In November 2012 a Tumblr account was created by an artist who signed himself Marquis, and over the next five years around forty finely-detailed pencil drawings appeared there, mostly of naked men in a variety of BDSM settings. Those that are dated were created in the 1990s, with a high point in 1995.

In 2018 Michael Ampersant from the Lustspiel website wrote to ‘Marquis’, asking to reproduce his images and asking for a short biography and artist statement. The reply was ‘I’d be happy to play a part in your gallery. Having just viewed it, I’d be honoured. As to a statement? Only that Marquis and Kenneth Craigside, the author of Here, and Always Have Been, are the same person.’

So that is all we know – forty accomplished and explicit pencil drawings and a book of thirteen short stories of gay historical fiction. We suspect that both Marquis and Kenneth Craigside are pseudonyms, but if you know better we would love to hear from you.

Here, and Always Have Been: An Anthology of Gay Historical Fiction, a collection of short stories ranging across eras from prehistoric times to the mid-twentieth century, from cro-magnon rituals and ancient Greece to King Ludwig’s Bavaria and Victorian England, was published in 2009 by Nazca Plains Corporation, a California-based publisher, mostly of erotic fiction, which was active between 2008 and 2014. You can read a full and balanced review of the book on the Speak Its Name website here.