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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

“Easy as a Bag of Cookies” in The Sidewalk Diverges

| December 17, 2024

“Easy as a Bag of Cookies” in The Sidewalk Diverges was inspired by a meme about Greek gods in the modern day. While I can’t remember the entirety of the meme, it involved Cerberus in some way. So I combined Cerberus, Hades, and Persephone into a contemporary story where Cerberus escaped his leash and found a […]

The Emperor in A Tarot of Sorcery and Sages

| December 10, 2024

The Emperor tarot card represents authority, power, and stability, all with a bit of a patriarchal vibe (traditionally). In A Tarot of Sorcery and Sages, this is represented by a haiku and a poem. For both of my Emperor pieces, I decided to diverge from the traditional patriarchal vibe. The haiku, “Greetings from the Sisterhood,” envisions […]

My 2024 Publications for Awards Consideration

| December 4, 2024

It’s the time of year when folks start posting lists of their stories and books from the past year that are eligible for award nominations, like the Nebulas, Hugos, and more. I’m including word count, because different awards require different word counts, and it’s easy for me to grab those so you don’t have to […]

My November 2024 Publications

| December 3, 2024

I had two new pieces out in November this year: a flash fiction story and a poem. My flash fiction piece was “We Dream in Color,” a post-apocalyptic story with queer characters, in Toad Shade Zine. This one came out of a one-hour flash fiction writing challenge and was inspired by an image of a […]

Dead-Starred Futures Poems

| November 28, 2024

My collection of dystopian science-fiction, Dead-Starred Futures, includes seventeen poems, which range across time and space. There are a couple of poems that look at the climate change crisis on Earth, including “Elemental Crisis” and “Temperance Lost”. There are many more poems that look at science-fictional future wars (like “Last Stand” and “Under Siege”) or colonization […]

Eight Plus Years of The Trouble with the Tick-Tock Tabby

| November 26, 2024

The Trouble with the Tick-Tock Tabby was one of the first things I self-published, back in 2016. At that point, I’d been writing for publication for more than seven years. And since 2016 was eight years ago (!), that means I’ve been writing for fifteen years, which is a wild thing to think about. But […]