–The story picks up right where the first novel leaves off. Because of this, Lee is in drag for the entire first chapter (Gold did say in our interview that OOP2 would have more crossdressing than before).

–Gold barely makes it five sentences into his new novel before insulting reporters. Seems the Forrester universe has dumbass journalists, but thankfully none of them are weasels.

–One of them is a fox though. New character Hal Kinnel, a fox reporter who might be helpful to the cause, gets introduced in chapter one. Lee has a chat with him while in drag, because foxes love to overstep boundaries and deceive journalists.

–The characters eat Sonoran food, which is really good if you haven’t tried it.

–There is a Harry Potter reference.

–There are boners.

Excited yet? We’ll give you more info on the studly tiger and feminine musk wearing fox as we get it.

During Further Confusion 2010, Blotch held a panel showing off concept art and pages from his upcoming graphic novel. He explained more about the story and characters, and answered questions, the first of which being, “How graphic is it?” (Nice, furries).

Let’s just say, don’t be expecting Dog Days of Summer. According to Blotch, Nordguard is not sexually explicit, and is a deeper story with more serious characters. Across Thin Ice follows a sled team of rescue dogs at the turn of the century in northeast Canada. According to him, graphic novel was influenced by European comics, but is more of an action adventure story than a historical drama.

Blotch said that the story is largely centered around survival, with the team struggling to get back to civilization. Much of the novel follows the teams journey through the ice and snow, where “every sanctuary is a colder, more miserable hell.” The body count for the book will be high, and many of the main character won’t be around for book two (keep that in mind, everyone who bawled during Eight Below). Plus is makes all that concept art of bright eyed youthful dogs in their underwear that much eviler.

We learned more about the ideas in the graphic novel, like the specieism, and the dichotomy between the civilized southern region, and the rugged north. There’s also the concept of how civilized animals eat meat (any hard vore fans out there?), and there are more dangers out there than just Mother Nature. There may be a villainous tiger, and there’s definitely something about diamond mines.

The project is a much larger endeavor than Blotch’s previous graphic novel, but he’s confident he’ll be able to finish.

“Dog Days was the test comic to see if I could do this, Blotch said. “I whipped out a page a day on that. This one takes three or four days a page.”

There’s an obvious Jack London influence on the book, which Blotch admits. Unlike London, though, Nordguard’s author has actually been to the north, even going so far as to get strapped to a dog sled and pull it around snowy Minnesota. That’s dedication to the art, folks.

And really the dedication to the project is coming through a lot. The sheer amount of concept art, clay models, environment pieces, and historical research has created a really interesting world, and I’m looking forward to what Blotch does with it.

If you haven’t already, head over theNordguard website. A lot of the artwork shown at the panel is available for viewing there, along with character bios. Across Thin Ice is tentatively scheduled for a summer release, possibly at Anthrocon or Comic-Con International. Make sure to pick it up!

Frane, aka Rikoshi in the fandom, will debut his new novel The Seventh Chakra, a psychological spy thriller set in a not-too-distant-futuresque alternate world (the same world used as the setting for his previous novel, Thousand Leaves).

Chakra follows Arkady Ryswife, who fans may remember from Thousand Leaves and his team of secret agents who work for a group called the Iolite League, a religious and philosophical organization that’s dedicated to foster a sense of world peace based on smoothing out relationships between people of different species. Kind of like a big furry United Colors of Benetton ad.

“Arkady and his team, however, work sort of ‘behind the scenes,’” Frane explained. “Specifically, they’re tasked with tracking down and recovering relics and artifacts from the world’s past, from a time back before ‘world history’ as civilization knows it covers.”

While technically a prequel, the events in Chakra don’t lead directly into Thousand Leaves so readers can start with the new book. Though you should really go read Thousand Leaves anyway because it’s pretty badass.

Gold’s upcoming book, Shadow of the Father is the third novel set in the world of Argaea, a furry medieval universe. The story follows Yilon, second son of Volle, who moves to a remote mountain province to assume lordship. There he has to deal with the political trials of being a lord, as well as having a mouse for a boyfriend in an area where rodents are the underclass (as well they should be!).

And while Shadow is still considered an adult romance novel, don’t expect the same level of sexual mischief and mayhem that made Volle a book that was nearly impossible to read in public without getting arrested.

“Shadow of the Father probably has the least sex of any book I’ve written so far,” Gold said. “When I was writing Volle I was most interested in the story. But I thought, ‘Alright, I need to put sex in to the beginning so people don’t get bored.’ That was my first novel, there was a lot of experimenting with what’s the right level. And I had people come back and tell me there’s too much sex in it.”

But don’t get discouraged that there won’t be any steamy scene, because there definitely will be. But Gold said it works in the story.

“I always try and make the sex relevant to the plot and reveal something about the character.”

And as for Chakra, Frane classifies it as a mature book, but not an adults only book. And definitely not an erotic book.

“If there’s anything even remotely sexy about it, write to me a let me know what it was.”

There’s a secret agent ferret and a buff wolf in the book. Sounds hot already.

Both The Seventh Chakra and Shadows of the Father will be available at the Sofawolf Press booth during Further Confusion, January 21-25 at the San Jose Fairmont Hotel, and shortly afterwards on Sofawolf’s website.