Tag Archives: Big Cats

Dec 8 2025

Post-pubescent Patreon: Path of the Hunters, Part Two

I feel like I want to come back to this world at some point. Two mighty tribes have been at war so long that there hasn’t been a battle in centuries, and their conflict has evolved into a rigid slate of rules and courtesies designed to prevent violence from flaring up and involving both tribes. Two fierce warriors of these opposing tribes meet in the ruins of an ancient city, and cautiously dance around each other, trading insults and shaking weapons to cement their antagonism. Waltz of the frenemies.

Torvik continues to struggle with growing up; he thinks it’s a stupid idea and doesn’t want to do it, not that he has a choice. His body has been making some bad decisions for him lately, and he’s feeling churlish and short. His easygoing Kahjah opponent pities him somewhat, which outrages him further, and he’s picked a fight he hasn’t a prayer of winning…

Nov 30 2025

Post-Apocalyptic Patreon: Path of the Hunters, Part One

I was going over this story for about the third time before posting it to Patreon when a random neuron fired and I suddenly remembered a story I first read in high school called “By the Waters of Babylon,” by Stephen Vincent Benet. Suddenly, scenes from it sprang fully-formed in my mind, images I haven’t thought of in nearly forty years.

I’ve written a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction that uses an urban environment being crushed by encroaching nature, and in the abstract, “Path of the Hunters” is just another in the conga line. None of it was written with “By the Waters of Babylon” in mind, at least not consciously, but this story probably falls closest to it on the scale.

Nov 17 2025

Payoff Patreon: Junkyard Dog, Part Two

A while ago I was asked to split a story into two parts for an anthology series. I was a little stumped by the request; the story wasn’t terribly long and I wasn’t sure how to build suspense for a cliffhanger in the middle of it, just when everyone was getting comfortable. Somehow I managed it, and the story was accepted.

For these longer works, I’m looking for a happy medium between just dropping the axe in the middle of a word and having to concoct suspense in an inappropriate scene, just to cleave to the 4,000-6,000 word-per-week rule. Clearly, some of these efforts are going to be a challenge, and “Junkyard Dog” was long enough that it had to be divided very carefully, meaning it leans more toward dropping the axe. At least I had a reveal at the end of the first part. Maybe with practice…

Nov 10 2025

Partial Patreon: Junkyard Dog, Part One

Didn’t take long for me to post all the low-hanging fruit I had in storage; stories that hit between four and six thousand words that were in good enough shape to show the world. From here on in, I guess I have to work for a living.

I created Junkyard Dog in the 1990s when I was creating anthropomorphic characters left and right; he was the sane half of a duo living in the New York underground with a grubby, impulsive idiot named Packrat. It took a long time for him to find a story, but he eventually ended up in this tale about an unpleasant, anti-social anthropomorphic Wolf protecting a mountain of metal junk from avaricious merchants who want to use it to suppress neighboring tribes.

I’ve got some notes indicating that this story is set in the White Crusade universe. This was also the second time after “Found: One Apocalypse” that I wrote a story featuring elemental smelting; in my defense, I don’t know much about metallurgy.