duskpeterson

A decade before e-books and self-publishing shook up the publishing industry, an author faced a dilemma: When you've written stories in a genre that is rarely published, what do you do?

At the beginning of 2002, Dusk Peterson (a journalist, history writer, and aspiring professional novelist) stumbled across the fan fiction community, where tens of thousands of readers and writers enjoyed gay genre fiction, which publishers rarely published.

Peterson's Muse didn't want to write fan fiction. That didn't matter. Gleefully, Peterson began posting male/male stories with original fantasy settings and characters to "slash" fan fiction e-mail lists, at the same plunging into fanficcers' world of online fiction, "songvids," conventions, celebrations of movie premieres, and endless discussions of literature, history, sexuality, and ethics. In the process, Peterson became part of a community that was taking advantage of the Internet's power in order to distribute stories, art, and videos that couldn't be professionally published.

This first volume in the Pixel-Stained series includes reminiscences, stories, and art from yaoi author/artist mdbl; Steve Berman, founder of the gay and lesbian speculative fiction publishing company Lethe Press; J. M. Snyder, founder of the queer fiction press JMS Books; and m/m romance author Emily Veinglory.
 

"I can't figure out why my characters get the yen to stop in the middle of having hot sex in order to discuss the moral implications of what they're doing. I certainly never did anything stupid like that. (Alas.)"

duskpeterson

* gods, priests, and mortals
* rulers and subjects
* lords and liegemen/liegewomen
* mentors and proteges
* masters, servants, and slaves
* dominants and submissives
* torturers, guards, and prisoners
* soldiers and spies
* college students
 

Not all at once, of course. :)

All of the stories feature love or respect, though sometimes it takes a while to get there. I've included the ratings, so that you can tell which stories have mature content. I also have a bunch of older stories that I haven't listed here. To see them all, you can visit my home page or simply click on the links to the series pages below. If you want to, you can Friend my blog or sign up for my updates e-mail list.
 

( The Eternal Dungeon, Life Prison, Commando, The Three Lands, Loren's Lashes, and cover artCollapse )

duskpeterson

The Eternal Dungeon, a historical fantasy series on gay D/s love in a Victorian prison, has proved to be the most popular series I've written. Its omnibus e-book received three honors in the Rainbow Awards 2011, including winning the Best Gay Fantasy category.

The Eternal Dungeon is ten years old this year. I'm in the midst of bringing out new stories in the series. If you've never read The Eternal Dungeon, then you can start here, with a couple of free stories that introduce the main characters in the series:

The Unanswered Question. No weapons, no allies, and no guarantees that he will survive the test.

The Breaking. The prisoner knew that the Eternal Dungeon was a place where suspected criminals were broken by torture, and he was prepared to hold out against any methods used against him – except the method he could not anticipate.

duskpeterson

Here's a full list of gay stories and friendship stories that I've posted online or published as e-books in the past year. They're original works of fantasy, historical fantasy, and contemporary fiction, which feature liegemen, servants, slaves, sailors, prisoners, bottoms, and/or 18-year-old students. As the boilerplate warning for all my stories puts it, "All of the stories feature love or respect, though sometimes it takes a while to get there."

The list below shows both my online fiction and my e-books. If you'd like to buy an HTML e-book containing all of my writings as of July 2010 (over a million words of fiction and 30 collections of fiction recommendations and nonfiction), visit Love in Dark Settings Omnibus. If there are any topics you prefer not to read about, be sure to read the warnings I link to.

If you prefer to browse by series or story cover, you can visit my home page. If you want to, you can Friend my blog or sign up for my updates e-mail list. ( The list of this year's storiesCollapse )

duskpeterson

—He had awoken, on that day after, to find himself lying alone in bed. ¶ Two volumes in the Eternal Dungeon historical fantasy series are posted.
—"The police were inclined to think of me as the victim, since I had been bound." He gave what Melody referred to as his shark's smile. "Their mistake." ¶ The beginning of a new serialized leather novel in the Loren's Lashes series is posted, with an accompanying e-book.
—A new edition of Love in Dark Settings Omnibus is published, and an update is posted to the story recommendations at Buried Treasure.

The details.

duskpeterson

Here's a full list of the gay and male friendship stories I've posted/reposted/published in the past year that have dark settings (imprisonment, slavery, prostitution, or war), or feature servants or liegemen. As the boilerplate warning for all my stories puts it, "All of the stories feature love or respect, though sometimes it takes a while to get there."

With one exception (marked below), all of these stories are available free online. If you'd like to buy an HTML e-book containing all of my writings as of April 2009 (700,000 words of fiction and 28 collections of fiction recommendations and nonfiction), visit Love in Dark Settings Omnibus. If there are any topics you prefer not to read about, be sure to read the warnings.

If you prefer to browse by series or story cover, you can visit my home page. If you want to, you can Friend my blog or sign up for my updates e-mail list. ( Read more...Collapse )

duskpeterson

The highlights:

—Now available in a single e-book: all of the fiction, nonfiction, and fiction recommendations at Love in Dark Settings.
—"'Sentenced to sixty lashes of the leaded whip. Sentence commuted to a transfer to Compassion Life Prison.'" Keeper raised his eyebrows. "That's the first time I've ever heard a transfer to this prison described as a commutation. We'll assume that that particular phrasing was meant as a joke." ¶ Two stories are posted from Hell's Messenger, a new volume of the Life Prison series.
—It was when Michael's voice went flat and his face drained of expression that Janus would begin to worry. ¶ The final parts are posted of the male prostitution novel, Whipster.
—Rudd, who had watched Meredith through narrowed eyes for the first week or two, gradually lost interest in scrutinizing the activities of his fag. ¶ An excerpt is posted from a new retrofuture series, Prison City.
—Books, films, and online resources are recommended at a new bibliography: Retrofuture: Visions of the Future, 1945-1975.
—Online fiction and memoirs are recommended at Buried Treasure: Online Male Homoerotic Stories and Male Friendship Stories and at the Turn-of-the-Century Toughs bibliography.

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