Category Archives: Books

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 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!

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.

I will be presenting at JAMBARK 2025!

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JAMBARK 2025 is an online summit of writers presenting topics to help writers. It is organized by the fine folks at What’s Your Story Author Services.

We will be presenting about things like worldbuilding, how to write a book if you have no time to write a book, social media for authors, and much much more!

My topic is: “Turning Personal Experiences into Fiction”. I’ll be presenting on Sunday the 26th of January 2025.

Our participants:

“The Ornament” sees the light of day…

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A couple of years ago, I drew a short story called “The Ornament”, to be included in a wintry holiday compilation. That compilation did not appear then, but it has just been published now!

The compilation is called “Snowflakes, Secrets, and Other Winter Reflections”.

It is available now from Kipekee Press as an ebook. Print books coming soon.

But that’s not all! There’s an advent calendar: https://hi.switchy.io/WinterTales2024

…and a contest!
https://kingsumo.com/g/1ggoez1/winter-tale-advent-calendar-and-book-launch

A Need for Giveaways

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So there I was. I had just wandered into a convenience store while wearing my new shirt that I had made with the logo of The Rabbit Trap. The cashier was asking me about it, what did it mean, and I was describing the book. He asked, did I have any info on it that he could give out, and I had to admit I did not yet. Creating something to give away was literally the next major thing I was doing.

To that end, I have now created and ordered bookmarks for The Rabbit Trap. Hopefully they will be here this week.