Monthly Archives: October 2026

One Month to Go. Plus, Titles!

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At the end of the month, I am to hand over a first draft of “The Rabbit Trap”, volume one of “The Rabbit Saga” to Akosua Brown of What’s Your Story Author Services, my editor. She is going to give it a manuscript review in early November. Time to write! Designing the animation of the book trailers can wait until then.

However…

I have figured out the names of all three volumes, and of the series!

Meet… The Rabbit Saga. It is the story of intelligent rabbits and the humans they meet… in many different ways.

Volume One: The Rabbit Trap.

This volume covers Red being rescued by the rabbits’ agents, his learning about the rabbits, and his taking up residence in their hidden city. In this volume, Red meets Darlene, and they start a family while living in the city. But Darlene and then Red start noticing that things aren’t quite right. They escape, but then Red goes back in to start a revolt and maybe free some of the other captive humans he found there. Will he succeed?

This is actually the second volume written. It incorporates events and writing going back to 1999! Akosua suggested a major rearrangement, and now it is Volume One.

We are tentatively planning an on-sale date of mid-March 2027.

Volume Two: The Rabbit Hole.

This volume follows the life of Peter, Red and Darlene’s son. He is born in the rabbit city, and in childhood adopts many of the rabbits’ mannerisms, as much as a human can. But then he and his family escape the rabbit city, and he must adapt to life among ‘feral’ humans in Kingston, Ontario. It doesn’t go well. Peter is never accepted by the other students at school, and home life is full of tension.

Red goes back to rescue humans trapped in the rabbit city, putting Darlene and Peter under even more stress. After violence at school, Red flees Kingston, going back to the rabbits, the only place he ever felt accepted. The rabbits grudgingly take him in, pretending that he is welcome while they figure out a use for him. Which could be as simple as their next meal. Will he survive?

This was the first volume written. It started as the short story The Rabbit Hole, published in the compilation “Nineteen Tales of COVID-19” (Kipekee Press; 2021), but it rapidly grew. The events in the short story are now just a minor episode in Peter’s life. Or so everyone thinks…

We are tentatively planning an on-sale date of mid-October 2027.

Volume Three: Dawn, Born of Monsters

Peter survives his life with the rabbits, after being betrayed and left for dead. After hospitalization, he takes up life as a hermit in the woods near Bancroft, Ontario. And for the first time in his life, he is living in his own world, not looking to others for approval. He heals.

And then the rabbits contact him. Their city is in ruins, their people are refugees, and revolution may be brewing. Can Peter help?

This volume is still in planning. It will take place mostly in the future, ending up in 2095, possibly when the ruins of the rabbit city are being declared a World Heritage Site. Edit 2026-10-07: I’m extending the title a little, after a huge think about the book during work today. The other titles may change. More to come.

We are tentatively planning an on-sale date of mid-March 2028.

A solarpunk event in Toronto?!!! Edit: I’m going!

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Today one of the members of my book club told me about an upcoming solarpunk event in Toronto!

It is the “We Create Our Futures 2026” event, taking place at the Centre for Social Innovation at 192 Spadina Ave (north of Queen), Friday to Sunday, 16-18 October. From the site:

What if the future isn’t something we wait for, but something we create together?
​We Create Our Futures is a 3-day festival of Climate, Culture & Arts, taking over the Centre for Social Innovation in downtown Toronto, October 16–18.
​For three days, we’re bringing together artists, activists, neighbours, makers, thinkers, dreamers and doers to explore what a more beautiful, regenerative and connected future could actually feel like.
​Expect art and music, food and fashion, engaging conversations, hands-on making, climate solutions, community wisdom, dancing, learning, repairing, imagining — and lots of unexpected encounters along the way.

https://luma.com/ycs3id1w

Edit: I’m going!

Vacation has been approved. Accommodation booked. Event ticket purchased. Train tickets bought. Yay!

This is important because it’s a direct call-back to the old dreams I had, the dreams of high-school me before the Oligarchs’ Counterrevolution changed the world.

High-school me. Age 15 or so, in grade eleven, just as I was discovering this stuff.

In 1978 or so, high-school me found an excerpt from the book YV88 in the magazine CoEvolution Quarterly in the high-school library. It broke my mind open. I had to find the source. And this was the source:

Yes, I managed to get a copy again.

I was thrilled by the vision of an electric solar-powered future built on a human scale.

At the end of high school, I had a choice to make. What to do next? I’d been drawing and writing for some time; Mom wanted me to go to art school. However, I could not even imagine how I would make a living with art. It required social fluency that was far beyond my limited autistic skills.

So in part to pursue these solar dreams, I chose architecture school. And it was a disaster. By this time, it was 1981 and the Seventies dreams were fading; the architecture school was more into post-modern political symbolism. I flamed out from architecture and switched to electronics. This gave me a job. But the old dreams never went away.

I tried animation school and wrote a story with a Gaian solar background. But I talked myself out of continuing in animation (not my most optimal decision) and went back to work. I got involved with actual passive-solar houses for a while. Eventually I ended up in technical writing and started drawing, writing, and publishing books.

And I started to encounter the term ‘solarpunk’ more and more often. I started to find artwork. I started to follow specific artists and styles and groups.

With the help of my book club and editor, a short story I’d written is now turning into a novel. And I’m realizing it’s going to end in a world influenced by solarpunk…