History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

My Flights of Foundry 2025 Recap!

| October 6, 2025

This year at Flights of Foundry, I was a workshop presenter, moderator, panelist, poetry challenge co-leader, and support staff. It was a ton of work but also, as always, a ton of fun! On Friday, I kicked off the poetry challenge with a co-working and sharing session. Then I led my Intro to Speculative Poetry […]

Resources for Historical Research for Non-Historians

| August 18, 2025

At Worldcon on Friday, I gave an Academic track presentation on “Historical Research for Non-Historians,” with an eye to folks writing historical fiction of all stripes, whether that be alternate history or fantastical history or something else! Because I’ve got training as a historian, I tend to do a lot of research for my historical […]

WriteHive Online Conference 2025: LGBTQ+ History in Publishing

| August 11, 2025

During the WriteHive Online Conference a few weekends ago, I was the moderator for a panel on LGBTQ+ History in Publishing. This was a fantastic panel in which the panelists talked about the history of queer authors and publishers, as well as publication of books with queer characters. Our panel description read: “While recent years […]

My Worldcon Schedule!

| August 4, 2025

Worldcon is coming up August 13-17, and it’s in Seattle this year! As such, I’ll be in attendance on most of the days and involved in a variety of events! Here are my scheduled events: Reading from Sure Shot in Cobalt City: Homecoming (Wednesday, August 13, 1:30-2:00 p.m., Room 428) Historical Research for Non-Historians (Academic […]

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 […]

Rounding Up Some Panels I’ve Been On

| May 19, 2025

As I’ve been working on panel transcriptions and recordings recently, I thought it might be nice to have a round-up post that lists the panels I’ve been on that you can watch online! “Historians on History in Fiction” is from the 2024 WriteHive conference, where several historians talked about history in our writing, ways to […]

Flights of Foundry 2024 Quick Recap, Day 2 (first half)

| October 14, 2024

Catherine Tavares posted her recap of what she attended at Flights of Foundry immediately after the convention. I took a little longer to collect some of my thoughts and notes, but I hope you enjoy! (You can find my day 1 recap here.) I’m going to have to do mine in chunks by day, so […]

Researching Nineteenth Century Diving for Brass and Glass 3

| September 12, 2024

When I was writing Brass and Glass 3: The Boiling Sea, I knew at least some of my characters were going to need to dive into that Boiling Sea in order to find the treasure they were looking for. But my setting is steampunk and roughly analogous to the nineteenth century in terms of technological influences. […]

Guest Post: Queering the Regency by Natania Barron

| August 12, 2024

Today I have a guest post from Natania Barron, author of Netherford Hall, which she summarizes as “Pride and Prejudice and Witches,” but which also is a sapphic Regency-era tale! So I asked Natania to talk a little about queer folks (particularly women) during the Regency for her guest post today! ~ Queering the Regency As […]

Historians on History at WriteHive Online Conference

| July 8, 2024

Another panel I was on at the WriteHive Online Conference was Historians on History. With a couple of other historians, archivists, and writers of historical fiction, we talked about doing research for our historical stories and how to avoid certain pitfalls of research rabbit holes (not always successful) and how to deal with difficult history […]