Author Archives: Scott Dawson

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…

Well, I’m back. Also: Solarpunk! Ecotopia!

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This is a long page. Jump to…
the videos
the books

I handed off a rough draft of Volume One of my book at the writer’s retreat. Now I can think about other things and then get back to writing.

One thing I’ve been thinking about a lot is a hopeful vision of the future. We live in authoritarian times. But fighting against authoritarianism, though necessary, is not sufficient. We need to supersede it. We need to look beyond dystopia. We need a vision and a direction to go in.

And that’s where the vision of solarpunk comes in: people living in harmony with the world, but with all the things we have learned as well. An early effort towards this was “Evelyn’s Story“, an assignment I did in animation school.

It seems to me that the biggest difference between the solarpunk world and ours might be the solarpunk reduction in short-term thinking and profiteering. Wikipedia on solarpunk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solarpunk

Solarpunk artwork tends to be green and sunny. There are related artistic styles in cozy animation and certain outdoor sketching communities, which have also inspired me:

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A wonderful writer’s retreat!

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On the weekend, I went to a wonderful writer’s retreat, my first, where many members of the Write Now Club were, plus a few more writers! It was organized by the incomparable Akosua Brown, and was hosted at The Carriage Loft in Hamilton, Ontario.

The Carriage Loft is in an 1870s garage, basically, set up as an event space. It’s beautifully restored and comfortable, with the upstairs set up as a large open working space. 

The hosts provided amazing food and arranged comfortable sleeping quarters. We had discussions and presentations and lots of writing time.

And on the Saturday evening, we went to Supercrawl in Hamilton. I was expecting a couple of pubs and maybe a burger. But no! It was a huge exuberant crowded street festival, somewhere between the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair and the CNE Midway, arranged along James St. I saw a lot of literary and artistic booths.

It was a wonderful weekend. 

I had great food, met great people… and got the rough draft of Volume One of my book done!

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Stepping back to write

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For the next few months, I will be stepping back a little from social media to concentrate on writing. It’s time to finish my novel!

My editor (Akosua Brown) and I have come up with A Plan. I have been working on a three-book science fantasy series set here in Ontario, involving a family that grows up in authoritarianism, and then flees. (And then their son wants to go back?!!! Also includes a hidden city under Algonquin Park and lots of cute bunnies.)

This started as a short story, “The Rabbit Hole” (included in the recently published “Rabbit Trap Sampler”) and has grown into a three-volume epic.

Our plan for Volume 1:

* July 1–Sep 1: Create draft 1 (rough, for Scott only).

* Sep 1–Oct 15: Create Draft 2 (shareable version).

* Oct 15–Nov 15: Manuscript review.

* Nov 15–Dec 31: Final manuscript.

* Jan 2027: Design. This is when the cover will happen, plus things like trope cards.

* Feb 2027: Uploads.

* Target Launch: March 15, 2027.

Volumes 2 and 3 will follow at six-month intervals.

Story Outline of Volume 1:

* Red is rescued from an abusive home by apparent social workers. He recovers in a guest home. One of the workers introduces him to the intelligent speaking rabbits who actually run the place. He is invited to live in the rabbits’ home, a great underground city.

* Red meets Darlene there, and they form a family. They live in the rabbit city, enjoying a rich if regimented existence… but then they starts to notice things that seem a bit off: strange conversations overheard, odd video programs in the distance, things suddenly hidden by the rabbits as they approach.

* Then Red and Darlene discover the enslaved humans…

I’ve gone through my outline for Volume 1 and identified at least 18 writing segments in the story that I need to create or expand. This means that I need to do three segments per week to get the draft done by the first of September.

I’ll also be working on two limited-animation book trailers.

Let the writing begin!

After some time

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Yes, I’m back. Work on The Rabbit Trap continues, and things have been seriously rearranged (not to mention it’s now three volumes).

But! I have created a writing sampler to tide people over until I can get Volume One out there! Here are the front and back, and the unboxing of 25 rush-printed examples at my book club’s summer barbecue!

I am setting the paperback and ebook up on IngramSpark for wide distribution. It’s only been a week, and the ebook is already available through Amazon, Kobo, etc.

I am now trying my own direct book sales too, so the paperback is available through Booksby, and the ebook is available through Gumroad:
https://books.by/scott-robert-dawson-books
https://srdbooks.gumroad.com/l/the-rabbit-trap-sampler
THese links are now on my store too, https://shop.srdbooks.ca.

