History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

July 2018 Recap

| July 31, 2018

By the numbers: Stories out at the beginning of the month: 33 Acceptances received: 0 Rejections received: 22 Stories withdrawn: 1 Resubmissions: 18 New Submissions: 2 Stories out at the end of the month: 31 The numbers for this month aren’t all that different from last month, aside from fewer new stories and acceptances. There […]

Reviving a Story

| July 30, 2018

Sometimes, stories can be like the undead. Sometimes, you start writing a story and put it away for a while. Sometimes, you come back to that story, and realize that what you wrote wasn’t that bad. Sometimes, you want to start working on that story again, and realize that while it’s not that bad, you […]

Fun for Friday: August Writing Prompts

| July 27, 2018

August is just around the corner, so it’s time for the August writing prompts! This month, we’re back to having some prompts based on the letters in the word August, some based on August holidays, some based on summertime things, and some toward the end getting into the next thing on the agenda, back to […]

Spocon is just a couple of weeks away!

| July 26, 2018

In a couple of weeks, we’ll head out to Spokane for SpoCon! I’ve got a couple of updates to my schedule, which you can find below! Friday, August 10, 3:00 p.m. (Evergreen) – The Magical Menagerie: Come and talk about some of the most awesome (and possibly bizarre) creatures from legend and myth. Friday, August […]

Music Recommendation: “Helpless” by The Regrettes

| July 25, 2018

My sister got me hooked on the Hamilton original cast recording the last time I was in St. Louis. I then played most of it for Jeremy while we were driving around in California. He returned the favor by finding me this delightful pop-punk cover of “Helpless.” Enjoy!

Scenes from a Quiet Apocalypse

| July 24, 2018

This time last year, I was writing what became Scenes from a Quiet Apocalypse as part of the Zoetic Press Write Like You’re Alive challenge. I’m taking this year off from the challenge, as I’m doing different challenges instead. However, if you’re a fan of Scenes from a Quiet Apocalypse and wish you could have more, did […]

Culture Building

| July 23, 2018

I came across this graphic (rendered at larger than my normal graphic size here to make it more legible) related to the aspects of culture that are easy and difficult to see. It was originally posted by a music teacher talking about multicultural classrooms. But on Twitter, Fonda Lee pointed out how useful it could […]

Fun for Friday: Interesting Words

| July 20, 2018

Writers thrive on words, and sometimes we want to use less common words rather than ones that everyone knows. While the words on this list may not be super uncommon, they’re still some fund words to use. There are two for every letter of the alphabet, which could also make for a fun writing challenge: […]

FREE Short Story Collections!

| July 19, 2018

Three of the collections of my short stories that I’ve published through DefCon One Publishing are available for FREE this month through Smashwords! If you’ve been thinking about picking up one (or more) of them, now is the time to do it! Through the end of the month, you can get Heroes of Necessity, Unfixed Timelines, […]

Weird Stuff in Seattle

| July 18, 2018

If you like weird stuff and conspiracy theories and other interesting possibilities like I do, you may be just as fascinated by Liminal Seattle’s map of the strange, wonderful, unusual, and unexpected. The Seattle Times reported on this map a few weeks ago, and it’s loads of fun to poke around at it to see all […]