History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Fun for Friday: Weird January History

| January 3, 2025

Time for more weird history to inspire your writing or maybe just pique your curiosity! Historic UK has a great list of historical events, including that one that changed the beginning of the year from my birthday to January 1st! Just think, we could have been celebrating my birthday right at the beginning of the […]

Review of ChloroPhilia by Cristina Jurado

| January 1, 2025

Cristina Jurado’s ChloroPhilia (originally published in Spanish as CloroFilia in 2017; English edition, Apex Book Company, 2025) is a dystopian novella with elements of body and post-apocalyptic horror, with a strong focus on the characters. The novella opens with a pair of prologue chapters that introduce the reader to the situation in the world and an unnamed […]

Review of Breath of Life by LH Moore

| December 11, 2024

LH Moore’s Breath of Life (Apex Book Company, 2024) is a gorgeous collection of Black-centered stories and poetry, with a substantial amount of horror and historical fiction, often in the same story! Most of my favorite stories were, of course, the historical ones. “A Little Not Music,” set in 1939 in Washington, D.C., is a dark […]

Spooky Reads for October: Camp Haunt

| October 1, 2024

If you’re looking for a spooky read for this October, check out my young adult epistolary novella, Camp Haunt. This book tells the story of a summer camp through found documents, including camp administrative materials, diaries, letters, and more. It’s a creepy read that developed out of my fond memories of Girl Scout summer camp, with […]

WriteHive Online Conference 2024: Fear Factors: A Horror Genre Master Class

| September 2, 2024

Now that the 2024 WriteHive Online Conference panels are available on their YouTube channel, I’m catching up on the ones I missed during the conference itself and sharing some of the things I gleaned from them here! I’ve caught up on a number of genre-specific panels, including Fear Factor: A Horror Genre Master Class. Horror […]

Kickstarter Recommendation: Bitter Become the Fields

| March 27, 2024

Horns & Rattles Press is currently funding their Bitter Become the Fields anthology, which is a horror anthology filled with stories featuring flora and fungi! The list of authors is pretty exciting, including some recent names in the horror genre and other names who are sure to hold that status in the future! The Kickstarter for Bitter […]

Review of The Hitherto Secret Experiments of Marie Curie

| February 28, 2024

The Hitherto Secret Experiments of Marie Curie, edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt and Henry Herz (Blackstone Publishing, 2023), is a speculative fiction anthology that blends historical fact about Marie Curie’s life as a young woman and fantastical, science fiction, and horror elements to present new and intriguing experiments a young Marie might have undertaken. Most […]

Kickstarter Recommendation: In the Neck of the Woods

| December 13, 2023

If you like spooky stories about camping, check out the Kickstarter for In the Neck of the Woods, an anthology of camping-themed horror stories by LGBTQ+ and BIPOC authors! In addition to the anthology, there are some very cool items along the camping theme included in the highest tier! The Kickstarter runs until December 31st, so […]

Poetry in Doorways in the Gloom

| November 28, 2023

There’s a part of me that never really left her goth phase, and sometimes, that comes out in my poetry. I included twelve of my dark poems in Doorways in the Gloom. They range from somewhat tongue-in-cheek on ghosts and death (like “15 Ghosts” or “Definitely Not Haunted”) to dark fantasy (“The Briar Princess”) to something […]

“Just Smile” in Doorways in the Gloom

| September 28, 2023

“Just Smile” is one of a handful of yokai stories I’ve written, generally during Drawlloween (an October art challenge that I use for writing prompts). I really love the different types of monsters that different cultures develop, because it gives a bit of insight into that culture’s fears that people might not otherwise talk about. […]