Adventures in Merchandising

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So, last Saturday, I may have …built an online store to sell shirts!

I found Printful, a print-on-demand merchandise maker: shirts, mugs, towels, all the things to put my artwork on! They print to order and ship to the customer… and they have a plant in the Toronto area!

Unlike book printer and distributor IngramSpark, they don’t distribute a catalogue to existing retailers. They need the artist to build an online store and connect it to them.

There was a long list of premade stores they could connect to: Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, Wix, BigCartel, Square, Ecwid, GumRoad… want a minute! Square? Oh yes!

I signed up for a free account at Printful, to see whether this would actually work. I enabled the online store in my existing Square account and connected it to Printful. In Printful, I selected a shirt, uploaded my artwork, and chose variants.

Printful pushed my chosen shirt to Square Online, and shirts appeared! I had to choose various options–I didn’t want my books to appear in the online store, for example, because they are distributed in a different way, and I only want to use the Square account to sell them in person with my little payment terminal. On the other hand, the shirts will be sold online on-demand only.

There are endless details. Getting the payment going from Square Online to Printful Customizing packing slips etc. Choosing shipping options. Providing a way for Printful to get paid. Uploading a logo to Printful to be used on their labels and packing slips. Likewise, uploading a logo to Square Online for the online store. It wasn’t quite the “easy setup” described in their comparative review of store systems, but it wasn’t bad.

So then I tried to order a shirt.

It let me choose a size and colour and presented a price with shipping cost. I paid. The money went into my Square Card account, from where Printful debited it.

I got an email thinking me for the order.

Meanwhile, in my internal control panel, I could see the order. As days passed, it went from “awaiting fulfillment” to “being fulfilled” (printed) to “shipped”! Outside, I got another email with shipping info.

Now I’m waiting for my shirt, to see what the quality is like. Printful has all sorts of options for shirts that I haven’t seen before, like custom logos inside the collar!

Hopefully I can get all the bugs out and get this working smoothly. If so, The Lonely Little Fridge shirts (and towels, mugs, stickers, etc) here I come!

Scene turns

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So I’ve gone over the outline for Volume One of The Rabbit Trap and explicitly called out scene turns for the major scenes, as suggested by (among others) Jennifer Ellis in her blog. This is something I’ve never tried before and it’s a little eye opening. There are vast stretches of time that may be just skipped over, and then there are sections thick with events. This is giving me an idea where I need to concentrate my next writing efforts. (That and finishing the outline for Volume 3… writing it backwards from a desired ending as suggested by Charlène A Bagcal in her Threads post.)

Crappy Drawing Tuesday!

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The first drawing is an attempt at working out how the fancy rabbit restaurant “Tastes of Human” might work. This is one of the few rabbit restaurants that has human servers. It’s a special treat for the rabbit rulers to see the subservience of humans.

I think I’m going to make another break with the canon of the old writing group and give the rabbits an upright bipedal gait, where they can carry things. It will make things so much easier. (This was handwaved past in the old group.)

The second drawing is a sketch of the moment where Darlene realizes the rabbits are Not Her Friends. She was rescued from a crappy life that included being leered as a waitress in a crappy donut shop, and now the rabbits want her to serve again?!!

A Tiny Computer!

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My friend gave me a Tiny Computer. Yes, that’s the whole computer in the first picture (it’s upside-down). It is running Ubuntu Studio, which includes audio, video, graphics, and publishing software. There is a very good chance this could replace my Adobe suite. I will have to experiment. The video is me scanning a drawing into The GIMP, a raster image editor.

The Tiny Computer!

And this post is being made from Linux! Getting images out of my Mac onto Linux required some setup… accessing my Dropbox account from both machines turned out to be easiest. (I kept wanting to cut and paste…)

This Linux distribution is Ubuntu Studio. It includes The Gimp (like Photoshop), Inkscape (like Illustrator), Blender (a 3-D animation app, like the control panel of a 747), Scribus (maybe like InDesign, but we’ll see), Calibre (for ebooks, but annoying because it wants to manage your files), and lots more. There are audio and video editing apps; I’ll have to see what corresponds to After Effects for editing limited animation. Alas, Scrivener is not available on Linux. If I can make and publish a book on this platform…

The trickiest part so far was configuring my scanner. The Epson scanner requires a driver, which Epson provides, but that driver requires further software. I had to go into the command line to install it (fortunately this is the kind of thing I used to do at my old job). And I had the help of my friend Mike, who is a born troubleshooter.