History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Researching the Essays for Unfixed Timelines 2

| July 24, 2025

When I published the first volume of Unfixed Timelines, I spent a day visiting libraries in the Seattle area to find good sources to cite in the essays related to each of those stories. I had plans to do the same for Unfixed Timelines 2, but the Saturday I’d set aside for that fell in late March […]

My Historical Fiction Round-Up

| June 19, 2025

I’ve published quite a bit of historical fiction, so I thought it might be useful to have one post where you can find all of those collections and novellas! Unfixed Timelines – alternate history stories and essays about the real history Unfixed Timelines 2 – alternate history stories and essays about the real history Unfixed […]

My Historical Fiction from Last Year

| September 19, 2024

I haven’t posted a summary of my historical fiction for a while, in part because there hasn’t been much to post. But last October, I released Unfixed Timelines 3 and Unfixed Timelines Omnibus. The former includes seven stories and one poem, several of which were previously published, along with essays about the history I altered […]

Review of The Crane Moon Cycle by J.C. Snow

| August 16, 2023

The Crane Moon Cycle by J.C. Snow (2023) is a wonderful epic fantasy novel duology filled with queer characters, slow-burn romance, and a deep historical world. Aili and Nora are preparing to ship out as military nurses, but before they do, they take opportunities to meet other queer women. In doing so, Aili meets an […]

Review of Flower and Thorn by Rati Mehrotra

| June 7, 2023

Flower and Thorn by Rati Mehrotra (MacMillan, 2023) is an absolutely gorgeous young adult fantasy novel set in an alternate sixteenth century India at the beginning of European colonization. With wonderful characters and sensory details, this book is sure to keep you reading long after you should have gone to bed! Irinya is the only […]

My Historical Fiction Publications, New, Old, and Coming This Year!

| January 24, 2023

I’ve got one recent historical fiction publication out recently. My story “Memento Mori” appeared in Queer Weird West Tales and tells a potential story about a weird bit of trivia related to Calamity Jane! I’ve published a lot of my fantastical history stories in Unfixed Timelines and Unfixed Timelines 2. Later this year, I plan to publish the third […]

Review of Weave the Lightning by Corry L. Lee

| September 14, 2022

Corry L. Lee’s Weave the Lightning (Solaris, 2020) is a gorgeous beginning to a series about dangerous magic, totalitarian government, and finding love in spite of the odds. With many parallels to Russian and Eastern European countries and governments in the early twentieth century, the story feels like an alternate history-inspired fantasy world. The main characters, […]

Reading Alternate History

| June 30, 2022

My published alternate history (which I prefer to call fantastical history) can primarily be found in two collections: Unfixed Timelines and Unfixed Timelines 2. Both of these collections include stories along with brief essays on the history that inspired them. I’ve got plans for an eventual third volume in this series, and at that point, I plan […]

Review of Lost in the Archives by E. Saxey

| May 11, 2022

Lost in the Archives by E. Saxey (Lethe Press, 2022) is a collection of the author’s short stories, many of which have been previously published. The stories include several in historic settings with speculative elements, as well as modern and future settings, all rendered with exquisite characterization and inventive plot elements. Some of the stories […]

“All That Transpires under the Night Sky” in Unfixed Timelines 2

| May 20, 2021

The backstory behind “All That Transpires under the Night Sky” is an odd one. I had started the story several years before I finished it. For whatever reason, it wasn’t working, and I shoved it into a folder of things to work on some other time. This proved effective when I was later looking for […]