"What if" stories – historical fiction?

Historical fiction is a broad church; a re-telling real events, quasi-biographical fiction, romantic, adventure, fantastical and detective stories, tales from the cave to the 1960s and set in every country and social situation you can imagine. And within that mix are counter-factual, alternative history stories, the ‘what ifs’ which project a possible different timeline from […]

Lupercalia – Not an ancestor of Valentine's Day

Lupercales, Andrea Camassei (1602-1649), Prado Museum

In AD 495, Christian bishop of Rome, Gelasius, finally managed to suppress the more than thousand year old Roman festival of Lupercalia. Gelasius’ letter to senator Andromachus taunted the nominally Christian senators who were intent on preserving the Roman tradition: “If you assert that this rite has […]

Alternate history and steampunk - settling the ambiguity

Steampunk themed photo: Kyle Cassidy

When people ask me about my books, I say “Thrillers – alternative history thrillers. They’re set in a world where the historical timeline changed in the past and a different looking world evolved.”

But the reactions can be interesting. Here’s one typical conversation I had at a book […]