History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Fun for Friday: NaNoWriMo (or other writer’s block) Help!

| November 15, 2019

If you’re doing NaNoWriMo this month, you may very well be surfing past my website because you’re stuck. Your characters and plot have gone off the rails (if they even had rails to begin with), and you’ll do anything other than try to work on you novel right now. You need these prompts, which the […]

Cross & Circle and Designing My Own Covers

| November 14, 2019

I’m now to a point in my writing career where if I need a cover for a book, I hire a professional. But for many of my early self-published books, I designed my own covers. The majority of them were photo manipulations of photos I had taken. For Cross and Circle, though, I had to do […]

Review of Into Bones Like Oil by Kaaron Warren

| November 13, 2019

My latest book review is up at Mad Scientist Journal, for a surreal Gothic-styled novella called Into Bones Like Oil. This book reminded me about the best parts of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, but geared toward adult readers rather than younger readers. The book just came out yesterday, so you can grab it right away! […]

I’ll Be at GeekGirlCon!

| November 12, 2019

This weekend, I’ll be joining DefCon One Publishing at GeekGirlCon, on Saturday, November 16 and Sunday, November 17. We will have a full array of our books there, including things I’ve written and edited! Come see us in the Vendor’s room this weekend at the Washington Conference Center (across the street from the big Washington State […]

When Sickness Overtakes Productivity

| November 11, 2019

I got back from vacation last week and had one productive day before getting sick for the rest of the week. So I’m way behind on pretty much everything in my life right now, including writing. Some folks are able to write through their sicknesses, and normally, I’m one of them. This time around, though, […]

Fun For Friday: Three Autumn Images

| November 8, 2019

It’s time for another photo writing prompt, and as we ease into November, I thought some lovely autumn photos might do the trick. Of course, if you look at them in a certain way, this could also be creepy, especially the house in the last photo. The first photo is leaf-strewn stone stairs, with a […]

Patreon Reminder!

| November 7, 2019

Have you checked out my Patreon lately? It’s a way for my fans to throw a small amount of money my way to support my writing! If you back it, you get the opportunity to see some of the things I’m working on in various stages in the process. Sometimes it’s snippets from a short […]

What I’m Reading, Watching, and Listening To, Early November 2019 Edition

| November 6, 2019

Reading: Comic books, in theory. In reality, I’ve mostly just been re-reading things I’ve written as I revise them. Watching: We’re slowly working our way through Legends of Tomorrow, when we have time. We’re still on season 2. Listening To: My favorite K-pop boy band, Monsta X, just released a new album, Follow, so that’s on […]

October 2019 Recap

| November 5, 2019

By the numbers: Stories out at the beginning of the month: 164 Acceptances received: 4 (+5) Rejections received: 80 (+5) (+1) Stories withdrawn: 3 Resubmissions: 89 New Submissions: 5 Stories out at the end of the month: 163 October was a much more typical month than September was, in that I didn’t finish a whole […]

A Brief Break

| November 4, 2019

As I told friends recently, “I feel like I’ve been running three marathons at once.” This was a result of finishing up a novel and a novella by the end of October, plus a very hectic two days of work as everyone tried to get things to me before I went on vacation. And now […]