After months of delay—well, let’s face it, after 2020, pretty much�Reclamation Project: Year Two is finally starting to take some shape. I still have to write my own story for the book, but I have many very good submissions, including lots of returning faces.

But I feel that something is missing, which I described on Twitter as “soul,� but I think it might be better to describe as “heart.� Most of the submissions so far have put a lot of emphasis on action, and have been very fun to read on that basis. But one of the things I was most surprised and pleased by in Year One were the quieter, more reflective stories, that (for lack of a better term) “humanized� this world full of furry adventurers, flying cities, and deranged robots. So far this collection doesn’t really have a “Dark Garden Lake� or “Flavors of Sunlight� to give it heft. It also doesn’t really have much “solarpunk,� veering more into “cold war� style intrigue between humans and furries, or post-apocalypse action.

In I touched on some of what is missing in the “Character Is King� section; but I think it needs some emphasis. Year Two still needs at least one story that is really about emotional connection, even when that involves blowing up rogue bots or having fun playing with . It also really needs some good solarpunking up—although what that might look like, I’m unsure of. (That’s why I’m editing the thing, instead of just writing it all myself! ;D )

So if you’re out there and you have something you think might fit the bill, ! The “submission cutoff date� has been stretched so many times at this point it’s snapped, and I’m not going to worry about it. My goal is to have the book on the table at AnthroCon 2021, assuming that actually happens, but as mentioned I’ve still got to write my own story for it as well, and I’d rather have a great book that came out late, than an “all right� book that came out on time.

So hit me with your furry solarpunk awesomeness!

2020 has messed with everyone’s heads, mine included. But like Nick Fury, until the world stops spinning I’m going to keep moving on the assumption that it will continue. To that end, carries on! The submission cutoff date is still October 31st, although that may slide as production requirements change. I certainly haven’t been talking about it nearly as much as I have meant to, so let’s fix that, shall we?

I get a lot of questions from would-be contributors about technical details: “Do the humans have laser guns?â€� “Would it make sense for a furry settlement to have helicopters?â€� “Does Pax Machina communicate via radio waves?â€� And while some of this stuff is , I almost always give the same answer, which is: “Yes, if that makes a good story.â€� As the editor of the series, I’ll take care of hashing out inconsistencies if they’re big enough that I think they’ll actually cause a problem, but the world is a large and complex place—whether a vehicle has wheels or antigrav is nowhere near as important as who’s in the vehicle and where it’s going. So don’t worry so much about the nuts and bolts! To maximize your chances of acceptance into the anthology, focus instead on the Reclamation Project “f´Ç°ůłľłÜ±ô˛ą.â€�

And just what is that? So glad you asked! Keep in mind, this is just a quickie list of some things to focus on. It’s not a hard-and-fast formula or boilerplate—we don’t want to just crank out write-by-numbers stuff—it’s just a set of touchstones to look for when you’re writing, or possibly a nudge if you get stuck. Not every story needs all of these elements, but these are good places to start, with examples from the Year One anthology to illustrate them.

The new world being built by the furries should be vital and exciting; the old world being clung to by the humans is stagnant, decadent, and ultimately self-devouring. This is not black-and-white or good-vs-evil. The humans have been born into these broken systems just like a rat born in a maze, and it takes a rare specimen to think of climbing up out of the walls instead of just following the path in front of them no matter where it goes. The furries, by contrast, were dropped in a giant (if dangerous) sandbox and left to find their own way. The natural consequence is rigid, cargo-cultish mindset on the part of humans, and an open-ended, “Everything is risky anyway, why not give it a shot?� mindset in the furries.

This has been discussed at length elsewhere, but I want to mention it here because it is at the heart of what the Reclamation Project is all about. Now more than ever, we need to provide an optimistic vision, something positive for the world to move toward, instead of reacting to the darkness of the past.

The world of Reclamation Project is a weird and uncanny place, full of surprises. Don’t just think outside the box—question the very existence of the box and think outside the inverted hypercube! Try not to be arbitrary with it: the WTF moment should be important to your story, either as a core part of the premise, a plot point that moves the story forward, or to reveal/change something fundamental about your protagonist. Action (see the next point) may be spice for your story, but the WTF moment is part of the main course.

Besides being strange, the world is dangerous, whether that danger comes in the form of mutant monsters, killer robots, marauders, or marching fanatics. Reclamation Project is fantasy adventure, and there’s no adventure without risk. Be careful with this, though: avoid being graphic or cruel in your depictions, even if the characters are being cruel in what they do. Action should be snappy, to-the-point, and serve the larger themes of the story.

On some level any story, of any genre, is an exploration of character, and the Reclamation Project is no different. Whether your hero is a hardboiled detective, a Regency-era gentlewoman, or a tabby cat that sounds like Antonio Banderas, it’s the things they value, the choices they make, and the consequences of those choices that make a story resonate. A fascinating twist without a character behind it is just an intellectual exercise; a compelling world without engaging people living in it is just a travelogue.

