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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It came!

It came! Nineteen Tales of COVID-19, the compilation I submitted a story to! ? (I changed the pictures when I realized how many crumbs were on the kitchen table… now it’s in front of my computer.)

The compilation was organized by the awesome Jackie Brown of Jackie Brown Books. The writers all have some connection to Durham Region (for example, I grew up in Whitby).

Yes, I also designed the cover and laid the interior out.

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