History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Steampunk Reads

| March 31, 2022

If you enjoy reading steampunk, I’ve got four books out now, and a fifth one coming soon! First off, I have the Brass and Glass trilogy: Brass and Glass: The Cask of Cranglimmering is the first in the series, followed by Brass and Glass 2: The Long-Cursed Map and Brass and Glass 3: The Boiling Sea. […]

Review of Shad Hadid and the Alchemists of Alexandria by George Jreije

| March 30, 2022

Shad Hadid and the Alchemists of Alexandria by George Jreije (Harper Collins, 2022) is an exciting and fast-paced book for kids of all ages who love magic, baking, and suspense! Shad Hadid and his Teta are the remaining members of their family in Portland, Maine, having immigrated from Lebanon. While Shad goes to school and […]

“Senchado in Microgravity” in New Moons Under Which to Sleep

| March 29, 2022

“Senchado in Microgravity” began as a flash fiction piece based on a prompt of a very specific tea set. The image was super evocative, and MANY of the people who saw that prompt wrote stories about the “fishy tea set.” (The set had a goldfish theme, including as small sculpted goldfish at the bottoms of […]

Time Tracking

| March 28, 2022

One of the most valuable takeaways I’ve gotten from the productivity and creativity classes I worked on earlier this year is the idea of time tracking. In my day job, we track the amount of time we spend on projects in 15-minutes increments, so it’s not something that was foreign to me. But the idea […]

Fun for Friday: April 2022 Writing Prompts!

| March 25, 2022

It’s nearly the end of March, and though I could post these prompts next Friday, on April 1st, I thought I’d get them posted a little earlier than that. April’s a good month for spring words and all sorts of word about wind. There are a handful of other words thrown into the mix to […]

“Brick-Red Love” in Intercity Illusions

| March 24, 2022

My story “Brick-Red Love” came out of a Drawlloween prompt of “bride”. While in the context of Drawlloween, I’m sure it was meant to be a Bride of Frankenstein reference, but I decided instead to write a bit of flash about a pair of brides, one of whom is suffering from some nervousness that she […]

Review of Wistful Ascending by JCM Berne

| March 23, 2022

Wistful Ascending, the first book in the Hybrid Helix series by JCM Berne (The Gnost House, 2020), is an action-packed sci-fi/superhero novel with a fantastic cast of characters and plenty of plot twists to keep you guessing! Rohan is a Hybrid, the offspring of a human and an alien race called the il’Drach. That alien […]

Unfixed Timelines 2 Complete on Channillo

| March 22, 2022

Have you checked out Unfixed Timelines 2 on Channillo? At this point, the entire book has been posted! You just need a Channillo subscription to read my stories and essays, and you can read other books there as well! A Russian pilot using a bit of magic and music to rescue her compatriot. The family impacts […]

Giving Yourself Permission to Play

| March 21, 2022

I’ve talked before about the idea of “writing play,” in which you aren’t necessarily writing with an end goal in mind. But it’s a hard thing to do when you’ve got things you want to get done, and it’s especially hard if, like me, you often take on a lot at any given time. I’m […]

Fun for Friday: A Tongue-in-Cheek Genre-Fiction Generator

| March 18, 2022

If you’d like to generate some story ideas while having a little fun at the same time, check out Wondermark’s Electro-Plasma Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator 2000. While it can give you a perfectly reasonable story idea, you can also pick and choose to come up with the most ridiculous possible idea if you like. Alternately, most […]