…the more I want to keep doing this! And that’s officially the worst play-on-words I ever came up with in my life. Not all my writing is that awful, honest! Actually, I’ve been told some of it’s pretty good. So much so that this whole furry thing has become a bit of a new hobby.
Anyway, you can call me Todd. That’s my raccoon fursona’s name. Should I say I’m new on the block? Well, I’m not exactly. I’ve known about the furry community for over ten years but just never joined up. I used to write Sonic fanfiction, in a couple of quiet corners of the internet where I had a few fans. None of that stuff’s available anymore (to be honest I cringe at most of it now) but it did teach me a LOT about the craft and staying power of writing.
Recently, one person who remembers me from back then sparked my interest in all things anthro again…
…but I’d graduated to ‘serious’ writing, and become a reasonably experienced self-published author, with some decent reviews under my belt and a regular day job and all the rest of the stuff you get after you graduate from university and get out into the world a bit. Was I seriously going to start writing anthro stuff again?
Well why the hell not? I was burnt out with the serious stuff anyway. And who was I kidding, I’d always been kind of taken with the idea of having a fursona, and always thought wearing a suit and going to a furcon might be all sorts of fun too. Hell, the whole thing appealed to me in ways I’d kind of admitted but not admitted. Why had I not done it yet? Because I felt kind of shy and embarrassed about wanting to secretly be a fur?
Well, life’s too short to worry about all that. Besides, really, who the fuck would care anyway? So I wouldn’t tell Mum and Dad and people from work about it. Maybe that’s the whole idea! A great big escape, where real life and all the shit that comes with it just gets dumped aside…
So I wrote a few sketches. One became a short story about a raccoon called Todd, about to graduate high school and go to senior prom, who fancies an edgy, badly behaved fox called Colton, and instead ends up dating his twin sister on prom night. And dealing with the fallout when Colton commits a little grand-theft-auto.
My friend read it and said ‘And you’re not a furry. Riiiight.’ Come on, I signed up, didn’t I?
And it sort of reminded me of a conversation I had with myself about ten years ago, when I first tried my hand at real-world writing, where I sat at my desk, looked at certain things in my recent work and said ‘So, you’re not gay. Riiiight.’
So here was another moment of ‘Get comfortable with yourself, because you like doing this, and all sorts of stuff about who you are and the random shit that’s in your head are coming along for the ride already, and maybe it could go somewhere brilliant if you just dare to run with it and see what happens…so get your trainers on!’
Six weeks later, and over 100,000 words worth of material, I don’t think I’ve been that productive or that oddly obsessed/driven by my own imagination since my fanfic days. And what the hell, I now knew a fair bit about how to get a book/story out there and get readers to notice it, and even better: these stories were actually getting good feedback from the readers on SoFurry.com. Should I consider a furry pen-name and actually make this a whole project on the side?
Hell yes! This whole thing felt like it was giving me a whole new lease of life creatively. The ideas just won’t stop coming to me. Of all the things I didn’t expect to discover this year, getting such a boost from writing slightly bonkers furry fiction just about tops them all. Embrace the unexpected!
This site will become a place to showcase my stories as I publish them. If you’re curious, head to SoFurry.com and check out my profile where you can find my stories. The published ones with a price-tag will be revised (and hopefully improved) versions of them.
(Just be warned: my stories all contain strong language, sex, and a scuffle between furs here and there.)