So when coming up with your story, dig in here. What are the stakes for your character? Does the story change them, or do they remain steadfast and thus change the world? A by-the-numbers adventure story with a compelling cast of characters will get you a lot farther than Big Ideas being delivered by cardboard cutouts (see also Star Wars vs. 2001: A Space Odyssey).

Preferably, of course, you’ll have both big ideas and exciting characters! But when in doubt? Focus on character first.

Focusing on these elements should help make your story a great fit for The Reclamation Project. Go forth and create something amazing!

Dude. Are you kidding me? O.o

I read them all, and loved them all; even the roughest ones of the lot had something awesome about them. But with a wordcount target of 100,000 � 150,000, that meant that at a minimum I would have to say no to 110,000 words written for a world that I spun out of thin air by mashing together some of my favorite tropes.

I gotta tell you, it hasn’t been easy. I still have a double-handful of stories that I just can’t quite decide about, and the clock is ticking. Do all editors go through this?

On the other hand, the stories that I know are definitely in? They are freakin� amazing. I am proud and astonished to be able to put my name on this book, and I’m ridiculously grateful to FurPlanet for making it possible. Just from my seat in the editor’s chair my own writing has also leveled up from experiencing the different voices and perspectives, and from seeing what worked in each story, what didn’t, and why.

So, yeah, editing is hard. But it’s been way more than worth it.

A rags-to-if not riches, at least a level of prestige, heroine in the Avatar universe, with a tsundere firebender love interest and lots of element-bending action, what’s not to like? It’s as if somebody gave F.C. Yee a list of stuff I love and told him to make a book out of it. So that’s all to the good. And while I enjoyed it and I’m glad I read it, I did have issues.

WARNING: Spoilers ahead!

As an entry into the Avatar universe, it works and has lots of fun little nods/homages without being clunky name-checking, which is good. Kyoshi is both unique, and believable as an incarnation of the same spirit as Wan, and even moreso as Korra. There are some neat new bending styles and a lot of interesting extrapolations on what the world of Avatar is like for ordinary people. Not since “The Waterbending Scroll� have we gotten so up close and personal with the criminal societies of this world, and the book creates an interesting and consistent culture for the daofei.

The story is engaging, with the relationship between Kyoshi and Rangi being the strongest element by far, and the relationship between Kyoshi and her guru-with-a-tarnished-halo Lao Ge being second. But everything else pales by comparison, to the point where the sections from Master Jianzhu’s POV rather drag. I realize the book was trying to humanize the antagonist in the Avatar tradition, but honestly Jianzhu’s just not that interesting a character under all the veneer and, for that matter, he’s not convincing as one of Kuruk’s “Team Avatar� members. In fact, all of Kuruk’s Team Avatar are a pretty rotten bunch, by the standards of the likes of Katara, Sokka, Asami, and the like. Even if you accept the “After Kuruk died, the world went to pieces…� explanation of things, for Kuruk to have been such a happy-go-lucky guy with this nest of vipers, he must have been even more oblivious than previously hinted.

Also, as engaging as it is, the book clearly runs out of room and just sorta falls apart 4/5 of the way through. After infiltrating the criminal underworld, taking down a corrupt earth kingdom governor in a massive assault, and then destroying a powerful would-be despot� the book is like “Oh yeah! The big villain Kyoshi’s been training to defeat and who has been hunting her since act one. Uh� he kidnaps her girlfriend, they fight, a deus ex machina happens, and she wins, all in one chapter. Oh, and then she goes to the air nomads and Kuruk’s spirit shows up to set up a cliffhanger. Tune in next time!�

It’s a disappointing anticlimax, that throws ice over the high of the big confrontation with the daofei, and also makes all that time sitting through the chapters with Master Jianzhu feel all the more wasted. Honestly, if those chapters had been cut to make room for Kyoshi setting up a more satisfying confrontation, I probably would have given the book five stars instead of four.

This book is violent. Very, very violent, by Avatar standards.

Granted, the Avatar series is for a TV audience, so violence and death is something the shows have to be very careful about. Generally speaking, when a character dies in Avatar, it’s intended to be a shocking and important moment, a rare and defining circumstance. Sometimes the show won’t even own up to it (right, Jet?).

The deaths in Rise of Kyoshi are certainly shocking and defining, not taken lightly, but� there are a lot of them, and some of them are extremely gruesome, on the horror level of the Earth Queen having the air sucked out of her, or P’Li blowing her own head off. Chin the Conqueror’s comedic Wyle E. Coyote death would seem tame, anticlimactic, and out of place here. By the end, I was more surprised when an important character survived.

