May 2020 Dispatch

[Kyell Gold]

May 2020

April Recap

 

We’re still under shelter-in-place here for another month, as are most of you. Whether or not you’re legally obliged to, I hope all of you are keeping safe and healthy, staying home and wearing masks when you go into stores and other spaces, washing your hands or paws often. I encourage you to read science-based news wherever you can get it and examine your local government’s policies through that lens to make sure they’re working with public health in mind and the best available facts. There are a lot of places re-opening businesses before recommended times, but that doesn’t mean you have to go out into them, or that you don’t still have to take precautions if you do go out. I read The Guardian for my news, in case you need a recommendation.

 

We’re going to get through this by supporting each other and keeping in touch through the Internet when we can’t meet in person. As I write this, Anthrocon has been canceled, and most of the furries I’ve talked to don’t expect another furry convention to be held until spring 2021 at the earliest. We might be wrong, but even if a convention decides to go ahead, I imagine attendance will be way, way down as a lot of people decide it’s safer to stay home.

 

The loss of conventions means that a lot of artists are losing income. If you’ve saved money on plane tickets or other convention expenses, consider helping out some furry artists. Many of them have Patreons, and that’s the best way to help, because it boosts their income while usually minimizing extra work. Many of them are having sales or are opening for commissions—check in on your favorite artists’ Twitter or FA or other social media and see what their situation is. One of the great things about the furry community is the way we take care of our own, and we’ll need to do that this week.

 

In that vein, thank you to all who’ve picked up e-books or audiobooks from me over the last month or so. My releases this year are delayed (see below) but I’m still writing and expect to have new content out for you this year. I’ve sent the final Love Match volume off to FurPlanet and I finished a draft of Dude, Where’s My Pack? just a couple days ago, so you’ll have new books soon.

 

Coming up in May I expect to work on revisions for the final book in the Calatians series, The Revolution and the Fox. I’ve gotten feedback from my writing groups and I’m confident about the changes I need to make so I’m pretty sure I can have this one out to Argyll by the end of May; look for it later this year.

 

Also this month I tried streaming writing, using my Zootopia fanfiction as the subject because people know the characters and I don’t care about spoilers. It went pretty well, so keep an eye on my Twitter or follow me on picarto.tv (https://picarto.tv/KyellGold) to be notified next time I stream. It’ll likely be for an hour and a half to two hours around 11 am PDT.

 

Here are a couple more shows I’ve been enjoying a lot that might help you get through the lockdown:

 

Undone: This trippy time-travel animated drama on Amazon has a lot of rich character writing and some great writing and acting. The premise is that after a car accident, a young woman starts seeing her dead father, who wants to teach her to time travel so she can undo his death. Things get complicated quickly, though, even in only eight episodes.

 

Duck Tales (2017): I never watched the Disney Afternoon shows, but I’ve been enjoying this reboot. A lot of characters that my boyfriends know and like are returning, and some great new ones show up as well. I’m enjoying the very sharp writing and voice acting through two seasons and looking forward to the third.

 

Counterpart: If you’ve ever thought to yourself that you’d like to see J.K. Simmons show off his acting chops, this is the show for you. Fortunately, it isn’t only that by a long shot. Simmons plays Howard Silk, a bureaucrat working for a nebulous government body (its branches are very Britishly named: Interface, Strategy, Diplomacy) in a modern-day Berlin. The group he works for, unbeknownst to him, manages a portal to an alternate Earth where nearly everyone has a counterpart. Silk’s counterpart, very different from him, brings him into an espionage operation that quickly goes bad. In addition to doing good work around its SF premise, the show is reasonably queer-friendly (most of the queer people are women, but there is also a polycule). I haven’t quite finished the first season yet but the show has yet to disappoint.

Release dates

Audiobooks: If you don’t have an Audible account yet, check out my new Soundcloud page (https://soundcloud.com/user-710305036-429996600), which has samples and links to all my audiobooks. Those links help me get extra money especially if you use them to sign up for a new account. Savrin is working hard on new audiobooks, and once Love Match 1 is up, we hope to get Titles and Ty Game out shortly following!

 

The 2020 release schedule has been delayed somewhat: Love Match (2013-2015) is now targeted for the first weekend in July. The fourth and final Calatians book, The Revolution and the Fox, will come out later in the summer (or early fall), and I hope to get the “Dude” sequel out this year as well.

 

My FREE book of writing advice called Do You Need Help? is on baddogbooks.com right here: https://baddogbooks.com/product/do-you-need-help/

 

Appearances in 2020

My full list of upcoming appearances is at http://www.kyellgold.com/contact.html, recently updated (or soon to be updated).

