Category Archives: Writing

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.

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

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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:

Screenshot
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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.

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.

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:

Another writing challenge!

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So now the Write Now Club is starting another challenge! This time, it’s Sixty Thousand Words* in Sixty Days!

But I put an asterisk beside the word “word”… because it’s not just words this time. There are many tasks involved in creating a book beyond just putting words down. What about doing research? Marketing? Illustration? One of our members is an incredibly-talented cartoonist. His stuff just doesn’t have many words. Should he be penalized even though he is doing as much work?

So another member came up with a list of tasks and word equivalents. You can get points for how much time you spend on a task, instead of for how many words you create during that time. Of course, if you’re mostly creating words, that is fine too.

This is great, because I’m doing a lot of illustration and drawing research in support of my story. It helps me figure things out.

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