May 2026 Dispatch
It’s Weasel Under the Sun release month! I’ll be at Furlandia (more on that below) and we’ll be releasing intrepid weasel cook/amateur detective Ellie Stone’s latest mystery. To celebrate, here’s the cover for you all to admire! Irene Huang did a bang-up job with this. I love the tense feeling in it and Ellie’s pose as she realizes something isn’t quite right…
(Can you spot what it is that isn’t right?)
Anyway, we are super excited to share this book with you. It’s been a long time coming (as you readers well know).
More news! I sold a story to Plott Hound Magazine, and it will be featured in their next issue, coming out very soon. I’ve seen an advance proof and it looks like a great issue. Love what Allison Thai is doing with this platform. Please go check out their animal-themed stories and give them love!
My story is called “The Heart of the World” and is about a young fox whose lost sense of smell becomes critical when her world is upended (almost literally), leaving her family in danger. Keep an eye on my socials; I’ll post when the issue goes up.
And last, I’ll be at Furlandia at the end of this month, and Galactic Camp the weekend after! If you’re in either Portland or our Bay Area, stop by and say hi. I’m looking forward to my first time at Furlandia, having heard really good things about the con, and I’ll be doing a writers Q&A with some other prominent furry writers, as well as my usual Novel Writing 101/102 panels and a few others.
At Galactic Camp I’ll be mostly at our table, but I will hopefully get to do a couple writing panels, like we did last year. We’re excited to be coming back to the ol’ USS Hornet for some wholesome furry literature and good times.
As for what I’ve been working on, well, it’s largely been Wolftown 4 (not yet titled), which I’d like to get drafted by mid-June so I can send it off for beta reading. We had a vacation in the middle of the month to attend a family wedding in Florida (and got to escape to Disney’s Animal Kingdom for a day), but since we’ve been back I’ve been working hard on it! If you recall me talking about how much of a struggle it was to get going with this book initially, please know that all that work was worth it. The story feels very alive to me1 and I’m having a great time with it. Being annoyed when I can’t work on it for one day is a really good sign.
Books
Upcoming releases:
Weasel Under The Sun: 2026 (Spring). 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…
Unlawful Possesssion (Wolftown book 3): 2026 (Summer): Chasing a ghost-napper, Jae uncovers a larger, more sinister plot.
Audiobooks:
Love Match 2 is out! Find it on Audible or iTunes.
Science Friction is out! Audible and iTunes.
Squeak Thief is out! Audible and iTunes.
And Dude, Where’s My Pack? is also nearly done.
Work on the Price of Thorns audiobook is largely done with just pickups and post left; we hope to have this out this year (there have been delays because of scheduling with the people proofing it).
Out now:
Azure City: 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.
Writer Ways: A Helpful Guide to Novel Writing: I wrote down about 100,000 words worth of what I’ve learned about writing novels, and I show my process while writing The Price of Thorns to give you an example to follow along with. Argyll (the publisher, buy direct!) has the print and e-book.
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 and wherever you get 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.
In progress:
Monster Huggers (Patreon) - serializing
Robin Hood fan fic (two books) — draft complete, awaiting revision
Ty the Knot — draft complete, awaiting revision
Fast Break (a gay basketball player story on Patreon) — first draft ongoing
untitled fantasy world project — outlining
Wolftown 4 - first draft ongoing
Streaming:
Project Hail Mary (theaters) - I had a great time throughout this movie. The alien is very cute (hardcore SF fans will likely be a little annoyed that the alien is SO human in its emotions and personality, but they weren’t trying to make Arrival 2 here; this did bug me a little but not enough to make me dislike Rocky). It’s gorgeously shot and Ryan Gosling is fantastic in a role that demands a lot from him. I might have made different choices in some of the storytelling, and there was a point in the movie where I flipped into thinking about the story structure rather than being engaged in the story. But overall it was very fun and definitely worth seeing on the big screen.
Peacemaker (HBO Max) - I don’t know why it took us so long to get to this series. It is very James Gunn, so if you liked his work on Guardians or The Suicide Squad, you will probably enjoy Peacemaker. John Cena is great and is supported on all sides by a fantastic cast, not least of which is the T-1000 himself as Peacemaker’s shitty racist dad. Good music, lots of personal angst, and some funny bits.
The Pitt (HBO Max) - I haven’t gotten to the furry arc yet! But season one of this medical drama delivered on every bit of the hype I’d heard about it, and then some. Noah Wyle is fantastic as the attending doctor in a Pittsburgh-area emergency room, the anchor both of the medical team and the cast itself. But this cast is full of terrific actors given great characters and lines to work with. It has an unabashedly pro-science slant to it, which can only be characterized as “liberal” because conservatives have come out so strongly against science.
Have a lovely May, everyone, and hope to see you in Portland or on a decommissioned aircraft carrier this month!
What this means in a practical sense is a few things: the situations feel real and the characters’ responses to them engaging to me; new possibilities suggest themselves as I’m writing; some characters that weren’t even in the outline are becoming integral parts of the story.