Todd Dawson-Cooper

## Todd Cooper

**Todd Dawson-Cooper** or **Todd Cooper** (born July 7th, 1997) is a Canadian author best known for *The Placebo Effect* series of novels.

## Early Life

From a very young age, Todd, always the odd one out, found comfort in his vivid imagination and had a love for storytelling for almost as long as he could speak: inevitably as a child, he began writing rough screenplays, making an endless number of homemade short films, designing movie posters both digital and physical and drawing brief comics and graphic novels that he would frequently share and gift to his family, friends and tutors.

Over the years, Todd would inevitably shift his focus towards the literary world and as he entered high school, began crafting various stories and characters in a connected universe that would slowly and inevitably form the foundation of what would become his current oeuvre of works, but it would be years before any of these concepts would appear on paper, as multiple events in his personal life left him disillusioned with writing, Todd spent the remainder of his youth entangled in a web of hard drugs, alcoholism, and sexual promiscuity.

Yet, while mentally drained and uninspired, Todd never gave up hope and enthusiasm that he would inevitably finish the works he had started. After many years and a brief stint in a rock band, Todd found himself with a lot of time on his hands and resumed writing as a form of productive catharsis. This time, he found himself quickly drifting away from the distant realms of sci-fi, horror and fantasy that made up the majority his childhood stories to focus on writing fiction that was grounded in the ever-familiar reality of urban violence, crime, poverty, addiction, sexual assault, domestic abuse and moral decay that had become all too prevalent in his waking life.

Todd has since been focusing on mastering his practice, weaving together complex and interconnected plot threads and crafting a filthy, dark overarching visage of nihilism through his debut novel *Blank Earth* and it's planned follow-ups.

## Early Works (2002-2014)

### Sister and Sister (2002)

Cooper's first officially acknowledged work was on *Sister & Sister,* a story that he initially began developing with doodles and concepts in late 2002 with the aspirations of seeing it realized as a film one day. At least partially inspired by the oversaturation of *Mary Kate & Ashley* films and novellas, *Sister & Sister* would follow a lesbian romance between two step-siblings whilst in the middle of a time crisis that sends both dinosaurs from the past and Terminator-esque cyborgs from the future to the modern-day.

### Filmmaking (2006)

In 2005, the aforementioned project was retitled as *Snow In Summer*, stripped of it's grandiose sci-fi elements and soon thereafter scrapped. However, it was also at this point that Cooper acquired his first digital camera and throughout the majority of the following year would pursue writing, directing and filming a number of both finished and incomplete films, both completely original works such as *Atlas, The Revenge, The Werewolf of Santarouge, Dusk of the Dead and The Infected* as well as fan films based on *Resident Evil, Underworld and 28 Days Later*. His most notable project at this time included the animated *William You Are Dead* trilogy which served as a large-scale crossover series of fan films, and *Uneven Odds*, a film he had conceptualized with Tyler Preston in early 2007 which centered around two Mafioso who find themselves caught in the middle of a zombie outbreak while working undercover in Vegas.

### Dark Africa (2008)

In 2008, initially as part of a school writing assignment, Cooper began work on a novel entitled 'Dark Africa'. This novel revived several elements of Cooper's initial *Snow In Summer* story and followed a group expedition into -- and escape from -- an uncharted island populated with genetically-engineered dinosaurs transported from another universe.

### Rise of the Dead series (2009-10)

In mid-2009, over the span of twelve hours, Cooper wrote a completely original 72-page zombie apocalypse screenplay entitled *Rise of the Dead* and finished further revisions in early-2010, at the same time, Cooper began adapting his *Dark Africa* novel into an episodic machinima series, *Operation Legacy*, which would've tied directly into the events of *Rise of the Dead* and it's incomplete sequel *Rise of the Dead: Endgame*. It was also at this time that Cooper wrote rough outlines for a vampire/werewolf novel entitled *Undivide* and a post-apocalyptic road-trip drama entitled *The Last Number* that he planned to return to at a later date.

