Furry Stories in 2012

The Ursa Major Awards season is upon us, and I have several stories that are eligible for nomination.  Most of them were originally published online and are easy to access there.  Two of them, though, were originally published in print anthologies.  So, for a limited time, I'm making those two stories available as free e-books.

St. Kalwain and the Lady Uta originally published in ROAR 4

One Night in Nocturnia originally published in Tails of a Clockwork World

Magtwilla and the Mouse

Hot Chocolate for the Unicorn

The Most Complicated Avatar

Shreddy and the Christmas Ghost

Looking back at all those stories that came out last year...  it's really kind of hard to believe.  It was an amazing year.  At any rate, whether you feel like nominating any of these stories or not, I hope that you enjoy some of them, and -- if you have an interest in furry fiction -- then I hope that you'll take a minute to nominate any stories from last year that you do feel are worthy.  The Ursa Majors are a people's award, and that works best when the people participate.

I turned thirty this summer.  I have one novel out, and another that will come out soon.  A third is finished and under review by a publisher.  I've written fifty short stories, and more than thirty of them have been published.  One won an award.  I think that's pretty good for thirty years.

My life has been very busy and very much in the present lately.  However, I recently ran into someone from my past, and I was amazed by how ten years of who I am was able to crumble away simply at the sight of someone who I've been out of touch with for a decade.  It was the kind of experience that causes one to feel even more reflective about the past than an abstract thing like turning thirty.

I am naturally a very analytical and reflective person.  However, I don't put that energy into writing a journal.  I put that energy into writing fiction.

When it comes to journaling, I don't keep a record with the written word.  I like to keep my journal more abstract -- for eight years, from the time I left for college until my daughter was born -- I translated my life into a playlist of songs that represented the experiences I went through.  After Elaine was born, I directed that energy into the pages and pages of photo albums that I keep of her.  Between that playlist and those photo albums, I have an extremely detailed record of the last thirteen years of my life.  The songs and pictures don't tell the whole story -- but I don't need them to; I just need them to help me remember it.

I'll continue to post anecdotes about Elaine that don't fit as picture captions here, and I'll try to show up with a comment or two about my own life sometimes.  But, when it really comes down to it, I'll be putting most of that writing energy into my fiction.

So, if you want to read words by me or learn about what's been going on in my life, what I've been thinking about, or who I am -- read my fiction.  It won't come with date stamps, and it won't be directly representational.  But writing my fiction is what I've been doing, what I've been thinking about, and -- the person you see represented in my stories? -- that's who I am.

A few quotes from the child playing underneath the Japanese maple tree, outside my open window:

"Okay.  I'll turn myself into a slug while I wait."

"No fear.  I will pretend today is my birthday."

"This is my little brother, but he's a rock.  And he just goes all the time jumping on the very top of trees," -- said while holding up a small rock she found under the Japanese maple.

"And this is his horse," -- said moments later, holding up another small rock.

She then proceeded to wobble dangerously between the small tree and the window screen while describing the adventures of her brother and his horse over the rainbow, illustrating all the while with the two rocks.

There's a line in the movie As Good As It Gets... Jack Nicholson is supposed to give Helen Hunt a compliment.  He's aiming for one that's good enough to keep her from leaving the restaurant, but he overshoots and gives her a compliment that she claims is the best one she's ever received:  "You make me want to be a better man."

Well, the Beach Boys' put out a new album.  The last time they put out a new album...  Let's just say, I hadn't noticed that the Beach Boys existed yet.  I was in fifth grade.

I don't think anyone expected them to put out another new album ever again.  I know I didn't.  In fact, when I heard about the single, it didn't even occur to me that it was the harbinger of a whole Beach Boys' album.  The idea was that unthinkable.

But, nonetheless, a new Beach Boys' album came out yesterday.  It's their thirtieth studio album, the first new one in two decades, and... it's good.  It may be their best album since Pet Sounds.  It's...  so good that...  it makes me want to write.  It fills my head with stars and stories and life filling a whole other universe.

"I'm pretending I'm a pogo stick." -- Elaine, jumping on one foot

"I'm all gone!  I'm all gone!" -- Elaine, with her hood pulled down over her head

"My brother is a skipping fairy, so all he eats is flowers, grass, mint, and chocolate.  That's all he eats!" -- Elaine, introducing her latest imaginary sibling

"I wish we lived in an igloo where it's very cold, and slippery, and wet, and soggy." -- Elaine, with no further explanation

Elaine and I went on a walk this evening.  She spent the whole time telling me about her new baby tiger, Tatsely.  He had no mother, so Elaine's sister -- a fairy named Yonga, who lives in a tree house next to our house -- bought Tatsely from the zoo.  Yonga comes into our house by flying down the chimney like Santa.  She knew that Elaine would like Tatsely, and Elaine has indeed been an excellent mamma to her new tiger.  She makes him all his favorite foods and has given him an excellent habitat.  He lives in a rainforest with a garden filled with tulips with clownfish inside them, and he has a pond filled with clownfish as well.  His favorite foods are clownfish milkshakes, fish pie, and fish noodles.  He dreams of fish-watermelon-cake.  His wings -- because, he can definitely fly -- are blue with alternating orange stripes and black polka dots.  Tomorrow, he'll be collecting seeds from all the clownfish hiding in the tulips so that he and Elaine can plant them.

Or... maybe it's the clownfish hiding in the pond...?  and they'll shrink into tiny little seeds?  So that Elaine can plant him a fishtree?

I wish I lived in Elaine's world.

One of my favorite Khristmas specials starts with the line, "In all this world, there is nothing so beautiful as a happy child." The special is "The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus," based on the book of the same name by L. Frank Baum. I love the sense of magic and the feel of a complete, original mythology in L. Frank Baum's version of the story of Santa Claus. It always makes me uncomfortable when Santa Claus mythology is combined with Christian mythology. The two don't really fit together. And while I enjoy movies like The Santa Clause (starring Tim Allen), there is a flippant quality to the mythology in them that isn't satisfying. There is something wonderful and deeply true about the way that the Sesame Street Khristmas special and the classic letter to Virginia in the New York Sun answer the questions behind the idea of Santa Claus, in a sense, by un-asking them. Very zen. Very true. Nonetheless, I do like to see Santa Claus turned into a story that has a mythological wholeness to it.

This is all beside the point, though. Watching "The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus" with Elaine this Khristmas, I found myself struck by that first line. I'd never paid overmuch attention to it before. I accepted it as a reasonable-seeming concept, although, it in no way spoke to me. Now that I have a child though, I find that it both speaks to me and that I can no longer accept it as reasonable.

There is a great deal that is beautiful in this world. A happy child is a beautiful thing. But, unless you are a human, biased by the drug-like chemicals that wash over your brain to reward you whenever you see happy infants and children, a happy child doesn't outshine all the other things of great beauty in this world.

A sleeping tiger. The flower-like wings of a deadly preying mantis. Waterfalls. Trees. Snowflakes. Grains of sand, greatly magnified. Two cats playing. A Sheltie prancing in the tall grass of a field. Only humans, under the influence of the drugs generated by their own brains, think that a happy child outshines all these other beauties. Without that peculiarly slanted vision, a happy child is merely a piece of all the other natural beauty in the world we live in.