Diane Visits Algonquin Main

The Bunnies decide to let a few carefully-selected Humans visit their home.

This is a segment that may or may not make it into the final version of “The Rabbit Trap”. It’s really part of the backstory, explaining how the conditions arose that let Red and his family live in Algonquin Main.


It was happening! Diane was excited. Caramel had bounced up to her during the weekly closed-doors Rabbit Meeting and announced the news. She, Diane, had been selected to visit the rabbit city of Algonquin Main!

It wasn’t going to be a long visit. Caramel had said that the warrens were thinking of expanding their contacts with human society — carefully-selected parts of human society, anyway — and this visit was a trial run.

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Holidays. And Writing…

I’m working on some things for The Rabbit Trap suggested by Akosua. One of them is rewriting a tentative first scene to be from the viewpoint of character Darlene rather than character Red. This turns out to be surprisingly tricky, given that the main actions in the scene are performed by Red. This is something I have tried for the first time.

Another request is rewriting the story outline to follow the internal emotional events of my protagonist rather than the external events. Again: tricky, and new to me. But it makes sense given that everything my protagonist (or any other character) does has to make sense to them at the moment. It has to be the option that appears to move them toward what they want with the least effort. Appears to them, that is. To the rest of us, it could appear completely crazy.

So I will have to dive into the emotional arc behind my character…

In other news, Happy New Year! I made a commemorative drawing for the New Year with many of my characters!

A book trailer, shirts, and Fifty Thousand Words

I have been working on an animatic, a kind of limited animation, to make a book trailer to promote The Rabbit Trap. I hope to have it done in a few weeks.

To express my gratitude for the help I have gotten with it, I have ordered shirts! They will include the new logo I have developed for the story.

As far as the story itself is concerned, Akosua and the Write-Now Club are proposing another writing challenge: another Fifty Thousand Words in Fifty Days challenge! This will take us to the end of summer, conveniently when I had planned to have a first draft done. I’ve pulled out Scrivener and started organizing things already.

A segment from The Rabbit Trap!

Linda of Funny Face Fiction has featured a segment from The Rabbit Trap on her blog!

The story is about a family who escapes a totalitarian nightmare — and what happens when one of them wants to go back.

This segment provides a view of the Great Revolt, where enslaved humans desperately try to escape captivity. It is draft text that may or may not make it into the final book.

Funny Face Fiction is the publisher of Hollow Edge by Frankie Cameron.

When Can I Use Real Names and Products?

In the Devilbunnies universe, writers used the names of existing concepts, characters, products and companies. Some of them were associated with the Bunnies or their enemies:

For the Bunnies

For the Bunnies’ Opponents

  • Elmer Fudd (from Warner Brothers; lent his name to the anti-Bunny forces);
  • Moxie, Irn Bru, D&B (“uncute” drinks);
  • Vanilla extract (the Bunnies were actually supposed to be allergic or even burned by it);

In some cases the group authors took the name and ran with it.

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Locations for “The Rabbit Hole”

The original alt.devilbunnies story postings that provided the characters I reference in The Rabbit Hole mentioned Kingston, Ontario, Canada. When I was writing the story, I needed to firm up my knowledge of the locations. So here are some of the locations:

  • The motel where the Aduins live is based on a motel on Old Highway 2, west of downtown Kingston. 3100 Princess Street.
  • The house where Landon lives does not actually exist. Balaclava Street is real, but 5 Balaclava Street appears to be a driveway or an empty lot.
  • The intersection of Princess and Centennial, in all its shopping-plaza-lined glory.

Working on the door prize

The book launch party for Nineteen Tales will have door prizes, and as one prize, I’m doing a drawing of a scene from my story. I’m starting with experiments and reminding myself how I draw… important artistic note: the water colour goes on before the india ink…

The next day: test drawings for the door prize. ?

One drawing is watercolour and pencil only, the other has india ink added.

This is the same technique I’m going to use for my story Parts.

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