Yes, I went there.
A horny harem series about bunny girls called Down the Rabbit Hole.
To be honest, I’m shocked someone else hasn’t done it first. Need To Breed was the original title, but I was talked out of that.
So, what actually is this thing that I’m talking about?
Back in the summer of 2023, Amazon made an abrupt decision that sent a lot of us authors into a state of panic for about two solid months. They then abruptly basically reversed the decision, and acted like it had never happened. Well, the thing is, a lot of panic decisions were made on my behalf. It led to a couple of things, like Beneath the Ashes and Goblin Girls Do It Better.
A couple of other potential projects were considered and ultimately rejected. At one point I decided I was going to do a more heavily erotic series that also featured a few tropes I normally don’t go for. Like bunny girls and isekai. I whipped up an idea and got to writing, but ultimately abandoned it when it became obvious it wasn’t going to work for what I was hoping. I almost deleted it completely, but figured I could do something with the stuff I’d written so far.
Well, that idea stayed with me and I found myself oddly yearning to return to and expand on it over the next year and a half. Finally, a solution presented itself.
It’s no secret that I am struggling more just recently with my mental health. This makes writing very hard. That, combined with the fact that I find myself wanting to take more time to write my novels, means I had to go looking for a solution of some kind. I considered a few different options, but ultimately I went in for the old tried and true solution of “I will write a series of serialized novellas!”. Even though every single time I try this, I ultimately come to the conclusion that it was a mistake and I should never do it again.
Why I think this is going to be different is because of my goal. It’s become obvious to me that the algorithm needs to be fed like a fire. I can’t keep throwing an entire log on every month. I don’t have a novel a month in me anymore, I think. It’s less that I don’t want to do it, and believe me, I don’t want to, but more because I can’t. I’m suffering as a consequence of trying, which means the work is suffering, which means the readers are suffering. It’s lose-lose all around.
This is the solution I have settled on. I will be releasing a new episode in this series at the beginning of each month. Each one will be around 25,000 words, while the first episode will be around 30,000. Every four episodes, I will bind them together with some bonus content and release them basically as typical novels. The episodes will have simpler cover art, and the full releases will have proper cover art. Also, I dialed back the eroticism, given that’s not really the goal of this particular project anymore. Fear not, though, if you’re looking for horny bunny girls desperate to be bred, it will have that.
Now, as for what this is actually about.
Down the Rabbit Hole focuses on Hunter, a grizzled veteran with memory troubles. He has just awoken in a mysterious world that is shockingly similar to his own, only this one is even more consumed by war and catastrophe than the world he left behind. And all the people have horns or tails or animal ears. Discovered by four bunny girls on the run as their civilization is consumed by war and societal collapse, he assumes the role of their protector. And breeder. (To be clear, the people of this world are basically the thing I’ve complained about a lot: human but with bunny ears or cat tails or wings.)
It’s going to be more along the lines of what people look for in haremlit, I think.
I’m intending to put the first episode up for pre-order on either the 23rd or 26th, not sure yet. Probably the 23rd, because the 26th is when I’m going to launch my huge end-of-the-year sale. Before that, however, I’ll be throwing this up on Patreon as early access.
I hope you all enjoy this! I’m also hoping this will help give me some more breathing room.
Below is the first chapter for free. And here is a link to the collection on Patreon where it will be uploaded in its entirety before getting taken down for the pre-order.
Awareness came to him gradually.
It filled his mind and senses the way the sun fills the sky as it rises.
The things that came to him seemed somehow disconnected, dislocated from each other, each an experience of only one sense.
Beneath him, he felt something wet and cold.
This passed out of his awareness and he might have slipped back into unconsciousness for a few seconds or a few hours.
Consciousness then brought another thing to him: distant but powerful sounds. Repetitive. They evoked a deep and immediate sense of fear and swift reaction, but he was in no condition to indulge either.
Next came smell: grass, rain, something much stronger. Something burning.
Every time he surfaced from the dark depths of his mind, he felt worse. Pain infected him, drilled into every instant with increasing effectiveness.
At last, he opened his eyes.
Stars and a dark sky above. The moon.
He paused, blinked.
Two moons.
Then, from somewhere nearby, a voice, speaking. A question? The words were meaningless to him. Coherency was coming, but it was still a long way off.
Footsteps, drawing closer.
The voice again, a question again, he was sure this time, and sharper, but still meaningless.
Had something happened to him?
And then a face appeared in his field of vision. A visage of raw, savage beauty. A woman, red hair pulled into a ponytail that slipped over one shoulder as she leaned cautiously towards him. Blood on a tanned face that she absently wiped at with the back of a gloved hand. The eyes she studied him with were some of the bluest and most beautiful he’d ever seen.
