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Sometimes I actually believe that Rasputin is still alive. Given the history of mental illness and paranoid schizophrenia in my family tree, maybe I should worry and shy away from this thought, but mostly I just think it's cool.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist of any stripe, and while I keep an open mind, my belief in the supernatural is minimal, save for my religious convictions. But I have always found the concept that there is something going on behind the scenes fascinating: something epic, dire, and sinister, something magical and very deliberately hidden away. That was originally part of my fascination with vampire novels and the like - I wasn't terribly captivated (then) by vampires themselves, but the thoughts that these secret, deadly immortal creatures existed in hidden cabals and manipulated the minds and sometimes politics of humankind? Wicked awesome. I read everything I could about the Illuminati (I first heard about them on Gargoyles, which definitely includes some Secret History in its world-building), the Freemasons, on how Princess Anastasia had survived, on Tupac Shakur's fascination with Machiavelli and why that meant he faked his death.
I think the research side of it is what really appealed to me. I'm a library geek and proud of it; spending hours piecing data together by cross-referencing half a dozen or more books is my idea of a good afternoon, and maybe even a hot date. If you assume there's a secret history to the world, there has to be evidence, and someone clever and dedicated enough could figure it out and prove it simply by reading between the lines.
A lot of this fascination has worked its way into my writing, and most especially into the Romance of Blood books. Running In Her Veins, the only one, er, actually written so far, doesn't show it as much - most of the perspective characters are just entering into the backstage area, so to speak. But some of it should still be evident - the villains are, after all, a hidden cabal of blood-drinking demonic immortals, even if they're not vampires per se. And while I don't know if he'll ever appear in the books, Rasputin is still alive - and I know how, why, and what he did to fake his death, and could show you a chain of evidence going back to the Roman Empire that would support my claims. Secret History stories have always seemed to me to be the most science-fictional that fantasy gets; because while there might not be science extrapolated upon and projected to convincingly shape the world, the principle is the same with rigorous historical research.
Though I still can't stand The Da Vinci Code.
So: what are your favorite Secret Histories?
I'm not a conspiracy theorist of any stripe, and while I keep an open mind, my belief in the supernatural is minimal, save for my religious convictions. But I have always found the concept that there is something going on behind the scenes fascinating: something epic, dire, and sinister, something magical and very deliberately hidden away. That was originally part of my fascination with vampire novels and the like - I wasn't terribly captivated (then) by vampires themselves, but the thoughts that these secret, deadly immortal creatures existed in hidden cabals and manipulated the minds and sometimes politics of humankind? Wicked awesome. I read everything I could about the Illuminati (I first heard about them on Gargoyles, which definitely includes some Secret History in its world-building), the Freemasons, on how Princess Anastasia had survived, on Tupac Shakur's fascination with Machiavelli and why that meant he faked his death.
I think the research side of it is what really appealed to me. I'm a library geek and proud of it; spending hours piecing data together by cross-referencing half a dozen or more books is my idea of a good afternoon, and maybe even a hot date. If you assume there's a secret history to the world, there has to be evidence, and someone clever and dedicated enough could figure it out and prove it simply by reading between the lines.
A lot of this fascination has worked its way into my writing, and most especially into the Romance of Blood books. Running In Her Veins, the only one, er, actually written so far, doesn't show it as much - most of the perspective characters are just entering into the backstage area, so to speak. But some of it should still be evident - the villains are, after all, a hidden cabal of blood-drinking demonic immortals, even if they're not vampires per se. And while I don't know if he'll ever appear in the books, Rasputin is still alive - and I know how, why, and what he did to fake his death, and could show you a chain of evidence going back to the Roman Empire that would support my claims. Secret History stories have always seemed to me to be the most science-fictional that fantasy gets; because while there might not be science extrapolated upon and projected to convincingly shape the world, the principle is the same with rigorous historical research.
Though I still can't stand The Da Vinci Code.
So: what are your favorite Secret Histories?
