History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Shades of Academia in Cross and Circle

| February 28, 2019

A chunk of the story in Cross and Circle takes place in the halls of academia, at least tangentially. Of all the aspects of this book, that was the portion I felt most comfortable writing. Evie’s campus and office are definitely based off my own experiences of many years spent on college campuses. Additionally, the house […]

Review of Broken Metropolis edited by dave ring

| February 27, 2019

My latest book review is up at Mad Scientist Journal, for an anthology of stories with queer protagonists called Broken Metropolis. Within, you’ll find 10 short pieces ranging all over the urban fantasy landscape. A number of the stories feature some wonderful magical realism, while others involve clearly supernatural creatures. You can read my review here, or […]

Final Push for I Didn’t Break the Lamp!

| February 26, 2019

We’re into the final week for the Kickstarter for I Didn’t Break the Lamp: Historical Accounts of Imaginary Acquaintances. The Kickstarter ends on Thursday at 7 p.m. Pacific time, so if you’ve been waiting until the last minute to back, that minute is now here! We’re looking forward to putting together this anthology, but we can […]

Leaving Book Reviews

| February 25, 2019

Indie authors and traditional authors alike get a lot of benefit out of people leaving reviews of their books on Amazon, Goodreads, or other book selling sites. On Amazon, in particular, once a book has a certain number of reviews, it’s more likely to be recommended to shoppers. Leaving a book review doesn’t have to […]

Fun for Friday: Folk Etymologies

| February 22, 2019

Sometimes, where we think a word came from is not necessarily the true story. According to Merriam-Webster, folk etymology is “the transformation of words so as to give them an apparent relationship to better-known or better-understood words.” This article talks about a number of cases of folk etymology, including the source of the words and […]

Just One More Week for I Didn’t Break the Lamp!

| February 21, 2019

There’s one week left on the Mad Scientist Journal Kickstarter for I Didn’t Break the Lamp: Historical Accounts of Imaginary Acquaintances! If you like inventive stories about creatures that may or may not exist, you definitely want to check this out! You can get the ebook for $5, the print book for $15, and there are other […]

Comic Recommendation: The Sun and Wayward Wind

| February 20, 2019

Back in 2017, I posted about an awesome looking Kickstarter on Mad Scientist Journal for The Sun and the Wayward Wind from Dandelion Wine Collective. It’s a comic anthology featuring myths and legends, some of which are reimaginings of traditional myths and some of which are new creations. I finally got around to reading it, because my […]

Quiet Moments of Heroism

| February 19, 2019

Heroes of Necessity is a collection with a lot of quiet moments. These stories aren’t knock down, drag out fights between people in capes and spandex. Instead, the stories focus on discoveries of powers and new applications of powers, and using those powers to fix things without necessarily fighting them. In “Fortissimo Possibile,” Leila argues […]

Breaking Rules of Spec Fic

| February 18, 2019

Some rules are made to be broken. In this article from io9, written by Charlie Jane Anders in 2015, she suggests 10 rules of speculative fiction that she wishes more authors would break. And while some of these rules are already ones a number of authors are breaking, there are some that still need more […]

Fun for Friday: Images as Inspiration

| February 15, 2019

I’m a very visual person, so it’s not entirely surprising that I get a lot of mileage out of images of unusual things. It might be something as simple as glass-like flowers. The description I found for them says “A flower whose petals turn clear as glass when wet… Diphylleia Grayi otherwise known as the […]