History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Fun for Friday: July Writing Prompts!

| June 29, 2018

It’s time for July’s daily writing prompts! July is all about the summer, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s also about sweet and treats like fruits and freezer delicacies! As always, you don’t have to necessarily go with the summery meaning of these words. There are quite a few this month that could be […]

Brass and Glass 2 in paperback!

| June 28, 2018

If you’ve been waiting to buy Brass and Glass 2: The Long-Cursed Map in paperback format, now you can buy it! You can also still get autographed copies directly from me, of course!  

Review of Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers

| June 27, 2018

My latest review is up at Mad Scientist Journal, this time for Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers. This is an anthology of solarpunk stories, defined by the publisher as “a type of optimistic science fiction that imagines a future founded on renewable energies.” If you like your science fiction positive and optimistic, this is a fantastic little collection […]

SpoCon in August!

| June 26, 2018

I had such a great time at SpoCon last year that we’re traveling back to Spokane this August! My schedule is still somewhat preliminary, but here’s where you should be able to find me at SpoCon. There’s also the possibility that I’ll have a reading and/or signing at some point, and I’ll post here when […]

Telling a Story Another Way

| June 25, 2018

I recently learned about wooden maps of Greenland’s coastlines, made by the native inhabitants for storytelling rather than navigation. And while I’m pretty sure that most magazines wouldn’t let you submit woodworking as a short story, it does present an interesting lesson for writers nonetheless. Sometimes, the trick to telling a story isn’t to change […]

Fun for Friday: Photo Prompt

| June 22, 2018

While the photo in today’s photo prompt is a still photograph of a video exhibit, it’s still a really cool image, with many individual screens within a neon outline of the United States.  The piece is called “Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii,” by Paik Nam June, and it is on exhibit at the Smithsonian […]

Quick Summer Reads: Heroes of Necessity

| June 21, 2018

If you’re looking for short stories to enjoy this summer, check out Heroes of Necessity! This collection contains four short stories, all of which are quick reads (each story is less than 5,000 words), starring a variety of low-powered woman heroes. What’s better, you don’t need any background information to get into these stories–they each stand […]

Music Recommendation: The Smithsfits

| 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 […]

New Story Sales!

| June 19, 2018

I’ve recently signed a couple of contracts for two of my short stories to be published! “Happily Never After,” which is a Cobalt City-adjacent story of Gray Dawn back when she was Cassidy Sweet, the pop star, will be published at The Colored Lens later this year. This one is a fun little story about late-bloomer pop […]

The Importance of Proofreading

| June 18, 2018

As I mentioned last week, we discovered that there were some errors in the version of Brass and Glass 2 that had been published. It’s easy enough to fix the ebook, but there were a number of print copies that we had ordered for a couple of events that included the errors. We were in a […]