History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

October 2017 recap

| October 31, 2017

By the numbers: Stories out at the beginning of the month: 25 Acceptances received: 1 Rejections received: 21 Stories withdrawn: 0 Resubmissions: 23 New Submissions: 2 Stories out at the end of the month: 27 October has been a very productive month. On top of doing a lot of work on Brass and Glass Book 2, I’ve […]

The Dreaded Fight Scenes

| October 23, 2017

AKA Why can’t we all just get along? I admit it. I hate writing fight scenes. Dread them, even. I don’t like reading them, either. My mind sort of glazes over, waiting to get back to the “good stuff,” also known as the part where they aren’t fighting any more. But I write action and […]

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By the numbers: Stories out at the beginning of the month: 22 Acceptances received: 0 Rejections received: 11 Stories withdrawn: 0 Resubmissions: 13 New Submissions: 1 Stories out at the end of the month: 25 Another slow month, it looks like, with only 11 rejections coming back.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 […]

A Day in the Life: Finding Time to Write

| September 25, 2017

As somebody who works a regular 8-5 job and writes, some people are amazed that I get so much writing done. Here’s a little breakdown of how I sneak it all in! In Theory I get up ridiculously early in the morning (by my standards, which is 5:45 a.m.) and leave to catch the bus […]

Writing with A Kernel of What You Know

| August 29, 2017

There’s a lot of advice for writers that says “write what you know.” For speculative fiction authors, that can be difficult–few of us have ever fought a dragon, piloted a spaceship, or escaped from certain doom at the hands of a horrific monster. (Your mileage may vary. I never have.) I think that perhaps the […]

Fun for Friday: Building a Story Idea

| August 18, 2017

Building off of the writing exercise I mentioned in my post on generating story ideas on Monday, here’s a fun story idea for you to take and run with. Here’s an interesting looking face, to the left–a young African boy, who looks somewhere between angry and sad to me. (You may think he’s got a different […]

Fun for Friday: Amazing Ideas!

| August 11, 2017

Off at Spocon, we will return to our regularly scheduled programming on Monday, with more on story ideas!

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 […]

Fun for Friday: Interesting Plot Building Exercises

| August 4, 2017

As a bit of fun for this Friday, I found an interesting post that talks about adding layers to your plot. I am particularly intrigued by the Donald Maass workshop exercise, because I LOVE random things. So the idea of randomly drawing lines between characters, narrative elements, and places to see what might shake loose is […]

July 2017 Recap

| July 31, 2017

By the numbers: Stories out at the beginning of the month: 25 Acceptances received: 0 Rejections received: 22 Stories withdrawn: 0 Resubmissions: 21 New Submissions: 2 Stories out at the end of the month: 27 Pretty normal month on the submissions/rejections front. I had two stories come back that I’m holding to self publish, and I had another story with a […]