Tag Archives: Rated PG-13

Dec 3 2025

Penalty Patreon: A Pocketful of Stars – Entrance of the Gladiators, Part 1

“Say, whatever happened to Chancellor Damon and Emperor Kellin after the Battle of the Caldera in ‘Found: One Apocalypse?'” said literally no one. But the original plot to the story that became this behemoth series was the entire Galaxy and all its various factions targeting the broken-down battleship for their own purposes, so it was time to wheel in another faction.

They’re pronounced “ZAY-tuss,” and that’s singular and plural. I suppose they’re a response to all the honor-before-reason barbarian species cooked up to keep science fiction moving. They look like seven-foot-tall anthropomorphic dragons, and they have a little gland at the base of their skulls that creates a hormone that makes them brutally competitive. Put two Zatus in a room together and they’ll beat each other up as soon as they get bored.

It doesn’t take long for Damon to realize that this civilization of death-before-dishonor barbarian lords is all hat and no cattle, and that when your civilization is death-before-dishonor, you end up generating a society of rules lawyers and backstabbers. Everyone aboard the Silver Star has great talent and abilities, none of which are valued by a society of skull-thumpers. So Damon is left to navigate this culture as best as he can. At least they’re honest with him.

Nov 24 2025

Procrastinating Patreon: Solitary Company / Wanderers in the Dark

It’s interesting to rub these two stories together and see how werewolves have evolved over thirty years; “Solitary Company” would have been written in the early 1990s, while “Wanderers in the Dark” was written just a few years ago. Banning Deerblood is a heavyset, leather-wearing biker who owns a dive bar on a decrepit back road; Garrebor and Tarrock are ascetic scouts for a secluded tribe of New England werewolves. Banning is shy and timid, keeping his dual nature under his hat for discretion, while Garrebor and Tarrock are loud and fulsome about their circumstances.

But the one that caught my eye is that Banning Deerblood can shapeshift, and Garrebor and Tarrock cannot.

The elimination of shapeshifting was an odd turn for my writing to take. It’s pretty much what werewolves are famous for. In fact, a lot of my characters would have a much easier time of it if they could shapeshift. But in my current work, becoming a werewolf involves finding a Pack that will have you, and undergoing a grueling initiation and painful transformation. Nobody gets randomly bit during a hike in the gloaming. And the transformation is one-way. There’s no going back.

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.