Definitely! Remember the DreamWorks Animation movie, “Rise of the Guardians”? The Easter Bunny was only one of several mythical characters with semi-divine powers, along with Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Jack Frost, the Sandman - not anthropomorphic, unfortunately. What about the Illumination movie “Hop”? Or the WB cartoon “Easter Yeggs”? Well, I guess they don’t all show the Easter Bunny having divine powers. But I don’t want any lone furry characters in a world of humans. What other characters would you team the Easter Bunny with? Nanabozo? The rabbit in the Oriental Zodiac? Anyhow, sure, I’ll consider a story with the Easter Bunny.
The Fortean Times Message Board has a section called “It Happened to Me!” where people can write about the weird events that (they claim) they’ve experienced. You want supernatural rabbits/hares? Check out “Rabbit Monster”:
There are even a few Easter Bunny sightings!
There is also the Japanese “rabbit in the Moon”, and the rabbit trickster in African folklore that led to Joel Chandler Harris’ Br’er Rabbit tales. All of these can be considered by anyone writing a story about a rabbit god. Maybe all of these are different aspects of the Easter Rabbit – or I should say, maybe the Easter Rabbit is only one aspect of a rabbit god. The Easter Rabbit is popularly supposed to be working in his workshop all year to prepare the eggs and candy for Easter (see the movie “Hop”), but who really knows? Maybe, for story purposes, anyhow, he’s the same rabbit god or demi-god who also appears as a trickster spirit in Africa and North America, in the Chinese Zodiac, in the Moon for the Japanese – maybe he was the inspiration for the play “Harvey”, with the invisible six-foot rabbit. He’s got all year besides Easter to get around in. Be imaginative!
my idea was that he’s not the same god throughout history but that each generation one rabbit is chosen among the celestial burrow to be the easter bunny
but then i later realized that may not work for this anthology (though that doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea of course!)
That’s definitely a cool idea, whether it works for the anthology or not. 
Does the protagonist have to be a furry god or can the story have mortal furry characters in a plot that involves furry gods?
I expect that many stories will involve mortal furry characters interacting with furry gods. I have asked that stories not be about a lone furry god amidst lots of humans, which should direct authors to consider such scenarios as lots of furry gods (conflict in a furry god pantheon?), or one furry god amidst mortal furry characters.
Thank you for the clarification. I need to get to work on this!
The cartoon album “Yakari and Nanabozho” (a translation of a 1978 French bande dessinée, published in English in 2013) depicts Nanabozho as a giant rabbit. But according to Wikipedia, Nanabozho is the Ojibwe trickster god/spirit who is primarily a human young man, but “changing to various animal forms to various human forms (adult to child) and to various mythical animals such as the Great Porcupine, or Big Skunk,” but most often as a giant rabbit. Is anyone considering a furry god who can change into different animals, only one of which is a human?
You better watch out for Aniw’ye, the Great Skunk, and his nuclear fragrance! He’ll blow you away:
“He turned around. He bent forward and raised his tail. He sprayed on the hut, and it blew to pieces and the old woman disappeared. She – pssaaattt! Gone!”
– “The Giant Skunk and His Offspring,” told by
Frances Tshasha-Giberson, collected in Howard Norman’s Northern Tales (1998).
Have any details on how to submit been finalised?
Just write a story and send it to me at fredpatten@earthlink.net. I’ll either reject it immediately (suggesting how to revise it to make it acceptable, if possible), or accept it as a finalist. When the May 1st deadline arrives, I’ll compare the finalists with the word limits of the anthology. If there are more stories than will fit into the book – there aren’t yet – I’ll reread all the stories, select the best that will fit into the book, and return the rest with thanks and a wish of good luck in selling them elsewhere.
Unless FurPlanet decides to make “Gods With Fur” a series, in which case I’ll ask the authors if I can keep the rejected finalists for consideration for #2, which will presumably be at least a year in the future.
Sounds good - exactly the information I was looking for! All noted, thank you! ^^
Out of curiosity - how come it isn’t advertised with Furplanet, or am I being a little bit daft and missing it?
FuzzWolf of FurPlanet is probably reading this. He can answer you if he wants to about why FurPlanet isn’t trying more to encourage submittals to “Gods With Fur”.
Today’s featured article on Wikipedia is on the Nuckelavee, a “horselike demon from Orcadian mythology”. Is there anything here for a story?
You’ve never asked me to add info about your anthologies to the site before. You mostly deal with Teiran, but I figured you were keeping a tighter control over who you sourced for submissions, such as here on this forum.
If you have a question like this in the future, ask it via email rather than making a passive-aggressive public post about it.
I’d recommend editing your initial post and adding this email there.
Taken care of.
Don’t worry, it doesn’t come off passive aggressive, just looked like information was being passed on.
Just wondering - how come it isn’t up on FurPlanet as an open call? Is it restricted or just being kept quieter for the time being, at least for the initial anthology? Just curious as I saw this a while ago and it seemed like it was a “maybe it will be done maybe it won’t be done” anthology, as it was only on a forum. I was honestly holding off on working on a submission until it was confirmed, just to show another perspective.
Thanks!
I don’t know what all this is about. I’m accepting submissions for “Gods With Fur” until May 1st. My e-mail, fredpatten@earthlink.net, is posted. Anyone can send a story there, or send me a private query if they don’t want to post it here. If FuzzWolf, being the publisher, wants to post anything here about the anthology and what FurPlanet wants, he can. I’ve gotten several good stories already, and I expect to get more now that the deadline is only a little over a month away. It’s an open call as far as I’m concerned; I’ve announced it here and on Flayrah, and I’ve sent several private invitations to submit, to authors whom I don’t really expect to write anything new for me because they’ve all complained on their blogs about how busy they already are.
As far as I’m concerned, “Gods With Fur” is definite unless it doesn’t get enough submissions to fill a book. It’s about halfway there now, and as I say, I expect the submissions to come in faster now. I’ve gotten stories about major furry gods; about minor gods like Coyote that are fine stories, and I won’t worry about whether they’re really gods or only demigods; about the fictional gods of the author’s already-established furry series; and about the gods of brand-new worlds created just for this story. Maybe if they’re popular enough, they’ll lead to their authors’ going on to write sequels. If “Gods With Fur” gets too many stories for one anthology, I don’t know yet whether FurPlanet wants to publish a “Gods With Fur 2” next year. Right now, I don’t want to discourage anyone from submitting because they’re worried about maybe the book being restricted, or maybe there are too many stories already about Egyptian or Norse or Chinese gods, or maybe the mythological character isn’t really a god. Hey, if you’ve got a good story about a Celtic phouka or a Japanese kami or nine-tailed kitsune, or Egyptian mythology’s Ammit/Ammut who’s only a demon rather than a god/goddess (Ma’at’s pet demon with the head of a crocodile, the shoulders of a lioness or leopardess, and the hindquarters of a hippopotamus), send it in! I just yesterday sent a weblink to a Wikipedia article about a Nuckelavee horse-demon from Orcadian mythology, in case that inspires a story-idea to anyone. Send those stories in!