History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

The Evolving Short Story Market from 2024 Nebulas Conference

| September 16, 2024

In addition to catching up on WriteHive panels, I’m also working through my list of panels at the 2024 Nebulas Conference that I didn’t get to watch at the time they were broadcast online. (If you have a 2024 Nebulas membership, you can watch the saved videos and more; if you don’t have one, you […]

Fun for Friday: Eggcorns and Malapropisms

| September 13, 2024

Do you know the difference between a malapropism and an eggcorn? Sometimes, they overlap, but this article explains the difference between the two things. If you’re a word nerd, you might just enjoy reading the article. But if you want to use this as a writing prompt, I think you could have some fun with either […]

Researching Nineteenth Century Diving for Brass and Glass 3

| September 12, 2024

When I was writing Brass and Glass 3: The Boiling Sea, I knew at least some of my characters were going to need to dive into that Boiling Sea in order to find the treasure they were looking for. But my setting is steampunk and roughly analogous to the nineteenth century in terms of technological influences. […]

Review of Strange Locations

| September 11, 2024

The Strange Locations anthology, edited by Marissa Van Uden (Apex Book Company, 2024), is a limited release collection of dark speculative travel guides told in microfiction format. Tiny and beautifully crafted, each of these thirty brief tales hints at a larger story of an unusual place. There were a few pieces that really stood out […]

August 2024 Recap

| September 10, 2024

By the numbers: Stories out at the beginning of the month: 53 Acceptances received: 1 Rejections received: 39 (+2) Stories withdrawn: 0 Resubmissions: 27 New Submissions: 14 Stories out at the end of the month: 53 A weirdly parallel month, with the same number of pieces out at the beginning and end of the month! […]

Completing The Wayward Writer!

| September 9, 2024

Throughout 2023 and most of 2024, I worked through the entirety of Ariel Gore’s The Wayward Writer. I took a few weeks off here and there for vacations, but I basically spent 78 weeks working through one exercise a week. I talked a little bit about hitting the halfway point here. Overall, I found the entire […]

Fun for Friday: September Historic Events

| September 6, 2024

While I wasn’t able to find a page with many “weird” historic events for September, I’ve got a couple of options for those looking for historical events to inspire your writing or other creative endeavors. Restless (a UK-based site) has a list of twenty-two historic events that happened in September, nearly one for every day […]

The Magician in A Tarot of Sorcery and Sages

| September 5, 2024

The Magician tarot card deals with potential and pure willpower, and I combined those meanings for a focus on creation in the two poems representing that card in A Tarot of Sorcery and Sages. The first poem, simply titled “Creation,” explores the magic inherent in creating new things, regardless of the format. The second poem, […]

What I’m Reading, Watching, and Listening To, September 2024

| September 4, 2024

I’ve been on vacation, so my normal reading, watching, and listening to habits are a little off right now! Reading: Still books for review, and I’m going to be starting in on another writing craft book next week that has more reading portions, though not as many sections as The Wayward Writer. (I’ll be doing a […]

WriteHive Online Conference 2024: Fear Factors: A Horror Genre Master Class

| September 2, 2024

Now that the 2024 WriteHive Online Conference panels are available on their YouTube channel, I’m catching up on the ones I missed during the conference itself and sharing some of the things I gleaned from them here! I’ve caught up on a number of genre-specific panels, including Fear Factor: A Horror Genre Master Class. Horror […]