Joe Ekaitis

Joe Ekaitis (born 1955 in Pennsylvania, U.S.A.) is an furry artist and author who lives in Southern California, U.S.A.

Joe has been entertaining others from an early age. He entertained college students as the on-air persona "Jojo Scappezzi" on radio station KVCR-FM in San Bernardino, California.

Later, Joe created a raccoon costume with the hope of selling a character named Roary Raccoon to Knott's Berry Farm, as a tie-in with their Roaring Twenties-themed area. As they were not interested, Roary became Rudi Racoon (with only one "C") and appeared on Chuck Barris' The Gong Show. Joe sang "Goodbye My Lady Love", scored 21 points, and earned about $900 in royalties and residuals.

As of 2010, he is the lead male soloist for the St. Mary's Catholic Church choir in Fontana, California.

Publications
Joe's published stories include:
 * Collinsfort Village (published February 15, 2006). This book involves a number of characters who lives in and around Collinsfort Village. Human Dennis Pearson grows up reading the stories of popular author Karolyne von Frankenburgh, whom no-one has ever seen. Finding a tantalysing clue about her identity (a portion of a letter from her publisher), Dennis enlists his two closest friends (Bear, a Suburban-driving grizzly bear who works for the local cable company, and Griff, a twenty-foot dragon-slaying griffin who reads stories to children at the local library) to investigate the mystery.


 * Revenge of the Gingerbread Man! (May 3, 2010, as a Kindle edition). This is the story of a monster-sized Gingerbread Man. Although bearing some simliarities to a subplot of the movie Shrek 2 (2004), Revenge was actually written a few years prior to that.


 * Gulliver Mouse (May 25, 2010, as a Kindle edition). Based on Jonathon Swift's Gulliver's Travels, this is the story of a mouse (Adrian Gulliver Mouse), who is shipwrecked and washed ashore on an island populated with tiny animals.

Other works
Joe was the creator of T.H.E. Fox, a furry comic strip which ran from 1986 to 1998, and was the first known online comic. He also contributed to the conbooks of Confurence 9, Anthrocon 2000, and Anthrocon 2002.