Q: Why gay historical fiction?
A: Because there’s so little of it, and it wasn’t until I started making A LIST of it that I found just how little there was.
When you think of how many thousands of heterosexual historical books there are, it’s about time that the gay stories throughout history were told.
Q: What do you review?
A: Gay Historical fiction.
Q: Is it fair to criticise the inaccuracies in the books? Surely it should be about the writing, not the history?
A: We review gay historical fiction. So we take all three aspects into consideration. The gay history, the history in general AND the writing. We know that many people will take historical fiction as being fact, and that badly presented facts and crappy research will give a skewed version of history. So if you put tea in a medieval story, we’ll point that out. If you have Regency gentlemen kissing in public, we’ll roll our eyes.
Q: What don’t you review?
A: We do not – at this time – review anything with a fantasy theme, such as AU earth, myths such as Robin Hood, steampunk, or with things that don’t exist such as shapeshifters even if the setting is historical. The one exception we have to this is stories with a ghost theme, as ghosts can be subjective.
Q: Why?
A: Because this is a very small genre. We want to encourage people to write more gay historical fiction and to get as passionate as we are about it, getting the details right. There are many other review sites where stories involving vampires and shapeshifters can be reviewed.
Q: Will you be critical of OKHOMO?
A: Yes. We personally think that OK HOMO is not a true releflection of the gay struggle. It is possible to still write a story about a gay man without loading a book down with homophobia whilst still remaining true to the era. Making everyone gay, and or making everyone fine about it insults the journey that gay men have had throughout the ages.
Q: What do your ratings mean?
A: 0-1½ stars= poor, 2 to 2½ stars = okay to pretty good, 3-3½ = stars good, 4-4½ stars = VERY good, 5 stars = excellent work, recommended read.
Q: How do I get my book reviewed?
Simply send an email to Erastes at erastes at erastes dot com with a PDF if you have one, or a request for a snail mail address if you don’t.
Current banner by cynbaby with grateful thanks
Ooooh, can I comment on that OKHomo thing as a Gay Man?
I would rather have an exploration of Gay Male relationships by Straight Women writers in a fantasy like setting using “everyone Gay, and or making everyone fine about it” than having the writer try to describe my personal journey and mess up badly. My problems with such stories tend not to focus on that aspect but many others.
Now critically speaking these trappings can make for stale and boring stories with no realistic character development or motivation but “insulting to me?”
Nah, to insult me personally would be to over generalize about my personal journey which may or may not be different than any other Gay Man’s journey in dealing with his particular sexuality.
I believe there are other personal journeys that have less to do with being Gay but may also include the problems of race or culture that I respect as being even harsher than the problems I have faced just being a Gay Man.
I expect more from real Gay Male authors and find they frequently do much worse in being insulting. Mostly by insulting my intelligence.
Of course! I welcome all comments!
I do agree – I’ve read some male writers who write just as okhomo as any straight female, and I’m all for “in a fantasy setting” – I’ve read many a fantasy setting and have written them myself. I don’t want to see the OK Homo in a supposedly “real” Victorian London drama for example.
I’m reading one at the moment The Journeyer by J P Bowie which does have elements of OKHomo, in as much as all the shipmates are OK with it, and then later all the Chocktaw Indians are too – but the actual relationships are not the emphasis of the book, the adventure is and hurrah for that – more of them too.
I think there’s a big difference between ‘okhomo’ (where the wind comes sweeping down the plain) in a sci-fi setting such as Bujold’s ‘Beta colony’ that has saner attitudes toward sexuality than those on planet Earth, and stories that claim to be historical but are actually fantasies because they portray an unrealistic setting that pretends to be an earlier era of this planet’s history. One might as well write of out gay lovers in a place like Iran, where fundamentalism is still legally murdering people in the name of religion.
The world lost what Oscar Wilde might have done if his health had not been destroyed in prison. Alan Turing, called the father of modern computing, was hounded to death instead of being knighted for his work in cracking Enigma. And England had its closeted spies who were blackmailed into treason because they were more afraid of being persecuted for their sexuality than prosecuted for espionage. This is historical fact. The willingness to do research has nothing to do with a writer’s personal gender or sexuality. And I think it’s respectful toward the people of an era–and the reader–to try for a reasonable degree of accuracy.
When some of the ManLove writers did a book signing at the late lamented Lambda Rising in Virginia Beach, the shop manager remarked that much of the best gay romance was written by women. His observation, not mine. I don’t know if other female writers have a gay beta, but I do have a friend who vets my stuff for physical and emotional impossibilities, and the feedback I’ve had from gay men suggests that I haven’t made any egregious errors.
Some men won’t read anything written by a woman. {shrug} We all have our preferences; I’m not partial to ‘Christian’ inspirationals. But my wife would laugh if I tried to pretend I was a het woman.
Every one of us has a different journey. I think it’s only respectful–of the people in an era and of the reader’s intelligence–to try to at least approximate a realistic setting for a historical story. Teddy, you are a 21st-century man. Your journey is contemporary, as opposed to historical, and nobody can write it but you. If you do, I’d like to read it.
Hmm, I don’t think that writing a solidly researched historical story that portrays accurate social attitudes about homosexuality with specific fictional gay and straight characters is generalizing about any modern gay man’s personal experience. Likewise, neither is OKHOMO in a nominally historical book, but it’s doing a disservice, I think, to the real people (dead as they are) who definitely didn’t live in an OKHOMO world. OKHOMO in SF or fantasy = great, have at.
