History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Another Batch of Flights of Foundry Videos

| September 1, 2025

Recently, I’ve been helping the fine folks at The Dream Foundry prepare, post, and promote some of the panel videos from the 2023 Flights of Foundry online convention. New content goes up every Sunday and Wednesday, and many of the videos are up permanently. (Some remain up for an limited amount of time.) Here’s a handful of […]

Resources for Historical Research for Non-Historians

| August 18, 2025

At Worldcon on Friday, I gave an Academic track presentation on “Historical Research for Non-Historians,” with an eye to folks writing historical fiction of all stripes, whether that be alternate history or fantastical history or something else! Because I’ve got training as a historian, I tend to do a lot of research for my historical […]

WriteHive Online Conference 2025: Interactive Fiction Q&A

| July 28, 2025

During the WriteHive Online Conference this a couple of weekends ago, I was the host for an interactive fiction Q&A with Livia J. Elliot, an author who co-created the app Unearthed Stories (Android and iPhone/iPad) with her partner. We had a great session in which Livia talked about some of the dos and don’ts of […]

WriteHive 2025 Recap

| July 21, 2025

July 11-13 was the WriteHive annual online conference for this year, and as I have for the past couple of years, I attended and participated in a bunch of events! On Friday night, I was the interviewer for an interactive fiction Q&A with Livia J. Elliot. This was a fantastic Q&A, with Livia providing a […]

Flights of Foundry Panels: Editing and More!

| July 14, 2025

Recently, I’ve been helping the fine folks at The Dream Foundry prepare, post, and promote some of the panel videos from the 2023 Flights of Foundry online convention. New content goes up every Sunday and Wednesday, and many of the videos are up permanently. (Some remain up for an limited amount of time.) Here’s a handful of […]

Guest Post: How to Write a Stand-Alone Sequel by Marie Vibbert

| June 30, 2025

Today I have a guest post from Marie Vibbert, author of Galactic Hellcats and the forthcoming Andrei and the Hellcats (among many other publications). I asked Marie to talk a bit about writing a stand-alone sequel for this guest post! How to Write a Stand-Alone Sequel My first novel, Galactic Hellcats, was a big hit for the […]

Back of the Book Blurbs as Marketing Tools

| June 23, 2025

If someone is picking up your book, whether physically or at an online retailer, they’re likely going to make their choice to buy your book based on the back of the book blurb. And if you’re a self-published author, you’ll be the one writing that back of the book blurb. While I don’t think writing […]

Another Flights of Foundry Panel Video Round-Up

| June 16, 2025

Recently, I’ve been helping the fine folks at The Dream Foundry prepare, post, and promote some of the panel videos from the 2023 Flights of Foundry online convention. New content goes up every Sunday and Wednesday, and many of the videos are up permanently. (Some remain up for an limited amount of time.) Here’s a […]

Great Writer Advice at Reach Your Apex!

| June 9, 2025

If you’re looking for a bunch of great writer advice, check out the Reach Your Apex blog! They’ve got guest posts from fantastic authors, some of which are in video format, on a variety of writerly topics! Reach Your Apex also offers workshops, and you can subscribe to their newsletter to get information about blog […]

Rounding Up Some Panels I’ve Been On

| May 19, 2025

As I’ve been working on panel transcriptions and recordings recently, I thought it might be nice to have a round-up post that lists the panels I’ve been on that you can watch online! “Historians on History in Fiction” is from the 2024 WriteHive conference, where several historians talked about history in our writing, ways to […]