History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Brass & Glass 2 coming soon!

| March 15, 2018

Last week, I turned in my second round of edits on the Brass & Glass 2 manuscript to my editors at Razorgirl Press, which means that we’re well on our way to having a book! We’re shooting to have it out by the end of May, but I don’t have a release date to announce just […]

When the Heroine Isn’t 18, Blonde, and a Size 3

| January 25, 2018

One of the panels I was on at Rustycon was called “When the Heroine Isn’t 18, Blonde, and a Size 3.” The topics we talked about were wide ranging, from books to TV to movies, but the primary idea was about writing non-Hollywood style women protagonists. This is a topic near and dear to my […]

Thinking about Steampunk

| December 19, 2017

At Anglicon a couple of weekends ago, I took part in a panel on steampunk with Jeffrey Cook and Andy Wolf. One of the things that we discussed during the course of it was on a scale of H. G. Wells to Jules Verne, where does your steampunk fall? (The abbreviated explanation on that scale […]

The Relief of Sending a Book to Editors

| November 2, 2017

I finished off the first draft of Brass and Glass Book 2 at the beginning of September, and turned around a second draft by mid-October. Then it went off to a handful of beta readers, so that I could frantically incorporate some of their changes and send it off to my editors at Razorgirl Press. […]

September 2017 recap

| October 3, 2017

By the numbers: Stories out at the beginning of the month: 22 Acceptances received: 0 Rejections received: 11 Stories withdrawn: 0 Resubmissions: 13 New Submissions: 1 Stories out at the end of the month: 25 Another slow month, it looks like, with only 11 rejections coming back. I’ve got a few stories that are well past […]

Character Inspirations

| September 14, 2017

Last week, I finished up the first draft of Brass and Glass 2 (which doesn’t have an official subtitle yet) and started outlining book 3. In doing so, I had a chance to look at some of my characters, their motivations, and the inspirations behind them. One of my friends read the first chapter of The Cask […]

Writing A Series

| September 7, 2017

I didn’t set out to write a series with Brass and Glass. But when the editors finished reading it, they asked, “Is there a sequel?” And by that point, I’d realized that I’d inadvertently written the first book of a trilogy. I’ve just finished writing the first draft of book 2 of this series now, […]

Elevator Pitching a Book

| August 15, 2017

Since I was at Spocon this past weekend, speaking on panels, I had a few opportunities to tell people about my books. I only had two books with me this weekend–Sparx and Arrows and Brass and Glass. Because Sparx and Arrows is a small book of short stories, it’s pretty easy to describe as “short stories about […]

Musical Inspiration

| June 13, 2017

Recently, while I was attending an event as part of DefCon One Publishing, one of the volunteers circulated among all of the authors and asked them a simple question: If they were to make a movie of your book, what song would be the opening song? I didn’t have to think too hard about my […]

Brass & Glass Book One available for pre-order tomorrow!

| March 24, 2017

Razorgirl Press has announced that as of tomorrow (my 42nd birthday, no less), my novel Brass & Glass: The Cask of Cranglimmering, will be available for pre-order on Kindle! The book will go live on April 1st! If you like steampunk, action, adventure, pirates, whiskey, or weird monsters, you should definitely check this out! You can […]