But I also don’t think that any specific gay character should be taken as a generalization of all gay people (unless the author suggests so), since members of a group always have a range of experiences. I certainly haven’t yet found any bisexual female characters with experiences similar to mine, but that doesn’t mean they’re not plausible or that I can’t enjoy reading about them. As long as characters ring true to their settings and fictional experiences and are interesting to read about, I’m happy.
Hello to all,
I’ve written and published a novel called Heroes, which is a historical novel about the life of Alexander the Great and his nineteen year long love affair with Hephaestion. If anyone is interested check out LULU.Com under serach type in LR Brown and it will pop up. Thank you all in advance for your time and consideration.
Interesting question — and already so well discussed, I can really only add one more idea to the melting-pot. I agree, books should be well rearched before they are well written … and nobody with half a brain in their head doesn’t know what gay men have suffered through the ages (and still today in places like the mid-east … and could be in America too, if the “Dominionists” get into the White House and institute Old Testament Law to replace democracy — terrifying thought isn’t it?)
However, I’m “just a reader.” I guess … I’m the person who puts down their twenty to buy your book! So at least some of the time the writer needs to think about what I want in trade for my twenty. Sure, I want good research and good writing …
But I read for entertainment and fun — hardly ever to be educated and/or maybe even to get depressed. My point is, I already know what the past (and other countries) was (and are) like fof gays. I don’t need the lesson taught again and again, so — bottom line — a writer has to “get realistic” and still make the book entertaining and fun!
That’s a whopping-huge ask. I’ve read some books where I was scratching the head and saying, “I’m positive this wasn’t true,” then also, I’ve read some books where the homophobia was probably 100% total accuracy, but the book ended up so depressing I struggled to finish and only got through because I’d paid maybe thirty or forty for this novel.
My personal fave is Mel Keegan. In the historicals MK walks the line between the real and the entertaining … and gets it just right (for me). (Truth is I really also get excited about MK’s SF work, which is maybe 400-600 years from now, and hobophobia is gone totally — replaced by things that are just as bad and new fights … meaning, gays can live their own lives without prejudice, and take part in the new fights to set people free). But in the subject of Historicals — I’ve read a lot, and for me, Mel Keegan gets the balance of “real” and “entertainment” just right.
Hope this was interesting…
I am pleased I found your website. I appreciate the stated purposes and advocate for the same. The reason I came to your site was that I was doing a web-search, looking for resources to purchase books authored by
Edward Prime Stevenson. It seems ‘Imre’ is the only one readily available,
other than a couple of the youth styled books. Would you advise me if you are aware of any other resources for obtaining any of the other books by Stevenson? I would sincerely appreicate your time and advice.
Regards,
Patrick Ian Cowan
Hi Patrick,
Thank you for liking the site, I try and keep up to date with the releases and am always looking for older books I may have missed.
I’ve also been searching for more of Stevenson’s books, but although Amazon has them listed, they simply aren’t available. Let me know if you find them!
Many thanks
Erastes
Hello Erastes,
So kind of you to respond.
I find your list of books is very thorough. Good job!
Will definitely let you know if I find a resource for Stevenson books, although I suspect if you have not I will have a time of it.
Regards
Hi, there. I’m enjoying your reviews – thank you so much for doing them for this genre in particular!
I have a LiveJournal account and I’d like to follow your reviews from there. However, the RSS/syndicated feed for the site, http://syndicated.livejournal.com/speakitsname/profile, does not seem to carry any recent posts even though it apparently references the correct URL. I was wondering if you still offer your content through an RSS feed (or if that practice had been discontinued), and if so, how I might go about subscribing in order to stay current with your posts. Thank you in advance for any help!
Hmmm – I wondered why it wasn’t showing up – apparently one of the posts is “too big” for the feed and that’s blocking the others… I’ll see what I can do.
ETA: I’ve submitted a support request to Livejournal – I’ll come back to you when I get an answer.
I’m so glad you like the site – thank you!
Thank you for looking into it!
Hi Carlotta, I’ve fiddled with the feed’s settings and it seems to be working – it’s now showing recent feeds on the syndication info page – I hope that it will now show on people’s livejournals.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention, it was something I needed to address for over a year, and just… hadn’t done so. Hopefully now this will encourage more people to add it to their feeds.
Excellent! I’ve friended the feed, and I’m looking forward to reading your future reviews. (I’ll rec the feed in my journal next time I post, too.) Thanks so much for jumping on this so quickly.
OK, this is probably a dumb question that has been answered somewhere and I’m just missing it. Still, is this site only for historical romances featuring gay MEN?
There is now a lesbian historical site which is growing rapidly, and is the sister of this site:
http://bosomfriends.wordpress.com/
It’s not only for “romances” Hanna:
We have reviewed a few lesbian books, but only a couple-the reason for this is that it’s basically only me doing the reviews. I have a couple of helpers, but they are generally all writers too, and time is limited. I don’t have anyone who has volunteered to review lesbian fiction, and of course, there’s a problem of getting the books in the first place, I have to buy most of the books myself.
Also if I were to expand the site to include lesbian fiction I would need help on the tekkie side too, as the blog would have to upgraded to a full-size website I think, again, I simply don’t have that much time.
So, yes, it’s primarily for gay male historical fiction (not just romances) but if you know anyone who can help address the balance, I’d be hugely grateful.
Hi Erastes,
I’m really excited that I found this website. Thankyou for doing this! What a great resource.
Thank you, Jennifer, it’s a bit of a labour of love, and I don’t get as much done with it as I’d like to , but I’m very glad its appreciated.
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