dawn.vogel | February 21, 2024
Addison Smith’s Darkling Dreams (Shacklebound Books, 2024) is a collection of drabbles–stories of exactly 100 words. The themes in these stories are often dark and sci-fi, but they show an incredible mastery of the drabble format in their breadth and scope of approaches to this tricky length. I was familiar with some of Smith’s drabbles through […]
dawn.vogel | February 20, 2024
“Consequence” is a drabble, exactly 100 words, in which a superhero is faced with a choice about her power. I can’t say more about it than that, without giving away too much of the story! “Consequence” originally appeared at Martian: The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy, but it’s also available in The Sidewalk Diverges.
dawn.vogel | February 13, 2024
It’s been a while since I posted about my steampunk stories, so I’ve got a bit of catching up to do! Back in December 2022, Factor Four Magazine published “Don’t Count Your Sprite Shards Before They’re Caged,” a flash fiction piece involving an airship, a captain, and her crew pursuing a dangerous energy source. While some […]
dawn.vogel | February 1, 2024
“The Experiment” is a very brief flash fiction piece in which a young girl conducts a magical experiment during the Dust Bowl era, much to her mother’s chagrin. I can’t say much more than that without giving too much of the story away. If you’re not familiar with the Dust Bowl era, you can check […]
dawn.vogel | January 30, 2024
While “Kleptoparasitism” isn’t the darkest of stories in Dead-Starred Futures, it is set in a potential dystopian future in which insects are a widespread protein source. It’s a microfiction story about how a visit to a location where insects are processed might go awry. If you like the idea of this story, check out Dead-Starred Futures […]
dawn.vogel | January 25, 2024
Have you had a chance to check out Brother’s Keeper yet? It’s a novelette set in the Cobalt City Universe, featuring the members of Triple Threat (Dulcamara, Terra Firma, and Ex Spiravit), along with Caterwaul, Gato Loco, and a new hero and villain! Gato Loco’s days as a vigilante are over. When a problem needs superheroes […]
dawn.vogel | January 23, 2024
“Trinkets or Treasures” falls more into the gaslamp fantasy area of steampunk–there’s no noted steampunk technology, and it’s more about magic than technology. But I included it in this collection because it fit well into the steampunk connection to people fighting against corrupt governmental systems. It’s a brief flash piece offering a bit on insight […]
dawn.vogel | January 18, 2024
My latest post-apocalyptic tales are in my collection Dead-Starred Futures. They include some dystopian and dark sci-fi stories on other worlds and some that take place on an Earth that looks very different after climate change and other things render the planet harder to make our home. In addition to this collection, I have two post-apocalyptic […]
dawn.vogel | January 16, 2024
Sometimes, you come up with a truly ridiculous concept for a story and then run with it. I don’t remember why I decided velociraptors could be genetically engineered to be sanitation engineers, but I decided to do it and play it like this was just a normal thing. Nothing weird about it at all. Then […]
dawn.vogel | January 11, 2024
“Memento Mori” is an unusual combination of the Old West and science fantasy. It’s a story about Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickok, and aliens, and it purports a history that isn’t even remotely true. But all that being said, it’s based on some real history, so it fits perfectly into Unfixed Timelines 3. This story was […]
