This is a shared blog owned by Erastes, Lee Rowan, Alex Beecroft and Charlie Cochrane. The contributors are our fellow Macaronis – all of them published authors of gay historical romance (for the purposes of GBLT history, we define a historical novel as a novel that is set pre-Stonewall, ie before June 27, 1969)
We post here about our books and about history, writing, GBLT issues and any combination of the three. If you’re a historical novelist and want to join the gang, or to contribute a post, just drop me a line on alex@alexbeecroft.com and I’ll see what I can do.
The Macaronis 
April 16, 2008 at 2:05 am
I’m a big fan of historical fiction, but will admit that I’m intimidated by the research involved. However, I have an idea for a story set in the 1920s or 30s in Hollywood that will not leave me alone, so I thought I’d start hanging around the historical writers and see what smart advice I could pick up before I plunged ahead.
April 16, 2008 at 10:07 am
Hi Jay! Hurray for your story idea, and I know what you mean about being intimidated by research. I’ve just had an idea for a Roman novel and know nothing about Rome, and it’s like; where do you start?
I am about finished writing a post for the blog on research, so that should go up soon. But, if you’re interested, we do have a Macaronis yahoo group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_macaronis/
the purpose of which is mainly to discuss what’s going to go on the blog, but where you could probably ask any awkward questions. You might get roped in to post on the blog occasionally though!
October 11, 2009 at 11:44 pm
I should like very much to apply for membership in this exquisitely eccentric group. My first book, a collection of historical short stories entitled “Here, And Always Have Been” has been published and reviewed on several sites incliding Speak Its Name and JesseWave. It’s thirteen stories should serve as a kind of portfolio, much like those that I had to show producers as a theatre designer. I have also completed a gay historical novel entitled “Of the Noble and the Savage” and would be happy to provide its chapter outline to complete the portfolio. And I write historical and often gay plays. “Chiaroscuro” about Caravaggio, has had professional theatre productions in Chicago and Palm Springs.
But I was born in Minnesota and live in Miami, not the UK. Still, this internet is there to unite us.
Well, there you have my application, based upon a nom de plume taken from Lord Armstrong’s Manse in the north of England.
Ken Craigside
October 12, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Hello Ken! I’ve discussed this with the other mods and we’re all agreed we’d love to have you join. It’s not a UK only thing at all 🙂 If you go over to the Macs yahoo group here
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_macaronis/
and apply to join, I’ll let you in straightaway, and then I’ll see about adding you to the list of people who can post on this blog. See you over there 🙂
Alex
February 18, 2021 at 3:13 pm
Why no mention of Mary Renault? She covered all the bases for homosexual relationships in her books and in her “out there” private life.
Read the wiki entry;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Renault
February 19, 2021 at 9:06 am
There’s no mention of Mary Renault because this was a blog and community for people who were writing right now, not classic authors who were no longer with us.
I think if you dig back through the posts you’ll find at least one review of The Charioteer, as we talk about books that influenced us. My personal favourite of hers is The Persian Boy – which is the reason my pen name is Alex.
She’s a great author, and many of us are fans. But gay literature doesn’t begin and end with a single author, and all of us are writing and living right now.
February 19, 2021 at 9:21 am
There’s no mention of Mary Renault because this was a blog and community for people who were writing right now, not classic authors who were no longer with us.
I think if you dig back through the posts you’ll find at least one review of The Charioteer, as we talk about books that influenced us. My personal favourite of hers is The Persian Boy – which is the reason my pen name is Alex.
She’s a great author, and many of us are fans. But gay literature doesn’t begin and end with a single author, and all of us are writing and living right now.
February 19, 2021 at 12:46 pm
My apologies, but for me, who first read one her books in 1957 at age 13 and felt an unknowing empathy with the topic, she is still (almost) a living author, as she didn’t die until 1983. I’m afraid that I hadn’t considered her part of an earlier tranche but part of a continuum whose overt but subtle writing made today’s freedoms possible. I re-read The Persian Boy last year and was still in thrall of her skill at portraying loving relationships whatever the gender.
Ben
February 22, 2021 at 8:54 am
Ha! Yes, in one way, if you have an author whose works were very meaningful to you, and who was one of the first in a particular genre, it’s sad not to see her represented in a community for that genre.
But in another, I hope it’s also good to know that the genre that she was formative in is alive and well and forming a living tradition that has survived without her.
Of course, having said that, this blog is actually defunct now, and the new nexus of gay historical fiction has moved somewhere else. I no longer know where because I’m no longer writing. Change is an unrelenting constant in life, alas 🙂 (Probably just as well, or we’d get so bored.)