god forbid 5000 year old girls do anything

holy shit bronze age pro sheep bone gamer girl

I wrote a story inspired by this discussion!

12 Best Historical Fiction Books to Read

The AHE team live and breathe history, but we all have our favourite historical periods and authors. We thought it would be fun for each of us to nominate one or two books that we would recommend for the general reader as well as high school students.

History is the story of ordinary people being resilient, courageous, and determined during extraordinary times. And since studying history is not simply about memorising facts, we think that the characters in the books we have nominated will allow any reader to view history through the characters’ eyes and as events unfold.

Become a Roman legionary for a day; solve the mystery of a stolen necklace in Anglo-Saxon times; go on a road trip through ancient Greece; gallop on a horse across the Scottish highlands with William Wallace as he fights for Scottish independence; discover the secrets of Carcassonne in medieval France; find out why Erik the Red was banished to Greenland; and learn what it was like to be a woman in biblical times.

Dylan Campbell - Media Editor

I would recommend Ariadne: A Novel of Ancient Crete by June Rachuy Brindel. In this story, Ariadne is the hereditary monarch, but her father, Minos wishes to take his role and overthrow the old Goddess religion, using increasing violence against the priestess. It is told from Ariadne’s perspective. The story takes place during the Bronze Age of Crete and delves into an alternate history but still includes famous Cretan and Athenian figures like Theseus, King Minos, Daedalus, Icarus, and others. The author revitalizes an old Bronze Age myth and provides a new twist.

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100,000 years ago on the East African coast, the huntress Ekan’e and her tame saber-toothed Megantereon Orru ambush a marauding party of Deep Ones, determined to prevent them from abducting any more of her kind for sacrifice to their horrible deities known as the Great Old Ones. Can our Paleolithic heroine and her feline companion vanquish these vicious fish-beasts?

This is an illustration I did for a short story I recently drafted. The Deep Ones are one of the creatures the horror author H.P. Lovecraft created for his Cthulhu Mythos, being a race of sapient and amphibious fish that are biologically immortal and have built various undersea cities. In Lovecraft’s stories, they have a habit of interbreeding with humans which he treats as a subject of horror by itself, but I wanted them to be more dangerous to people by abducting them and sacrificing them to their gods. They’re now the kind of monsters you want to see taken down!

— Brandon S. Pilcher, aka Tyrannoninja

Historical Fiction of Mesopotamia

Historical fiction is frequently dated to works including the Iliad of Homer (8th century BCE) or The Tale of Genji (11th century CE) or, in English, to the 19th century, usually to the works of Sir Walter Scott, but the genre has more ancient origins dating back to the 2nd millennium BCE through Mesopotamian naru literature.

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Genuinely 90% of historical fiction would be so much better if more writers could get more comfortable with the fact that to create a good story set in a different time period you do actually have to give the characters beliefs & values which reflect that time period

#even if they share your values they would phrase things differently. ‘​I hate to see a man hanged for it’ vs ‘love is love’ (via @aurpiment)

Just started reading The City War by Sam Starbuck and I like how from the very first page I can tell Marcus Brutus is into men.

Just finished it, and it was very well-written and enjoyable! Well, enjoyable in a tragic way, as might be expected when the plot revolves around killing Caesar.

Do note there’s a lot of sex scenes, it’s not intended to be strictly historically accurate, and unlike most romances there is a bittersweet ending. Still a very good read for fans of Brutus, Cassius and gay romance.

Favorite bits:

I’m definitely going to buy that book soon. It sounds really cool. Anyway, did you know Sam Starbuck has a Tumblr? It’s @copperbadge.

Sorry this response is a bit belated, but thanks for the shout-out and @just-late-roman-republic-things I’m SO glad you enjoyed the novel! Things like trans rep were important to me in writing it so I’m glad that came through. 

I did do my absolute best for historic accuracy in places where I had knowledge but yeah I knew I wasn’t 100% nailing it there. :D My classics studies are loooong behind me and were even when I wrote this several years ago.

