Walking into a trap may be the only way to create one.

Danger runs high for Vito when he arrives at the Eternal Dungeon, escorted by guards. In this royal dungeon, prisoners are "searched" for their crimes, by torture and by more subtle means.

Vito knows that he will be searched. But he has his own searching to accomplish, and to do so he must undergo the scrutiny of the queendom's most accomplished torturer.

Vito was beginning to wonder whether this dungeon's prisoners were questioned in pitch darkness. That was a matter of some personal concern to him.

In the battle-weary lands of the Great Peninsula, only one fate is worse than being taken prisoner by the Lieutenant: being taken prisoner if you are the Lieutenant.

As the world's most skilled torturer struggles with his change of fortune, he finds that his fate is intertwined with the destinies of an idealistic army commander, an affectionate prisoner, and a protégé who reveres the Lieutenant's art . . . but is on the wrong side of the conflict.

The beginning of the end for him (or so it seemed at the time) came in the moment that he stepped into the shadow of Capital Mountain and was assaulted by a stranger.

Title: Bonds (Sweet Blood #1).
Author: Dusk Peterson.
Where to find me: Website, AO3, DW/IJ/Tumblr/list.
Series: The Eternal Dungeon, an award-winning speculative fiction series set in a nineteenth-century prison where the psychologists wield whips.
Series cycle: Turn-of-the-Century Toughs, a cycle of alternate history series about adults and youths on the margins of society, and the people who love them. Set in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the novels and stories take place in an alternative version of America that was settled by inhabitants of the Old World in ancient times. As a result, the New World retains certain classical and medieval customs.
Categories: Original fiction: slash and gen.
Length: Novella (26,000 words).
Feedback: Yes, please.
Rating: R for violence and (in a separate scene) for nonviolent D/s.
Warnings: Boilerplate warning for all my stories.
Summary:

A prisoner meeting his fate. A torturer meeting his demons. And between them, a man whose bonds are on the point of shattering.

As the head torturer of the Eternal Dungeon sets out to terrify his subordinates in a horrific manner, his junior guard seeks a way to rebel against orders. But deep within the drama lies another man, and the fate of the dungeon may be determined by whether that other man steps forward.

In the past, he would gladly have accepted the death sentence for his crimes – indeed, he had pled for it then, in the name of justice. But now he had another person in his life to consider.

Note: Bonds is the latest in a sequence of stories with related events and characters, as follows: Green Ruin (a humorous story set during a peaceful period soon before trouble arises in the Eternal Dungeon), On Guard (which I previously announced here), The Whipping Post and Open-Soul Surgery (both set during the events of Bonds), and finally Bonds (which follows upon the events in On Guard). If you want to avoid spoilers, you can read the stories in that order. However, I wish to emphasize: You don't need to have read any previous stories to understand Bonds.

Title: Adversaries.
Author: Dusk Peterson.
Where to find me: Website, DW/IJ/LJ/Tumblr/list.
Series: The Three Lands, a fantasy series on friendship, romantic friendship, romance, and betrayal in times of war and peace. The series is inspired by conflicts between nations during the Roman Empire and the Dark Ages. You don't need to have read the other stories in the series to understand this one.
Categories: Original gen and original pre-het.
Length: Novella (34,000 words).
Feedback: Yes, please.
Rating: PG-13.
Warnings: Boilerplate warning for all my stories.
Summary: 

When an endangered slave visits an imprisoned spy, she discovers that she has more options in life than she had thought.

Life is not easy for Serva, the bastard daughter of the King of Daxis. Alternately treated as a slave and as a princess, she is distrusted on all sides . . . especially by her old rival from the nursery, her cousin the Prince.

When the Prince begins to hint that she is a threat to his ambitions, Serva must make a decision that will determine the course of her life. And that decision will determine the fate of a spy who is due to be hanged. . . .

Lying on my stomach in the passage, I held my breath. Knowing the man who spoke, I had no doubts as to what he was suggesting.

Title: On Guard.
Author: Dusk Peterson.
Where to find me: Website, DW/IJ/Tumblr/list.
Series: The Eternal Dungeon, an award-winning speculative fiction series set in a nineteenth-century prison where the psychologists wield whips. You don't need to have read the other stories in the cycle to understand this one.
Categories: Original gen and original slash.
Length: Novel (86,000 words).
Feedback: Yes, please.
Rating: Mature.
Warnings: Boilerplate warning for all my stories.
Summary: 

A bloody knife from a crime scene becomes a mystery to be solved and a foreshadow of trouble to come.

