History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Stephen Fry on Rhyme, Part 1

| August 29, 2022

As I mentioned previously, I’m working through Stephen Fry’s The Ode Less Travelled very slowly to absorb as much wisdom as I can about writing poetry. This week’s post covers Chapter 2, Section 1, on rhyme. Rhyme is something that I’ve always felt more comfortable with, especially compared to meter. And as Stephen Fry explains, that’s true […]

Camp Haunt Available for ebook Pre-Order!

| August 25, 2022

Six years ago, I wrote an epistolary novel about a haunted summer camp. Up until this point, the only place it has been available is on Channillo. But I always wanted this to be a book that folks could buy and own, so now it is! Camp Haunt is coming back! The book has undergone minor […]

Review of Hamlet, Prince of Robots by M. Darusha Wehm

| August 24, 2022

M. Darusha Wehm’s Hamlet, Prince of Robots (in potentia press, 2023) is an absolutely brilliant retelling of Hamlet that hits every note of Hamlet while updating the story to a science-fantasy future in which life-like robots are the technological battleground between the Danes and the Norwegians. In Wehm’s retelling, Hamlet is Hamlet 2.0, the second generation […]

“Dead Souls” in Avatar of Freya

| August 23, 2022

“Dead Souls” was a story that I wrote specifically for Cobalt City: Dragonstorm, a small anthology of stories about a dragon invasion of Cobalt City that the founder of the shared universe wanted to put together. But the roots of the story came from an earlier Cobalt City story I’d written, “Double Angel,” which introduced Evan […]

“The Toad Catcher’s Wife” in Conceits of Whim and Fancy

| August 18, 2022

“The Toad Catcher’s Wife” was another of my Drawlloween pieces, this one with a prompt of toad. And, as expected, the toad starts out with a witch, but there’s a bit of a twist on the curse placed on this particular toad. It took a bit of work to get this story just right, but […]

“A Modern Mary Shelley” in Doorways in the Gloom

| August 16, 2022

My story “A Modern Mary Shelley” was from a Drawlloween prompt of the author’s name. In this case, I wrote a second-person story from the perspective of a student entranced by the odd girl in their class, discovering more and more about her until the final conclusion. One of my favorite lines from this story: […]

“A Burrito is not a Sandwich” in Intercity Illusions

| August 9, 2022

The title of my story, “A Burrito is not a Sandwich,” was absolutely meant to be a reference to the ongoing battles over what is and what is not a sandwich. Personally, I subscribe to the cube theory, by which a burrito absolutely is not a sandwich. But what started for me as a story […]

Review of Daughter of Maat by Sandy Esene

| August 3, 2022

Sandy Esene’s book, Daughter of Maat (Blue Benu Press, 2018), is an intriguing look at a world in which the Egyptian gods have persisted throughout the centuries, and the ways in which their machinations and schemes impact the modern world. Alex Philothea, an archaeologist, is swept up into this world because she signed up for […]

Stephen Fry on Meter, Part 6

| August 1, 2022

As I mentioned previously, I’m working through Stephen Fry’s The Ode Less Travelled very slowly to absorb as much wisdom as I can about writing poetry. This week’s post covers Chapter 1, Section 6, on syllabic verse. This is a very short section, and interestingly for me, it basically describes a lot of the poetry that […]

Celtic Tales in Old Legends and New Fables

| July 28, 2022

Celtic tales worked their way into three of the poems of Old Legends and New Fables, specifically “A Man of the Earth,” “The Cromlech Glen, and “If You See the Black Dog.” I haven’t been able to retrace the details of the legend that inspired “A Man of the Earth,” but it has some bits in […]