It's finally out, everyone! Finally, after 10 years working on this series.

If you were waiting to read The Fire Bearers until the series was finished, THE SERIES IS FINISHED.

I told the story I wanted to tell, and with discounts on the first and second books, there's no better time to read them. If you haven't read gay dark fantasy romance in a prehistoric African setting before, I've got something for you.

You can order from Sofawolf at https://sofawolf.com/products/god-of-fire?sku=GOF

Happy to answer any questions you have.

The book will be releasing through Sofawolf Press on April 16. Links to follow when it's up on the site.

Still no God of Fire update

Obviously, it was supposed to be out last month, but art and layout etc is apparently taking longer than expected

I will let y'all know as soon as I have anything.

Hey all. I'm trying to keep this account more focused on my books/professional writing.

Some of you may know of a story series called Contraindications. Wasn't written by me -- was written by an evil demon who lives inside me and writes lots of erotic fetishy stuff. He's got another series he's working on called Abyssus Abbey and wants to post it here as well as on SoFurry. You'll be able to follow that here, and Contraindications is moving over to that account as well.

You can find him at https://www.furaffinity.net/user/pendarke/

The update is: I have finished it. The series is complete, and the submission draft has been sent to the publisher. Now we just wait for acceptance, any copyediting they need (hopefully shouldn't -- I was VERY thorough), and art and layout.

Happy to answer questions if y'all've got 'em

Yep, I'll be at the con, with my new book, God of Clay!

Look for the badge that says Ryan Campbell -- that's me! Here's where you can find me:

Friday, September 27:
4-6 pm - St. Helens Hospitality Suite - Sofawolf Book Launch party
You guys, I get a party! Ain't that nuts? Anyway, there will apparently be food and maybe wine and some awkward speeches all round.
6-7 pm - Elliott B - A reading and Q&A with Ryan Campbell. I'll be reading a selection from God of Clay and taking questions, if there are any.
7-10 pm - Time for a dinner with my dear husband  jakebe to celebrate our 5th anniversary. Five whole years of being married to him! It feels like both more and less
10pm - ?? - Horizon/Glacier - I'm a special guest on the Unsheathed podcast! Exciting! Come hear me awkwardly banter with Kyell Gold!

Saturday, September 28
10-11am - Elliott B - Character Development
Come listen to me and Alflor and Mitch de la Guardia talk about how to move your characters through your stories in interesting ways.

You guys, check it out -- http://www.amazon.com/Smiley-and-th.....dp/B005FSHQ86/

It's the full text and all the illustrations.

Obviously if you can, you should definitely buy the hard copy from FurPlanet -- they've put a lot of hard work into the book for me, and it's a proper book with paper and everything, ready to light up your shelf like a neon red flashlight. You can pick that up at http://furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=494

But if your wallet is pinching you, you can grab the digital copy from Amazon too.

Thanks again for all your support. The Fire Bearers is coming along great so far and I can't wait to get that out there. Hopefully sometime next year.

Okay, you guys all know how much I hate that guy Not Tube. But he has this story called A Non-Biodegradable Fox that got picked up by the Bad Dog Book Club.

 osfer did a dramatic reading of it and it's surprisingly awesome. You can give it a listen over at http://baddogbooks.com/bookclub/201.....x-by-not-tube/

--Tube

So after what? Four years? the end to the long-running Contraindications saga is right around the corner.

I know exactly how it's ending, and have for some time. The ending isn't changing. But here's my question to you:

If you could see anything happen at the end, no matter how weird or out of character, what would it be? What would be the hottest ultimate fate for our poor, put-upon otter? Does he grow to absurd sizes? Does he become a monster and have a wolf supper? Does he shrink back down to nothin' again? Does he go to space? (Spaaaaaaace!) Let me know what boats your float!

Don't say anything you want to keep, though! There's likely going to be a print version of this coming out, and you may see your suggestion appear in an unexpected way!

