History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Sparx and Arrows and More in Cobalt City

| January 24, 2019

The majority of my Cobalt City writing has revolved around Kara Sparx, inventor extraordinaire, and various incarnations of the Huntsman. And most of those stories can be found in Sparx and Arrows, which I published in 2016. In 2019, I’ve got more in the works, first dealing with Gray Dawn, a sonic-based hero with a career as […]

Book Recommendations: Cobalt City

| September 19, 2018

Sometimes, I only wind up reading books because I’m editing them, and that’s the case with the books I’m talking about today. I’ve recently edited three books for DefCon One Publishing in the Cobalt City Universe, which I also write in. All of these books are re-releases, but I did a little bit of polishing […]

“Happily Never After” in The Colored Lens!

| August 23, 2018

The latest issue of The Colored Lens is out, and with it comes my story, “Happily Never After.” “Happily Never After” is a Cobalt City-adjacent story. It’s actually set in Cerulean City, on the West Coast, but some of the characters in it are from Cobalt City. This is a sort of prequel story for […]

If You Could Go Anywhere …

| May 15, 2018

One of the awesome things about Cobalt City is that it’s one of many worlds that’s a part of something called the Coil. There are infinite variations that can be found, with the right technology. My story, “Big in Japan,” explores one such alternate world that Kara Sparx somewhat accidentally stumbles into. She’s trying to […]

An Interview with Author Amanda Cherry

| February 28, 2018

Today, I’m interviewing Amanda Cherry, whose first book, Rites & Desires, will be out on March 20, 2018! It’s the first Cobalt City novel with a villain as the protagonist, and those of us in the Cobalt City family are super excited to have a fresh new voice in the universe. I asked Amanda to answer […]

Two Heads are Better

| January 11, 2018

What’s better than a superhero? A team-up! Any time you get two (or more) superheroes involved, you’ve got potential for more exciting happenings. And, likely, more exciting conflict. In Sparx and Arrows, Kara Sparx, who is very much not a team joiner, works with Huntsman to deal with a problem that they’ve both had to confront–robotic […]

Strange Paths to Super Heroes

| December 5, 2017

I did not come into writing about super heroes in the usual way. The first comic books I ever read were Archie and Richie Rich. These were comics that had belonged to the children of a friend of the family, and I was reading them in the 80s. The comics themselves were probably from the […]

Shared Universes

| July 27, 2017

I’ve set a number of my short stories in a place called Cobalt City, which is part of a shared universe. Right now, there are about half a dozen writers working in the shared universe; a bunch of us are also in a Cobalt City game, run by the creator of the universe (who also […]

Holiday Reading: Sparx & Arrows

| July 4, 2017

Looking for a little light reading for the Fourth of July? Sparx & Arrows, which is only 99 cents in ebook format, includes five fun stories of super heroics in Cobalt City. As an added bonus, two of the stories involve clockwork American presidents, which even makes it thematically appropriate for the Fourth of July! Great […]

“Nochevieja” and reprints available now!

| December 6, 2016

I’m a little behind in announcing some story releases! “Nochevieja,” which is the latest of my Huntsman stories in the Cobalt City Universe, appears in Cobalt City Christmas: Christmas Harder. This is another Huntsman story featuring the World War II incarnations of the Huntsman–Matthew Castile in the U.S. and Sarah Castile in Europe–but it’s set in […]