History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Kickstarter Recommendation: Enter Here: An Anthology of Portals

| April 16, 2025

If you like anthologies featuring stories by marginalized authors, check out Enter Here: An Anthology of Portals, which is currently on Kickstarter! The anthology will feature horror, fantasy, and sci-fi stories about doors opening. Four of the stories have already been selected, but there’s an open call to fill the remaining spots in the anthology! You […]

Coast to Coast Stars: Tales of Cobalt and Cerulean City

| April 15, 2025

My collection, Coast to Coast Stars, came out almost five years ago! It’s got five short stories set in Cobalt City and Cerulean City, with the former on the East Coast and the latter on the West Coast. Four of the stories are set in Cerulean City, but one of them, “Happily Never After,” features a […]

Internal Character Conflicts

| April 14, 2025

Last Monday, I talked about external character conflicts, and how those are the sort of “conflict” that many authors are thinking of when they talk about the subject. At the end of that post, I started to dip a little bit into internal character conflicts, which is what I’m talking about today. Most people have […]

Fun for Friday: Instagram Prompts from DefCon One

| April 11, 2025

It’s time for some more prompts from the DefCon One Instagram account! Write a piece about what happens when a fox encounters fuzzy socks. Write a piece about early flowers and late icicles. Write a piece about repairing a lamp with the wrong tool for the job. Follow the DefCon One Instagram account for writing prompts every […]

My Monthly Newsletter

| April 10, 2025

If you’d prefer a summary of my monthly writing and history research, along with book reviews, new releases, and more, you should subscribe to my newsletter! It comes out on a Monday near the middle of each month, and if you sign up, you also get a newsletter-exclusive short story, “Poisoned, Shot, Beaten, and Drowned,” […]

Kickstarter Recommendation: Neon Hemlock’s Sixth Novella Series

| April 9, 2025

Neon Hemlock is at it again with another novella series for 2025! This year’s Kickstarter will fund the publication of six novellas and a short story collection. There’s one historical fiction novella on tap, alongside several contemporary fantasy titles, which will carry into early 2026. I’ve enjoyed all of the Neon Hemlock novellas and collections […]

Brass and Glass Still Shines!

| April 8, 2025

My first novel, Brass and Glass: The Cask of Cranglimmering came out almost exactly eight years ago. Even though that’s quite some time ago, and I’ve accomplished a lot more writing goals since, I’m still proud of this novel! Though I don’t write as much steampunk any more, I enjoyed the worldbuilding and character development for […]

External Character Conflicts

| April 7, 2025

When most authors talk about the need for “conflict” to drive a story, they’re talking about external character conflicts. Most often, this is distilled down even further to a protagonist vs. an antagonist. And while that’s certainly one way to generate conflict to drive a story, it’s not the only option! External character conflicts can […]

Fun for Friday: Weird April History

| April 4, 2025

Time for more weird history to inspire your writing or maybe just pique your curiosity! This month, I’ve got the daily historical events from The History Place, which include the normal mix of several events and birthdays for each day of the month. In addition, Rest Less has a list of 28 events that took place […]

March 2025 Recap

| April 3, 2025

By the numbers: Stories out at the beginning of the month: 44* Acceptances received: 3 Rejections received: 17 (+1) Stories withdrawn: 0 Resubmissions: 19 New Submissions: 11 Stories out at the end of the month: 53 March was, predictably, a little slow on the submissions front, though I did get a bunch of pieces I […]