The ties forged between the noble-minded Eternal Dungeon and an abusive foreign dungeon have set off an unpredictable chain of horrific events, in which the love between two of the Eternal Dungeon's Seekers (torturers) will be tested to the straining point. Caught in the middle of the struggle are Barrett Boyd and Seward Sobel, loyal guards who will find themselves questioning their most fundamental beliefs about the royal prison's ideals.

Barrett must help his Seeker determine whether their mild-mannered prisoner is an attempted murderer. His friend Seward has pledged to guard his own Seeker against an assassin . . . or should Seward be protecting the dungeon inhabitants against his Seeker? But when the guards' two Seekers fall into a lovers' quarrel, that is when the real danger begins.

"Shall we allow criminals to roam the streets at will because we're afraid to take the chance of harming an innocent prisoner?"

Honored in the Rainbow Awards, Dusk Peterson writes historical speculative fiction: alternate history, historical fantasy, and retrofuture science fiction, including lgbtq novels, original slash, and other types of diverse fiction. Suspense plays an important role in many of the tales; the conflict in those tales is both external and internal. Peterson's stories are often placed in dark settings, such as prisons or wartime locations. The mood of the stories, however, is not one of unrelieved gloominess; romance, friendship, family affection, and faithful service are recurring themes.

Peterson is the author of Turn-of-the-Century Toughs, a cycle of alternate history series (Dark Light, Waterman, Life Prison, Commando, Michael's House, and The Eternal Dungeon) about disreputable men on the margins of society, and the men and women who care for them. Set between the 1880s and the 1910s, the novels and stories take place in an alternative version of America that was settled by inhabitants of the Old World in ancient times. One of the series in the cycle, Waterman, combines elements of the 1910s with retrofuturistic imagery from the 1960s. Dusk Peterson has also written The Three Lands, a fantasy series inspired by conflicts between nations during the Roman Empire and the Dark Ages.

Where to find me:  Website | DW/IJ/LJ/list | Goodreads | Twitter | Facebook | Tumblr | Archive of Our Own.

Note that some of the online fiction links may convert to e-book links in the future as I bring out new e-books. If that happens, you can still find the online fic mentioned below at my AO3 account.
 

( Lots of fic, plus two mildly NSFW coversCollapse )

As guards send each other telegraph messages through their prisons' coding offices, strange developments occur in the life prisons of the Magisterial Republic of Mip: hardened prisoners become reformers, idealists dally with danger, and the prison keepers struggle to keep control. The strangeness will only become odder when two guards, who hold very different views on the proper handling of prisoners, strive to find common ground.

"Sweet blood, Tom, sometimes I wonder at your innocence. Why do you think that your prisoners were sent to prison? It wasn't for lacing daisy chains."

Also, I've posted my August 2014 newsletter, listing my recent e-books, free fiction, bestsellers, and news.

In the Silence (Life Prison)

The prisoner can't speak. He can barely see. He experiences only fear and the faint whispers of something he had once known.

But an intruder into his secure retreat from danger will pull him into awareness of what stands before him. What stands there is renewed danger. . . and the hope of something more.

¶ PG-13; gen/slash; e-book.

Images came, like flickers of a candle: Dark stones. Dark metal. Faint fire. A spoon in his hand, as someone urged him to eat. A stinking pit that he knew he was duty-bound to fill. A loom nearby that he vaguely remembered he had once known how to work, but which now stood as silent as the rest of his world.

Cell-mates (Life Prison)

Sentenced to life in prison, Tyrrell didn't have many opportunities for bed-play . . . unless he could count what the guards did to him as "play." So his future seemed brighter when he was paired with a cell-mate he'd been eyeing for a long time with affection and lust.

If only Tyrrell could keep from becoming his cell-mate's latest murder victim . . .

¶ PG-13; gen/slash/het; asexual and bisexual characters; e-book.

They had to settle the issue of sex first.

Never (The Eternal Dungeon)

She was attending the ball at the palace to dance. That was all. Which made it annoying to face a proposal of marriage from a guard who was distinctly not the sort of man she would ever consider marrying. Certainly not.

