History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

The Hanged Man in A Tarot of Sorcery and Sages

| September 18, 2025

The Hanged Man tarot card represents sacrifice, waiting, uncertainty, perspective, and contemplation. In A Tarot of Sorcery and Sages, this is represented by a haiku and a microfiction piece. The haiku, titled “Longing for your lips” after the first line, is a piece that reflects the “waiting” aspect of this card. The microfiction piece, “No […]

Recent Urban Fantasy Pieces

| September 16, 2025

Since my last post on my urban fantasy pieces, I’ve had a few pieces published! My flash fiction piece, “Propagating Rosa glacies,” appeared in ALOCASIA in March 2025. It involves a mad botanist, grief, and revenge. My short story, “One Person’s Nightmare,” appeared in the Rescuing Curiosity anthology from Inked in Gray in March 2025. Despite […]

Breadcrumbing Clues in Mystery Novels at WriteHive Online Conference

| September 8, 2025

During the WriteHive Online Conference in July, I was one of the panelists for “Breadcrumbing Clues in Mystery Novels.” This was a fantastic discussion with other authors who write mysteries, generally in conjunction with speculative fiction elements, like I do. We talked about the use of breadcrumbs to leave a trail for our readers to […]

Triple Threat in Brother’s Keeper

| September 2, 2025

Brother’s Keeper is a Cobalt City novella featuring the superhero trio known as Triple Threat. Their team name is a bit of a inside joke between Jeremy and I about “triple threats” (traditionally singing, dancing, and acting) that we sometimes use about three random (and not always useful) skills or characteristics. The members of Triple […]

Weathering Youth: “Things My Mothers Taught Me” and “Flapping”

| August 28, 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! “Things My Mothers Taught […]

Joyful Science Fiction

| August 26, 2025

I’ve published several collections of science fiction stories and poetry, ranging in topics and moods. Droplets from the Universe is where I collected the most joyful, humorous, and often hopeful stories of possible futures. This collection has a heavy concentration of poetry, and those poems include spacefaring people reminiscing about life on Earth, as well as […]

Cover Reveal for Chimerical Remembrance

| August 21, 2025

My next collection, Chimerical Remembrance: Tales of Contemporary Fantasy, is now available for pre-order, with a release date of September 23! The world is a strange place, and the stories and poetry within Chimerical Remembrance amplify that strangeness. From selkies and werewolves to witches and ghosts, exploring unusual places, botany, candy making, and more, you’ll […]

Justice in A Tarot of Sorcery and Sages

| August 19, 2025

The Justice tarot card represents balance, fairness, and truth, with an additional meaning of “maybe” in answer to yes or no questions.  In A Tarot of Sorcery and Sages, this is represented by two poems. The first poem, “Reading Wax,” looks at this “maybe” answer in presenting another sort of fortune telling in the form of […]

My Steampunk Collection, Wreathed in Steam

| August 14, 2025

I haven’t had any steampunk stories or poems published recently, so my most recent steampunk publication is Wreathed in Steam, which collects seventeen of my steampunk pieces – eight stories and nine poems – in one place! The stories in this collection are often shorter pieces, but there are two longer stories included, and one of […]

“Promises Made” in The Sidewalk Diverges

| August 12, 2025

“Promises Made” is a microfiction piece that combines a fairy promise and a modern staging of A Midsummer’s Night Dream. Though it’s quite short, it’s a story I enjoyed writing, as it makes good use of relying upon common knowledge as a shorthand to keep the word count low. After all, most readers will be […]