History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Have You Checked Out C. and M. Marsh, Girl Detectives?

| June 16, 2022

Have you checked out C. and M. Marsh, Girl Detectives yet? Chrysanthemum and Marigold Marsh live in a mechanical garden with their family. But when strange things happen, these two girl detectives are on the case! Follow them through their adventures with rose thieves, a misbehaving monkey, and someone sneaking around the garden at night! C. […]

Review of The Devil Walks in Blood by David Green

| June 15, 2022

The Devil Walks in Blood by David Green (Eerie River Publishing, 2021) combines the first two books in this supernatural private investigator series into a single volume, giving the reader a fuller picture of the fascinating world and characters. Nick Halloran died while on a case, but the intervention of a passerby made sure he […]

Sci-Fi Poetry in New Moons Under Which to Sleep

| June 14, 2022

New Moons Under Which to Sleep takes its name from a line in one of the poems included in the collection–specifically “Golden Migration (In Four Parts),” which is a golden shovel of Robert Frost’s “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.” “Golden Migration” is just one of the sci-fi poems in this collection. A few of […]

Learning Your Pace to Deal with Deadlines

| June 13, 2022

Recently, the NSFWords Thursday evening Twitter chat was about deadlines, and I gave a suggestion that I thought was worth expanding. The question was looking for advice for authors who struggle with deadlines, and I said “I wasn’t really good at setting and hitting deadlines until I had a good sense of how long it […]

Fun for Friday: Gardening Images

| June 10, 2022

I’ve got gardening on my mind, so here’s some interesting gardening images for this week’s Fun for Friday! The first image is some brilliant blue anemones with a sepia-toned background. The second images is a heart-shaped gap in a vivid green hedge, with an out of focus scene in the background. The third image is […]

May 2022 Publications

| June 9, 2022

In May, I had four pieces come out–two flash fiction, one microfiction, and one poem! My flash fiction piece, “Not Their Real Names,” appeared in The Arcanist. This story is a fun and quick high-tech heist story with some quite relatable characters and scenarios, though always with a twist! My microfiction piece, “I Need a […]

What I’m Reading, Watching, and Listening To, June 2022 Edition

| June 8, 2022

Reading: A mix of books for reviews, Stephen Fry’s poetry book, and marketing books. Lots to juggle and process! Watching: We burned through season 2 of Sanditon recently, as well as the first part of season 4 of Stranger Things. Listening to: New albums from Oneus and Psy, plus a new group on Psy’s label, TNX, who […]

“The Gift” in Intercity Illusions

| June 7, 2022

“The Gift” began as an attempt to write a non-Halloween story during Drawlloween and instead coming up with a winter holiday story. The prompt was the goblin market, so I came up with a single dad needing to get a gift for his young daughter, but paying for it in an unusual (not scary!) way. […]

Stephen Fry on Meter, Part 4

| June 6, 2022

As I mentioned previously, I’m working through Stephen Fry’s The Ode Less Travelled very slowly to absorb as much wisdom as I can about writing poetry. This week’s post covers Chapter 1, Section 4, on meters with three and four feet. Previous sections have focused on the many variants on two-footed meter, while this section is […]

Fun for Friday: Sample Writing Exercises

| June 3, 2022

There are all kinds of writing exercises available online, as well as those available in published books. In this case, one author of a couple of published books of writing exercises, Brian Kiteley, has put some sample exercises on his website. The first set are from his book The 3 A.M. Epiphany, while a second set […]