History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Do You Know a Kid Who Loves Spiders?

| December 31, 2024

We met up with a former co-worker of Jeremy and her young daughter at one point, and somehow got on the topic of my writing. Because I’m really good at talking to kids, I wound up addressing most of my comments to the daughter, whose eyes got bigger and bigger as I told her about […]

Completing Millions of Suns

| December 30, 2024

Over the past several months, I’ve been working my way through Millions of Suns: On Writing and Life by Sharon Fagan McDermott and M. C. Benner Dixon. While it’s very different from the last craft book that I worked through, it includes writing exercises alongside the twelve chapters, making it a great read for authors who […]

Fun for Friday: January 2025 Writing Prompts!

| December 27, 2024

It’s time for the first writing prompts for 2025! This month, I took the prompts from three different art challenges. The first column is the Kick in the Creatives January art prompt list, with some of the prompts shortened slightly and Americanized. The second column is from Blenduary 2025, which is normally an art challenge using […]

Have You Checked Out Weathering Youth?

| December 26, 2024

Have you checked out my latest collection, Weathering Youth? It’s got a bunch of stories and poetry featuring younger characters and other characters with a more youthful outlook, regardless of age. In worlds with dragons, starships, and monsters, adults aren’t the only people. Children, teenagers, and young adults are sometimes the heroes of the story […]

What I’ve Been Reading, Watching, and Listening To, December 2024 Edition

| December 25, 2024

Reading: Books to review, and finishing up Millions of Suns. I also dipped back into The Anti-Planner by Dani Donovan to find some exercises to improve my motivation. Watching: We finished Agatha All Along (which was amazing, start to finish), but other than that, we’ve mostly been watching K-pop stuff. We are going to see Nosferatu later today as […]

The Heroes We Need

| December 24, 2024

Heroes of Necessity includes four of my short stories about women with minimal superpowers helping out the world on a small scale. Though their powers aren’t the big, flashy kind, they are the ones those women need to solve the problems they face. “Fortissimo Possibile” features a mom with minor powers dealing with a teen […]

WriteHive Online Conference 2024: Marketing Tactics for the Self-Published Author

| December 23, 2024

Now that the 2024 WriteHive Online Conference panels are available on their YouTube channel, I’m catching up on the ones I missed during the conference itself and sharing some of the things I gleaned from them here! “Marketing Tactics for the Self-Published Author” was a fantastic panel filled with great information for self-published authors who […]

Fun for Friday: Winter Etymology

| December 20, 2024

If you’ve ever wondered about the etymology of the word “winter,” look no further! This article at Dictionary.com explains it all! As a bonus, you can also read about the origin of December, which may be better known among some. But there are also some additional names that the month went by before it reached […]

My Latest Urban Fantasy Pieces

| December 19, 2024

I have a handful of new urban or contemporary fantasy pieces out since my last post about that genre! My poem, “Bad Luck for the Fates,” which appeared in Asimov’s in April 2024, has a somewhat mythological basis in the Fates, but the setting is decidedly contemporary. There are a couple of contemporary fantasy pieces hiding […]

The Non-Player Review of Video Games: Saints Row Franchise Radio Stations

| December 18, 2024

One of my favorite parts about the Saints Row franchise is the variety of radio stations. My favorites of those are often based on them playing songs I know, though there are also songs I have come to know and love from Jeremy playing through the games multiple times. Of course, the radio stations change from […]