The Back Door to Dusk Peterson's Domain

Updated March 2009.

WHAT'S AT THIS DOMAIN

For the sake of those of you who would otherwise miss the sites at this domain because Google didn't pick up the right keywords, I'll mention here that this site features various genres of fiction: mainstream fantasy fiction, gay fantasy stories, and contemporary gay leather fiction. The stories range from the literary equivalent of G to NC-17. Information for parents, guardians, and visitors who control their own reading matter is available.

My fiction series are listed at the home page. A separate page lists my nonfiction sites.

E-books (ebooks) and e-texts (electronic texts, online fiction) are featured at this site. You can download them or read them online.
 

GENRES

Genres: Suspenseful fantasy, historical fantasy, historical fiction, science fiction, contemporary fiction, friendship fiction, romantic friendship fiction, heterosexual love stories, sweet romance, original gen, original het, original slash, alternate universe fiction, hurt/comfort, darkfic, m/m fiction, gay fiction, gay love stories, gay erotic romance, gay erotica, leather fiction, fiction recommendations, and nonfiction.

The non-gay stories are often male friendship fiction, although friendships and romance between men and women sometimes occur in the tales.

The gay stories (male homoerotic fiction, GLBT stories) are often – but not always – gay romance fiction (gay love stories; the sort of novels made famous by Romentics) – specifically, gay sensual romances. Or they are gay erotic romance stories.

Suspense (thrillers, romantic suspense, historical suspense) plays an important role in many of the tales; the conflict in those tales is both external and internal.

To use an alternative set of terminology, I write friendship fiction (usually male friendship fiction) and original slash fiction (as opposed to fan fiction), particularly in the areas of historical slash, darkfic (dark fic, dark fiction), angstfic (angst fic), hurt/comfort (h/c), prisonerfic (prisonfic, prisoner fic, prison fic), slavefic (slave fic), and what some people might call smarm, although romantic friendship fiction (romantic friendship stories) is probably a better term.

I specialize in male homoerotic historical fantasy stories, especially those based in the late Victorian and Edwardian Eras. These are likely to interest readers of historical fiction, steampunk fiction, alternative history fiction (alternate history fiction), and paranormal romance. In other words, the science fiction and fantasy crowd (speculative fiction) may feel at home here.

Of my fantasy series, The Three Lands, Princeling, and the Turn-of-the-Toughs cycle can be classified as epic fantasy, depending on how you define that term.

Not to scare the rest of you off who are lingering over the words "friendship" and "romance," but I also write gay leather fiction (gay leather stories, rough sex stories, BDSM tales, kink stories, either non-erotica or literary erotica, that is, literotica— Well, let's be blunt. Porn).
 

THEMES

Religion and spirituality are topics that sometimes shows up in my stories, which is why my shelves are filled with novels by Christian fantasy authors like C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and no, I haven't been able to make my way through J. R. R. Tolkien yet. I keep trying.

For heavens only knows what reason, my characters keep ending up in different races and ethnicity, so folks interested in African-American literature, black literature, biracial (bi-racial) fiction, multicultural (multi-cultural) stories, and multiracial (multi-racial) fiction may find something they like, particularly if they're fond of fantasy literature.

Mental illness and disabilities (disability) play a role in a number of my stories, particularly abuse recovery (both physical abuse and sexual abuse).

For reasons I know all too well, androgynous characters (androgyne, androgynes, androgny, intergender, third gender, genderqueer, polygender, bi-gender, bigender) sometimes appear in my stories too. Particularly if they're eunuchs. So if you're looking for transgender stories, here be what you're looking for.

On the other hand, if you're looking for homomasculine men, visit my leather fiction. Just don't be surprised if a queen shows up occasionally.

Other topics that appear in my stories are class and rank themes, mentors, prisoners, and war.
 

SIMILAR AUTHORS

Authors writing about similar topics to mine? On the mainstream front, I read Diana Gabaldon, Susan R. Matthews, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Guy Gavriel Kay, Mary Renault, Robin Hobb, Ursula K. Le Guin, George R. R. Martin, Patricia A. McKillip, Naomi Novik, Mary Stewart, Rosemary Sutcliff, Robert A. Heinlein, Alistair MacLean (yes, I like spy novels and war novels), and some other authors whose names are so closely associated with juvenile fiction that I won't list them here, lest I attract the young 'uns to this site.

