History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Sure Shot in Cobalt City: Homecoming Out Today!

| March 11, 2025

Sure Shot in Cobalt City: Homecoming is out today! This is the second installment in my alternate 1950s, superhero, noir mystery series, but each book is a stand-alone story that doesn’t require knowledge of the other books! This book has Sarah Castile returning to her hometown of Cobalt City for a case … or two! […]

February 2025 Stories

| March 4, 2025

I had two new stories out in or around February. (One was technically January, but I didn’t realize it was out until after my January story post!) As I mentioned previously, I had four stories selected for the Hawthorn & Ash anthology, and the first of those has appeared on the Iron Faerie Publishing website. “Glaistig” […]

“The Sky is Falling” and “Outrageous Fortune” in Weathering Youth

| February 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! The third […]

My Recent Publications for Young Readers

| February 25, 2025

I’ve published a few new pieces for young readers in the months since my last post on the subject. The main one is “The Storyteller,” which appeared in Bikes, The Universe, and Everything from Microcosm Press. Though the protagonist is a young adult, the story is appropriate for kids as well. “The Storyteller” is also in […]

The Lovers in A Tarot of Sorcery and Sages

| February 20, 2025

The Lovers tarot card represents relationships, of course, but also harmony and choices. In A Tarot of Sorcery and Sages, this is represented by a flash fiction piece and a haiku. The flash fiction piece, “The Truth of Their Tunes,” revolves around heartsongs and a witch who can understand them. The prompt for this story was […]

“Little T, Big T” in The Sidewalk Diverges

| February 18, 2025

My flash fiction piece “Little T, Big T” was originally written as a Drawlloween story with a prompt of “ghost,” but it turned into a cute, sweet story about sisters. I’m not sure where I got a secondary prompt for this, but somehow, I got it in my head to write a story about a […]

Cover Reveal for Sure Shot in Cobalt City: Homecoming!

| February 11, 2025

My next book, Sure Shot in Cobalt City: Homecoming, will be out a month from today. It’s a sequel of sorts to Sure Shot in Las Capas: The Case of the Absent Star, but the books can be read in any order and don’t require you to read them both to understand either one. A […]

January 2025 Publications

| February 4, 2025

Right at the end of January, Holly & Broom (Hawthorn & Ash vol. 6) came out with four of my drabbles in it. One of those stories, “Glaistig,” is available on the Iron Fairie Publishing website as of yesterday, with the other three to come. The other three drabbles are “Witch Knight,” “Tarot Estoterica: The Black […]

New Years’ Resolution to Write a Novel? Check Out An (Un)helpful Guide!

| January 30, 2025

If you’ve given yourself a New Years’ resolution to write a novel, my non-fiction, tongue-in-cheek, book of novel writing advice, An (Un)helpful Guide to Writing a Novel, might be helpful! Most books about writing a novel give you advice about plot and structure and stakes and more. This isn’t most books. Within the pages of An […]

Watch Me Read “Best of Both Worlds”

| January 29, 2025

A couple of weeks ago, I read my short story, “Best of Both Worlds,” which originally appeared in Dangerous Waters, for Story Hour. This was my third appearance at Story Hour, which started in 2020 to give authors a venue to read online when we couldn’t read in person. But they’ve kept going even after […]