History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Review of Flower and Thorn by Rati Mehrotra

| June 7, 2023

Flower and Thorn by Rati Mehrotra (MacMillan, 2023) is an absolutely gorgeous young adult fantasy novel set in an alternate sixteenth century India at the beginning of European colonization. With wonderful characters and sensory details, this book is sure to keep you reading long after you should have gone to bed! Irinya is the only […]

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 […]

Review of The Red Palace by June Hur

| February 8, 2023

The Red Palace (Feiwel and Friends, 2022) is the second of June Hur’s historical fiction young adult mystery novels set in Korea that I have read and enjoyed. This book, set in the mid-eighteenth century, again features wonderful characters and a great mystery. And while you might guess the culprit earlier in this book than […]

Reading about Camp as a Hope for Warmer Days?

| January 19, 2023

Have you ever noticed that when you read a book describing the weather, sometimes you feel like the weather outside must match what you’ve been reading about? If this is the case for you, and you’re tired of the cold, what about checking out a book about a summer camp? Maybe that can bring some […]

Have You Checked Out Camp Haunt?

| November 22, 2022

Sometimes, the best reviews for a book you can get are the ones that aren’t necessarily posted online. My mom reads all of my books, and she sent me a message a few days after finishing Camp Haunt. She said she really wanted to read it to see what I remembered about camp, and she […]

Spooky Stories and Novella

| October 25, 2022

If you’re looking for some spooky Halloween reads, I’ve got a few options available! Volatile Figments is a collection of six dark contemporary fantasy short stories in which the protagonists deal with the supernatural. They generally tend toward dark contemporary fantasy rather than horror, so they’re spooky without being terrifying. Doorways in the Gloom is […]

September 2022 Publications

| October 6, 2022

For the first time in a long while, I don’t have any new stories or poems out in the past month! But not to fear, there will be more new pieces coming soon. So in the meantime, I did have a new book out this month: Camp Haunt. Which is actually a re-release of sorts, since […]

Review of Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen and Caytee by Suzanna Kanto

| October 5, 2022

I grabbed a Kindle copy of Caytee by Susanna Kanto (Caudex Books, 2022) recently because it was touted as a modern retelling of Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. As I’d wanted to read Northanger Abbey for a while, but often find Jane Austen’s writing style a little difficult to dig into, I thought this would be a […]

Camp Haunt Out Today!

| September 27, 2022

My young adult epistolary horror novella, Camp Haunt, is out today, in print and ebook for the first time! Camp Haunt started out as a serial epistolary novel on Channillo, which I wrote in 2016 and just into the beginning of 2017. At one point, I thought I might completely rewrite it as a novella […]

Camp Haunt Available for ebook Pre-Order!

| August 25, 2022

Six years ago, I wrote an epistolary novel about a haunted summer camp. Up until this point, the only place it has been available is on Channillo. But I always wanted this to be a book that folks could buy and own, so now it is! Camp Haunt is coming back! The book has undergone minor […]