EDIT: You guys, as I said below, I'm not asking about this from a literary standpoint. I'm talking balls-to-the-wall, full-blown, fetish freak flag flying.

The night before last, I plugged my phone into my laptop in our computer room to charge and then went to bed.

Yesterday morning, when I woke up, I went to look for my phone, and it was gone. Not connected to the charger. I wracked my brain: did I disconnect it and move it somewhere else in the apartment? I went to me.com and used the GPS tracker there. The phone still appeared to be in the complex. The dot wasn't centered right over our building, but it was in the general area. I tried sending the phone a signal -- it's basically a shrill beep at full volume that continues for two minutes. I could hear no sound. Baffling. Perhaps the phone was buried under a pile of clothes or between sofa cushions. I checked everywhere I could think of. Still, no phone.

The only thing I could think of was that someone had entered our apartment in the night while we were sleeping and taken it. But no. The idea was inconceivable. The thief would have had to travel right past our open bedroom door, walking on noisy wood floors, and taken it from the bedroom. And why had nothing else been taken? The phone was connected to a laptop. Why not take the laptop?

Still, there were a number of odd things that came to mind. Once or twice since we moved in, I had woken, thinking I heard noises in the apartment. We were not in the habit of locking the doors when we slept, so it's possible someone could have entered. Several times we had come out of the bedroom in the middle of night or in the early morning to find that the sound for our stereo system had been turned on. We had dismissed it as stray radio signals accidentally turning on the sound -- this had happened to us in a previous place even while we were in the room. All day at work I kept checking me.com, looking for movement in the phone. It strayed around the northern area of the condo complex, not really near our building. This troubled me. Could the GPS really be off that much? I convinced myself that it must be so. I thought of new places to check when I got home.

Except when I got home, I checked the website again and found that my phone was not in the complex anymore -- it was in the parking lot of the nearby mall. I couldn't believe it. Someone had been entering our apartment while we were sleeping and taking things. And, I guess, watching tv too. Mostly, though, I was furious. Someone had come into my lair and taken one of my valuables. I grabbed my laptop, put it in the trunk of my car, and peeled out of the complex like a bat out of hell. I was practically snorting fire. I won't say that I drove recklessly to the mall, but I will say I wasn't paying a lot of attention to speed limit signs. I wasn't sure what I was going to do when I got there. The map had showed the phone in a parking lot; maybe it was just sitting in the thief's car. Maybe I could send another beep signal to it, find the car, smash its window with a tire iron, and get my phone back. Or maybe I could find the thief himself, smash HIM with a tire iron, and get my phone back. At the very least I could cave in the side of his mountain and devour his ponies.

Alas, when I got to the mall, I could find no usable wireless signal to use to send a beep to the phone. However, the mall had an Apple store just inside. Perhaps someone had found the phone and returned it there -- a relative of the thief for example. Or perhaps the thief himself had brought it to the Apple store in an attempt to unlock it. I ran into the mall and went to the Apple store. There I explained my situation, which got the local representatives rather excited. We pulled up me.com and began tracking the thief's movement throughout the mall. One of the reps used his own phone and tracked that on the site as well. Using walkie-talkies and the help of local security, they attempted to make the dot for their own phone and the dot for mine converge.

In the meantime, we sent a couple of alarms and messages to the phone telling the thief that I was tracking him with the help of Apple employees, and if he didn't turn it in, we would call the police. Minutes later, someone turned the phone in to mall security -- they had found it abandoned in a restroom. I thanked the Apple employees and mall security, and headed home to unlock my phone and call the cops (hey, he didn't turn it in!).

Using the exact timestamps of the times I had sent messages to the phone, the police were able to use security camera footage to track the movements of the person who had turned in the phone back to the restroom, and then get a photo of the suspect, who, presumably frightened by the message and the alarm, left it there. The photo is blurry, but it appears to be just some teenager. However, I know it's a kid who lives in the local complex, or nearby. And I scared him, so it's unlikely he'll try entering our apartment again (I found from our upstairs neighbors that the previous tenants had had their place entered twice while they lived there).

