Steven F. Scharff
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Steven F. Scharff, a self-admitted "greymuzzle" (born in 1962), is a fandom writer and artist whose work has appeared in several self-published "mini-comix" in the 1980s, including Lab Rat Funnies, Everything You've Always Wanted to Know About Funny Animals But Didn't Know Why To Ask (which was a satire of the concept of anthropomorphics), and Dream Sequence, which he is expanding into a novel-in-progress entitled Packlands (originally entitled Scrolls), and is being published in installments in the Rowrbrazzle APA.
Packlands has gone through a number of false starts and re-writes, and he experienced a severe writer's block after Michael-Scot McMurry, who was to have illustrated the finished work, died of stomach cancer in 2001.
In the past, Steven contributed to other comics projects, mostly small press projects by other artists, but did write and draw a two-page strip in Jane J. Oliver's underground comix work Tales of Jerry #3. He was a staff writer for the marginalist newsletter Inside Joke, which he credits with learning how to write for an audience.
He has had a long standing interest in anthropomorphics, and became seriously involved in furry fandom after fellow self-publishing artist Timothy Fay wrote to him about the Rowrbrazzle APA. He sent then Official Editor Marc Schirmeister samples of his work for consideration, including a political strip entitled The Rats Retire, which he printed and posted on the walls of Manhattan in 1980 as a public art project. Schirmester published the wall poster strips in the second issue of Rowrbrazzle. Scharff jokes about this making him "Rowrbrazzle's only draftee".
Presently, he maintains The Microfreedom Index, an on-line resource devoted to various new country projects, independence/seditionist movements, model countries, unrecognized nations, disputed territories, governments in-exile, diplomatically recognized small nations and sovereign territories around the world. He also maintains a quasi-political blog entitled D-BUNK-R, devoted to exposing and disproving conspiracy theories.
While he does not participate in any on-line MUDs and rarely joins in on-line chatrooms, he has extensively written film reviews on the Internet Movie Database under the name "Baroque". He has also been active on-line as part of the "Peak Oil" movement and often refers to himself as a "peaknik".
He currently resides outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. His avatar is a bighorn sheep (the state animal of Nevada), although he is known to use a fursona in printed work in the form of a "lounge lizard" dragon named "Oratorio".