Category Archives: Alt Hist and Alternate History

Reopening Alt Hist for business

alt hist issue 10 coverI took the decision last week to get Alt Hist back on the road. I paused publication back in 2017 because it was just stopping me doing anything else.

Alt Hist is a short story magazine I set-up to publish historical fiction, historical fantasy and alternate history fiction. I really enjoyed publishing it and had the pleasure of putting out some great stories over the 10 issues of its initial life.

But at the time I found that I just didn’t have the time to focus on my own writing. Reading and making decisions on submissions took a lot of time, as did actually editing the stories for publication,  I ended up doing little else in my spare time!

Now however, I have had another think. I am pretty sure I can be more efficient about the submission process and also editing.

So if you’re interested in historical fiction and alternate history I encourage you to take a look!

Seamus Sweeney on the Radio: A Pseudo-Biography of Fr Noise

Seamus Sweeney, a previous contributor to Alt Hist, has been featured in a radio documentary for RTE the Irish broadcaster. Hes been involved in writing a pseudo-biography of Fr Noise. You can find the documentary at https://www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/2017/1102/917047-a-man-out-of-time/. I encourage you to have a listen. It’s an interesting story and piece of pseudo-fact—you could call it Fake History perhaps?

Seamus has told me more about similar projects he has been working on:

And indeed having got a taste for this I began writing biographies of so-called “fake artists” on Spotify – basically on various playlists spotify seems to use artists with no presence anywhere except Spotify, the suspicion is they hire session musicians to reduce playing royalties. .. examples of my bios are here https://seamussweeney.wordpress.com/2018/02/06/the-lost-world-of-amity-cadet/ and here https://seamussweeney.wordpress.com/2018/02/09/the-lost-world-of-ana-olgica/ and https://seamussweeney.wordpress.com/2018/07/10/the-lost-world-of-enno-aare/

Publication Plans

Things have been a bit quiet from me recently so I thought I’d let you know what I am currently working on at the moment. Firstly as you may know I’m the editor of Alt Hist – the 10th issue of this magazine is being edited at the moment and I’m aiming to publish in February or March.

Also I am editing the second volume of Stonehearted. The first volume, By the Sword’s Edge, started off the story of two young adults – Richard and Eolande and the Hundred Years War. I think that will be available early in March.

There are other things that I need to edit and get out there as well – but won’t promise any more yet!

Writing-wise I am currently about half way through a short story/novella set in an Oldhammer inspired world – a bit like Warhammer, but without any actual Warhammer content, to avoid copyright infringement 🙂

I’m having quite a lot of fun with that – I don’t usually write humour, but the Oldhammer theme required it, so have given it a go – get ready for some bad puns!

What is Oldhammer you may ask – that’s probably the subject for another post, but until then let’s just say its for those who liked Warhammer pre 1992!

Alt Hist Issue 7 is here! | Alt Hist: Historical Fiction and Alternate History

Alt Hist Issue 7 is here! | Alt Hist: Historical Fiction and Alternate History.

I am pleased to announce that Alt Hist Issue 7 has now been published!

You can purchase eBook and Print copies from: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Barnes & Noble

And eBook copies from:

Smashwords | Kobo | iBooks

Alt Hist returns with the seventh issue of the popular magazine of historical fiction and alternate history. This is the biggest issue of Alt Hist so far and this time we have seven wonderful short stories for you—including two parts of the popular Battalion 202 series and stories from Alt Hist favourites Priya Sharma and Andrew Knighton. If you like historical fiction, then you are sure to love this issue of Alt Hist.

Alt Hist Issue 7 features the following stories:

  • “The Vivisectionist’s Daughter” by Jason Kahn
  • “Cold Flesh” by Andrew Knighton
  • “The Independence Day” by Pavel Nikiforovitch
  • “Heff in Dearborn” by Michael Fertik
  • “Battalion 202: The Sheep and the Goats” by Jonathan Doering
  • “Set Britain Ablaze” by Jonathan Doering
  • “The Red Vortex” by Priya Sharma

 

Alt Hist, alternative history and historical fiction magazine launched

Alt Hist Image
Alt Hist Image

In a previous post I mentioned Alt Hist before in a previous post. My plan was to start a Facebook page (and associated Twitter feed) to provide a news and discussion forum for anyone interested in historical fiction, whether it be “realistic” or alternate history. At the time I saw this as possibly growing into a regular magazine for publishing historical fiction and alternate history as well.

Well guess what! I went and started up the magazine! Hooray! Quite scary, but amazing fun as well. Alt Hist got listed on Duotrope a few days ago and already we’ve had a few submissions come in. I really hope that if you’re interested in historical fiction at all you will find Alt Hist write up your via (bad puns intended).

The site is located at http://althistfiction.com/ and I welcome any contributions and suggestions.

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Alt Hist Facebook page for lovers of historical fiction

Alt Hist Image
Alt Hist Image

New Alt Hist Facebook Page

As you may have realised if you occasionally read this blog, I am really into historical fiction and historical fantasy fiction, and also Alternate History as well. I always find it surprising that there are few outlets for discussion of historical fiction compared to science fiction and the various aspects of fantasy fiction. In particular short stories seem to be very badly served. I don’t know why this is. Perhaps historical fiction is regarded as part of the mainstream, either at the literary level with Booker Prize winners such as Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, or at the more mass market mainstream level with the likes of Bernard Cornwell. But I always think of historical fiction as genre writing first and foremost. Especially when writers start to bend history and imagine what might have been.

I thought it might be a good idea therefore to experiment with the creation of a community of readers and aspiring writers in historical fiction.  So I have created a Facebook page to facilitate discussion and the spreading of news. My plan is to allow users to post their own news and even post links to their own historical short stories wherever these maybe located. At some point I am thinking of perhaps setting up a regular magazine to publish historical short stories, reviews and features, but that maybe some way down the line yet.

Please let me know what you think of the page and the idea behind it, either here or over at Facebook.

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