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📖  Coming Soon · Full of Quack · Book One
A Vibelandia Adventure

Dabbling Duck
and the
Shadowquack
Realm

A modern fable about focus in a world full of distractions.

Dabbling Duck has too many ideas. Too many paths. Too many almost-finishes.

When his own shadow drags him beak-first into the Shadowquack Realm, he must face nine personified versions of creative self-sabotage — and learn that the goal isn't to defeat them. It's to understand them.

🦆 Metafiction Comedy · Adventure Self-help disguised as story ADHD-friendly Hero's Journey

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BOOK ONE
Dabbling Duck and the Shadowquack Realm book cover
About the book

This is not a self-help book
dressed up as fiction.

It is a story about a marriage under real strain. A man racing against his father's fate. A blended family of seven kids watching their dad try to prove something. Three business failures that cost more than money.

Dabbling Duck lives in Vibelandia — a Chicago-like city where creators and dreamers come to build their futures. He's full of brilliant ideas but has never finished anything. When his dark reflection pulls him into the Shadowquack Realm, he must face nine personified versions of the voice in his head that has killed more projects than any external obstacle ever could.

The twist? You can't destroy them. They're not villains to defeat. They're parts of you that need to be understood, managed, and — eventually — integrated.

Underneath the adventure: the Dabbler Science framework — a real assessment, a real way of understanding how your creative brain is wired, built by a duck who needed it to survive his own story.

The antagonists

Meet the Nine Shadowquacks

Each one a personified version of creative self-sabotage. Each one a part of you.

Gatequack
External barriers
"You need permission, credentials, and an audience first."
Futurequack
Paralysis by planning
"What if we planned all three books before you write the first word?"
Phantomquack
Perfectionism
"Nothing you've written is good enough to ship."
Splinterquack
Scattered attention
"But what about this other idea? It's better. Trust me."
Darkquack
Shame & failure
"You've failed before. Why would this time be any different?"
Echoquack
Comparison
"They're ahead of you. They're always going to be ahead of you."
Chronoquack
Time manipulation
"You might miss the deadline. You probably will."
Quackstorm
Infinite ideas
"You have 847 ideas competing. All of them urgent."
Shadowquack Prime
The final boss
"I'm not a villain to defeat. I'm you. The real you."
About the author
Dabbling Duck character
Brian Stout
Vibe Creator Studios · [email protected]

Brian Stout is a Zone 4. 29 out of 30 on novelty drive. He has a project graveyard that includes three businesses, a podcast, a course with twelve modules fully outlined and zero lessons recorded, and an expensive Moleskine notebook from 2019 that remains a work of art.

Dabbling Duck and the Shadowquack Realm is the first thing he ever actually finished. He built the Dabbler Science framework because he desperately needed it himself. He is still figuring it out — which is the only honest position from which to write this book.

He lives in Noblesville, Indiana with his wife Lori (the inspiration for Lolo), their blended family of seven kids, and an AI collaborator named Ocho who is more reliable than most humans he's worked with.

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