"Say, I could write a story..."

Be careful what you suppose, because it can sometimes take on a life of its own. Such is the case with the furry space opera, Blue Horizon.

Blue Horizon is the story of an interstellar freighter with an anthropomorphic crew, and while life on a cargo carrier is generally supposed to be quiet, it isn't always so for this particular vessel and its crew.

It started off simply enough. Steve and I had been instrumental in helping Mark Barnard produce the first two issues of Midnight Sonata, but due to Mark's increased workload in the Comic Industry, the publication was discontinued to allow him time to work on his more important projects. As Midnight Sonata had been my first foray into Furry Fandom, I sorely missed the opportunity to write anthropomorphic stories. In 1996, Eileen and I decided to start working on our own stories and cast of characters, just for the fun of it. She began sketching drawings of the characters we created and I started off with the first story, "Drug Running". We had no intention of making the project into a publication -- it was meant merely for our own enjoyment. We often discussed our tales and the characters over dinner or while out driving around, and before we knew it, the crew of the Blue Horizon freighter began to come to life on their own.

Then in mid-1998 we pitched some of the stories to longtime friend Steve Carter and he was immediately taken with the ideas and characters we had been using. His involvement took off like a shot and he even took the liberty of writing "Vexed of Kin" (originally entitled "Relativity"), allowing the two of us to take a break from the creative process and allow our first real "fan" to step in and show his appreciation. Steve and I had worked together before and it felt natural to show him what we had done thus far. Steve's interaction with the characters quickly and almost by default elevated him to full partner in our venture; in fact it was sometimes exciting just to see where he would take the cast.

In late 1998, after much insistence from both Eileen and Steve, I put together a Blue Horizon website on Geocities, a free Internet community. I was hesitant and actually resistant to going public with our project, having had prior experience running an ElfQuest fandom chapter (called a holt) for six years, but I agreed to give it a try.

In November 1999, the site was moved to Blasingame.net after Yahoo and Geocities merged and things like advertising banners became annoyances, but it wasn't advertised to furry fandom in general until January of the following year. Tigress.com and FurNation.com allowed us to set up a "doorway" on each of their servers to allow folks to find us when they might not be able to otherwise, and then in 2001, everything was transferred to a new domain that I set up specifically for our online projects, FurStuff.com. However, I later realized that not all of my projects are "furry" related, so I adopted a new domain, Dennier.Com, which is broader in its content. (Note: the FurStuff.Com domain name is no longer owned by me, and the material found on that site is definitely not mine.)

Over all this time, we maintained a regular readership that kept expanding by leaps and bounds, and the nice comments we'd gotten in email and on our message board helped to encourage us to continue at times when things got slow. As of this writing, we have over forty 'episodes' online that have been divided up into several 'seasons', with a section called 'Other Horizons' for stories written by the friends and fans of Blue Horizon. As of early 2008, a new multi-chapter storyline called 'Twelve Sixty-One' began production and should be ready for reading later in the year.

For those who have joined our adventures for the first time, we welcome you aboard our ship, the SS Blue Horizon.