I was in New Orleans this weekend and of course my imagination was lit on fire by all that surrounded me. The visuals, the smells, the sounds, the food… I was on a creative high the entire time.  One night, perusing the French Quarter, we happened upon this little art gallery and this picture caught my attention.

One look and YES, I had to have it.

My friend gave me a questioning, but supportive, look and asked “Are you going to get that?” in “that” tone. You know the tone when someone is trying to talk you out of something you may regret.  Like, “Are you sure jumping off that bridge is the right thing to do right now?” or “So… you wearing that?”  🙂

My answer was a resounding yes and I happily took, what I now call my “Bad Trip Rabbit”, out the door with me.

I connected with this pic for a couple of reasons, one I will NEVER own up to because it’s too embarrassing.  (And no, I will not tell you what it is no matter how many times you ask me.)

As a writer, I often find myself going down rabbit holes.  Occasionally it’s a good trip, and I come back no worse for the wear. These are the days when I actually find when I’m looking for on internet within 5 minutes or so without getting sucked into the net void, or  I’m able to perfectly channel my mood and  finish up that scene I’ve been grueling through, or I manage to magically pull together some random plot points with a genius that even astounds me.  Like I said, this happens only occasionally…. 😉

But most times, I take those bad trips down the rabbit hole.  Writers know the ones I’m talking about.   Like while researching, I come across one carrot and leads to another carrot, that leads to yet another carrot. And by the time I’m done (an hour or so later), I have no clue how I ended up where I ended up or what my initial reason for even starting the search was. Like that time I specifically went in search of the properties of amber and ended up on Jean Claude Van Damme’s Wikipedia page. Really, who does that?  And to be honest, Jean Claude’s page was probably the tamest end of one of my research trips.  I’ve seen stuff that simply cannot be unseen… (And no, please don’t ask.)

Or  I go down the rabbit hole and come back with dark information I was not expecting for a story or character I’m working on. This is when I find out someone doesn’t make it after all or some sort of bad fate befalls a character that has already had so much bad happen in their fictional lives. OR–my personal fav– when I find out the story I’ve invested about 50,000+  words into is now a pile of junk as something has changed and the plot, theme, or characters, as they currently stand, no longer work.  I just LOVE IT when that happens…. ~sarcasm~

So that’s why when I saw this rabbit, who’s obviously had a bad trip down the rabbit hole this time around and came back much worse for the wear– I mean come on, the dude is now a vamp bunny; that screams of a bad trip– I had to have him.  I can sooo  identify with my new little bunny dude on those days.