History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

January 2018 Recap

| January 31, 2018

By the numbers: Stories out at the beginning of the month: 25 Acceptances received: 1 Rejections received: 16 (+2) Stories withdrawn: 0 Resubmissions: 14 New Submissions: 2 Stories out at the end of the month: 23 How is it already the end of January? It seems like the month just started! Anyway, here we are. It’s […]

Historical Fiction

| January 30, 2018

At Rustycon, I was on a couple of panels about historical fiction or using history for writing and gaming ideas. We talked about interesting historical fiction we’d read and written, as well as ways of using history to come up with neat story or gaming ideas. If it wasn’t already apparent from the name of […]

New Stories

| January 29, 2018

Because I was nearly done with a couple of stories at the end of the year, which I finished early into 2018, I’m currently in a position where I’m starting lots of new stories rather than revising completed stories. It means that my brain is in overdrive working out all of the details, figuring out […]

Fun for Friday: February Writing Prompts

| January 26, 2018

As January winds to a close, it’s time to start looking at writing prompts for February. There are a lot of love-related things for this month, but you don’t have to make them part of a romantic story or poem. In fact, it could be interesting to flip some of them to their darker sides. […]

When the Heroine Isn’t 18, Blonde, and a Size 3

| January 25, 2018

One of the panels I was on at Rustycon was called “When the Heroine Isn’t 18, Blonde, and a Size 3.” The topics we talked about were wide ranging, from books to TV to movies, but the primary idea was about writing non-Hollywood style women protagonists. This is a topic near and dear to my […]

Review of Serpent’s Rise by Trish Heinrich

| January 24, 2018

My newest book review is up on Mad Scientist Journal, and it’s the sequel to a book I reviewed earlier! Serpent’s Rise is the sequel to Serpent’s Sacrifice. In this book, Alice/the Serpent has a few more years beneath her belt, but she’s dealing with the fallout of the previous book, on multiple levels. While this […]

Battling in All Her Finery: Countdown to the Kickstarter Launch!

| January 23, 2018

Today on Facebook, we’re launching an event to count down to the launch of our next Mad Scientist Journal anthology on Kickstarter. Which is a long way of saying: we’ve got another Kickstarter on the horizon! Battling in All Her Finery will be an anthology of science fiction and fantasy stories about woman leaders: presidents, queens, […]

Self-Publishing 101: The Types of Editing

| January 22, 2018

While at Rustycon recently, Jeremy and I were on a panel about self-publishing. We also met with an author who is considering self-publishing his book. One of the topics that came up in both instances was the types of editing, the order they happen in, and the importance of each. The first step, prior to […]

Fun for Friday: Penguins Writing Prompt

| January 19, 2018

According to our calendar from our local zoo, tomorrow (January 20th) is Penguin Awareness Day. As my husband said, “I am aware that there are penguins.” So am I. I have both petted and fed a penguin at our local zoo, so I can confirm that they are definitely real animals. They’re also one of […]

Scenes from a Quiet Apocalypse: What’s It All About?

| January 18, 2018

My next novella, Scenes from a Quiet Apocalypse, will be out in a couple of weeks, and it’s available for pre-order now! The title hints at what it’s about, but the blurb explains it a bit better! Without warning, most of humanity stopped speaking. Acting in silent unison, they overthrew the world in service to an […]