History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Guest Post: History, Alternate History, and Ahistoricity

| September 30, 2019

Today, I’m hosting a guest post from author Laurence Raphael Brothers, who has a few things to say about writing historical fiction, alternate history, and ahistoricity, in relation to his recently released book, Twilight Patrol! ~ When you set out to write a historical novel, of course you don’t want to get anything wrong. Well. Not […]

Fun for Friday: October 2019 Writing Prompts

| September 27, 2019

October is my favorite month of the year, because it culminates in Halloween. It’s also a month with a whole lot of art challenges themed to the spooky season. So this month’s writing prompts come from Mab’s Drawlloween Club, Inktober, and Sari’s Artober. There’s a little bit of repetition amongst the lists, but for most […]

Talking about Brass and Glass with Nate Crowder!

| September 26, 2019

Last week, Nate Crowder, who is a part of our local writing group, interviewed me about steampunk, the Brass and Glass series, and writing in general. We talked about all sorts of stuff, even bringing in table-top RPGs and how they’re connected to what I write. And I gave him a little glimpse into what’s next […]

Reading/Watching/Listening To: Late September Edition

| September 25, 2019

Reading: I’ve spent a lot of the month looking over my own books, in preparation for releasing Brass and Glass 3: The Boiling Sea. But I’ve also been reading anthologies to review. Watching: Farscape has been our main thing to watch lately. We’ve finally gotten to Chiana, which I was looking forward to! Someday, we’ll even finish […]

“A Dark Place” in Denizens of Distant Realms

| September 24, 2019

“A Dark Place” was the first story I sold at semi-pro rates, back in 2014. At that time, it was the most money I’d ever been paid for one of my stories. It originally appeared in a magazine called Fictionvale (which has since closed up shop), and it later reappeared in Disturbed Digest in 2016. This story […]

Writing Lots!

| September 23, 2019

Last week, I hosted a guest post from Kurt Pankau, and he returned the favor by hosting a guest post from me! I wrote about how I’ve increased my writing output and the ways in which I get so much writing done. You can read all about it here!

Fun For Friday: A Huge List of Word Roots

| September 20, 2019

For all of the etymology nerds out there (and I count myself among you), check out this page of word roots. It will tell you a ton about prefixes that often get tacked on to words to change their meaning, but it goes back to the roots of those prefixes. It also breaks down which […]

August Poetry Challenge Recap

| September 19, 2019

The Write Like You’re Alive challenge is a month-long effort to create something every day of the month. I’ve done the challenge three times now, but this year was the first time I did it strictly with poetry. I didn’t end up writing a poem every day–there were a couple of weekends where I just […]

My First K-Pop Concert!

| September 18, 2019

Last week was the culmination of my frantic watching everything by Pentagon I could get my eyeballs on in preparation for seeing them live. And it was definitely an experience. Jeremy and I both work downtown–my office is very near the theater they were playing–so we met up after work for dinner and drinks, then […]

Zombies in Unfixed Timelines

| September 17, 2019

All of the stories in Unfixed Timelines have some sort of fantasy or science-fiction element to go along with the history. In “The Glorious Dead,” it’s zombies at Vicksburg. “The Glorious Dead” is one of the earliest stories I wrote, and I had a pretty solid idea for it from the beginning. Many years ago, […]