History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Books for Kids

| September 19, 2023

I’ve got several books for kids, including steampunk and fantasy! The Trouble with the Tick-Tock Tabby is a middle grade book featuring girl detectives Chrysanthemum and Marigold Marsh. The setting is a steampunk Victorian era. The characters are 9 and 12 years old, which skews toward the younger end of middle grade, but the reading level […]

Things for Kids to Read

| January 12, 2023

I’ve recently published my third book for younger readers to read, so it’s time to update this list! The Spiders of the Shifting Swamp is my children’s picture book that I also illustrated! It’s a fantasy story in which spiders run a shop and interact with other swamp creatures. The reading level is about right […]

My Books for Children!

| October 28, 2021

I write quite a bit of stuff for younger readers, but much of that is short stories that are scattered here, there, and everywhere, including throughout my collections. But I also have two books that are explicitly for younger readers. The Trouble with the Tick-Tock Tabby is a middle grade book featuring girl detectives Chrysanthemum […]

Site Recommendation: 101 LGBTQ Picture Books!

| September 8, 2021

If you’re looking for a good book recommendation for a kid that’s more in the age range for picture books than books they read on their own, check out 101 LGBTQ Picture Books! Created by a college student who decided to read all of the LGBTQ picture books she could find, rather than trying to […]

Family, Teamwork, and Responsibility in a Kid-Friendly Book!

| January 14, 2021

Spiders of the Shifting Swamp is my children’s book about family, teamwork, and responsibility. Even though the characters are mostly spiders (and some lizards), they have a lot to teach about working together and taking care of each other. It’s a great book for young kids to have read to them, and for early readers […]

My 2020 Book Publications

| December 10, 2020

This year, I got back on my string of book releases, with five new books out this year. Three of them were collections, one was a children’s book, and one was a novella. This is a tie with 2017 for number of new books out, so I’m pretty pleased! In June, I released Coast to Coast […]

Spiders of the Shifting Swamp!

| October 6, 2020

Today is the official release date for Spiders of the Shifting Swamp, though it’s been out in the wild for a couple of weeks now! I talked a bit about the background here. I’m excited that I’ve got a children’s book out in the world, even if most of my niblings are a little too old […]

Out Now: Spiders of the Shifting Swamp

| September 22, 2020

And now for something completely different, I’ve written and illustrated my first ever children’s book! Spiders of the Shifting Swamp started as a short story loosely based on a world that Jeremy had created, or at least tucked into the corner of a world he had created. The story was VERY short, and one market […]

Coming Soon: Spiders of the Shifting Swamp

| August 27, 2020

One of my big projects this summer has been working on my first children’s book. It started out as a very short flash fiction story, but someone suggested it might work better as a children’s book, so I thought I’d try going in that direction. The tricky part about a children’s book, however, is that […]