And against all odds, I got my phone back.

So I finished the 12K Bay to Breakers race in just over 1:12. That's around a 12 minute improvement from last year. Exhausted today.

I felt like I could have kept running, though. It was easily my best time, and I was easily in the best shape for it I've ever been. It's weird to be able to see such a huge difference. The first year, at the end, I came in around two hours, had to walk a huge portion of it, and I screwed up my feat really bad. I was soaked in sweat, panting, had stitches in my side, and my feet were bruised and blistered. Within an hour of finishing the race, I could barely walk at all, and was in pretty bad pain.

This year I was ready to head back to the starting line on foot.

Maybe I'll hunt around for a 15k to try. I'd also like to get my time up. I started sprinting in the half-mile straightaway at the end, trying to keep up with Rolo, but then I had to stop and puke, so no good there.

Okay, SORT of a goal. I've been trying to lose weight for about a year now. My goal was to get down to 180 lbs. I just hit 189 this morning. I'm still continuing weight loss through the end of May, but there ain't no way I'm losing 9 lbs in three weeks. All the same, I've lost NEARLY thirty pounds now, and I officially Look Good Naked now.

Next month I start a bulking cycle. Hope I can choke down enough protein to pack on some serious muscle.

I've noticed that each chapter of Contraindications seems to generate less interest than the previous one -- fewer comments, faves, and views -- it's true here, but especially on SoFurry. I'm really not sure why this is happening. Maybe it's easier to read something that's only a couple parts than to tackle a thirteen-part saga.

Don't worry, I'm not demotivated to write any more or anything, but I do wonder why it happens. Surely at least the people who liked the earlier chapters would come back. But I guess either I take things into territory some people don't like, or I take too damn long to update and people forget about the series... and the name change halfway through probably didn't help either.

The nice thing is that as I post these new parts, I pick up a few people who go back and find the early chapters for the first time.

Anyway, I'm well into chapter 12, you guys. Then one more chapter (probably) to finish out.

Yeah, think I'm gonna have to throw out a thousand words of sex scene I wrote last night. It is just. Not. Hot Enough.

For you. The fans. This is how much I care.

Chapter 11 ain't far away, y'all!

In the meantime, let's say that, hypothetically, the whole saga was going to be released in some kind of dead paper or ebook form... and let's say, too, that there were a series of illustrations FOR said form.

Who do you guys think would be a good artist to tap for that kind of work?

Snap, I think novel writing has been not good for me.

I'm pretty far into this chapter and it's all story, no porn!

Dear muscle fictioners,

I hate you all, and here's why:

1) God damn it, the word that is short for "pectorals" is "pecs." It is not "pecks." Peck is what a bird does. Unless you are an ostrich, stop talking about your huge pecks. Or I will stab you. Stab you in your stupid pecks.

2) Six-packs do not increase in number when you get stronger. That is just moronic. The rectus abdominis, the muscle that makes up the "abs," is one solid muscle that has natural divisions in it that give the appearance of separate muscles. There is one vertical division and four horizontal divisions, like this:
_ _
_|_
_|_
_|_<--bellybutton goes in there!
\ /

As you can see, the vertical division usually does not extend much beyond the top and bottom horizontal divisions. If someone is really lean and developed, you can see six separate bulges in the abdominal muscle. The bottom part of muscle has only a minor division, and will always look like one muscle. SOMETIMES the top part of the muscle will also appear to be divided, creating the rarer "eight-pack." Sometimes you'll also see cases in which the abdominal muscles are asymmetrical, with one side looking higher than the other. But what causes these variations has nothing to do with low body fat or lean muscle mass. It is entirely controlled by GENETICS.

So when you talk about building up muscle so much that "his six-pack became an eight-pack, and then a ten-pack!" you are talking about genetic mutation. It makes about as much sense as saying "he grew another row of abs alongside the first row!" God. AWFUL. I HATE YOU.

