Erotic art site Wacky World of Erotic Cartoons has closed its doors, reportedly due to hosting costs. The imminent closure of the site was announced on its forums; both were taken offline just hours later, although a deadline of a week had been provided.

The WWoEC and its forums featured erotic depictions of American cartoon characters. It opened at the turn of the century, running as a partially paywalled site in its early years. Paid content later moved to LustToons (NSFW), which supported the WWoEC and its forums.

Palcomix and The Jab Archives have been proposed as alternative hosts for the site's artists.

Twelve-times Ursa Major Award winner Kyell Gold has announced his withdrawal from the Best Novel and Best Short Story categories this year, and for "a few more going forwards", to ensure that other authors win:

There is precedent in other awards for frequent winners stepping back. One of the people on the Ursa Major committee told me that in a musical award, when someone wins three years in a row, they are retired from that category by the award. That's not how the Ursas work: they have been very hands-off and admirably resistant to public opinion. When Stan Sakai won the Best Comic award multiple years running, they assured people that in time, other comics would win, and they were right. In response to my multiple wins, they have assured people that, in time, other authors will win.

I have no doubt that they are correct, given the profusion of talent in the fandom. In fact, each of the last two years I have been convinced I would not win one of the two awards (perhaps neither). But I have also observed that it would probably be better for the writing scene if that day comes sooner rather than later.

Flash! Phil Geusz abandons writing anthropomorphic fiction; switches to military s-f to dramatically increase sales.

Featuring genengineered rabbit- and dog-morph soldiers.

Phil Geusz and Legion Publishing have chosen an unusual format in which to publish the adventures of David Birkenhead. Instead of publishing them together as three or more novels, they are putting out a set of seven booklets of roughly 150 pages to 200 pages each. Although most are available in trade paperback editions (and there was a 106-page trade paperback booklet edition of Ship’s Boy as a promotional giveaway at Anthrocon), Geusz and Legion expect virtually all sales to be of the Kindle e-books, to Amazon.com readers who cannot pass up the bargain of a “whole book” for only 1¢ or 99¢ or $2.99 in these days when an ordinary paperback is $8.

They are being marketed as military s-f, not Furry fiction. Amazon.com’s advertising targeted to its customers who buy military s-f is, “Are you looking for something in our Science Fiction & Fantasy books department? If so, you might be interested in these items,” with a list that includes the David Birkenhead books among ten or twelve other military s-f titles.

And it’s paying off. Geusz reports that:

[…] earlier today I had two books ranked in Amazon's top 100 for SF. […] Both were in the 90's, but they were there. […] There are almost never any furry books listed in connection with the Birkenhead buyers -- it's all either military SF or straight action-adventure stuff. So it's fair to guess that only a tiny proportion of my buyers are furs.

Will Geusz and the David Birkenhead series bring new readers to Furry fandom?

Part of my fate in the fandom seems to involve finding bad foreign animated films. Granted, most folks in the fandom couldn't be bothered to know about them anyway, but if I can stop even a handful of people from wasting their time, that's a good thing.

So: Don't bother watching Legend of a Rabbit (trailer).