Category: Blog

2020 Awards Eligible Work by Mary E. Lowd

This is my round-up of original fiction I had released this year.  I’d be honored if readers would consider these works for award nominations, but I’d also be really happy if people simply read and enjoy them.

Novels

My novel ENTANGLEMENT BOUND was published by Aethon Books in December, 2020. Continue reading “2020 Awards Eligible Work by Mary E. Lowd”

A Small Present in Three Parts

Merry holiday season!

It’s been a long, hard year for a lot of us, so we’re sharing three stories today as a Christmas present for anyone who needs one.  These three flash fiction stories fit together, following the voyages of a starship carrying scientists from world to world, making first contact with alien species, bringing small touches of hope and connection from the stars. Continue reading “A Small Present in Three Parts”

Am I Furry? — Fandom vs. Genre

by Mary E. Lowd

“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.” — Groucho Marx

 “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.” — Groucho Marx

“You shouldn’t need a membership card to write or enjoy furry fiction. All you need is a story about anthropomorphic animals, and there are more of those coming out all the time.”

There’s a question that floats around the furry writing community occasionally:  how do you define furry fiction?  At first glance, this question seems similar to the age-old, what’s the difference between sci-fi and fantasy?  A nit-picky question about the borders of a genre that can be endlessly debated.  Hours can be lost to arguing over whether Star Wars is sci-fi because of spaceships, or fantasy because of the Force.  I would expect arguments about furry fiction to fall along similar lines.  For instance, does Robert T. Bakker’s Raptor Red anthropomorphize the raptors enough to count as furry?  Or is it simply a piece of speculative naturalism? Continue reading “Am I Furry? — Fandom vs. Genre”

Fiction by Mary E. Lowd in 2019

Okay, theoretically, this is an Awards Eligibility Post… except, I had so much fiction published this year that thinking of it that way will probably melt people’s brains.  So, instead, here’s a guide to learning about the fiction I had come out this year, in case you want to read it.  If when you get to the end, you can still remember that awards exist, then I’d absolutely be honored by any award nominations my fiction might receive.

First off, my books…

Nexus Nine, published by FurPlanet, counts as a novel for the Ursa Major Awards and Cóyotl Awards, and a novella for the Leo Literary Awards.

Tri-Galactic Trek, Jove Deadly’s Lunar Detective Agency (co-written with Garrett Marco), and  ROAR 10 were all published by FurPlanet and count as Other Literary Works for the Ursa Major Awards and as Anthologies for the Leo Literary Awards and Cóyotl Awards.

 

 

 

 

 

Now for short stories!  I had 29 short stories come out in 2019.  Many of them are furry, and many of them are free to read online.  Links provided.

First of all, I’d like to particularly draw attention to the following four stories; they’re not furry, but I think they’re particularly strong pieces of my mainstream sci-fi/fantasy writing.  So, if you’re able to nominate stories for the Hugos or Nebulas, I would be honored to have these considered:

Now for the Definitely Furry Stories:

And, uh, now for even more stories…

Like I said at the beginning, it’s a brain-meltingly long list.  Now, since my brain is definitely melted… time to go write more stories, so that I can do this again in future years.

Sweet Spooky Treats

This year, Furry Book Month crept up and surprised us, so we didn’t have anything prepared.  However, now that we’re down to the last day — which is also Halloween! — we have two new furry stories to present, and since one is about a haunted cafe and the other about a werewolf in space, we’ve packaged them up with two new ghost stories to create a spooky Halloween issue! Continue reading “Sweet Spooky Treats”

Awards Eligibility Post for 2018 — a.k.a. Tons of Free Furry Fiction

This novel came out in 2018! And you can read the first chapter on Deep Sky Anchor!

Okay, so, realistically, I had way too many stories come out in 2018 for anyone to keep track of them all — 26 stories total, and almost all of them are furry.  So, I’m going to list them all here, but I’m also going to filter them out a bit — putting a few of my favorites at the top of the list, and then arranging them by how easy they are to read online.

First, my novel The Snake’s Song: A Labyrinth of Souls Novel came out in 2018 and is eligible for awards!  I’ve received permission from the publisher, ShadowSpinners Press, to reprint the first chapter here on Deep Sky Anchor!  So, here ya go, The Snake’s Song:  Chapter One.

And now… some of my favorites of my furry short stories from 2018:

Next up are all the rest of my furry stories from 2018 that can be read easily and freely online:

And now we get to the stories that are either hard to read online, not available online, or not really furry… but they exist!  And they came out in 2018!

Finally, I’m the editor of ROAR 9 and the new furry e-zine Zooscape.  ROAR 9 is eligible as an Other Literary Work, and Zooscape is eligible as a Magazine.  If you’d like to check out Zooscape, it also has free-to-read, awards-eligible furry stories in it.

Happy Unicorn Day!

Apparently, today is Unicorn Day.  So here’s a fresh hot cup of unicorn stories, newly available here at Deep Sky Anchor:

  • Hot Chocolate for the Unicorn — The Dragon and Unicorn come calling.    [~1,000 words]
  • Feral Unicorn — Janie’s in over her head when her pet unicorn’s horn comes in, and he starts working mischievous magic around the house.       [~4,800 words]

And if you need some more, we do have a few stories that have been rattling around the site a bit longer:

  • Cyclops on Safari — A normal day on safari, in a different world.    [~800 words]
  • The Carousel of Spirits — When Artie finds a ghost haunting his carousel, it’s time for him to build a new horse.     [~3,700 words]

Enjoy!

And Happy Unicorn Day!

Furry Award Eligible Stories

award-ribbon4It’s award season, and so we’re doing a round-up of Mary E. Lowd’s furry short stories published in 2017.  There are a lot of them!  All but one of these stories can be read online for free; four of them can be read right here at Deep Sky Anchor!  If you love any of these stories, please consider taking a moment to nominate them for the Ursa Major Awards, or if you’re a qualified nominator, the Leo Literary Awards.

On Deep Sky Anchor:

On Daily Science Fiction:

On various zines around the internet:

Available for purchase, all money goes to support the SPLC:

As a special bonus, we have a coupon for free e-books of Otters In Space 3: Octopus Ascending, which is also eligible for awards!  Just use the code YP35J on Smashwords.  We also highly recommend each of the stories in ROAR Volume 8, and the anthology itself is eligible for the Ursa Majors in the Other Literary Work category.

The Ursa Major Awards are open for nominations through February 15th, and anyone can nominate.  It only takes a minute, and every nomination counts!