In one spectacular example of combining these two terrible things into one, someone I read actually thought the "pack" from a six-pack was the PECS. So yes. His CHEST went from a six-pack to an eight-pack to a ten-pack to a twelve-pack and then to a whole barrel keg, and then I lost the ability to become aroused for all time, ever. If you want to know why there's been no more Contraindications in so long, it is that guy's fault. I blame him.

3) Believe it or not, there is NO SUCH THING AS A BICEP. I know. Seriously. There is no such thing. The muscle, even when it is on one arm, is called a biceps. Biceps (short for biceps brachii) is from the Latin for "two-headed." When your biceps are all beefy and lean (like mine, you jealous fuckers), you can actually see the split down the muscle. There's also a biceps femoris, which is that muscle on the back of your thigh, but no one ever means that. What I'm getting at here is that it is always wrong to say "he flexed a bicep." That sounds stupid. It's like saying, "he cut the paper with some scissor," or "he was in underwear because his pant was in the laundry." And yet EVERYONE does that. You do it so much you've gotten me doing it sometimes by accident and for that I HATE YOU WITH DEMONIC FURY FROM BEYOND THE FAR REACHES OF HELL. While we're on the topic, there is no such thing as a tricep or a quadrucep, either. Unless you have some kind of sad and grotesque medical condition, I guess.


...

Okay, look, obviously I'm kidding you here in tone (I don't hate you, I promise), but seriously: if you're gonna write muscle stuff in fiction, you should know at least some of your shit. Otherwise you end up sounding like a dork.

Guess what Iiiiiii'm working on!

Should I post the first chapter of Smiley and the Hero here? Would there be interest in that?

Hey, y'all! The book is finally available for purchase after TOTALLY SELLING OUT at FC -- get your copy here: http://furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=494

Your support is greatly appreciated!

Hey, y'all. Here's where I'll be at FC this year:


I MIGHT go to the Opening Ceremonies Thursday, 07:00 PM – 08:30 PM Club Regent

I am a PANELIST for Novel Writing Friday, 05:00 PM – 06:30 PM
The perils and pitfalls of creating long stories and novels are manifold, the process can be daunting and often can be overwhelming. Do you plan ahead? Write every day or in bursts? Learn from experienced writers why they write novels, what works for them and what to watch out for in your own long-form writing projects.
Empire
Other panelists:  kyell  rikoshi  chipotle

I will PROBABLY NOT BUT MIGHT ANYWAY go to: Dragons Friday, 08:00 PM – 09:30 PM Club Regent
(It is a secret that I am secretly really love dragons.)

I will ATTEND PART OF Voice Acting Workshop Saturday, 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM Club Regent

I will be a PANELIST for the Writer's Workshop (Sat) Saturday, 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
Stuck in a rut for a story? Need some advice on how to get over writer's block? Whatever the case may be, come on in and we'll do our best to get ya out of that rut or bust through that block. In any case, stop on by! You might learn something new!
Empire
Other panelists: Hilary Ayer

I will be a PANELIST for the Learning to Love Editing Saturday, 01:00 PM – 02:30 PM
Everybody loves the creative freedom of the first draft, it's going back to refine the stories that seems tedious and makes writing a chore. But it doesn't have to be! Find out how to enjoy the process of editing your stories making it a fun part of your writing life.
Empire
Other panelists:  kyell  rikoshi  chipotle

I will be ATTENDING Furry Writers' Guild Meet & Greet Saturday, 03:00 PM – 04:30 PM Empire

I will be ATTENDING Sofawolf Presents Saturday, 05:00 PM – 06:30 PM California

I will be ATTENDING Storytelling Saturday, 08:00 PM – 09:30 PM Hillsborough

I will be ATTENDING Unsheathed Live Podcast Saturday, 10:00 PM – 11:30 PM Hillsborough

I will be a PANELIST on Character Journeys Sunday, 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
How does your character move from Chapter One to The End and what does he learn along the way? You've heard about character arcs, how each story is a journey, now learn how to prepare your character for a journey in chapter one and how to make the journey interesting to yourself and your audience until its satisfactory conclusion.
Empire
Other panelists:  kyell  rikoshi  chipotle

I will be SIGNING MY FREAKING BOOK in the Dealer's Den at the FurPlanet table from 1pm to 3pm. Be there or be rhomboid.

