dawn.vogel | February 19, 2025
At some point around 2009 or 2010, my then-boyfriend (now husband) introduced me to Katamari Damacy. This seemed like a video game I could manage–all you had to do was roll a ball around the screen and let it collect random things. However. (There’s always a however.) Eventually, I got to a level where you’re rolling […]
dawn.vogel | February 12, 2025
The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune (Tor, 2020) is a lovely novel of bureaucracy, music, and found family. With a marvelous cast of characters and occasionally hilarious side comments, it weaves a cozy tale with secrets and a reasonable amount of peril. Linus Baker is a caseworker with the Department in Charge […]
dawn.vogel | January 22, 2025
Vanessa Ricci-Thode’s The Young Necromancer’s Guide to Ghosts (2024) is a young adult novel set within her Fireborn universe, filled with dragons and magic. It’s a charming and sweet look at sisters, found family, grief and loss, and necromancy! Lusi and Marsi lost their mother when Lusi was born, and though their father remarried, he has […]
dawn.vogel | January 15, 2025
Jeremy curates lists of YouTube videos for me, which include trailers that he thinks I might be interested in. Which means that when the trailer for the Fallout TV series came out, he put that on the list. I watched it with some confusion, because I didn’t remember any wild west zombies, and the weapons didn’t […]
dawn.vogel | January 1, 2025
Cristina Jurado’s ChloroPhilia (originally published in Spanish as CloroFilia in 2017; English edition, Apex Book Company, 2025) is a dystopian novella with elements of body and post-apocalyptic horror, with a strong focus on the characters. The novella opens with a pair of prologue chapters that introduce the reader to the situation in the world and an unnamed […]
dawn.vogel | December 18, 2024
One of my favorite parts about the Saints Row franchise is the variety of radio stations. My favorites of those are often based on them playing songs I know, though there are also songs I have come to know and love from Jeremy playing through the games multiple times. Of course, the radio stations change from […]
dawn.vogel | December 11, 2024
LH Moore’s Breath of Life (Apex Book Company, 2024) is a gorgeous collection of Black-centered stories and poetry, with a substantial amount of horror and historical fiction, often in the same story! Most of my favorite stories were, of course, the historical ones. “A Little Not Music,” set in 1939 in Washington, D.C., is a dark […]
dawn.vogel | November 27, 2024
My friend Darren just sent me a tarot deck he really loves, and I now also love it. It’s the Fyodor Pavlov Tarot, which approaches the cards with a queer and gender fluid outlook. The end result is stunning artwork (definitely not safe for work) that offers a fresh approach to card interpretations and meanings, […]
dawn.vogel | November 20, 2024
Jamie Lackey’s Toil and Trouble (2024) is a delightful retelling of Pride and Prejudice that integrates witchcraft and LGBTQ+ characters seamlessly into the Regency setting, offering a fresh take on the Austen classic. The book opens with Mrs. Bennet making a deal with a witch–in exchange for her daughters Lizzie and Mary, her fifth child will be […]
dawn.vogel | November 13, 2024
So there I am, chilling out, when I get a message from one of my friends. Their sitter is ill. Is there any chance I can come over and kid-sit for them that night? My schedule was clear, so off I went! The kids in question are three very smart, very nerdy kids. The eldest was […]
