History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Fun for Friday: January 2024 Writing Prompts!

| December 29, 2023

Well, 2024 is just around the corner, so here we go with the first writing prompt post for the year! List 1 is Doodlewash’s January 2024 list. I added a link to “puffling” on this list because I only learned when I looked it up that it’s a baby puffin! How cute is that?! List […]

“Good to the Last Drop” in Dead-Starred Futures

| December 28, 2023

“Good to the Last Drop” is a dark sci-fi flash fiction piece that involved research into hydroponics and growing coffee, along with some other searches to pull together the plot. I can’t say much more about that research without giving it away, but suffice it to say that some people will do ANYTHING for their […]

Review of Rosalind’s Siblings

| December 27, 2023

Rosalind’s Siblings, edited by Bogi Takács (Atthis Arts, 2023), is an anthology of stories and poetry about scientists of marginalized genders, inspired by the erasure of Rosalind Franklin’s scientific discoveries and inspirations. The stories and poetry are wide ranging across genres and themes, though all with the central core of science and gender. Favorites of […]

“The Dame with the Boots” in The Sidewalk Diverges

| December 26, 2023

I can always remember where I got my weirdest ideas, and it’s almost always that someone misread, misheard, or misinterpreted something. “The Dame with the Boots” was definitely one of these cases. I think it was something about a pool shark, and for whatever reason, I pictured an actual shark playing pool, and somehow, that […]

Happy Holidays!

| December 25, 2023

Whether you celebrate Christmas or any of the myriad other winter holidays, here’s wishing you and yours the best winter holiday season! Back tomorrow with my usual content. Today is a day for watching movies and ordering delivery (and tipping our driver HEAVILY)!  

Fun for Friday: Unnatural Animals?

| December 22, 2023

Our local zoo does a Wild Lanterns event each winter with all sorts of “animal” displays. We haven’t been to the nighttime version this year, so we haven’t seen the animals lit up, but we see them on our daytime zoo walks. So this week, you’ve got a trio of “unnatural” animals to use in […]

“Nectar Shortage” in Conceits of Whim and Fancy

| December 21, 2023

Sometimes, a story starts with a writing prompt in a workshop, and then you wind up frantically typing the rest of the story in your hotel room after the workshop instead of whatever you had planned next. That’s how “Nectar Shortage” came about. It required a good deal of editing and reworking, but the bones […]

Review of Resurrections by Ada Hoffmann

| December 20, 2023

Resurrections by Ada Hoffmann (Apex Book Company, 2023) is a wonderful collection of speculative fiction stories and poetry, ranging through a variety of themes and lengths. Many of the pieces feature neurodiverse and/or queer characters, either explicitly or implicitly. The collection as a whole is brilliantly assembled, with many of the stories arranged in such […]

My Recent(-ish) Sci-Fi Stories and Collections!

| December 19, 2023

It’s been quite a while since I did a sci-fi roundup of things I’ve published. So here goes! My poem, “Portrait Day at Zapus Zone 9 Academy,” which imagines a school attended by multiple alien species, appeared in Star*Line in October 2022. My flash fiction piece, “Senchado in Microgravity,” was podcast at Manawaker Studios Flash […]

Gifts for Writers: 2023 Edition

| December 18, 2023

If you’re looking for last minute gift ideas for your favorite writer, check out this list from Cosmo! (No, it’s not Cosmo’s “traditional” fare.) The ideas range all over the place (and come in a variety of price ranges, though there are a lot of higher end items), but I absolutely love the waterproof shower […]