My original historicalfic

[duskpeterson]

I write original historical speculative fiction: gen, slash, and het. This is how I come up with stories:

(*Pages through Maryland Historical Magazine and finds a book review mentioning that nineteenth-century Southern children were sometimes given slave-children as their playmates.*) Me: "Oh, my gosh - What was that like for the slave?"

(*Reads a bunch of Arthurian novels.*) Me: "Oo, I like the male bonding. And the empire founded upon a law system. And the disagreements about religion. And Roman soldiers with swords. And rebellious slaves. And rebellious nations. . . . What the heck. Let's toss it all together."

(*Reads The Oyster Wars of Chesapeake Bay.*) Me: "Oh, lovely, oystermen on sailboats holding gun battles on the Chesapeake! Is that enough for this universe? Nah, I'll throw in The Jetsons."

(*Grubs through Google Books, seeking a juvenile prison in Southern Maryland during the 1910s.*) Me: "Oh, look, the campus of a reform school in Southern Maryland during the 1910s! Oh, and hey, I went to school there in the 1970s!" (All I can say is, Synchronicity.)

Anyway, here are my two main series cycles:

Turn-of-the-Century Toughs is a cycle of alternate history series about adults and youths on the margins of society, and the people who love them. Set in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as in a future that never existed, the novels and stories take place in an alternative version of America that was settled by inhabitants of the Old World in ancient times. As a result, the New World retains certain classical and medieval customs.

Chronicles of the Great Peninsula (handwavy historical fantasy inspired by Late Antiquity) is a cycle of series about an epic battle between cultures, set at a time when a centuries-old civilization is in danger of being destroyed.