The *Rise of the Dead* series would carry over the idea of parallel universes from *Dark Africa*, and in particular, follow the character of Liam Kendall, who would die at the end, only to be revived in a new universe, the idea was that eventually, these resuscitations would be explained with a paranormal confrontation between Liam and several deities who reigned over the realm of Purgatorio. It was also at this time, that Cooper envisioned two follow-ups to *Endgame*, a novel *Deadworld* and a graphic novel entitled *Lost Island* that would intertwine the separate characters and plot threads from both *Rise of the Dead* and *Operation Legacy.*

At this point, Cooper enlisted help from the now defunct *Jurassic Park Legacy* community of which he frequented and found support from several members of the community including Tom Parker (Tomozaurus), Jack De La Mare, and designer Katie Williamson ('Big Razzie' Mbessai), with the comic getting its own board hosted on the forum's front page. Not long after, Cooper was contacted by user Martin Kevil (Daspletosaurus5000) who had been working on a coincidentally similar horror-themed webcomic entitled *Reawakening* and after several dozen emails back and forth in August 2010, Cooper and Kevil decided to feign a rivalry between *Reawakening* and *Lost Island,* before announcing the plans for a crossover between the two.

### Reawakening 2: Apocalypse (2010)

Main article: *Apocalypse*

This crossover, initially titled *Reawakening 2: Apocalypse* would be the second of three "seasons" of Martin's comic, being written by Cooper, but with Kevil continuing to illustrate and helm the series overall creative direction. *Apocalypse* would begin with the *Rise of the Dead* character of Liam Kendall awakening from death in another universe per usual, only to discover the universe in question would be that of Kevil's *Reawakening*.

Liam and a group of young survivors would then cross paths with the Cramburg survivors consisting of Joseph Stieker, Ajay Siddiqui, Meraj Siddiqui, Paul Backman and Rachel Trau in the small town of York, Missouri where they would be confronted with several human antagonists and newly mutated creatures, inevitably setting the stage for the third season. *Reawakening 2: Apocalypse* entered into official production on September 7th, 2010 with the completion of a script for the first issue and was publicly announced three days later.

### Junior High of the Dead series (2010-15)

Shortly after the announcement of *Reawakening 2*, Cooper decided to completely restructure his previous plans for the *Rise of the Dead* multimedia franchise, as the series was initially being written with the intention of leading up to a theological epic/high fantasy conclusion that contradicted *Reawakening's* science-fiction setting, he decided to make *Apocalypse* the second installment of a new series of novels, with *Deadworld* (now rebranded as *Junior High of the Dead*) being the first. This new series would maintain the core elements of universe-hopping and zombie horror with patchwork elements of the previous series in-place but would be far more grounded and serious in tone, with the reasoning for the universe-hopping being reworked and presented to audiences as more of an ongoing mystery, as well as providing Cooper with a completely clean slate to work with. Several months later, Cooper revived elements from the pre-conceptualized *The Last Number* as a third installment to the *Junior High of the Dead* franchise, retitling the novel *Epidemic*, but eventually this project grew separate from the trilogy it was attached to and was placed on-hold for the forseeable future.

Work on *Apocalypse* continued for a further two years, during this time, Cooper had written rough concepts for two further *Junior High* sequels (*Bonds* and *Genesis*) and two short stories (*Hell Chapter* and *Trial By Fire*) that would bridge the gap between them. *Hell Chapter* would take place during Liam's temporary death in *Reawakening 2* and have him encounter a jaded future incarnation of himself who had lived hundreds of lifetimes, while *Trial By Fire* would lack zombies altogether and have Liam awaken as Lane Stackhouse in Seattle of 1982. With the help of his new friend Tylar Anderson, Liam would struggle to manage his newfound personal life as Lane, while simultaneously trying to avoid encounters with younger versions of his parents in fear of changing the future. *Junior High of the Dead 3: Bonds* would take place two and a half decades later, in the same universe as *Trial By Fire*, and deal with Liam's awakening in an idealized alternate timeline that would be disrupted by yet another outbreak, while *Genesis* would be the final novel and would be a series of vignettes chronicling Liam's various lives across several universes since his death in *Bonds*, searching for answers, including meeting his past self, as seen in *Hell Chapter*.

