History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

My Historical Fiction Publications

| November 9, 2021

I write a lot of historical fiction, but almost all of it can be found in two collections: Unfixed Timelines and Unfixed Timelines 2. Both of these collections include both my stories and brief essays on the history that inspired them. Of course, I’ve got more historical fiction than is in these two slim volumes, so at some […]

A Series of Small Walls at Fantastic History!

| December 24, 2020

Catherine Schaff-Stump is hosting some of my articles about the real history behind my stories from Unfixed Timelines at her Fantastic History blog. The fifth post, and the last one of my guest posts for 2020, “A Series of Small Walls,” is up now! There’s an old Eddie Izzard bit about how archaeologists are always […]

Veiled Prophet Essay at Fantastic History!

| October 27, 2020

Catherine Schaff-Stump is hosting some of my articles about the real history behind my stories from Unfixed Timelines at her Fantastic History blog. The fourth post, “The Veiled Prophet,” is up now! One year at Christmas, while flipping through a book about St. Louis at my mom’s house with Jeremy, Mom and I had to […]

Pirates of the Mediterranean Essay at Fantastic History!

| September 24, 2020

Catherine Schaff-Stump is hosting some of my articles about the real history behind my stories from Unfixed Timelines at her Fantastic History blog. The third post, “Pirates of the Mediterranean,” is up now! I wrote my story “Salt in Our Veins” based on a call for submissions that necessitated a Mediterranean setting and fae of […]

The Nineteenth Kentucky Essay at Fantastic History!

| July 14, 2020

Catherine Schaff-Stump is hosting some of my articles about the real history behind my stories from Unfixed Timelines at her Fantastic History blog. The second post, “The 19th Kentucky,” is up now! The characters in my story, “The Glorious Dead,” were members of the 19th Kentucky, and one of those characters, James J. Ray, was […]

“Beer City” at Fantastic History!

| June 2, 2020

Catherine Schaff-Stump is hosting some of my articles about the real history behind my stories from Unfixed Timelines at her Fantastic History blog. The first post, “Beer City,” is up now! The history of the incident I portray in “Veli tis Artemidos” is one of the weirdest things I’ve ever researched. It involved mostly looking at […]

Unfixed Timelines: Veli tis Artemidos

| February 25, 2020

When I was choosing stories to include in the first volume of Unfixed Timelines, “Veli tis Artemidos” was at the top of my list. Not only do I love this story, I also love the history behind it, because it’s just so WEIRD! A body so riddled with bullets that the person responsible for the death […]

Zombies in Unfixed Timelines

| September 17, 2019

All of the stories in Unfixed Timelines have some sort of fantasy or science-fiction element to go along with the history. In “The Glorious Dead,” it’s zombies at Vicksburg. “The Glorious Dead” is one of the earliest stories I wrote, and I had a pretty solid idea for it from the beginning. Many years ago, […]

Nineteenth Century Pageantry in Unfixed Timelines

| July 30, 2019

In nineteenth-century America, pageantry became “a thing.” Many of the pageants had backgrounds in nativism and nationalism, and others delved into racist and classist origins as well. But in spite of (or perhaps because of) heir origins, they can be a fascinating look at American culture in that time period. They’re also FULL of all […]

The “What-Ifs?” of Alternate History and Historical Fantasy

| May 14, 2019

While I don’t often write the traditional sort of alternate history that posits a major change in the timestream (like a different outcome in a war or election), even within the alternate history and historical fantasy that I do write, there are often “what if” moments. The big difference is that my “what ifs” tend […]