How you feel about this will color your enjoyment of the book. If I were just coming into this book with no expectations from its connection to the Avatar universe, I probably would have taken it in stride as just “this is a story about ruthless violence� and accepted it. But since I do have those expectations, the level and more importantly the frequency of the violence jumped out at me.

F.C. Yee has created a compelling and convincing story in the Avatar universe, populated with believable characters and a very relatable protagonist, that leaves a lot of questions open for future expansion without feeling like plot threads were left dangling. Although hampered by a rushed ending and a bit heavy-handed on the violence, I recommend it to both fans and non-fans of the Avatar universe. Anyone who like YA fantasy and adventure, will find something to enjoy in this book.

One of my writing pals contacted me yesterday: he was trying to write a story for but wasn’t happy with the results he was coming up with. In an effort to get his creative juices flowing, I sent him a link to I had created to help me get into the right frame of mind.

“Maybe I’ve been going around this wrong,� he replied. “I’ve been trying to pull story ideas out of thin air, but that’s proving hard. I used to go looking at pictures, but it felt like a crutch…�

I’m here to tell you, when it comes to creating story ideas, there’s no such thing as a crutch. There are only tools!

Sometimes a story will leap nearly fully-formed into your head, and the biggest obstacle is making sure to get it all written down before you forget it. And those times when the Muse Burns Within You are amazing!

…But unreliable.

If you want to get somewhere as a professional writer, you need to be able to create stories on demand. While “writer’s block� is a very personal experience, in my own case it’s often a matter of “perfect being the enemy of good.� Writing as a deliberate craft is less like dictating the voice of the muse, and more like slopping a giant blob of clay onto the wheel and spinning it into a useful shape � and since the final product is going to be vastly different from that original lump of clay anyhow, you can use whatever you need to get it started. Write about your cat. Take a story out of the news, flip the gender of all parties involved, and set it on a space station or in ancient Babylon. All you need is a starting point!

Here are some starting points I like to use�

A picture can be worth a lot more than a thousand words. Looking at an evocative image and asking yourself, “What’s happening here? Who are these people? How did this come to pass?� might be all you need to get the ball rolling.

I’ve already mentioned Pinterest. It’s not the best for all applications (it’s terrible about original sources, just for starters), but just in terms of finding neat pictures to look at it’s a good start. Tumblr is another source that’s easy to search by keyword. Want to write steampunk? Need a very specific “anime + elves� vibe? If you can think of something, there’s probably at least one and possibly several blogs devoted to it.

The point of these boards is not to give you “the thing� you’re going to write; just lifting someone else’s creative work and repackaging it as your own would be a crutch, and worse. The point of these boards is to give you suggestions for moments, or ideas, or possibilities, that you will then weave into your own stories. An old pulp sci-fi painting I found on Pinterest gave me an arresting visual image; when I combined that with my own characters and plot it became a 15,000-word story.

Story prompts are everywhere, from games like or , to , to . One sometimes uses Tarot readings to create story outlines.

I generally find prompts to be very hit-or-miss; if I don’t have a single notion in my head, the phrase “When you come to a fork in the road, take it!� is not going to be enough by itself. However, a prompt combined with something else � a character idea, for instance, or a relationship dynamic I want to explore � can sometimes be just enough to prod me into the right direction.

Here’s my secret, Cap: almost all my fic is fanfic.

Everybody knows about 50 Shades by now, right? My novel Sky Pirates of Calypsitania began its life as a notion for an AU fic about “Rainbow Dash, Airship Pirate,� even if the final story doesn’t have a little pony in sight.

Fanfic is a massive creative energy generator (well deserving of ). One of its most powerful features is that, by piggy-backing onto established properties, it allows writers to cut to the chase in their story creation. The characters are already established and the rules of the universe are already written, so all the writer has to do is figure out what happens and write that.

Remember, however, that we’re talking about tools to get you started here, not finished stories. If all you do is shave the names and serial numbers off of a fanfic and repackage it as a new story, people are gonna notice. Fanfic can give you the bones of an outline, but you still have to go back and do the work of establishing your characters, and building your world, before you can truly call the work your own.

This is a long-established practice, and a great one. Take two very different things you love, mash ’em together, and see what sparks fly. Put Casablanca in space and you get Babylon 5. Put a roaming samurai in the old west and you get A Fistful of Dollars. Put British snark and a touch of sentimental romance into The Book of Revelation and you get Good Omens.

There’s a lot of crossover between this category and fanfic � “alternate universe,� “fix-fic,� and “X but Y� are all well-traveled fanfic paths. You could make a cogent argument that Lord of the Rings is �Macbeth Meets Der Rings Des Nibelungen,� and Tolkien did all right for himself.

And of course, there’s always just finding out what an editor wants, and writing that. For The Perfect Warrior, I was given the title and back cover blurb, and told to write an adventure that matched it.