For those interested, The City War is a historic romance/erotic novel, set during the last days of Julius Caesar’s rule, available here. (I really should push it more around the Ides of March, since that’s the climax of the book.) 

art by @lullintoes

i really really want to write an ancient-novelesque comedy about a respectable learned matrona from the roman senatorial élite whose boring sheltered life is suddenly turned upside down upon meeting a gruff and illiterate but handsome runaway lesbian (from the island of lesbos) lesbian (women connoisseur) slave. the story is set in the augustan age but the novel has clearly read the satyricon. everything is weird and erotic. the matrona read too much elegy. the obligatory pirate cliché (it’s lesbians again). ovid is there

we’re talking about a matrona who’s like. considered the epitome of womanly virtus by everyone around her but only because no one actually talks to her. if they spent more than 0.2 minutes prying her interests they’d discover she’s actually an elegy addict and constantly like ‘oooohh when will a sexy poet besiege MY door and corrupt my mores’. then the yearned Handsome Savior comes but she’s like. ma’am i can’t read

her oblivious boring senator husband brags about his Model Mater Familias spending her whole day on the loom but she’s actually weaving her 7th tibullus body pillow

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Neo-Babylonian Break-Up Letter (Hyperallergic April Fools Post) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: King Nabonidus, Nisaba, Kizalaqu Additional Tags: Miscommunication, Letters, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Idiots in Love, Childhood Friends, Trust, Background Poly Summary:

King Nabonidus first heard the rumor from a Persian merchant who sold fine jewelry, who travelled with his riverboat caravan to the palace hoping to find a buyer for his wares. “These” he said, having spread out a cloth before the king and laid the heavy gold and glistening gems there with a delicate hand, “are the very best I have to offer. So fine that the great General Nisaba bought one for his wife.”

“General Nisaba has no wife,” the king said, frowning. “I should know, for he has been my dearest friend since childhood.”

“Ah,” the merchant said. “Perhaps I misunderstood.”

not that i’d actually wanna live in a different time period, thanks very much, but also lately im vibing the idea of being born hundreds years ago when an army trudges through my city and kills all my loved ones and i must assume a male disguise in order to seek revenge in this male-dominated society so i cut my hair short and slick it back and join the army and learn how to use a big heavy broadsword and i soon have a reputation as a great swordsman which is only overpowered by my reputation as a great lover despite the fact i never take all my clothes off but i still manage to get all the women and the other guys in my regiment can’t figure out how i’m so good with them but i just gotta shrug and play up the ladies man thing until one day i meet a princess of the blood and im charged with protecting her on a journey out of the capital but we get separated from the rest of the regiment and i start developing feelings for her because she’s spunky but i know It Can Never Be for a number of reasons and then one night she catches me bathing in the moonlight and i instinctively draw my sword because No One Can Know My Womanly Secret but also she’s the princess and also also now i’m in love with her so i simply hand the sword over but she throws it aside with a clatter and throws herself at me and we make love by the lakeside and the next day i put on my soldiers gear and we keep moving wondering what the future will hold when the enemy horde comes upon us and i defend her but am outnumbered when suddenly our separated guards catch up and we fight the invaders and i kill the man who slaughtered my family because he is conveniently part of this regiment and we’re all happy for our victory but i still look sadly at the princess because It Can Still Never Be and i must take her to the capital to meet her betrothed and we kiss and make love sadly in a tent one last time but then we finally reach the city it turns out her fiance is a huge Gay too and has a huge entourage of gays following him around and brushing lint out of his fur coats and he hires me to be the queen’s bodyguard wink wink nudge nudge and i meet her nightly using a secret passageway under the castle and also i get a really cool new sword and history doesnt remember me as anything more than a friend to the queen until centuries later when a bunch of love letters are found in a secret compartment under the castle by a lesbian librarian who was researching the local history and she falls in love with the lady castle tour guide as they bond over an interest in our love story the end 

OP you just wrote a whole ass novel get that published

Why would you hide this gem in the tags

You’re right. It’s true and I should say it

OP POST THAT MOTHERFUCKING NOVEL

Forget posting. WRITE AND SELL.