And…
Rabbit ears?
He tried to speak but all that did was cause her to jerk back.
And then the darkness swam over him once again.
…
When he came awake again, it was with the impression that a lot of time had passed.
He had a string of uncertain memories.
Being moved. Being spoken to. Distant explosions and gunfire cutting through the air. The redheaded woman with the bunny ears (surely he had hallucinated that) asking him more questions in a language he didn’t understand.
He remembered starlit darkness, and then more voices, being carried and dragged, steel corridors and dim lights.
And then…
He opened his eyes. Stared at a bland gray ceiling. Whatever was providing the light source flickered briefly and it was like driving nails into his eyes, his brain. Everything seemed to hurt, but his head ached like nothing else on him.
A door opened somewhere nearby and he winced at the clang it made. Footsteps again, getting closer, and then someone else was looking down at him.
This woman was very different from the first. Short, thin, her black hair chin-length. She had an air of professional detachment, and…
Bunny ears.
What? How? Why?
He felt a lot more conscious and aware now, but damn if those weren’t rabbit ears coming out of her head.
She asked him something and somehow, he thought he was in some way closer to grasping the meaning of the mysterious language.
When he didn’t respond, she raised one finger, which he followed with his eyes, and drew it to herself, to her chest. She wore a long-sleeved, button-down beige shirt, the pocket of which had several shiny instruments secured within.
“Chloe,” she said, tapping her chest. Then she reached out and tapped his chest gently and raised her eyebrows.
Oh. Name. She wanted his name.
He opened his mouth, and then hesitated when nothing immediately came. He closed his mouth and frowned. She seemed to take it for confusion, which it technically was, and tried again, repeating the gesture and the word.
Struggling through the pain and disorientation, he thought he had something. H something. H, h, h…
“Hunter,” he said at once. To emphasize this, slowly, his body protesting sharply with pain, he reached up and tapped his chest. “Hunter.” To show he got what she meant, he pointed to her and said, “Chloe.”
She smiled. She had a really pretty smile and it seemed to transform her whole face. She tried asking him another question, but it was still gibberish to him. Her ears twitched when he shook his head, then he winced and groaned, placing a hand against his head.
Hunter watched as the smile disappeared and the clinical detachment returned.
She turned away for a moment and when she came back, she held something in her hand, something he couldn’t quite make out. She said something that he thought was meant to be calming, then pressed it against his neck.
There was a sharp pain, followed almost immediately by a soft warmth that began expanding outwards, sinking tendrils of pleasure up into his aching head and down into pain-ravaged body, and then he was delivered smoothly back into sleep.
…
The next time Hunter opened his eyes, he heard arguing, two familiar voices.
He carefully raised his head, finding that it didn’t hurt nearly so much this time, (though the wobble of dizziness told him he was still on heavy painkillers), and saw two familiar figures. The redhead and the dark haired woman who had helped him.
The redhead was gesturing at him sharply, arguing about something, angry, but the woman (medic?) with dark hair was steadfastly standing her ground. The redhead snapped her gaze in his direction when he shifted a little more and began to walk towards him, but the medic put a hand on her chest, above some considerable breasts that were very clearly visible through the thin fabric of the tanktop she wore.
The redhead snapped something, and he caught the word “dangerous!”, and the medic responded, her tone flat but very authoritative.
Finally, the redhead snapped something else and marched out of the room.
The medic watched her go, then turned back towards him and walked over. She picked something up from a small table beside him, a tablet, and began typing on it, scrutinizing it closely.
She began speaking again, and he caught the words “Sorry” and “dangerous” and “tired”. Then she began a long litany of words that he slowly realized must be whatever she’d read from the tablet. His vitals? Had to be.
Even as he thought that, he heard “pulse”.
Finally, she stopped and set the tablet aside, then looked at him, like she was expecting something from him.
Hunter decided to try for something. “I’m thirsty,” he said.
Chloe, he abruptly remembered, frowned. He repeated himself, then, when that didn’t work, he made a motion of lifting a glass to his lips, then tapped his throat.
“Oh!” she said, looking at once both surprised and then a little guilty.
She walked across the small room they were in and as she presumably found him something to drink, he studied the space around him.
It was cramped. He was on a bed in one corner of it. He saw another bed, a little desk with a computer on it, a rolling metal table pushed up beside him, and the rest of the space was taken up by some counters and cabinets. From one of these she found a glass and filled it with water from a sink built into the counter.