In some ways, this is just a leveled-up version of a writing prompt. Cruising sites like , or checking out upcoming anthologies in your favorite genres, can not only spark cool story ideas, but has the added bonus of giving you a target market and a deadline!

Whatever method you use to get words flowing, the important thing to remember is that writing any story is a process and a journey. Give yourself permission to create something rough, and get writing! In the words of Tim Powers, “The first draft is supposed to be crap.� Where would the skill of the sculptor come in, if the blob of clay was perfect when it was first plopped down?

Just a calm, collected freakout to remind you that ! The Reclamation Project is coming together fast now, but we’ve still got a little space you could squeeze into!

At the risk of tooting my own horn, this book is going to be amazing. We’ve nabbed some of the best writers on the furry scene, and they’ve really done an amazing job of making the world of The Reclamation Project come alive. It’s got mystery! It’s got romance! It’s got adventure, and excitement, and really wild things!

I think that what I’m most impressed by is the amount of love and deep thought that’s shining through in these stories. Even the most gonzo adventure tale I’ve received so far (and there have been some doozies) has been built on a profoundly human foundation. I feel deeply honored to be collecting and curating these tales to bring to the world, and !

Don’t mess with those daedra

You never can win!

You are green, Dovakhin

And there’s pox on your skin

“Hello, hello!� he replied, sipping at a coffee and tapping away at the laptop.

She raised an eyebrow, but shrugged and started rooting through a cabinet for the english muffins. “Soooo�?� she said.

“Hmm?� replied Greg, still tapping away.

“Go on,� she said.

“Go on about what?� She just looked over at him; his expression was befuddled. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.�

“Really,� she said.

“Yes, really,� he replied.

“Okay,� she said, turning to her breakfast. A moment of quiet followed.

“You know,� he added, “the Hogan’s Heroes theme song is actually an incredibly dense and layered composition. It’s a masterclass in themes and sub-themes!�

“There it is,� said Brigid.

Picture if you will, the valar and maiar gathered around discussing creation.

Reviewee: I have invented a new kind of animal! It lives in the water, has gills to breathe, and flippers that enable it to move. I call it a “fish.�

Critiquer: Yeah, that’s good, but� what if this “fish� lived in trees and had wings to fly with?

Reviewee: Well, the point was to make a thing that lived in the water�

Other Critiquer: Man, I really like this “lives in trees and has wings� idea! You should give your fish brightly-colored feathers and have them sing.

In the writing track, writing groups and critiques � and specifically, how to give good critiques � were a major focus. Having only recently gotten into the world of actually being in a writing group, this discussion was fresh in my mind as I watched and winced at a person in a recent group meeting having their perfectly good kid’s book being twisted into all kinds of weird pretzel shapes. Instead of critiquing the story that she had brought, the discussion kept turning to all sorts of different things the story could have been (or to some of the critiquers� way of thinking, should have been).

The thing reached a head when one of the critiquers suggested that the entire story could be told in pictures, with none of the reviewee’s words at all, to which the reviewee replied, “So what’s the point of my even doing it?�

Please don’t do this to people.

Giving useful feedback can be difficult, and the thing about writers particularly is that we’re a creative lot. When we see an idea that sparks thoughts and possibilities, we want to spin new stories out of them. It’s as natural as breathing! But in the context of writing critique, it’s as useful as putting a fish in a tree and telling it to fly.

Unless the reviewee is specifically looking to brainstorm new ideas (which can also be a great exercise), your job as a critiquer is to address the text at hand: what works, what doesn’t, and specifically if the writer succeeds at making the text do what it’s supposed to do. “Maybe your fish should have its eyes on the side of its head to more easily spot predators� is useful feedback. “Your fish should be a bird� is not, and worse, it can be actively harmful. I don’t think anyone at the meeting intended to tell the reviewee that she had wasted her time and effort creating a useless story, but that was clearly the message she was receiving.

So, what should you do? Try this�

“Get� the Story. Look for what the writer was trying to accomplish, as well as fairly universal things like “Do the sentences make sense?� and “Are the characters engaging?�

Talk About What Worked, What Didn’t Work, and What Was Great. Using the famous “shit sandwich� model (the bad stuff surrounded by good things on either side), give feedback that’s as specific as possible. Remember that the point is to discuss the story that’s actually on the page, not the amazing story you came up with in your own head.

Suggest Changes. Here’s where you can toss in your own ideas, but keep in mind that the changes should be to address what didn’t work first and foremost. If the reviewee’s fish has given you a great idea for a bird, go ahead and mention it as a possibility for expansion or a new direction if you like. Or maybe go create your own bird. You’re a writer, after all! And the best part is that by doing that, you empower the reviewee to make an even better story, instead of tearing them down and making them wonder what the point of having written it was.