*Reawakening* also began to shift it's tonal and directional gears with creator Martin Kevil deciding for his initial concepts for a third season to become the series first (scrapping the initial horror-themed town escape narrative in favor of a post-apocalyptic drama), *Reawakening* also eventually did away its initial science-fiction setting in favor of a paranormal one, and *Apocalypse*, by extension, followed suit.

In early 2013, Cooper was contacted by Kevil, who had felt the inclusion of the main *Reawakening* characters as protagonists in *Apocalypse* was limiting in his own direction of the characters. While the change was made late into *Apocalypse's* initial production and was sudden in notice, in a show of good faith, Martin allowed the protagonists a short cameo at the start of the book to explain their absence in the story and created three new characters to take their place as leads (Dontey Bailey in the place of Joseph, Wilfred Cunningham in the place of Ajay, and Vishal Siddiqui in the place of Meraj), as well as allowing Cooper to keep the Rachel Trau character, whose role was no longer extant in *Reawakening's* main plot, and which he felt had been fleshed out by Cooper far more than he ever initially intended. On the other end of this exchange, Lyla Painter would have a small, but nevertheless present cameo in *Reawakening* to keep the two projects 'in-continuity' with each other.

### SuperStition series (2012-15)

At the same time, Cooper had begun work on a new novel that he considered separate in tone and identity from the *Junior High* series. This new project, entitled *"SuperStiton"* would carry over various elements of the previously abandoned *Uneven Odds* and *Undivide* projects and followed the character of Jack Carver, a member of a newly formed secret British intelligence agency in an alternate future where the country had fallen to widespread crime and gang warfare.

At an early point in the story, Jack would be attacked by a strange man and begin his jarring and confusing transformation into a vampire, while almost simultaneously sensitive information regarding the countries security would be leaked and his wife would be murdered, as Carver was framed as the culprit for both incidents, he'd be forced to go on the run across the eastern hemisphere while engaged as the target of an international manhunt. As the story progressed, it would be revealed that not only did *SuperStition* take place in the same universe established in *Junior High of the Dead 3: Bonds* and *Trial By Fire*, but that Jack himself, was the son of Lane Stackhouse (Liam's variant persona in *Trial By Fire*) who disappeared in 1982, the story would've concluded with a catastrophic bioterror attack in Wales using the hallucinogenic Heisenberg Syndrome. Carver would've been aided by a much older Tylar Anderson, who would've been a high-ranking official of the United States military under General Theodore Moore (a character who would've been introduced as a primary antagonist in earlier drafts of *Apocalypse*)

Over a year later, Cooper would revive the concept and outline of *Lost Island* from the *Rise of the Dead* series and rework several elements to fit within the narrative of SuperStition, with the novel serving as a direct sequel to *SuperStition* as well as *Bonds*, further expanding the roles of Emily Kaufman and Lyla Painter as major supporting roles and firmly establishing the concept of a "primary shared universe". A third and final sequel entitled *Minutes to Midnight* would've introduced the concept of lycanthropes and would've seen Carver teaming up with a variant of his father: the original Liam Kendall (prior to the latter's rebirth across the multiverse) and the origins of what would become the Prometheus.

More than any of the aforementioned projects, the creative decisions and plot threads of the SuperStition trilogy would inevitably go on to be recycled and/or influence the The Placebo Effect franchise.

## Personal Life

From a very young age, Todd, always the odd one out, found comfort in his vivid imagination and had a love for storytelling for almost as long as he could speak: inevitably as a child, he began writing rough screenplays, making an endless number of homemade short films, designing movie posters both digital and physical and drawing brief comics and graphic novels that he would frequently share and gift to his family, friends and tutors.