History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Fun for Friday: June 2019 Writing Prompts

| May 31, 2019

May flew by just about as quickly as April did, but instead of May flowers, we’ve got June 2019 writing prompts. This month’s prompts are randomly generated, which should lead to some fun and interesting ideas! Check back on the last Friday of each month (or occasionally the first day of a new month, when […]

Recent Stories

| May 30, 2019

Two of my stories have come out recently! “I Believe,” which is a flash piece about imaginary friends, is out now at The Future Fire. It’s very short and very sweet, and won’t take you long at all to read! I’ve mentioned the Bargains anthology from Pine Float Press before, but it’s now available at […]

TV Show Recommendation: Lucifer

| May 29, 2019

I’m a huge Neil Gaiman fan, and I wasn’t sure what to think when they first announced the Lucifer TV show. Would it be half as wonderful as Lucifer is in the comics? The answer is yes, but … If you’re hoping for a faithful recreation of the comics, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. […]

Volatile Figments: Darkness, Light, and Muses?

| May 28, 2019

One of the stories in Volatile Figments, “Terpsichore,” started out when I realized how creepy a dance studio looks when it’s dark and there’s only a small source of light reflecting off the mirrors. From there, it spun into a ritual performed in a dance studio, and the creepy aftermath. At only 928 words, “Terpsichore” is […]

Shade and Light in Worldbuilding

| May 27, 2019

When you’re world building, how much thought do you give to places that have shade and places that are brightly lit? And how do your characters react to the same? In this article, which talks about the lack of shade in Los Angeles, and how it is a marker of economic disparity, there are all […]

Fun for Friday: Another Three Images

| May 24, 2019

It’s time for another batch of images to potentially inspire a story or some other piece of writing! This week, we’ve got: A microscopic view of a multi-colored object with three roughly equal segments topped with a much smaller segment. A dark haired woman in profile, wearing heavy black eye makeup and black lipstick, smirking […]

Scenes from a Quiet Apocalypse “Pinspiration”

| May 23, 2019

When I write many of my longer pieces, and even some of my short stories, I make a Pinterest board where I collect images that connect to the themes, characters, or other aspects of my writing. For Scenes from a Quiet Apocalypse, which drew on the major arcana of the tarot deck for inspiration, my Pinterest […]

Show Recommendation: Cowboy Bebop

| May 22, 2019

I know I’m WAY behind the curve on this one, but with the Cowboy Bebop live action show in the works, I’m trying to get through the entirety of the anime series (and movie) in advance! It’s alternate parts ridiculous and weird, and I’m a little surprised that no one has been able to make […]

Inspirations for Cross and Circle

| May 21, 2019

Cross and Circle grew out of a strange note I found about a circle and cross inscribed on the roof of a car. It rustled around in my ideas folder for quite a while until I made the connection between this symbol and pecked crosses. Once I dug further into pecked crosses and realized that […]

Growing as a Short Story Writer

| May 20, 2019

I started writing regularly in 2009 and lucked out by selling my first short story early in 2010. After that, things were a bit more hit and miss for a while. Between 2010 and 2014, I made a total of 11 story sales, some of them for no payment, and mostly for very small payments. […]