December 2024 Dispatch
Well, that sure was a month, wasn’t it? Anyway, moving on. I spent a lot of November somewhat distracted, and I even wrote a post about writing while the world is trying to ruin your concentration. Despite all that, I managed to finish a draft of Weasel Under the Sun! I enjoy a fun mystery and I think this one ticks most of the boxes for me, wrapping up pretty well in a way I didn’t expect when I started it. Hope is to have this one ready for TFF’s “Murder on the TFF Express” theme this year (April).
We also revealed the cover for Dead Right, which will be out in checks four days at MFF! Can’t wait to sign a bunch of these for people so please come help wear out my paw (in a SFW way)! I’ll be at the FurPlanet table as per usual, when I’m not at my panels.
Speaking of! All of the below are in the Hartsfield room at the Hyatt, which is the writing track room this time around. Kit and I will be at:
Upcoming Releases from Furry Small Press - Friday 3 pm (I might read a bit from Dead Right here!)
Queer Fiction - Friday 8 pm
Self-Publishing: Trials, Triumphs, and Lessons Learned - Saturday 12:30 pm (with NightEyes DaySpring and Utunu)
Character + Plot = Story - Saturday 4 pm
Author-Artist Collaborations - Sunday 9:30 am (with Devon)
They’re all going to be fun, so if any of these sound interesting, get your tail over there and bring some questions for us!
After MFF, we’re home for the rest of the month. I’m going to try to finish the Azure City revisions in December and then I’m going to take Weasel Under the Sun to a writing retreat in January the week before FC. And then I’ll be flying home to hang out at FC! FurPlanet has a table, so I’ll be there, and I don’t plan to have any other titles out, but if you didn’t get Dead Right at MFF, it’ll be there.
I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving or end of November, and if you were trying NaNoWriMo, I hope you got a lot of words written and I hope they were all from your brain and not from a generative LLM engine.
Books:
Squeak Thief: A rich mouse hires a fox thief to steal from his own family, but the job quickly spirals out of control. You can get it as a print book on FurPlanet or Amazon, or as an e-book on BadDogBooks or any other major retailer.
The Price of Thorns: buy at Argyll and review at Amazon or GoodReads. In a fantasy world where stories are woven into the fabric of magic and life, Nivvy the thief is hired by a mysterious woman, and this job will change his life in ways he could never have anticipated.
Audiobooks: Titles is out! Find it on Audible or iTunes.
We are working on getting Love Match 2 out the door—should be available this month! Work on the Price of Thorns audiobook continues; we hope to have this out next year. The Dude, Where’s My Pack? audiobook is also in process.
Other upcoming releases:
Dead Right: Late fall 2024 (MFF). Jae gets tangled in the life of a ghost activist who endangers his relationships and his future.
Azure City: 2025. A book full of blank pages might be the key to another world, but the more Athos reads, the more he disappears from this one.
In progress:
Robin Hood fan fic (two books) — draft complete, awaiting revision
Third Wolftown book — draft complete, awaiting revision
Ty the Knot — draft complete, awaiting revision
Fast Break (a gay basketball player story on Patreon) — first draft ongoing
craft book — first draft ongoing
Weasel Under The Sun (mystery) — first draft complete!
untitled fantasy world project — outlining
Streaming:
Arcane (Netflix): Kit watched this a while ago and kept trying to get us to watch it, but it took the second season coming out for us to finally get there. And it’s a lot of fun! I like how they play with art styles, and while I would’ve preferred they pick a title theme other than Generic Imagine Dragons Song, otherwise the music was pretty good all the way through. The characters were good, which can make up for a lot of deficiencies in worldbuilding and plot, and while I could never say Arcane was boring, I did go through the entire series with the feeling that I’d missed a few key scenes or an episode here and there. They tend to jump around, and the pivotal tech of the series feels too vague to be a true Science Fiction Premise but at the same time too defined to just be a black-box tech like hyperdrive. But for all that, it’s fun and a delight to watch, so I would recommend it.
Monk (Netflix): I’ve never seen Monk, which is weird because I really like Tony Shalhoub and I love a good mystery show. Monk, as it turns out, has a lot of great characters (and great guest stars), if the plots are not quite as…well-developed as I would’ve hoped (two of the plots through the first two seasons rely on a character agreeing to marry someone within a week of starting to date). Shalhoub is great and the supporting cast are all fun, and it’s nice to see our Bay Area represented on screen, so it’s a worthwhile watch.
I need to catch the second season of Shrinking sometime soon. Maybe after MFF.
Have a fantastic December and whatever winter holiday you celebrate, and I’ll see some of y’all later this week!