Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day
Is bonny and blithe and good and gay.

Wikipedia says that this nursery rhyme dates back to at least the 1570s, and that, before it was printed and ‘fixed’ in the 19th century, there were many variations.

Andres Cyanni Halden uses this standardized version. He has gotten seven authors – six plus himself – to each write a Furry story around one of these ‘days’. Most are erotic gay stories. Each story has a small frontispiece illustration by Amaze.

The Fortune Teller's Poem is a work of anthropomorphic fiction for adult readers only. (publisher’s advisory)

FurPlanet Productions, June 2011, trade paperback $19.95 (237 pages), Kindle $9.95. Illustrated by Amaze, cover by Horrorshow.

‘Hotdish’ is another term for casserole – a collection of seemingly disparate ingredients held together by a hot, gooey sauce. It creates a hearty portion of food for those on a relatively modest budget.

Hot Dish is a collection of stories about the romantic and erotic relationships between characters of disparate species and sexual orientations. It is a hearty portion of quality fiction which was too long to fit into our yearly adult anthology, Heat.

Hot, gooey sauce not included. (back cover blurb)

Hot Dish is an anthology intended for an adult audience only and contains some explicit sexual scenes of various sexual orientations. It is not for sale to persons under the age of 18. (publisher’s advisory)

Hot Dish, which includes a number “1” on the spine so more volumes are planned, consists of nine romantic Furry novelettes, about forty pages each, by pseudonymous authors.

(Really, I respect Furry pseudonyms, but when an entire book is filled with stories by Huskyteer, Lady Chastity Chatterley, Dark End, and the like, it makes it look like everyone concerned has something to hide.)

Sofawolf Press, March 2013, trade paperback $17.95 (xii + 374 pages). Illustrated by Keovi.

Author Dawn Kravagna has released Murderous Critters, her first collection of Cattle Capers ™ mystery stories on-line at Smashwords. “Murderious Critters is a trio of outrageously funny mystery short stories, the first collection in a series featuring the zany comic animal characters from the world of Cattle Capers ™. A killer magician, rogue dinosaur skeletons, and roaming gunslingers are no match for bovine Master Detective Adam Steer and his goofy sidekick Crazy Cal.” The stories here include “The Magician’s Trick”, “The Dino Sore Mystery”, and “The Moontana Murders”, as well as the extra short story “Whopper Fish”.

image c. 2013 Dawn Kravagna

Here are some brief reviews and ratings of a number of Kindle E-books I’ve read in the past year. These range from man vs. animal (like Jaws) to talking animal (Watership Down-type) to outright furry to werewolves to fantasy with talking dragons.

This is by no means a complete list—simply what I personally read and can comment on. While some of these are only available in Kindle format, others can be ordered in hardcopy, so if you’re interested in a particular title and don’t have an e-reader, check the listing.

Isiah had the chance to interview most of the contributors to annual adult anthology Heat 9, published by Sofawolf; some could not be reached. Related interviews: Whyte Yote & Alastair Wildfire – Camron & Vantid – Alopex – Huskyteer – Kandrel & Scappo – Tempe O'kun

Isiah Jacobs: Good evening, Ray! Thank you so much for coming on! It's nice to have you on the show!

RayFKM: Pleasure to be here.

Isiah Jacobs: You have a story in Heat 9 that you titled "Stupid". Could you please tell me a little about this story?

RayFKM: Oh, yeah. It's the story of a lonely guy who wants to find some love... and does not matter how!

Isiah Jacobs: And this guy is straight, but he convinces himself to be gay just for sake of companionship, is that correct?

RayFKM: Yes, totally.

Isiah Jacobs: Why did you decide on this story?

The Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Association, which administers the annual Ursa Major Awards, has updated the 2012 Anthropomorphic Reading List to include the titles recommended by furry fans through the beginning of December. This list is often used by fans to nominate in the next year's Awards.

There is less than one month to add your favorites of the year to the List. All fans are invited to recommend worthwhile anthropomorphic works in eleven categories (motion pictures, dramatic short films or broadcasts, novels, short fiction, other literary works, graphic stories, comic strips, magazines, published illustrations, websites, and games) first published during 2012, if they are not already on the list.

