#ScribesAndMakers July 29: Why do you like your genre(s)/style(s)?

I started my writing in speculative fiction, specifically fan fiction in speculative fandoms, but I increasingly turned to #historicalFiction as an opportunity to tell untold and under-told stories about groups that get less attention in mainstream history: Women, queer people, working-class people, and disabled people. Disabilities for instance are regularly erased even from the narratives of people you've heard of--did you know Harriet Tubman had seizures and narcolepsy from a head injury, for instance?

My #shortStory A Very Long Malaise, produced into a podcast episode by @heatherrosejones 's wonderful Lesbian Historic Motif project, is a case in point. There are records and allusions to working women in the Korean royal palace falling in love with each other, but none is mentioned by name which was probably best for the safety of these women. My story clothes that premise in the bodies, inner lives, and relationships of hopefully plausible characters for the selected period to tell an untold history. https://lesbianhistoricmotif.podbean.com/e/a-very-long-malaise-by-lj-lee-the-lesbian-historic-motif-podcast-episode-301/ The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast's fiction episodes all do this for sapphic people from a range of eras around the world and are well worth checking out. https://www.alpennia.com/lhmp/essays/lesbian-historic-motif-podcast-index-fiction-episodes