History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Fun for Friday: Hearts and Sunsets

| May 15, 2020

For this week’s Fun for Friday photo prompts, we’ve got a mix of hearts and sunsets. The first photo is a pink heart on a black background. The right hand side of the heart is transforming into zeroes and ones. The second photo is a person with long dark hair, wearing a hat and scarf, […]

My Patreon and Coming Collections!

| May 14, 2020

Did you know that I have a Patreon? I do! It’s a way for my fans to throw a small amount of money my way to support my writing and learn about what I’m working on! I haven’t reached my first goal, which involves a monthly video of me reading one of my stories or […]

Reading, Watching, and Listening To, May 2020

| May 13, 2020

Reading: Books to review, for the most part, plus a bunch of history articles and books for my Unfixed Timelines II essays. Watching: We recently watched the first episode of the new Penny Dreadful run, and while it’s very unlike the original Penny Dreadful series, I’m really enjoying it for the history and the visuals. At one point […]

“Charcoals from an Unidentified Chicago Artist” out now!

| May 12, 2020

I’ve got a new story out in Community of Magic Pens, “Charcoals from an Unidentified Chicago Artist.” This story was born out of a trip to Chicago and a realization of just how many fires have ravaged that city. The “magic pen” in my story is a box of art tools that remain tied to the […]

Music to Evoke a Sense of Time and Place

| May 11, 2020

Since I’m currently spending most of my workdays listening to my old iPod, I’m getting hit with a lot of nostalgia based on the songs. Any random song might send me back to my days in St. Louis as a teen, to my college dorm room, the variety of concerts I went to, or the […]

Fun for Friday: Urban Legends from Every State

| May 8, 2020

If you’re looking for inspiration for a horror story or other creepy tale, check out this list of the scariest urban legends from each state. Having lived in three different states, I admit I hadn’t heard any of the urban legends from any of those states. But we definitely had more localized urban legends in […]

“Senchado in Microgravity” Out Now!

| May 7, 2020

For one of the online writing contests I participate in, one of the photo prompts was a fancy celadon colored tea set with goldfish at the bottom of the cups. The image caught the attention of many of the participants, and we wrote a lot of “fishy tea set” stories that week. My “fishy tea […]

On Kickstarter: Geek Elders Speak

| May 6, 2020

Geek Elders Speak is a planned anthology of interviews and essays by older women in fandom, collecting the history of fandom and the role women played in that community. It looks like it will be a neat collection and a wonderful way to collect stories and wisdom from, as the Kickstarter puts it, our “fannish […]

April 2020 Recap

| May 5, 2020

By the numbers: Stories out at the beginning of the month: 186 Acceptances received: 1 Rejections received: 86 (+2) Stories withdrawn: 1 (+4) Resubmissions: 38 New Submissions: 8 Stories out at the end of the month: 136 As work from home has become more and more regularized for me, I’ve felt like my downtime has […]

Poetry Forms: Nonet

| May 4, 2020

The nonet is a simple poetry form, in terms of the rules. It’s a nine line poem in which the first line has nine syllables. Each subsequent line has one less syllable, with the final line being only a single syllable. There are no rules about rhyming or any other bits of meter except for […]