History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

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 […]

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 […]

Strength in A Tarot of Sorcery and Sages

| May 15, 2025

The Strength tarot card represents strength, as is to be expected, but also courage, persuasion, and patience. In A Tarot of Sorcery and Sages, this is represented by a haiku and a poem. The haiku, “rippling waters” (after the first line of the poem), being very brief, mainly deals with the “face value” of the […]

Completing Wonderbook (Sort of)

| May 12, 2025

I’ve been working through the writing exercises in the appendices of Wonderbook, after having gone through the chapters, but I’ve recently made the decision to not complete all of those exercises. I found the text of Wonderbook very useful to me, and I wound up highlighting and flagging a lot of material that I know I’ll […]

Have You Checked Out Sure Shot in Cobalt City: Homecoming?

| May 8, 2025

Have you checked out Sure Shot in Cobalt City: Homecoming, the second of my Sure Shot novellas, which are stand-alone, alternate history, 1950s noir mysteries with superheroes? A mysterious case, a murdered friend, and something sinister behind it all. Sarah Castile, former superhero turned private investigator, is on the case! When her old friend Lillian invites […]

Mermay and What If I’m a Merfolk?

| April 29, 2025

As we’re getting closer to May, I’m thinking about Mermay and my collection What If I’m a Merfolk? While not all of the pieces included in this collection were written during Mermay, a large amount of the poetry was, using the daily prompts as my inspiration for each piece. This let me write a bunch of […]

“How Far You’ll Go” and “Shrinking Violet” in Weathering Youth

| April 24, 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! “How Far You’ll […]