History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Kickstarter Recommendation: Bitter Become the Fields

| March 27, 2024

Horns & Rattles Press is currently funding their Bitter Become the Fields anthology, which is a horror anthology filled with stories featuring flora and fungi! The list of authors is pretty exciting, including some recent names in the horror genre and other names who are sure to hold that status in the future! The Kickstarter for Bitter […]

Review of The Hitherto Secret Experiments of Marie Curie

| February 28, 2024

The Hitherto Secret Experiments of Marie Curie, edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt and Henry Herz (Blackstone Publishing, 2023), is a speculative fiction anthology that blends historical fact about Marie Curie’s life as a young woman and fantastical, science fiction, and horror elements to present new and intriguing experiments a young Marie might have undertaken. Most […]

Kickstarter Recommendation: In the Neck of the Woods

| December 13, 2023

If you like spooky stories about camping, check out the Kickstarter for In the Neck of the Woods, an anthology of camping-themed horror stories by LGBTQ+ and BIPOC authors! In addition to the anthology, there are some very cool items along the camping theme included in the highest tier! The Kickstarter runs until December 31st, so […]

Poetry in Doorways in the Gloom

| November 28, 2023

There’s a part of me that never really left her goth phase, and sometimes, that comes out in my poetry. I included twelve of my dark poems in Doorways in the Gloom. They range from somewhat tongue-in-cheek on ghosts and death (like “15 Ghosts” or “Definitely Not Haunted”) to dark fantasy (“The Briar Princess”) to something […]

“Just Smile” in Doorways in the Gloom

| September 28, 2023

“Just Smile” is one of a handful of yokai stories I’ve written, generally during Drawlloween (an October art challenge that I use for writing prompts). I really love the different types of monsters that different cultures develop, because it gives a bit of insight into that culture’s fears that people might not otherwise talk about. […]

“Rory” in Doorways in the Gloom

| July 27, 2023

“Rory” is a very short horror story that I wrote for a Halloween contest one year. It won the contest, but weirdly, I was never able to find the right market for it. My horror stories tend to be very, very short or close to 5,000 words, and there are far more markets out there […]

“The House Provides” in Doorways in the Gloom

| May 25, 2023

“The House Provides” is a story I’ve been trying to write for years. It started out with a very solid and creepy image, and I have pages of notes on what I wanted to do with it. In the end, though, I wound up with a different story than I’d imagined, though it still has […]

On Kickstarter: Playlist of the Damned

| April 26, 2023

Horror + music? Sign me up! Weird Little Worlds launched their Kickstarter for Playlist of the Damned, a horror and music-related anthology, last week. It’s already filled with luminaries from the horror fiction community, and they’ll be opening to submissions at the beginning of May to fill the other slots in the anthology. In addition to […]

Nervous about Summer Camp? Don’t Read This Book

| April 11, 2023

If you’re a parent who’s nervous about sending your kids to their first overnight camp, or if you’re a kid who’s worried about going to an overnight camp, you definitely should not read Camp Haunt. If you’re not, however, and you enjoy spooky occurrences happening to people who aren’t you, you should check it out. It’s […]

“If the Light is Constant” in Doorways in the Gloom

| March 21, 2023

“If the Light is Constant” is a creepy little piece of microfiction that delves into perception and reality. Because it’s so brief, it leaves a bit to the imagination, which I find is often very effective for horror and other dark stories. The monsters you can’t quite see are far more terrifying than the ones […]