dawn.vogel | 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 […]
dawn.vogel | 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 […]
dawn.vogel | 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 […]
dawn.vogel | 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 […]
dawn.vogel | 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 […]
dawn.vogel | 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 […]
dawn.vogel | 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 […]
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 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 […]
dawn.vogel | April 28, 2025
If you’re writing a character with a secret, how might you portray that through your writing? The Character Secret Thesaurus from Writers Helping Writers is a great place to start! The Character Secret Thesaurus is a database in progress that presents a number of secrets a character might be keeping, along with specific details that […]
