• “Without Evidence” (unpublished†)
• “Shattered Stone” (YARF! 51, 1998)
• “Still Life, With Espresso” (Mythagoras 2:1, 1996†)
• “Vertical Blanking” (Xero 1, as “Recondite Directives,” 1995†)
• “The Fox Maiden” (PawPrints 3, 1994†)
• “Otter Summer,” (Caffeine Quarterly 1, 1993)
• “Dreams Are For Vixens” (Touch 1, 1992†)
• “Wounds” (Caffeine Quarterly 2-3, 1992)
• “How George Miles Almost Saved the World” (YARF! 14, 1991; collected in Best of Show, 2003)
• “Rabbit Pens” (novella; Touch 3 [2 chapters only], 1991)
• “The Peppermint Demon” (novella; Touch 2, 1991)
• “The Lighthouse” (novella; YARF! 16-19, 1991)
• “Travelling Music” (Mythagoras 2-3, 1990†)
• “The Fence” (The Furkindred, 1990†)
• “Beast” (Mythagoras 1, 1990†)
• “A Gift of Fire, A Gift of Blood” (novella; YARF! 5-8, 1990)
• “Going to the Dogs” (Reagent 1, 1989)
• “Charcoal and Amber” (FurVersion 18-19, 1989)
• “Only With Thine Eyes” (FurVersion 14, 1988†)
• “Playing the Hero’s Role” (FurVersion 10, 1988)

The Mini-FAQ

(All guaranteed to be questions I’ve been asked more than once.)

Q:	Are there going to be more Revar and Mika stories?
A:	There’s suposed to be a third novella-length piece in the sequence. However, I have no idea when—or if—it’ll ever happen. Sorry for the very non-specific answer, but I don’t have anything better.
Q:	Do Revar and Jemara get back together?
A:	I get asked about this fairly frequently, and I’m not sure if the questioners just haven’t read “A Gift of Fire” and “The Lighthouse,” or if they’re just choosing to ignore them. Without giving away the plot, I’ll just say that I don’t expect Revar’s romantic status to be different after the end of “Lighthouse” than it is at the end.
Q:	Whatever happened to In Our Image, the novel you started in YARF! and abandoned after nine chapters?
A:	It still haunts me, in no small part for its value as a warning not to bite off more than I can chew. I’ve tried several times to revive it, to no avail yet. In 2002, I pulled it out of mothballs again and radically replotted it (mostly affecting what would have happened later, although there are changes in the published part as well), but it’s still awfully slow going. I’m still betting I get it finished before Steve Boyett publishes the rest of The Architect of Sleep, though.
Q:	Why don’t you have more of your work online?
A:	I may choose to put more online sometime, but I wanted to keep the work I was intending for Why Coyotes Howl off the network, and I’m usually disinclined to make new work available this way without attempting to find it a market first. Publishing something on the web, even a personal web site few people visit, is “prior publication” in legalese.