 

I haven’t gotten any official word from Megaplex, where I am scheduled to be a GOH in August, but I’ll keep you updated. I would not at all be surprised if we don’t have any more furry conventions until 2021.

 

Spotlight: Furry anthologies!

Bad Dog Books is offering e-books of many of their anthologies for deeply discounted prices. FANG 10, which I edited, is only $2.99 and is a great collection. Other anthologies are $1.99. Check out their selection: https://baddogbooks.com/product-cat/sale/

 

Excerpt: Here’s a little bit from my Zootopia fanfiction, since I’ve gone back to working on that again.

At Sand’s office, Judy smiled brightly at Jenny as the three of them approached her desk. “Hi there,” she said, waving. “Remember us?”

“Of course!” The coyote’s smile faltered as she saw Simon behind Nick, but she remained polite. “I’ll tell Councilor Sand that you’re here.”

“Thanks so much,” Judy said.

Jenny picked up the phone, knocking over her cup of pens. With practiced ease, she scooped up the pens as she said, “The ZPD officers are here to see you, ma’am.” Her ears flicked and then she hung up the phone. “You two can go in,” she said, and pointed at Simon. “Not the reporter.”

“Excuse me.” Simon stepped forward. “You can’t deny the press access to a public inquiry.”

“She can, actually.” Judy put a paw on Simon’s shoulder and turned to Jenny. “He’s not reporting on the case; he’s just doing a profile on us. Nothing from the interview will be in his report without the Councilor’s permission.”

The coyote looked doubtful but picked up the phone again and relayed Judy’s promise to the Councilor. Her eyebrows rose as she listened. “Yes, ma’am,” she said, and hung up. “She says he can come in.”

Simon pumped his fist and Judy wanted to restrain him again, but it wouldn’t look good, so she walked into the Councilor’s office.

As with many large mammal spaces, it took her a moment to orient herself. The camel sitting behind the immense desk dwarfed her, Nick, and Simon, but she fit the room perfectly. Three large chairs sat in front of her desk, all finely polished dark wood with blue velvet upholstery, and to one side stood a platform with two stairs up to chairs their size, plain light wood with no cushions. On the far side of that platform, one corner had been cut into a zig-zag staircase going up to a smaller area with four mouse-sized chairs.

Behind the camel’s desk, the wall showed off a dozen photographs of Councilor Sand with a few people Judy recognized: former mayor Lionheart, past mayor Carron, and even Chief Bogo. She didn’t know the figures in the other photos, but they were all taken in important-looking areas so she assumed they were important Zootopia political figures.

On Sand’s desk sat a large-sized laptop, stacks of papers, a lamp, and a framed desk photo whose back was to them. As they climbed the steps to the medium-mammal chairs, Judy got a better view of the papers on her desk: one newspaper and a number of what looked like reports or meeting minutes.

“Welcome,” Sand said as Judy and Nick settled into the chairs. Her tawny fur went perfectly with the cream-colored blouse she wore, set off by a brooch designed like a pair of theater masks. Her eyes, sharp and narrowed, followed their progress.

Only two chairs sat on the platform. Simon had gotten up the first step before he realized this, and stood there looking lost for a moment before Sand said, “You’re the reporter, is that right?”

“That’s right, ma’am,” he said. “Simon Grazer of the Bunnyburrow Beacon.”

“Why don’t you stand in one of those chairs?” she said. “I’m sorry I don’t have more chairs to accommodate you.”

Simon eyed the large-mammal chairs and then clambered up into the nearest one, standing on it with his elbow uncomfortably resting on the armrest. Sand smiled at him. “Is that all right?”

“It’s fine.” He took out his notebook.

“Good. I don’t have anything to hide from the press. Or from the ZPD.” She turned her attention back to Nick and Judy. “How can I help you, officers?”

“We’re investigating the theft of the fifty thousand dollars meant for the Sunshine Middle School,” Judy said as Nick took out his pad and pen. “We just want to ask you a couple things about the money.”

“Of course.”

“First of all, the money was requisitioned by the council, so I assume the other councilors knew about it.”

Sand smiled. “You’re very generous toward my colleagues. But yes, I assume that at least most of them remembered authorizing the money. Or at least their staffers did.”

“Would any of them have known the details of when it would be withdrawn?”

The camel shook her head. “Only our treasurer, and she only provided the authorization to the bank. She didn’t know who was going to get it or when.”

“But he knew it was for your district, so he could have guessed it would be Ms. Scar?”

“Actually,” Sand said, “Normally we wouldn’t withdraw it at all. We would have Ms. Caravan—that’s our treasurer—wire it directly to the bank. In this case, though, the school’s bank account was not in good standing.”

