“Dry Spell” in Denizens of Distant Realms
One of the stories in my fantasy collection, Denizens of Distant Realms, began life as a fantastical history story. “Dry Spell” was originally about an enslaved Romani woman living in colonial Virginia during an extensive drought. Based on the research I had done, this scenario was plausible–there were Romani slaves in the American colonies, and there was historical evidence for the drought at the period of time I set my story.
The problem was, both of these things were just obscure enough that it made the story unbelievable as fantastical history. So I scrubbed the serial numbers off of the story and turned it into a secondary world fantasy story, which made it fit perfectly with the other stories in Denizens of Distant Realms.
I talked more about this on Jennifer Brozek’s “Tell Me” feature back in September, where you can read more about the original story and the changes!
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