March 2025 Dispatch
If you’re looking for a place that could use some donations of time or money, check out the ACLU. A lot of the fights over the next few years are taking place and are going to take place in courts, and the ACLU will be fighting a lot of them. If you have a preferred charity or cause, please share in the comments!
February ended up being a productive month for me. I finished edits on Weasel Under the Sun, a process that took it from novella to novel (it crossed the 50K word barrier), and I finished the bulk of the audiobook recording of The Price of Thorns, thanks to my supportive director and producer Hashtag Cat. We sent it off to post-production and have already gotten back some pickups that need to be done. Not sure when it will be available, but hopefully this summer. Looking forward to getting it into your ears!
And speaking of audiobooks, we got a new project under way! Squeak Thief is going to be coming out this year, and we’ve just gotten started with a narrator. To celebrate, have a new bonus image for the heist/gay romance story, courtesy of TomatoDogArt:
Want to know more and haven’t read the story yet? You can get it at the usual places!
We’ve also been working on a way to visually mark the books that exist in my “Forester Universe,” which if you’re not familiar with it is the world that contains the Out of Position series, Waterways, Dangerous Spirits, Love Match, and most of my Kyell Gold-authored work.
We collaborated with the talented Nicole Dornsife (aka Thornwolf) to create a logo that perfectly captures the spirit of these stories. We’re looking forward to including it on book covers and maybe in some nifty wearable swag.
Stay tuned for exciting updates on future releases under the Forester Universe banner!
In March, I’m planning to finish up a first draft of my “how to write a novel” book and maybe get through a revision of Azure City. In April, I’ll be at Texas Furry Fiesta, maybe doing some panels but definitely hanging out at the FurPlanet table to chat about books like my latest release, Dead Right, the second book in the Wolftown series. And—just maybe—there’ll be a sneak peek at Weasel Under the Sun. Stay tuned!
Books:
Dead Right: The sequel to Unfinished Business! Jae gets tangled in the life of a ghost activist who endangers his relationships and his future. Out now in print and e-book form at Argyll Productions! Coming soon to other platforms.
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! Work on the Price of Thorns audiobook is largely done with just pickups and post left; we hope to have this out later this year. The Dude, Where’s My Pack? audiobook is also in process, as is Squeak Thief!
Other upcoming releases:
Weasel Under The Sun: 2025 (AC). The third Ellie Stone mystery (second to be published on its own)! Ellie works for a month in another family’s kitchen while hers is on vacation, but murder will follow her anywhere…
Azure City: 2025 (Fall). 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.
Unlawful Possesssion (Wolftown book 3): 2025 (Winter): Chasing a ghost-napper, Jae uncovers a larger, more sinister plot.
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
untitled fantasy world project — outlining
Streaming:
We watched a bunch of the Best Picture nominees this month!
Anora — Loved it. Completely deserving of its wins. It’s a love story until it isn’t, and what it’s really about, it turns out, is dignity. Its mixture of weirdness, violent worlds, and physical comedy reminded me of Fargo in all the good ways. I didn’t know most of the actors in it, but they’re all great and I’m sure we’ll know them well before long.
A Complete Unknown — I grew up with lots of Bob Dylan’s music in the house. The music in this movie is intimately familiar to me in a way that the context is not. So it was really a pleasure to go back and learn about those years. Chalamet is fantastic as Dylan, and in fact all the acting is incredible. The music is alive in this movie in a way it isn’t in lesser music-biopics, and that Chalamet is performing it himself is really cool. He’s good! Structurally, though, the story seems more focused on telling you about the people Dylan affected and the things they wanted him to be without ever telling you what he wanted to be—only that sometimes it aligned with what other people wanted, and when it stopped aligning, too bad for them. In that way, the title of the movie works really well.
Flow — This movie is absolutely gorgeous and earned its Best Animated Feature Oscar. It was a delight to watch every moment, and the fantastical world it imagines—one inhabited by capybaras and lemurs along with housecats and dogs, one that apparently experiences biblical floods at regular intervals—is painted beautifully and breathtakingly. The cat at the center of the movie is amazingly catlike, and the story moves along well. Where it faltered a little bit for me was in the structure: it feels like the cat is carried along for a lot of the adventure and only at a couple points does she really affect the story. As animal-like as all the animal characters are, they also exhibit human understanding of the world at times—sometimes moreso than the cat. Many of them understand how to operate a boat’s rudder, they understand their own reflections, they make conscious decisions to help less fortunate animals, and so on. And it is possible that the cat’s journey is from being a creature of instinct into a creature capable of being part of a community like that, but that is reading generously into the story. But gosh, it’s pretty, and there are genuinely emotional moments (even if some of them are confusing as to what is actually happening).
The Substance — Just as visually arresting as Flow but in a very different way, The Substance explores the life of Elizabeth, an aging actress about to be fired from her exercise show (Demi Moore). When she learns of a mysterious Substance that will create a younger version of you, she tries it, and out comes Margaret Qualley. Younger-Elizabeth, who takes the name Sue, finds immediate success, but has trouble sticking to the strict schedule of sharing her life with Elizabeth. Remarkably sparse in dialogue, the story is nonetheless compelling as Elizabeth and Sue compete in a world dominated by the male gaze (embodied by a deliciously creepy Dennis Quaid), and we see beneath the slick veneer of the world to the gross, uncomfortable substance beneath it. Loved this movie too, although if you’re not into body horror, you might want to watch with discretion.
Monk (Peacock) — I’m late to this (the show ended in 2009) but they made a new movie recently, and I like Tony Shalhoub and mystery shows, so I thought it was worth going through. I liked it a lot! The mysteries always have a little bit of contrivedness to them, but the characters are great and they tackle some really interesting stories as the series goes on.
Central Park (Apple+) — We finally finished up this lovely animated series and I know I’ve recommended it before in this space but I want to recommend it again. It’s a musical series with Leslie Odom Jr and Daveed Diggs (both of “Hamilton” fame) as well as Josh Gad, Kathryn Hahn, Stanley Tucci, and Titus Burgess, with Kristen Bell and Emmy Raver-Lampman (an understudy in the original “Hamilton” and also Allison from Umbrella Academy). It’s a sweet show, funny, cute and inventive, and the music is catchy. It makes good use of both its medium and its setting, and is definitely worth checking out if you haven’t yet.
Hope everyone stays warm and dry through March, and I’ll see many of you in April!