It was even more annoying to find that she kept thinking about the man. Why would she want to continue to speak to a guard who rudely implied that she led a frivolous life?

And why oh why were all the balls in the capital suddenly so boring?

¶ PG; het/gen; 50 Darkfics challenge; e-book and online fiction.

He had not seemed a threat at first, even after it became apparent that he was attending as an honored guest. He had no fortune, his face was pleasant but nothing to boast about, and he said not a word about his deeds, though he might easily have done so, with the Queen's medal of honor glittering upon his chest.

Title: Green Ruin.
Author: Dusk Peterson.
Where to find me: Website, DW/IJ/LJ/list.
Series: The Eternal Dungeon, an award-winning historical fantasy series set in a land where the psychologists wield whips.
Categories: Original gen/het/slash. Friendship. Flangst. Humor.
Length: Short story (5,000 words).
Feedback: Yes, please.
Rating: PG-13.
Warnings: Drinking. Boilerplate warning for all my stories.
Note: You can read the story as part of the free PDF zine Wanderlust: A Travel Anthology, edited by T. Spoon for The Slash Pile. The story is also available for sale as HTML and Kindle e-books
Summary: Three guards and a mysterious substance provide a temptation too great to be missed . . . especially when two torturers add their skills to the mix. Soon three very different men – a married man who is committed to respect and honor, a bachelor harboring secret desires, and a soldier with an unfulfilled ambition – will find themselves caught in a trap. Their rescue will come from an unexpected quarter.
 

During the dawn hours at the Eternal Dungeon, as the day shift yawned itself awake and the night shift yawned itself to bed, the talk turned, as it always did, to the injustices of being a guard.

Plus, two recent e-books:

Isolation (Life Prison). A prisoner's life takes an unexpected turn when he learns he may be able to play a role in changing conditions the harsh conditions at Mercy Life Prison. To do so will mean risking what remains of his life, as well as turning away from the only life he has known. What reward can he hope to receive in exchange for such a sacrifice? ¶ PG-13; gen, within a gen/slash series; historical fantasy; prisonfic.

Curious (Life Prison). Backbiting, threats, violent encounters, forbidden desires played out at night and in stark daylight . . . all this Ulick must face in his new job as a prison guard. At the center of the maelstrom lies Merrick, a foul-mouthed prisoner with a notorious reputation. But behind Merrick stands another man, hidden in the shadows, and Ulick's future depends on what that man wants of him. ¶ PG-13; gen/slash; historical fantasy; prisonfic.

Well, since my last update, I published/posted/reissued practically everything. Eleven novels and twenty-five pieces of shorter fiction. ("Shorter" usually means novella-length.) Enjoy.

Below, I've linked to all my online fiction and e-books during the past year or so, divided by series.

Here's my official bio: "Honored in the Rainbow Awards, Dusk Peterson writes fantasy, historical fantasy, science fiction, contemporary fiction, and New Adult speculative fiction. Suspense plays an important role in many of the tales; the conflict in those tales is both external and internal. Peterson's stories are often placed in dark settings, such as prisons or wartime locations. The mood of the stories, however, is not one of unrelieved gloominess: friendship, family, heterosexual romance, gay love, and faithful service are recurring themes."

Fandom translation of my bio: Originalfic and rare litslash. Gen, het, slash, friendshipfic, romance fic, powerfic, prisonerfic, slavefic, warfic, DSfic, darkfic, hurt/comfort fic, angstfic, and humorfic.

Boilerplate warning for all my stories.
 
  ( The Eternal DungeonCollapse )( Life PrisonCollapse )( CommandoCollapse )( Michael's HouseCollapse )( WatermanCollapse )( The Three LandsCollapse )( PrincelingCollapse )( Master/OtherCollapse )( SubtextCollapse )( Whisper of SecretsCollapse )( Main Street LeatherCollapse )

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.

The only thing I lost that's a pain to reconstruct is my last letter to you. I'd written a lengthy letter that was along the lines of "OH MY GOD, THE PHANTOM MENACE ZINE ARRIVED, IT'S SO ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS, I'M ABOUT TO HAVE A HEART ATTACK, YOU'RE AN UTTER SWEETHEART TO SEND ME THIS, KISS KISS KISS—" and as you can imagine, it's a bit hard to reconstruct that type of letter.

