History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

My November 2021 Publications

| December 9, 2021

I only had a couple of new stories out in November, far fewer than the abundance of October! My flash fiction piece, “There Is No ‘I’ in Heavenly Host,” came out in Friends Journal at the beginning of the month. This was for their special speculative fiction issue, and I got the idea for it […]

New Publications in October 2021

| November 4, 2021

October was a BUSY month for new publications for me, with stories out throughout the entire month, plus one poem! “Just Smile,” a flash piece, was my first publication of the month at The Dread Machine. It’s a yokai story, this one about the hari onago. If you’ve heard of this yokai before, you’ll understand […]

September 2021 Story and Poetry Releases

| October 7, 2021

I had two new pieces come out in September. First, my poem “The Turn of the Seasons” was published in Sylvia Magazine. This poem is a double acrostic poem–it’s easy to notice the letters spelling out summer and winter at the beginning of the lines, but the last letter of each line also spells out autumn […]

New Moons Under Which to Sleep Out Today!

| July 20, 2021

Today’s the day! My first ever book of science fiction stories, New Moons Under Which to Sleep, is out! This collection is an interesting one, as I don’t typically consider myself a sci-fi author. However, every story in this collection has been previously published! So I guess maybe I’ve written a few sci-fi stories after all! […]

New Stories and Poetry Out Recently!

| July 8, 2021

I’ve had two stories and one poem published recently, all of which are available online! The first is “Wishes without a Birthday Cake,” in Land Beyond the World. This story came out of a writing sprint class that I took with K. Tempest Bradford (which I talked about here). The story underwent some revisions to […]

“The Actor-Observer Effect” in Unfixed Timelines 2

| March 23, 2021

I work alongside archaeologists and anthropologists in my day job, so it’s no surprise that some of their terminology infects my brain, and thus my writing. I’ve also become keenly aware over the years about just how flawed a lot of early anthropological work was, with the practitioners inflicting their own understanding of how the […]

Review of Hollow Skulls and Other Stories by Samuel Marzioli

| January 6, 2021

Hollow Skulls and Other Stories by Samuel Marzioli (JournalStone, 2021) is a collection of thirteen horror and otherwise dark short stories. The majority of the stories are previously published stories, while a few are new to this collection. One of Marzioli’s greatest strengths, showcased in this collection, is a sense of creeping dread that pervades […]

Setting Goals for 2021!

| January 5, 2021

While 2020 didn’t go entirely as planned for many folks, even after a promising start, I’m hopeful that 2021 will be an improvement. True, things can still get worse, but I’m choosing hope in terms of creating my goals this year. One of my goals for 2020 was to become agented, but that didn’t pan […]

“Say a Little Spell” in Coast to Coast Stars

| December 15, 2020

A few of the stories in Coast to Coast Stars feature characters that I created for “Happily Never After” and wanted to explore further. “Say a Little Spell” takes magic-user Preethi back to her childhood, when she was still learning the limitations and requirements of the magic that she and her grandmother share. It’s a very […]

Short Stories or Novels: Which Should You Tackle First?

| November 30, 2020

If you’re sliding into the end of November with a brand new novel draft in hand after NaNoWriMo, congratulations! If you didn’t quite reach the end of your novel, that’s okay too! What’s critical in either cases is that you finish. And then? You revise. If you’re new to writing, you may find a lot […]