Poverty Patreon: Rats in the Cellar

Terrified and on the run, Clarence Lowe flees his privileged life for Konalepti Spaceport. Rather than a clean getaway, he finds himself naked, abandoned, and friendless in Anthro-Town, the city’s destitute underground, among its population of inscrutable and suspicious animal-men. But rather than a wretched slum filled with desperate, struggling creatures, he finds a thriving and distinct culture built upon the rubble and refuse of his own. Clarence struggles to adapt to this new society, while staying one step ahead of his past.

This story runs as a three-parter, and had an interesting twist in its writing. In the middle of writing it, I went off to do something else for a while, and when I got back to it, I realized I couldn’t remember the ending I’d had in mind. This tasked me with basically having to solve a mystery I’d written. I don’t think there was ever a moment when the light dawned and I thought, “Ah, yes, that’s what I was going to write.” So I ended up writing the ending I was most likely to write.

The Wrong Albert

Werewolf pelts go for up to ten thousand dollars a pop, so werewolf hunting, though illegal, is lucrative. And if a human kills a werewolf, there’s no guarantee that the Pack will get any justice. But werewolves can’t kill humans, so their own justice won’t fit, either. The answer is to forcibly transform the human into a werewolf. As a werewolf, the killer must respect the orders of the beast that created him. As a killer, the werewolf is immediately exiled from the Pack’s grounds. So the killer is trapped in a body he despises and bound to never harm another werewolf. Many hunters subjected to this treatment don’t survive. Unable to live among humans or werewolves, some hunters choose the easy way out. But some eventually learn to live with themselves.

Albert is captured in Carver Gore hunting one of their most beloved and accomplished members, and is easily run down and transformed by Gabriel’s friends. Now he’s lost in the woods and taunted by a tween pup with a smart phone and a smart mouth, his only guide in this bizarre new world, and unable to return to his own. As Duncan leads him to his inevitable exile, Albert starts to suspect that something else is going on – something worse than being stuffed into the wrong body.

Portly Patreon – The Heavy Hunter

As a werewolf, Gabriel Blaine is a formidable attorney who has done great things to secure the future of his people. But the robust appetite of a werewolf fares poorly when tempted by the plentiful food of humans. At 385 pounds (174 kg), Gabriel’s weight is starting to affect his robust lycanthropic health, leaving him with no choice but to take a sabbatical and rejoin the Carver Gore Pack for the summer, where the food is considerably harder to catch. His return to his people is marked with high celebration.

But, at his weight and nearly sixty years old, Gabriel finds keeping up with the pack impossible, and the judgment of his companion uncomfortable. With long hot days turning into unexpected struggles, Gabriel is torn between returning to Ashton Mills in ignominious failure, or steeling himself against his own weaknesses and proving his continued value to his people.

Progress Patreon: Thou Shalt Not… / The Way I Lived, Out Here With You

The three-part “Thou Shalt Not…” comes to an end, dependent on whether Harris Baker can let go of his vendetta. Astute readers might notice that the timeframe is a bit compressed; the events of the story really wouldn’t happen that quickly, but Baker’s bad decisions seem to hustle things along. Meanwhile, Simon is well on his way to discovering who he really is, and finding a family strong enough for him.

“The Way I Lived, Out Here With You” is this week’s free story, about a werewolf struggling to end a difficult period of mourning for the sake of a loved one. How do you move on without feeling like you’re abandoning those you’ve lost?

Obstructive Patreon – Thou Shalt Not… Part 2

One of the things I found interesting in my re-read of this older story is that nothing Harris does inconveniences the Tribe in the slightest. Konac Namaroc isn’t part of the legal team defending his property, so this existential battle is going on entirely in the background. His people just live their lives as Harris throws money at the lawsuit.

But Harris was right about one thing. It isn’t safe for Simon among the Namaroc, and he will get hurt. Not through any fault of the Tribe, and not in the way anyone expects, but there are dangers the Pack hasn’t found – dangers that eventually find Simon.

Obsessive Patreon: Thou Shalt Not…Part 1

“Thou Shalt Not…” was one of two stories I wrote for an anthology.

The story was supposed to center on Harris Baker’s obsession and jealousy with his neighbors, and how that obsession cost him everything. Instead, Simon’s gentler coming-of-age story turned out to be a much more pleasant place to be. The result is reflected in the story, with Harris’s scenes curt, abrupt, and hurried, while Simon’s scenes are lavish and detailed. Which would you rather do – spend an idle summer swimming in secluded rivers, or trying to steal your neighbor’s house?

Protective Patreon: Weasels of the Apocalypse

One wonders why one needs so many different apocalypses, just as one wonders why one might need so many different kinds of werewolves. It’s a little like running a simulation; begin each new version with different parameters and see how your characters react to it. It’s possible all of these are the same apocalypse; there’s plenty of room on the planet, after all.

But “Weasels of the Apocalypse,” an excerpt from a longer novel of the same name, descends specifically from an unexplained event called the “Orange Sky.” Whatever the nature of that event, Anthros set themselves up as caretakers to the surviving humans, who could no longer care for themselves, and eventually inherited the world – with no interest in the works of humans, except to circulate a few comforts of choice. (There’s a scene in the longer story where Tarrant watches his first movie.)

It’d be nice to revisit this particular apocalypse again at some point and see how this trio of weasels are getting by at home in Winnepesauke. The story is available on “The Voice of Dog,” read aloud by Khaki, May 02, 2022.

Parched Patreon: Hot

I wrote “Hot” in the dead of winter, coldest day of the year, with the wind howling outside the windows and the thermometer reading 8F. I was thinking about how my earlier complaining about the snow and cold would soon give way to complaining about the suffocating summer heat, giving the impression that one could never be truly satisfied with the weather.

The story went a long way toward cementing the Tribe as a running series; after writing it, I edited older stories to match its setting. The town of Ashton, Maine, a former mill village with a population of around 9,600, puts in its first appearance, 24 miles from Carver Cabin in Carver Gore, the territory of the Tribe and the 152 werewolves who call its dozen or so square miles of unincorporated land their home. The Tribe’s leader, called simply “The Master,” is a young visionary celebrated throughout the Pack for his problem-solving skills, though the people remain largely ungoverned. The Pack’s freedom is partly due to the legal maneuvering of Gabriel Blaine, a member of the Pack who passed the bar and created a non-profit trust granting the Pack stewardship of Carver Gore.

The werewolves of the Tribe are an indolent, goofy lot, though they do have the ability to lock-in when one of their own is in danger, and they have little tolerance for hostile humans. “Hot” asks a lot of its two protagonists: what do you do next when you’ve achieved your greatest dream? When does ennui turn into depression? How do you encourage someone else to take the reins of your life? And is the problem really just the heat, or is it something deeper? As Breakwater and Patrick stumble out of the woods on their fool’s quest to briefly join civilization, they’re confronted by their neglect of a part of themselves as beautiful as any beast.

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…

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.