History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

My Recent Post-Apocalyptic Stories

| July 15, 2025

I’ve had a few new post-apocalyptic stories out since my last post on the topic! “Child’s Play,” published in Bullet Points in October 2024, involves interplanetary travel to a world in which survivors have taken up residence in a reinforced junkyard and an injured person on the run encounters some of the young residents of that […]

Four Years Since Intercity Illusions

| July 10, 2025

Intercity Illusions came out four years ago, collecting a variety of contemporary fantasy stories and poetry, a large number of which had been previously published. It’s fun to look back at that collection and recall all of the pieces that went into it. That includes the cover art, which was created from a multitude of […]

My Patreon!

| July 8, 2025

Do you back my Patreon? Backers get exciting perks! I’m currently putting together my next collection, and Patreon backers at $3 per month or more will get a free ebook copy of that collection when it’s out in September of this year. In addition, those backers will get future books that I put out through […]

My June 2025 Publications!

| July 1, 2025

I had two publications in June 2025, but one of them was a BIG one for me! My story, “Last Dam Standing,” appeared in the July/August 2025 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact, which is available now! Analog has long been on my list of markets to which I’d love to sell something, so I was […]

Weathering Youth: “Family Tree” and “A Trail of Apples”

| June 26, 2025

Because Weathering Youth is my biggest collection to date, I’m grouping the short stories and flash fiction stories in pairs for my posts, based on the way they fall in the collection. This lets me look at the connections between the stories and how I decided to arrange specific stories in the collection! “Family Tree” and […]

Using Folklore in Fiction

| June 24, 2025

My collection Old Legends and New Fables collects stories and poems that come from folklore, mythology, and other stories from a wide variety of cultures. While most of the pieces are related to older stories, there are a few that touch on more modern mythologies and folklore. For my pieces, I often drew from stories […]

My Historical Fiction Round-Up

| June 19, 2025

I’ve published quite a bit of historical fiction, so I thought it might be useful to have one post where you can find all of those collections and novellas! Unfixed Timelines – alternate history stories and essays about the real history Unfixed Timelines 2 – alternate history stories and essays about the real history Unfixed […]

“Fiddle in the Middle” in The Sidewalk Diverges

| June 17, 2025

“Fiddle in the Middle” is one of several stories I’ve written that was inspired by a bus ride. The two main characters were initially a pair of older women I saw on the bus at the same time–one all in white, and one all in black. Their juxtaposition stuck in my head, and I knew […]

The Hermit in A Tarot of Sorcery and Sages

| June 10, 2025

The Hermit tarot card represents solitude, introspection, and the seeking of internal wisdom. In A Tarot of Sorcery and Sages, this is represented by a haiku and a short story. The haiku, with the first line “a witch’s cottage,” deals primarily with the solitude part of the Hermit’s meaning. The short story, “Architect of the […]

My May 2025 Publications

| June 3, 2025

I had one new piece out in May, which was a drabble for the Reach Your Apex community drabbles! My story was “Tower Twister,” which is a drabble about towers around the world being relocated. It’s an incredibly quick read, and there are several other drabbles on the theme of “extraction” alongside of mine!