History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

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 […]

Review of The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

| 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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Denizens of Distant Realms for Valentine’s Day?

| January 28, 2025

My collection of fantasy short stories, Denizens of Distant Realms, might not seem like an obvious Valentine’s Day read, but it’s got a few stories within its pages that have a bit of romance and love within! “Stormbringer” involves a young man asking for his beloved’s hand in marriage, but before she can accept, there’s a […]

The Hierophant in A Tarot of Sorcery and Sages

| January 23, 2025

The Hierophant tarot card represents righteousness, sacredness, and hierarchical order. In A Tarot of Sorcery and Sages, this is represented by a haiku and a poem. The haiku, which begins with the line “it’s traditional,” is a bit of a protest against the hierarchical order and righteousness of this particular card, rendered in very few […]

Review of The Young Necromancer’s Guide to Ghosts by Vanessa Ricci-Thode

| 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 […]

“The Storyteller” and “To Choose a Name” in Weathering Youth

| January 21, 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 Storyteller” is […]