dawn.vogel | May 16, 2025
For this week’s Fun for Friday, I thought I’d do a different take on “spring” and some image prompts. The images are all sourced from Pixabay and were uploaded long enough ago that I feel pretty confident that they are not AI generated. The first image is of a glowing yellow electrical light filament, arranged […]
dawn.vogel | May 15, 2025
The Strength tarot card represents strength, as is to be expected, but also courage, persuasion, and patience. In A Tarot of Sorcery and Sages, this is represented by a haiku and a poem. The haiku, “rippling waters” (after the first line of the poem), being very brief, mainly deals with the “face value” of the […]
dawn.vogel | May 14, 2025
Reading: Still working through Wonderbook and still reading some fiction to review. Amusingly, I had time to kill at a K-pop concert I attended solo last week between the soundcheck and performance, so I found a seat and read a third of a novel. Antisocial, yes. But it was nice to have a little time to […]
dawn.vogel | May 13, 2025
I’ve recently moved my newsletter to MailerLite, which seems like a great service for hosting it! If you’d already subscribed, I was able to transfer your subscription over, so you don’t need to do anything. If you’ve haven’t already subscribed, you can get in on the sleek new design and the monthly updates on what […]
dawn.vogel | May 12, 2025
I’ve been working through the writing exercises in the appendices of Wonderbook, after having gone through the chapters, but I’ve recently made the decision to not complete all of those exercises. I found the text of Wonderbook very useful to me, and I wound up highlighting and flagging a lot of material that I know I’ll […]
dawn.vogel | May 9, 2025
Since it’s nearly Mother’s Day, this week’s Fun for Friday is about etymology and mothers! “Mother” is one of those words with very deep roots, across multiple languages. Part of the explanation of this is that “mater” originally comes from Proto Indo-European, which is the root of a LOT of languages. And of course, this […]
dawn.vogel | May 8, 2025
Have you checked out Sure Shot in Cobalt City: Homecoming, the second of my Sure Shot novellas, which are stand-alone, alternate history, 1950s noir mysteries with superheroes? A mysterious case, a murdered friend, and something sinister behind it all. Sarah Castile, former superhero turned private investigator, is on the case! When her old friend Lillian invites […]
dawn.vogel | May 7, 2025
North Continent Ribbon by Ursula Whitcher (Neon Hemlock, 2024) is a collection of six linked sci-fi short stories that span 400 years, but with all but one of the stories taking place in a 100-year span. Featuring queer characters occupying a vast star-faring culture, the stories stand alone but also contribute to the larger storyline. […]
dawn.vogel | May 6, 2025
By the numbers: Stories out at the beginning of the month: 53 Acceptances received: 1 Rejections received: 14 (+2) Stories withdrawn: 0 Resubmissions: 22 New Submissions: 7 Stories out at the end of the month: 60 I had thought my submissions in April had been a little higher than March, but it turns out they […]
dawn.vogel | May 5, 2025
There’s a lot of writing advice that tells authors to remove passive voice, adverbs, and more. And while these things can be useful ideas to keep in mind when you’re editing your writing, there’s a lot more nuance to these “rules” than is initially apparent. Some people take “remove passive voice” to mean “never use […]