This second annual anthology of stories by and for the fans at Seattle’s annual RainFurrest convention had a theme of “Steam Punk, Weird Science/mad science”. Authors were requested to write a G to PG story of 5,000 to 8,000 words with a first deadline of February 2012, for revision and publication in time for the convention on September 27–30. The result is this neat little booklet published by FurPlanet Productions.

As before,

This Anthology was created and written by the fans of Rainfurrest. All the writers and artists have waived all fees, so that all the money will go to charity, so that our furry friends can have a better life. We want to thank all the writers involved, the artists and their brilliant images, and for FurPlanet for helping us put this together. This is a dream come true, and we hope to be able to continue this unique tradition.

(The charity of Rainfurrest 2012 was Rabbit Meadows, a Seattle-area rodent [and presumably lagomorphs] rescue society and clinic.)

“Tails of a Clockwork World: A Rainfurrest Anthology”.
Dallas, TX, FurPlanet Productions, September 2012, trade paperback $10.00 (119 pages).

Already Among Us: An Anthropomorphic Anthology (Kindle), compiled by Fred Patten, is a collection of 14 science-fiction and fantasy stories from outside our fandom, focussing on humanity's interactions with intelligent animals (or animal-like aliens).

Fred introduces each story to put them into context, and the book's font is large and easy to read. The layout, however, could have benefited from having the authors and story titles printed along the tops of the pages. Without them, it's much harder to pick up where you left off, without using a bookmark.

The stories can be divided into two distinct time periods. Six were written between 1942-1962 (the tail end of SF's golden age); the rest are from 1991-2006. I was surprised that there was nothing from SF's new wave/experimental period in the 60s and 70s.

Compare: Watts Martin's review of Already Among Us.

Alan Loewen was the Author Guest of Honor at Morphicon 2012. To commemorate the occasion, he published this slim collection of thirteen of his anthropomorphic short stories. Eight of them were first published between 1998 and 2011, and five appear in this volume for the first time.

Three of these stories first appeared in Pawprints Fanzine, one of the leading Furry fanzines between 1994 and 2001; one in the Anthrocon 2003 convention book; and three in Ethereal Tales, a quarterly of “cute ‘n’ creepy” stories for gothic and fantasy fans since 2008. In other words, Loewen’s credentials as a Furry author are solid. Most of these stories are very short, only four or five pages; the longest is barely over thirty.

Most of these are stories in the well-established Furry tradition, offering little or no explanation for their anthropomorphic characters; they just are.

CreateSpace, March 2012, trade paperback $9.95 (ii + 113 pages), Kindle $2.99.

The Ursa Major Awards have been running since 2001, and one of the more difficult categories to vote in has been "Best Anthropomorphic Short Fiction", due to the works being scattered across various fanzines, magazines, con books and web pages. So I'm very glad that Fred Patten has edited together The Ursa Major Awards anthology: a tenth anniversary celebration, published by FurPlanet (2012), allowing us to read eleven stories from across the fandom collected under one cover. (341 p., ISBN 9781614500520)

See also: Reviews by Roz Gibson and Watts Martin

The original idea was to print the winning short story from each year of the Awards, but because Kyell Gold has won the popular vote consecutively from 2006 to 2011, this felt a little unbalanced towards the other contributors, so only three of his works appear here. (It skips In between from 2008 and Bridges from 2010.)

To pad out the book a little more, three Ursa-nominated stories were also included. Most of the works are about 20-30 pages in length, with occasional illustrations from artists such as Synnabar, John Cooner and Vicki Wyman. The gentle, moonlit cover art was done by Blotch.

Isiah had the chance to interview most of the contributors to annual adult anthology Heat 9, published by Sofawolf; some could not be reached. Related interviews: Whyte Yote & Alastair Wildfire – Camron & Vantid – Alopex – Huskyteer – Kandrel & Scappo – Kyell Gold & Nimrais

Isiah Jacobs: Hello again, Tempo! Welcome back to the show! It's been too long!

Tempo: Happy to be back. :)

Isiah Jacobs: So, you have a story in this year's publication of Heat. And you were actually able to get it illustrated by Blotch!

Tempo: Yep! The story behind that story starts a couple years back when Blotch and I were talking about what we liked in each other's work. I liked that Blotch's pics often felt like they had a world behind them, like there were stories behind them. They ended up asking if I wanted to write one of those stories and we paged through their prints until we found "The Prisoner". (NSFW)

Isiah Jacobs: That's the one with Drust tied to a tree or something, right?