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

Not all at once, of course. :)

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." 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 )

The Eternal Dungeon, a historical fantasy series on friendship and romance 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. Although I conceived the storyline some time in the 1990s, I began to write down the series on March 14, 2002. By the end of that month, I'd written 59,000 words about the Eternal Dungeon. (I spent the first half of the month finishing The True Master and writing all of the Life Prison novella. It was a busy month.) The first volume of the Eternal Dungeon series was serialized on slash fiction lists between September 2012 and January 2013.

If you've never read The Eternal Dungeon, then you can start here, with a story that can be read online or downloaded as a free e-book: The Breaking. (Story summary: 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. Gen/pre-slash | PG-13 | hurt/comfort | 27,000 words | boilerplate warning for all my stories.)

If you've enjoyed reading the series, join the festivities. Chat with other readers of the series as I publish more Eternal Dungeon stories during the next few weeks. Post about some aspect of the series that intrigues you. Draw a picture of your favorite character. Post a vid about the series. Write a fanfic.  Let me and your fellow fans know how you're celebrating: post here or at my duskpeterson blog (you can post announcements, discussions, and creations there), or drop me an e-mail. If you'd like, I can link to your creation at Shared Universes, which collects links to fanworks inspired by my stories.

In the meantime, I would like to offer my profound thanks to the many slash fiction writers (especially these writers) whose stories spurred me into a frenzy of writing activity in 2002. Without the inspiration of those folks, most of the stories I've written in the ten years since then would not exist.

Author: Dusk Peterson.
Where to find me: Website, Dreamwidth blog, InsaneJournal mirror blog, LiveJournal mirror blog, duskpetersonbooks (e-mail list with announcements of my fiction and vids).
Fandom: My original gen/slash Turn-of-the-Century Toughs 'verse. You don't need to have read any of the previous stories to understand these.
Word count: 1200 | 80 | 2200.
Ratings: PG-13 | G | PG-13.
Prompt table and blurbs | Series warnings.

#92: Wax (The Eternal Dungeon). The Record-keeper of the Eternal Dungeon goes in search of a very special supply.

#34: Broken (The Eternal Dungeon AU). Layle Smith is not always the ideal man for the job.

#10: Torture (The Eternal Dungeon/Life Prison crossover AU). The High Seeker of the Eternal Dungeon visits a foreign prison.

Title: Law Links.
Author: Dusk Peterson.
Where to find me: Website, Dreamwidth blog, InsaneJournal mirror blog, LiveJournal mirror blog, duskpetersonbooks (e-mail list with announcements of my fiction). I am serializing this novel weekly. This is the only announcement of it that I will make at this community. If you want to receive notices of each new chapter, please Friend my blog, subscribe to my blog's feed, or subscribe to my e-mail list
Series: The Three Lands, a fantasy series on friendship, romance, and betrayal in times of war and peace. You don't need to have read the other stories in the series to understand this one, but those of you who have may wish to know that Law Links begins twenty-one years before the beginning scene of Blood Vow.
Categories: Original fiction. Male/male platonic feelings (main plots) and male/female platonic feelings (subplots). Friendship fiction, mentor fiction, prisoner fiction, military fiction, spy fiction, slave fiction (subplots), family themes, race/ethnicity themes, and spirituality themes.
Note: You can also take part in the story discussions for this series or buy the e-book of all the novels and stories in the series.
Rating: PG-13 for violence.
Warnings: Boilerplate warning for all my stories. Warnings for this series.
Length: 160,000 words, divided into 27 serialized chapters.
Feedback: Yes, please.
Story summary: Few events are more thrilling in a Koretian boy's life than a blood feud between two villages. Or so Adrian thought. . .. Torn between affection toward his traditional-minded father and worship of his peace-loving, heretical priest, Adrian finds himself caught between two incompatible visions of his duty to the gods. Then the Jackal God sends Adrian a message that will disrupt his life and send him fleeing from a danger he knows too well.

"Sometimes I feel that he is as mysterious as the gods, and that he is hiding something of vital importance from me. Something that would transform my life."

A great man and his faithful guard – that was the tale of which ballads were sung.

He knew what his prisoner's expression would be before he saw it: a mixture of apprehension, wary hope, and the expression he had come to fear most of all – determination.