dawn.vogel | June 20, 2018
One of my good friends posted a link on Facebook to a song the other day, and it basically made my head explode in the best possible way. Somehow, I hadn’t heard of the Smithsfits until then, despite them being a mashup of two of my favorite bands. Just imagine the jangly guitars of the […]
dawn.vogel | June 4, 2018
With the end of the school year comes the joys of summertime, including a lot of vacations. For authors, vacations can be a disruption to their normal schedules. But they’re also very valuable as a way to recharge your writing “batteries.” While you’re out and about on your summertime adventures, take a moment to look […]
dawn.vogel | May 4, 2018
In the course of working on a new story, I realized that I had the main character in mind, but I didn’t quite know what I wanted them to do. So I looked for a random espionage mission generator, and found an excellent one via NeverEngine. With this and the die roller on my phone, […]
dawn.vogel | May 3, 2018
While I was writing Scenes from a Quiet Apocalypse, I very much had a setting in mind, but it’s a setting that never was named. Astute readers may have picked up on the clues that I left, but for others, it may have read as a strictly fictitious city. The book works fine whether you know […]
dawn.vogel | April 16, 2018
At Norwescon, I spoke on a panel about punk in science fiction and fantasy. At first, I was pretty sure that I didn’t have very much to say on the subject, especially in comparison to my co-panelists. But it wound up being a great conversation about punk music, the punk aesthetic, and the many, many […]
dawn.vogel | April 10, 2018
One of the things that I love the most about going to conventions like Norwescon is the opportunity to learn from other writers. Even if I don’t get a chance to go to many (or any) panels that I’m not on, I still wind up in conversations while working at our table, or at parties, […]
dawn.vogel | January 19, 2018
According to our calendar from our local zoo, tomorrow (January 20th) is Penguin Awareness Day. As my husband said, “I am aware that there are penguins.” So am I. I have both petted and fed a penguin at our local zoo, so I can confirm that they are definitely real animals. They’re also one of […]
dawn.vogel | January 12, 2018
You know how they say that a picture is worth a thousand words? Today’s writing prompt is the picture (deleted). Sure, it looks like a simple wintery scene, but there’s a deer grazing at the edge of the only partially cleared road, and there’s a woman walking away. One might assume that the two could […]
dawn.vogel | January 9, 2018
As I’ve mentioned before, Scenes from a Quiet Apocalypse came out of the 2017 Write Like You’re Alive challenge from Zoetic Press. This also wound up informing the format for the story, too. See, I normally outline using Mark Teppo’s outline structure (which I’ve talked about before), which leads to an 18 chapter outline, with […]
dawn.vogel | January 5, 2018
What would your character do if they had the opportunity to make a fresh start? Would they continue on where they were already headed, or would they do something completely different? If you’re stuck writing a character, try this out as a way to get unstuck. Write that character with a fresh start, and see […]
