History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

“Penny White and the Clockwork Star” and “Someone Else” in Weathering Youth

| July 30, 2026

Because Weathering Youth is my biggest collection to date, I’m grouping the short stories and flash fiction stories in pairs for my posts, based on the way they fall in the collection. This lets me look at the connections between the stories and how I decided to arrange specific stories in the collection! “Penny White and […]

Scenes from a Quiet Apocalypse when You Feel Like You’re in the Apocalypse

| July 9, 2020

When you’re in the midst of an uncertain time, it can be difficult to read some types of books. Scenes from a Quiet Apocalypse may best fit into the category of “post-apocalyptic,” but I like to think of it as an apocalypse with a bit of hope–a little taste of hopepunk, if you will. Sure, the […]

Short Story Recommendation: Deacon Carter’s Last Dime

| April 3, 2019

One of the really wonderful things about being an author is making friend with other authors, and getting to read their stuff. My friend Nathan Crowder writes amazing stuff, and he’s just republished one of my all time favorite stories of his, “Deacon Carter’s Last Dime.” It originally appeared in Crossed Genres Magazine years ago, and […]

Punk in Science Fiction and Fantasy

| April 16, 2018

At Norwescon, I spoke on a panel about punk in science fiction and fantasy. At first, I was pretty sure that I didn’t have very much to say on the subject, especially in comparison to my co-panelists. But it wound up being a great conversation about punk music, the punk aesthetic, and the many, many […]