History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Writing Tools: World Roulette

| July 19, 2021

I’ve accumulated a large collection of card-based writing tools, each of which is useful to different parts of my writing process. So I’ve decided to do a series of posts about the various decks I own and how I use them in my writing. I’ve talked previously about World Roulette as a worldbuilding tool, which is […]

Do You Know Where to Find Me Online?

| July 12, 2021

If you’ve found my blog, you’ve found the online location where I post most often. But if you’re looking for other places to find me online, check these links out! Facebook: History That Never Was (rare posts) Twitter: @historyneverwas (posts about new blog posts, retweets, and occasional random posts) Patreon: Dawn Vogel (posts about what […]

Locus Recap

| July 5, 2021

The Locus Awards events were online this year the last weekend in June, and while I didn’t participate in a whole lot, I watched a couple of panels that I thought were interesting. One was “Speculative Mood: Making Short Fiction Shine.” The panel wound up being different than I expected from the title, but it […]

Convention of Heroes Recap

| June 28, 2021

Last week was the Convention of Heroes, an online event hosted by Superhero-Fiction.com. There were a ton of great panels, and the best news is that you can watch recordings of all of them on YouTube! I particularly found the “How to Craft a Hero” and “Captivating World Building” panels useful for someone who writes […]

Writing Tools: Reckless Deck

| June 21, 2021

I’ve accumulated a large collection of card-based writing tools, each of which is useful to different parts of my writing process. So I’ve decided to do a series of posts about the various decks I own and how I use them in my writing. Though it was originally envisioned as an artist prompt deck, Reckless Deck, […]

Cool Name Matching Tool

| June 16, 2021

When you’re working on coming up with names for characters, particularly characters of a specific ethnic group or age range, you could poke around a bunch of baby naming books or sites to find other names that go along with ones you’ve already picked out. Or you could check out the Name Matchmaker site. This […]

Interesting Panels at the Nebulas

| June 14, 2021

The first weekend in June was SFWA’s Nebula Conference Online, and I took a day off work so I could attend a few panels, hold office hours for authors looking for critiques, and watch a little bit of the Nebula Awards (I would have watched them all, but we were gaming during the second half). […]

Poetry Form: Luc Bat

| June 7, 2021

I’m back to writing some new form poetry, so it’s time to talk about another form! Today’s form is the Vietnamese Luc bat (the proper rendering includes marks that I can’t render here, but you can see them if you click that link for the Wikipedia article). The name means, simply, “six eight,” which refers to […]

Keeping a Writer’s Notebook

| May 31, 2021

Writers love blank books. We hoard blank books sometimes, like we’re dragons. We like to have a stack of blank books waiting around for just the right project. For some authors, suggesting that they use one of their precious hoard to write notes is anathema. But I’m suggesting just that–picking one of the notebooks from […]

Writing Tools: Story Forge Cards

| May 24, 2021

I’ve accumulated a large collection of card-based writing tools, each of which is useful to different parts of my writing process. So I’ve decided to do a series of posts about the various decks I own and how I use them in my writing. My oldest deck is Story Forge, which I posted about nine […]