I MAY BE ATTENDING Adult Furry Fiction Sunday, 08:00 PM – 09:30 PM Empire

I will be ATTENDING The Small Press Monday, 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM Piedmont

I will be a PANELIST on Writing Groups Monday, 01:00 PM – 02:30 PM
Come and join us for an open round-table discussion on organizing writing groups! We'll talk about the types of policies that might be needed, the best times and places to meet and how to keep your writing group on focus.
Crystal
Other panelists:  jakebe  blackfeather

Hey, y'all!

So good news for everyone who likes action-adventure stories -- my short novel, Smiley and the Hero, is debuting at Further Confusion this year. You can pick it up for ten bucks at the FurPlanet table.

Sorry to disappoint everyone who likes Contraindications, but this isn't along the lines of that story -- it's a straight-up adventure. No muscle growth or anything there, though it does include a giant insane gangster wolf.

For those who aren't into my more fetishy stuff -- good news! None of it here.

(And don't worry, y'all. I'll get back to Contraindications once the book is out.)

For those who aren't going to Further Confusion, you can preorder the book here: http://furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=494

It'll start shipping Jan 31st.

I'm really proud of this book, you guys. It's my first novel, full of suspense and danger and whatnots, and it's got illustrations by  cooner as well as a kickass cover.

I'll be signing copies at the FurPlanet table on Sunday from 1-3pm, and there's a chance Smiley himself may show up. Which, er, actually isn't that big of a draw. Stay away. He's a monster. You'll die.

Anyway, I'm also on a lot of the writing panels at FC with my esteemed colleagues  kyell,  rikoshi, and  chipotle, so come by and see me.

Synopsis for Smiley and the Hero:

San Fernando is a small island port in the tyrannical grip of the giant gangster wolf, Smiley O'Hannigan. Here, barely surviving and on the edge of starvation, there seems to be no future for young Johnny and his mother. But when Johnny finds a key to the back door of Smiley's fortress and treasure vault, he has a chance to change everything. Johnny's always dreamed of being a hero like his father, but he's about to learn that heroism isn't quite as easy--or as simple--as he thought.

A guy on foozzzball's journal http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/1764691/ said this:

I've always said that the fandom is hugely sex based, right from the word go, and it honestly bothers me when people try to play it off as "just innocent except for the couple pervs we sometimes get." the only proof anyone needs to see what this fandom really is, is an FA account, with adult material enabled. Sure, going around telling people that we all jerk off to pictures of animal people is a bad idea, but people's outright denial pisses me off. I once had someone make the claim that they don't jerk off to furry porn or partake in the sexual side of the fandom, while at the same time having several porn commissions done, and faving mostly porn. There are times I'd even go so far as to call the fandom a fetish, with the "innocent" furs being a huge minority.

The fandom sucks because of mass ineptitude, and social retardation...the sex isn't the problem, it's the "glue" that holds it all together.

Yeah, okay, there's a lot of hypocrisy around furry sex, but you know what? Lots of people lie about their sex habits or feel insecure about divulging them, and that's because they're none of your goddamn business in the first place.

But let me clear this up for people: FURRY IS NOT ABOUT SEX. No really. It's not. People (with a few exceptions) are not into furry because of the sex. Is there sex in furry everywhere? Yeah, there sure as hell is. So the fuck what? Furry is not about sex.

You know else what you see lots of sex in? Anime. There's CRAPLOADS of it. But anime is not about the sex.

You know what else you see a lot of sex in? Marriages. But go ahead. Try to tell someone his marriage is only about the sex (granted, it MAY be, but that would be depressing).