At least, he hoped it was water. It looked like water.
She came back and offered him the glass. He sat up more, wincing, and accepted the glass, then smelled it cautiously, instincts warning him to be sure.
Chloe said something and in there was “safe”.
He took a drink. It was definitely water. He drank it all off and then passed her back the glass.
“Thank you,” he said, and she froze in the process of taking back the glass.
She asked him something that ended with “Thank you”. What the fuck was going on? Hunter thought he knew, or that he had the knowledge, somewhere in his skull, but he couldn’t be sure at the moment. He shrugged helplessly.
Chloe stared at him for a moment longer, then she turned away and moved to put the glass back. He found his eyes drawn down. She was wearing some tight blue shorts and she’d changed from the beige long-sleeve to a yellow short-sleeve button-down. Her tight ass was showcased pretty nicely in the shorts and…
She had a tail. A small, fluffy stub of a tail the same dark white, almost gray, as her ears, poking out between the top of the shorts and the bottom of the shirt.
When she turned back around, he realized that the top two buttons of her shirt were undone. Chloe seemed to notice him noticing that and looked down at herself, then slowly back up at him. Her cheeks flushed. A small, awkward smile came onto her face and she took a few steps closer to him, hesitated, then came to stand by his bedside again.
She reached up and gently fingered the shirt, pushing it open just a tiny bit. She asked him a question hesitantly, but all he got out of it was “see?”.
Hunter felt confused about a lot, a hell of a lot right now, but he wasn’t confused about that at least. He nodded and reached up. Chloe swallowed and watched with wide eyes as his hand came to her shirt. He began pulling it open slowly, half expecting her to stop him, but her body language was extremely inviting.
The shirt caught on the third button, still buttoned, and only a little bit of her chest had been revealed. He moved his hand down and fumbled with the button for a moment, his fingers clumsy, his head clouded.
There. He got it undone and her shirt opened more, revealing the gentle curve of a pair of small, firm breasts.
They were still at least half hidden. In that moment, it seemed like absolutely everything else could wait. Bunny ears and a bunny tail or not, this was still an extremely attractive woman who was coming onto him. Her eyes slid down lower and he hesitated, following her gaze, realizing he had an erection that was pressing up against the sheet over him.
Now it was her turn to reach out. She pulled the sheet back, pausing twice, like she expected him to stop her, but there was no way he was derailing whatever this was. As she flipped the sheet back, he realized that he was naked save for a pair of gray boxers, which his erection was straining against.
Chloe rested her hand slowly across it and she actually shuddered. Then she looked up at him, her hand still there, resting on his crotch, which was pulsing in time with his heart now as his desire began overwhelming everything else.
“All right?” she asked.
Head swimming with lust and painkillers, he nodded and smiled. She returned the smile and leaned forward a little. He reached down to try and get the fourth button undone…
And that was when the door opened and someone new stepped in.
“Chloe!” she snapped.
Chloe responded immediately, hastily flipping the sheet back into place and beginning to button herself up as she took a step back from him. Hunter felt a wave of frustration roll through him, but it was softened by the painkillers.
Damn but was he horny now!
The arrival of the new woman didn’t help, because she was also very attractive, though in a different way. She was a little taller and a little older than Chloe. Her pale blonde hair was pulled into a rough ponytail and her blue eyes held a lot of chill.
She, too, had the ears.
As Chloe finished buttoning herself back up, blushing worse than ever, the new woman studied him coldly from across the room. She had an air of authority that the others didn’t.
She asked him something. Waited. He shook his head.
She tried again. “What’s your name?”
“Hunter,” he replied.
She looked mildly surprised, then asked him something else. He shook his head. Her frown deepened and she looked at Chloe for a moment, asked a question. Chloe responded and he caught a little bit of it.
This was starting to get frustrating.
They spoke a bit more to each other, the new woman returning her gaze back to him. She seemed more curious now.
Behind her, the redhead appeared in the doorway. She crossed her arms and leaned against the door frame. She fixed him with an amused and intense stare that said ‘try something, please’. Hunter sighed and laid back down in the bed. The other woman, who seemed to be in charge of the group, appeared to be debating with Chloe.
Probably about what to do with him.
He felt questions crowding in. Where was he? What was the situation? Why was he having so much trouble remembering...everything?
Why did they have ears? And tails?
What the fuck was going on?
Whatever conversation they seemed to be having ended, and judging from their expressions, in some kind of stalemate.
Chloe walked back over to him, holding the same medical tool as before.
“Sleep,” she said, injecting him again and patting his chest.
The questions were going to have to wait a bit longer.
