History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

My November 2023 Publications!

| December 7, 2023

I had four new pieces out in November of this year! My flash fiction piece, “The Train Station That Knows What You Need,” came out in Cafe Irreal. This story is super special to me because while we were in Japan back in May, we came VERY near to the train station in question. Sadly, […]

“Amanita” in Conceits of Whim and Fancy

| August 24, 2023

“Amanita” is an odd story on the border between reality and dreaming and, perhaps unsurprisingly, given the title, involves hallucination-inducing mushroom tea. (Amanita mushrooms can be poisonous, but they can also be hallucinatory. Or both.) It took a bit of work to get it to balance nicely between reality and dreaming, but I was pretty […]

“Mind the Gap” in The Sidewalk Diverges

| June 20, 2023

“Mind the Gap” was written to a prompt about voids, so I decided to combine the void of “the gap” with another void. If you’re not familiar with the phrase “Mind the Gap,” it’s an announcement made in London in Tube stations. It may be used elsewhere as well, but I know it from British […]

Poetry in Intercity Illusions

| November 29, 2022

Intercity Illusions has relatively few poems, compared to my other collections, and what’s more, most of them were previously published. But what’s represented here includes some of my favorite poems. “Secret Gladiolus” originally appeared in the WLYA 2019 Anthology, alongside a few other pieces by me. It imagines an unusual tattoo and how it changes […]

“Kinuyo-yo” in Intercity Illusions

| November 1, 2022

My story “Kinuyo-yo” started with a couple of images, which involved a brightly colored boat, a sense of motion, and not much evidence of a means of propulsion. It turned into a story about an unusual young girl living in a flooded city and figuring out ways to make one of her weird hobbies into […]

“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 The Kiminee Dream by Laura McHale Holland

| May 20, 2020

The Kiminee Dream by Laura McHale Holland (WORDforest, 2020) is a surreal and beautiful slipstream novel about the inhabitants of a very unusual small town in Illinois. The novel primarily follows the story of Carly Mae from her birth (a momentous occasion for the town) through her early teen years. Along the way, she exhibits […]

Review of Into Bones Like Oil by Kaaron Warren

| November 13, 2019

My latest book review is up at Mad Scientist Journal, for a surreal Gothic-styled novella called Into Bones Like Oil. This book reminded me about the best parts of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, but geared toward adult readers rather than younger readers. The book just came out yesterday, so you can grab it right away! […]

Slipstream Fiction

| August 26, 2019

I write a lot of short stories that fall loosely into the fantasy category, in that they have fantastical elements, but that might be more accurately described as “slipstream.” They’re the sort of story where something is clearly outside of a realistic experience, but that thing is both never explained and never questioned–it simply is. […]