History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Fun Steampunk Reads to Pass the Time

| March 19, 2020

If you’re looking for books to read to pass the time, may I recommend my steampunk series, Brass and Glass? It’s action and adventure with an ensemble cast, similar to if Firefly was on an airship. The trilogy is complete, so no need to wait around for the ending, either! You can find all three of them […]

Mechanical Cats and Mystery!

| March 5, 2020

Chrysanthemum and Marigold Marsh, girl detectives, investigate a break-in at their family’s mechanical garden, and discover the culprit is a mechanical cat. After learning that the mechanical cat has only a limited power supply, they must find the cat to return it to its owner. But Dover is a big place, and there are Built […]

Gifts for Kids: The Trouble with the Tick-Tock Tabby

| December 12, 2019

The Trouble with the Tick-Tock Tabby is one of my books that I market as middle grade, but what does that actually mean? In general, they are books that are meant for 8-12 year old readers, but they also feature different themes than a young adult, or YA, book would. A middle grade book generally […]

The Marsh Sisters and Their Adventures

| October 3, 2019

The Marsh sisters, Chrysanthemum and Marigold, were the first characters I wrote when I started getting serious about my writing. Since then, they’ve dealt with a thief in the mechanical garden in “The Recondite Riddle of the Rose Rogue,” a clockwork monkey acting up in “The Marvelous Matter of the Mischievous Monkey,” and a missing […]

Steampunk Technology, Real and Imagined

| May 16, 2019

The steampunk technology that I write into my novels and stories is often partially real and partially imagined. For The Trouble with the Tick-Tock Tabby, the idea of the clockwork animals was pulled primarily from my imagination–while it’s certainly possible to have mechanical or robotic animals with modern technology, I used a lot of hand waving […]

Winter Reads: The Trouble with the Tick-Tock Tabby

| December 20, 2018

Mystery, steampunk, and clever girls? You’ll find all that and more in The Trouble with the Tick-Tock Tabby! Written for a middle grade audience, folks of all ages will enjoy the investigations of Chrysanthemum and Marigold Marsh, girl detectives who make their home in the mechanical garden! This is the first full-length adventure of the Marsh […]

Now in Paperback: The Trouble with the Tick-Tock Tabby!

| October 23, 2018

When I first published The Trouble with the Tick-Tock Tabby, I did my own cover. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the best plan, as it didn’t look good when I got a proof copy of the print book. So I made a plan to have an artist re-do the cover later. That’s finally happened. The inestimable Leigh Legler […]

The Marsh Sisters are Coming Back!

| March 29, 2018

The protagonists of The Trouble with the Tick-Tock Tabby, Marigold and Chrysanthemum Marsh, are at it again! Their latest tale of excitement and mystery, “The Magnificent Matter of the Mischievous Monkey,” has been accepted for publication! I’ll give more details once the contract is signed, but suffice it to say, I’m excited to get another tale […]

Thinking about Steampunk

| December 19, 2017

At Anglicon a couple of weekends ago, I took part in a panel on steampunk with Jeffrey Cook and Andy Wolf. One of the things that we discussed during the course of it was on a scale of H. G. Wells to Jules Verne, where does your steampunk fall? (The abbreviated explanation on that scale […]

Dissecting a Book Cover: The Trouble with the Tick-Tock Tabby

| November 16, 2017

We recently went on vacation to one of our favorite spots, the Edgefield Hotel in Troutdale, Oregon. It’s one of the McMenniman’s properties, using the renovated buildings from the old Multnomah County Poor Farm. While we were there, I remembered that one of the trees on the property is the tree that I photographed to […]