Isiah had the chance to interview most of the contributors to annual adult anthology Heat 9, published by Sofawolf; some could not be reached. Related interviews: Whyte Yote & Alastair Wildfire – Camron & Vantid – Alopex – Huskyteer – Kandrel & Scappo – Tempe O'kun

Isiah Jacobs: Good evening, Nimrais, thank you so much for joining us tonight! It's nice to have you on the show! Kyell, always a pleasure!

Nimrais: Good evening, it's a pleasure to talk to you two!

Kyell Gold: Likewise! Thanks, Isiah, for setting this up.

Isiah Jacobs: Obviously, you two produced content for Heat 9 this year; a story called "Rewind". Before we discuss the story itself, I'm just curious. Have you two heard of each other before this?

Isiah had the chance to interview most of the contributors to annual adult anthology Heat 9, published by Sofawolf; some could not be reached. Related interviews: Camron & Vantid – Alopex – Kandrel & Scappo – Huskyteer – Kyell Gold & Nimrais – Tempe O'kun

Isiah Jacobs: Good evening, gentlemen! Thank you both so much for joining me tonight, it's a pleasure to have you both on the show!

Whyte Yote: Thanks for having us.

Isiah Jacobs: Whyte, Alastair, as I understand it, you both have sort of collaborated in this year's issue of Heat. Whyte, you wrote a short story called "Two Minutes" and Alastair, you provided the illustrations.

Whyte Yote: Well, I wouldn't call it "collaboration" as much as "I didn't know who was doing my illustrations until Alopex told me after they were done." XD He likes surprises. Plus, publisher's prerogative.

Walter R. Brooks (1886-1958) is remembered today as the author of the Freddy the Pig children’s books. But from 1915 through the late 1940s, he was also a prolific writer of almost 200 adult short stories for popular magazines like The Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, and Esquire. Among those short stories were the series of humorous fantasies about the talking horse Mr. Ed and his often-drunken owner Wilbur Pope. There were 23 of these between 1937 and 1945, for Liberty, Esquire, The Saturday Evening Post, and Argosy. (Plus two more unsold stories included in the 1963 collection.) Brooks eventually stopped writing anything besides a yearly Freddy the Pig novel, illustrated by Kurt Wiese. The Freddy novels came to be eagerly anticipated annually by children’s librarians and young readers, while Brooks’ earlier magazine short stories were forgotten.

Just before Brooks’ death in August 1958, Arthur Lubin, a fledgling television producer fresh from his success as the director of most of the Francis, the Talking Mule movies for Universal Studios during the 1950s, licensed from him the rights to the Mr. Ed series as Lubin’s first TV program. There was also a connection between the Francis movies and the Mister Ed TV series in that Lubin employed the same animal trainer, Lester Hilton. It took three years, but Lubin and the Filmways Television Productions company sold the concept to sponsor Studebaker Corporation for TV syndication in January 1961, and then to CBS for network broadcast in October. Mister Ed, starring Alan Young as a bumbling young architect and a golden palomino gelding named Bamboo Harvester as the talking horse, was an extremely popular TV comedy for six seasons from 1961 through 1966, and in reruns and DVD sales since then. Brooks’ original mildly bawdy humor, emphasizing Wilbur’s and Mr. Ed’s comedic drunkenness and Ed’s earthiness, was toned down considerably for the family TV audience.

Bantam Books (NYC), January 1963, paperback 118 pages, USD 40¢. Illustrated by Bob Bugg.

Isiah had the chance to interview most of the contributors to annual adult anthology Heat 9, published by Sofawolf; some could not be reached. Related interviews: Whyte Yote & Alastair Wildfire – Camron & Vantid – Alopex – Kandrel & Scappo – Kyell Gold & Nimrais – Tempe O'kun

Isiah Jacobs: Good evening, Ms. Dryden, thank you so much for coming on!

Huskyteer: Thank you for inviting me!

Isiah Jacobs: You submitted a story to Heat 9 this year, and it was illustrated by Cara Mitten. Unfortunately, she couldn't join us.

Huskyteer: I should confess I haven't got my mitts on my copy of Heat yet, so I haven't seen the illustrated version. I hope it gets through Customs. Sometimes stuff from the US arrives in a matter of days, sometimes it...doesn't.

Isiah Jacobs: Your story is called "Bad Timing." Could you please briefly explain what your story is about?