History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Fun for Friday: August 2021 Writing Prompts!

| July 30, 2021

It’s the end of July, so it’s time for the August 2021 writing prompts! The words this month come from all over the place, but there are quite a few summer words tossed in to suit the month. You can focus your writing on the dog days of summer or on the fleeting freedom before […]

Defending Home in What If I’m a Merfolk?

| July 29, 2021

One of the themes that runs through a number of the pieces in What If I’m a Merfolk? is the idea of merfolk defending their home. While the ocean is vast and has plenty of hiding places for creatures like merfolk, it’s still important to them to defend their territory from things like incursions of humans […]

TV Recommendation: Loki

| July 28, 2021

So it’s been hard to look any direction on the internet lately without seeing people raving about the Loki series on Disney+. And I’m here to join the clamor! Though Loki may not have had quite the same pace and flash as some of the other recent MCU series on Disney+, it more than made up […]

My Sci-Fi Publications

| July 27, 2021

Although I’ve published a lot of books, there’s only one sci-fi book in the mix, and it’s the most recent one! New Moons Under Which to Sleep is a collection containing previously published sci-fi short stories, flash fiction pieces, and a couple of poems, joined by a couple of poems that were new to the collection. […]

Question: How Much Historical Research?

| July 26, 2021

I was talking to a newer author of historical fiction recently, and one of the questions they had for me was how much historical research do you need to do before writing historical fiction? My terribly unhelpful answer is, of course, it varies. If I’m writing a short story that’s tied to historical events in […]

Fun for Friday: Three Summery Images!

| July 23, 2021

For this week’s Fun for Friday, I’ve got a handful of summer photographs, all of which have a bit of a vintage look to them. The first image (deleted) is a field of very small lavender flowers that appear to be on an uphill slope. Above, the sky is blue with puffy white clouds. The […]

Have You Checked Out Intercity Illusions?

| July 22, 2021

Have you had a chance to check out Intercity Illusions? Cities are filled with the strange and unusual, especially when you add the supernatural to them. This book collects urban fantasy stories and poetry highlighting the abnormal goings-on across myriad cityscapes. These tales will leave you wondering what is real and what is merely an illusion. […]

Review of The Atrocities by Jeremy C. Shipp

| July 21, 2021

The Atrocities by Jeremy C. Shipp (tor.com, 2018) blends a modern setting with a spooky Gothic tale. In turns, it maintains creeping dread and sustains quick action. Danna Valdez has just taken a position to educate the young daughter of a wealthy and somewhat eccentric family. But when she arrives at their unusually appointed estate, […]

New Moons Under Which to Sleep Out Today!

| July 20, 2021

Today’s the day! My first ever book of science fiction stories, New Moons Under Which to Sleep, is out! This collection is an interesting one, as I don’t typically consider myself a sci-fi author. However, every story in this collection has been previously published! So I guess maybe I’ve written a few sci-fi stories after all! […]

Writing Tools: World Roulette

| July 19, 2021

I’ve accumulated a large collection of card-based writing tools, each of which is useful to different parts of my writing process. So I’ve decided to do a series of posts about the various decks I own and how I use them in my writing. I’ve talked previously about World Roulette as a worldbuilding tool, which is […]