History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Stuck in the Middle with You

| May 14, 2018

Last week, I talked about beginnings. Today, I’m thinking about what happens when you get stuck in the middle of the story. Sometimes, my stories grind to a halt around the middle when I’ve been writing for a while. Pinpointing the reason for this isn’t always easy, but for me, at least, I often find […]

2018 Planning

| January 2, 2018

Yesterday, I talked about what I accomplished in 2017. I managed to get a lot of writing, reviewing, and editing done. 2018 will be similarly ambitious! This year, I’m writing a bit more detail about what I plan to work on, so that I can track it better at the end of the year! In […]

2017 publishing

| December 14, 2017

It’s the time of the year when authors are making lists of the stories and other items that they published in 2017, which are eligible for awards. Most of my short stories that were published this year were reprints, but I’ve got a few things to mention! Short Stories: “Justice is Blind,” published as part of Bards […]

2018 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide now available!

| December 12, 2017

The 2018 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide is now available, including my story, “Far From Home.” This is my second year with a story in this fantastic anthology of short stories for younger readers, and I’m so excited to be sharing the table of contents with a number of other writers who are also returning for […]

“The Glorious Dead” reprinted in The Misbehaving Dead

| October 24, 2017

My story of Civil War soldiers and zombies, “The Glorious Dead,” has been reprinted in The Misbehaving Dead, an anthology of stories about dead things that won’t stay dead and buried. My story involves a little bit of voodoo gone wrong, along with a fragment from an actual soldier’s diary while he was at Vicksburg. If […]

“Bringing Light to the World” reprinted in Frostfire Worlds!

| August 22, 2017

My story “Bringing Light to the World” has been reprinted in the most recent issue of Frostfire Worlds from Alban Lake Publishing. It’s a fun retelling of several related Native American myths shared by several tribes of the Pacific Northwest. Not only does it explain how light was brought into the world, it also explains why […]

Choosing Titles

| August 7, 2017

Whether you’re writing novels or short fiction, titles are important. For one thing, you need them in order to keep track of your stuff. But you also need them so other people can keep track of your stuff. And while you could just call things “Book 1,” “Book 2,” etc., that’s not really all that […]

2016 in Review

| January 1, 2017

It’s time, once again, to look at what I’ve accomplished on the writing front this year! My numbers for 2016: Stories out at the end of 2016: 16 New Stories Written: 9 Old Stories Making the Rounds: 20 Total Submissions: 188 Total Rejections: 170 (+1, +3) Total Acceptances: 8 Stories out at the end of 2016: 22 So […]

November 2016 recap

| December 5, 2016

By the numbers: Stories out at the beginning of the month: 22 Acceptances received: 0 Rejections received: 12 Stories withdrawn: 1 Resubmissions: 12 New Submissions: 1 Stories out at the end of the month: 22 Really tidy numbers this month. I had one story that I withdrew from a potential market after no response in almost […]

September 2016 recap

| September 30, 2016

By the numbers: Stories out at the beginning of the month: 21 Acceptances received: 0 Rejections received: 18 (+1) Stories withdrawn: 0 Resubmissions: 19 New Submissions: 1 Stories out at the end of the month: 22 The numbers for September are really clean and easy. No acceptance, but I did finish a new story (rain) and get that out […]