As far as non-mainstream authors . . . Well, so far, John Preston (of Mr. Benson fame, though I Once Had a Master is far better), Aaron Travis (aka Steven Saylor), and a bunch of online writers who ought to be better known than they are. Manna, for one (The Administration). Parhelion also (Hurrah for Hollywood). And then there's Marquesate (Her Majesty's Men). And Ranger (Fleur de Lys). And . . . Well, heck, just visit my orecommendations of online male homoerotic stories and male friendship stories.
 

PUBLISHERS AND WRITERS' ORGANIZATIONS

MAS-Zine was my short fiction publisher between 2002 and 2004.

Amazon and Lulu.com (Lulu Press) are the distributors for my books.

I used to hang around the Erotic Romance Writers Forum. Many of the members there are published by Torquere Press and Forbidden Fruit, though they all seem to lust to be published by Ellora's Cave.

I also used to hang out at Romance Divas and at the Gay Authors and Absolute Write forums.

I'm a former director of the Erotic Authors Association, which attracts the kind of crowd that ends up being published by Alyson Books  and Suspect Thoughts Press and Velvet Mafia and the erotica imprint of Haworth Press and would have been published in Drummer if that magazine weren't sadly demised. All power to them.

On the nonfiction front, I enjoy good relations with the Leather Archives & Museum (do stop by their site just to see the cute hopping boot on the home page), and have contributed in the past to the The World History of Male Love (otherwise known as the Androphile Gay History Project).

One of these days I might end up in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), but not while they look down their nose at the types of places where my writings show up. I can't afford the fee to belong to the Historical Novel Society, alas, so I have to make do with reading their newsletter.

And when, pray tell, is someone going to start a professional writers' organization for those of us who produce queer lit? Even Queer Writers seems to have disappeared.
 

READING HANGOUTS

Fictionwise (Fictionwise.com) is a partially sighted reader's best friend. Too bad I'm dead broke and can't afford their books, but I still linger over their site.

Baen Free Library (and its paying counterpart, WebScription eBooks) should win multiple awards for best idea of the decade. It's wonderful that Tor Books has followed their lead with Tor.com. I also admire Cory Doctorow, Charles Stross, Jim Munroe, John Scalzi, and similar authors for offering free electronic versions of their books (some licensed through Creative Commons) that you can download. As you'll gather as you explore my site, I'm of the same frame of mind.

Alas for the loss of Meisha Merlin.

I draw most of my reading matter from Web published fiction and my local public library. When I can afford to, I subscribe to Bookshare.org and Booksfree.com.

I am hoping and praying the day will come when friendship fiction readers unite and start producing as many Websites as romance readers do. In the meantime, I have to plow patiently through genre novels in search of the friendships that aren't described in the blurbs.

I will cheerfully confess to being a slash reader. I will also cheerfully confess to being a gay leather reader. This allows me to get sweet romance in the morning and dark agony in the evening, though somehow I always seem to end up reading stories that have both. That's why I hang out at sites with scary sounding names like Boys in Chains and at the Authoritarian section of Nifty Erotic Stories Archive.

People ask me why I read these dark erotic stories. Nobody ever asks me why I read Harry Potter. Go figure.
 

NONFICTION

I have a large number of nonfiction resources at this domain, primarily on the topics of friendship history (the history of friendship), genre fiction (such as historical fiction, science fiction, and fantasy), resources for the blind and disabled, GLBT history, and leather history.

There. If Google hasn't found me by now, it wasn't really trying.

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This text, or a variation on it, was originally published at duskpeterson.com. Copyright © 2006-2009 Dusk Peterson. Some rights reserved. The text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0). You may freely print, post, e-mail, share, or otherwise distribute the text for noncommercial purposes, provided that you include this paragraph. The author's policies on derivative works and fan works are available online (duskpeterson.com/copyright.htm).