History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Every Hero Needs a Villain

| August 27, 2019

When you’re writing super hero stories, it’s also important to have good villains to send your heroes up against. In Sparx & Arrows, there are all sorts of villains for the heroes to face. When her father is down for the count, Eleanor Castile goes up against a mad scientist (engineer, really) who’s constructed killer steampunk […]

Lady Huntsman in Cobalt City

| April 30, 2019

One of the concepts I introduce in my stories in Sparx & Arrows is that of the Lady Huntsman. In the Cobalt City Universe, Huntsman is a legacy superhero–a mantle that’s been handed down almost exclusively in the male line of one of Cobalt City’s founding families. Note the almost. Whenever I hear a qualifier like that, […]

Sparx and Arrows and More in Cobalt City

| January 24, 2019

The majority of my Cobalt City writing has revolved around Kara Sparx, inventor extraordinaire, and various incarnations of the Huntsman. And most of those stories can be found in Sparx and Arrows, which I published in 2016. In 2019, I’ve got more in the works, first dealing with Gray Dawn, a sonic-based hero with a career as […]

Winter Reads: Sparx & Arrows

| November 27, 2018

If you’re looking for some exciting short stories to read as the days and night get colder and longer in the Northern Hemisphere, why not check out Sparx & Arrows? It’s got three stories featuring three different incarnations of the Huntsman and three stories featuring Kara Sparx (the trick is that one story features both!). […]

If You Could Go Anywhere …

| May 15, 2018

One of the awesome things about Cobalt City is that it’s one of many worlds that’s a part of something called the Coil. There are infinite variations that can be found, with the right technology. My story, “Big in Japan,” explores one such alternate world that Kara Sparx somewhat accidentally stumbles into. She’s trying to […]

Robotic Former Presidents

| February 19, 2018

It’s President’s Day today, and what better way to celebrate than to read some stories featuring robotic former presidents? Granted, they’re not the protagonists in this stories, but they make great antagonists for the Huntsman (in two eras) and Kara Sparx to protect Cobalt City from! You can check out “Daddy’s Little Girl” and “Blast […]

Two Heads are Better

| January 11, 2018

What’s better than a superhero? A team-up! Any time you get two (or more) superheroes involved, you’ve got potential for more exciting happenings. And, likely, more exciting conflict. In Sparx and Arrows, Kara Sparx, who is very much not a team joiner, works with Huntsman to deal with a problem that they’ve both had to confront–robotic […]

Elevator Pitching a Book

| August 15, 2017

Since I was at Spocon this past weekend, speaking on panels, I had a few opportunities to tell people about my books. I only had two books with me this weekend–Sparx and Arrows and Brass and Glass. Because Sparx and Arrows is a small book of short stories, it’s pretty easy to describe as “short stories about […]

Shared Universes

| July 27, 2017

I’ve set a number of my short stories in a place called Cobalt City, which is part of a shared universe. Right now, there are about half a dozen writers working in the shared universe; a bunch of us are also in a Cobalt City game, run by the creator of the universe (who also […]

Holiday Reading: Sparx & Arrows

| July 4, 2017

Looking for a little light reading for the Fourth of July? Sparx & Arrows, which is only 99 cents in ebook format, includes five fun stories of super heroics in Cobalt City. As an added bonus, two of the stories involve clockwork American presidents, which even makes it thematically appropriate for the Fourth of July! Great […]