Furry (and scaley, and feather, and all the various hybridy ilk) is an aesthetic. You could probably fill a book with all the reasons that people got into furry, and you still wouldn't have begun to cover everyone. A huge percentage of us found it aesthetically appealing long before we ever had the inkling of any kind of sexual notion.

So let me state this very clearly and very plainly: PEOPLE DO NOT LIKE FURRY BECAUSE OF THE SEX. PEOPLE LIKE SEX BECAUSE OF THE SEX. There. That's as emphatic as I can get. Look, we are sexual beings. It's by necessity. As far as nature is concerned, if we do not breed before we die, we are a fucking biological failure. So there are two things that we want to do more than anything else: live, and screw. And since most of the people knocking around on these parts of the Internet are red-blooded males, that instinct is even stronger -- and by necessity connected with our aesthetic.

We, as people, are all about sex. And when we want to have sex, we want to have sex with something that is in line with our aesthetic. But that doesn't mean that our aesthetic is defined by our sexual urges. You have it the wrong goddamned way around.

Some people don't have any sexual urges connected with furry at all. But most of us have a furry aesthetic that is encompassing. We like animal people, for whatever reason -- they're cute, or exotic, or expressive, or interesting in the way they interact with the world. Maybe we just grew up with lots of animal cartoons or animal books and so that's normal to us. But that means that we are more likely to like an action story if there are animal people in it, and we're more likely to like our comedies if they're furry-themed, and we're more likely to like our love stories when they're fox meets wolf than boy meets girl because they involve elements we actually like. Why in the hell wouldn't that be true for our porn, too? That doesn't mean that furry is sexual. It just means that people are sexual, and they like their sex to involve things they... you know... like.

And then there's this little quote at the end:

The fandom sucks because of mass ineptitude, and social retardation....

I see this a lot too. This is also completely wrong. People who think the fandom sucks, that it suffers from extreme amounts of drama and social retardation, to me, plainly have all but zero experience with the world outside the fandom.

Seriously, dude. That shit is everywhere. It's not furries that are melodramatic and broken and confused. It's everyone. It's called "people." And in my experience, it has not been any more or any less in the fandom than anywhere else. Sometimes we have slightly different flavors of it, but not in greater quantity. People are dramatic because life is dramatic, because people can be mean and stupid and selfish, and furries aren't special. Go look at any other community online and you'll see the same thing. Look at Facebook, for god's sake; it's like a black hole of personality from which no good qualities can escape. We're not special. We're not different. We're just people. And you'll find the same things wherever you go -- just sometimes better hidden.

Guys, I have a huge secret. And I have sat on it for FAR too long. No longer able to keep it in, I must finally reveal it to the world:

My supposed long-time archrival, that scalawag and neerdowell nottube is, in fact, a fabrication, a nom de plume. He and I are one and the same. I know this must come as a terrible shock to some of you, considering how often I have complained about his miscreancy and shenanigans, but that was all just a clever ruse meant to deceive you, to convince you that we were different people. We are not.

I wish I could say I'm sorry for having tricked everyone for so long, but I'm not, because it was super-fun pulling the wool over all your eyes.

Suckers.

So apparently some of you guys decided to take what I said before about NOT nominating Not Tube's story, Moonthief, for an Ursa Major as a joke, and you went to the website and nominated it anyway. Well nice going, guys, cuz now that asshole has an Ursa Major nomination for his story. Good going. If he wins that thing, he's going to be INSUFFERABLE.

The only thing to do is to make sure that everyone else gets all the votes. My buddies Rikoshi and Kyell Gold are both up for the same award, as is Whyte Yote for his fantastic story in X. So please, everyone, go to http://www.ursamajorawards.org/voting2009/ and vote for ANYONE but Not Tube for the Best Short Fiction category. I know you're thinking, bah, what can I do, but often the winners are separated by the losers by just a few votes. So help me out guys. Vote! Just not for Not Tube.

Thanks.