“This Is Jezebel” (a story)

And now for something different.

This is not a translation.  You can call it midrash or fan fiction.  I’ve been writing a chapter about Queen Jezebel and her death for my dissertation, and this was my way of dignifying her death without rewriting it, while giving a voice to some of the only canonically queer characters in the Bible.

I hope you enjoy it.

When Jehu came to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it; she painted her eyes, and adorned her head, and looked out of the window.

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Hey, everybody!

Our second Kickstarter of the year, and the FIRST Kickstarter of the new Circus Maximus imprint, has JUST GONE LIVE! Come grab a ONE-TIME-ONLY print edition of Otava Heikkilä’s tale of a chance meeting in the Neolithic Jordan Valley, “Shattered Spear!”

“Shattered Spear” is the first book released under the new ICC imprint, Circus Maximus. Circus Maximus was created with the intent to showcase short, unique comics exclusively to the ICC audience. Books that deserve a showing in print, but that our experience tells us would have a hard time finding a place in the current comics market.

So, what does that mean? It means:

Shattered Spear will be available, in print, from this Kickstarter only.

This will be your only opportunity to own this comic.

It will not appear in the Iron Circus shop, or on Amazon.

It will not be available in stores.

After this Kickstarter ends, this book will not be offered in print from Iron Circus again.

It’s now or never.

Back us here and now to help us bring this comic to print, for the first and last time.

Calling all historical fiction dabblers! Let’s make use of the tag #historicalfic so we might all find and share our work easily!

It would be great is this tag was limited to history*-based fiction rather than period/historical drama ones (who tend to have their own tags) i.e. fics on the life and times of the Borgia family/Mary Stuart/the Tudors etc but not based upon the shows. (*AUs would be great as I for one love a good history!au fic)

feel free to reblog/spread the word :)

Girl Under a Red Moon: Growing Up During China’s Cultural Revolution (2019)

In a small village called Yellow Stone, in southeastern China, Sisi is a model sister, daughter, and student. She brews tea for her grandfather in the morning, leads recitations at school as class monitor, and helps care for her youngest brother, Da.

But when students are selected during a school ceremony to join the prestigious Red Guard, Sisi is passed over. Worse, she is shamed for her family’s past – they are former landowners who have no place in the new Communist order. Her only escape is to find work at another school, bringing Da along with her. But the siblings find new threats in Bridge Town, too, and Sisi will face choices between family and nation, between safety and justice. With the tide of the Cultural Revolution rising, Sisi must decide if she will swim against the current, or get swept up in the wave.

Bestselling author Da Chen paints a vivid portrait of his older sister and a land thrust into turmoil during the tumultuous Chinese Cultural Revolution.

by Da Chen

Pre-Order it here

Da Chen’s life is a true immigrant success story. A native of China, Chen grew up in a tiny village without electricity or running water. He was a victim of communist political persecution during the Chinese Cultural Revolution but then went on to study at the Beijing Languages and Culture University. Da arrived in America at the age of twenty-three with only $30 and a bamboo flute, and attended the Columbia University School of Law on a full scholarship. Da is the New York Times bestselling author of Colors of the Mountain, a memoir; Sounds of the River; Brothers; the middle-grade novels Wandering Warrior and Girl Under a Red Moon; and several other titles. He lives in Southern California, with his family.

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10 000 years ago, the lives of two travelers are intertvined in the ancient Jordan Valley.  Shattered Spear is a 50-page, full color, pay-what-you-want comic about a chance meeting in the Neolithic by Otava Heikkilä.

How to tell if you’re in a novel set in the Late Bronze Age