History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

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!  

Sci-Fi Reads in New Moons Under Which to Sleep

| May 29, 2025

New Moons Under Which to Sleep, is one of my shorter collections, containing six short stories, three flash fiction pieces, and six poems. And though it’s quite short, it has a few pieces in it that I absolutely loved writing. The inspirations for the pieces are widely varied and include a repurposed limestone mine in […]

“I Was a Slacker Teenage Witch” and “Cat’s Got Your Tongue” in Weathering Youth!

| May 27, 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! “I Was a […]

Exploring a Character Through Avatar of Freya

| May 22, 2025

All of the stories in Avatar of Freya include the titular character, aka Friday Jones / Dulcamara. Friday was originally a character I played in a Cobalt City tabletop game, and some of the characters she teams up with in Avatar of Freya were also characters in the game, played by some of my friends. While I […]

My Latest Sci-Fi Publications

| May 20, 2025

Since my last post about sci-fi publications, I’ve had a couple of poems and a short story published, plus some self-published pieces in Weathering Youth! My poem “An Alphabet of Forty-Two,” which is about language in a sci-fi setting where different species are in contact with one another, appeared in the October 2024 issue of […]