“Do you know why that is?” Nick asked before Judy could say anything.

“You’d have to ask the school,” she replied smoothly. “But it often happens with businesses in certain areas of Savanna Square.”

“Which areas?” Nick kept his tone civil, but it had an edge underneath it that made Judy’s fur prickle.

“We have a lot of turnover in some neighborhoods,” the camel said. “There’s a lot of crime and instability, and so the more successful businesses tend to stay away from there. We’re working with the police to improve the quality of life for those residents, but there’s only so much we can do.”

“You mean Happytown,” Nick said bluntly.

Judy put a paw on his wrist. “It’s not important where it is,” she said. “We can ask the school about their bank account and their problems if we need that information. I just think it’s so wonderful that you were trying to help them despite those problems.”

Sand continued to look at Nick for a moment, her smile unwavering, then turned to Judy. “Of course we do. That was part of our outreach effort. The money was supposed to help the school repair some of its facilities and pay its teachers. Sadly, the people running the school aren’t very good at managing their money.”

“And now they don’t have any,” Nick said.

Judy tightened her grip on his wrist as Sand said, “Tragically not.”

“Are you going to send them more money?” Judy asked.

Sand placed both hooves on her desk. “Sadly, it’s very difficult to go back to the council and ask for another fifty thousand dollars to go to a neighborhood that, if I may be frank, has a crime problem that is responsible for the loss of the last fifty thousand.”

Nick opened his mouth, and to forestall him, Judy started talking. “Of course it is. I totally understand that. Just one more question: was this payment part of a larger program or was it a one-time payment just to the Sunshine Middle School?”

This gave the councilor pause. “It was a one-time payment,” she said. “We had allocated a certain portion of our budget for special projects, and this was the last of it.”

“And how did you choose the Sunshine Middle School?”

“Ah, well.” Her confident smile returned. “You’ve met my assistant, Ms. Scar? She came to me through our intern program designed to give underprivileged people a leg up. She actually grew up in Happytown and she’s the one who identified the Sunshine Middle School as a place that could use our money.”

“Thank you,” Judy said. She turned to Nick, scribbling in his pad. “I know your time is limited and we really appreciate you speaking with us.”

“It’s my pleasure.” Sand stood. “I hope you find the people who stole the money.”

 

Questions From YOU

 

If you’ve got a question about my books or my writing—or anything else you want me to talk about—shoot me an email and I’ll answer it here.

 

This month I had an idea for a topic so I’m just going to write about it and maybe I’ll add it to Do You Need Help? in the next edition.

 

“Feels Like the First Time”

One of the fun parts of worldbuilding is imagining interesting new problems for your characters to run into. When you’re creating new worlds and new ways for people to interact, you create situations that your reader (hopefully) can empathize with even though they’ve never seen them before.

The thing you have to keep in mind, though, is whether or not other people in your world will have faced that situation before. Is it likely that other people have? If so, have they found a solution? If not, why not? Why are things different for your characters in this specific moment?

The example that led me to think of this was from a TV show that features people with magic powers. One type of person has psychic abilities, and this is rare but not unknown. A character with those abilities fathers a child with one of the other characters, and during her pregnancy the mother starts to experience some of the psychic abilities of her unborn child. The father is worried because his mother had the same problem and had to be committed to a mental institution, and they find out that there’s a psychic bond between mother and child and they have to figure out how to sever it.

So…there have been other psychic children. Does this happen all the time? If so, this would’ve been studied and there would be, if not a solution, at least a procedure to follow. If it doesn’t happen all the time, then why is this time different? The show never explores either of those questions, instead acting as though these characters are the only ones who have ever existed in the world or had to deal with this problem.

In furry worlds, this often happens as people imagine, for instance, a world where carnivores and herbivores live side by side. Are herbivores disgusted by meat eating? Maybe, but they’re used to it; they have coping mechanisms. Society has taught them that this is a common thing and nobody reacts to it as though they’ve never heard of someone eating meat before.

When you don’t think about whether other people have faced the problems of your world, your world feels smaller and less real. If your characters are truly facing issues nobody has faced before, they have to come up with innovative solutions. But they don’t have to invent solutions for the problems to be interesting. For example, what if in the TV show example, the problem was known and the solution was either that the mother could undergo psychic training (giving up her ability to do whatever else she was interested in doing, perhaps) or they could sever the bond but then she would also lose her feeling of motherhood for her child? In that way you can represent the issue that a lot of parents have in deciding how much of their life to give up for their child. Some aren’t willing to give up any; some will give up everything. The answer to that question is still interesting and doesn’t require nobody to have faced the problem before.

 

Stay safe and stay home, y’all.