RedDragonness, your concept sounds neat. I listened to a Podcast recently on orphan ships, which emigrated children forcibly from England to Canada, and thought of writing a magical realism book with a similar kind of concept- from the POV of a child en route, strictly set on the ship. I'm pretty addicted to history podcasts, I'd recommend Stuff you Missed in History Class to anybody who wants ideas for settings and historical events to write about, as its really entertaining and gives lots of lesser known bits and background from history.
My recently completed YA novel is set in 1912, in a fictional but historically grounded traveling circus, and is an illustrated novel as well. My drawings, which are in the style of historic circus posters and portraits, are at
https://theshimmeringcircus.deviantart.com/ . Feel free to take a look at them and leave me any comments- I love sharing my work.
It has a slight magical realism feel, but is the first in an intended series that my plan to be a slow developing but subtle portal fantasy (think His Dark Materials- a parallel world that is revealed but the characters don't visit for a long time and is very grounded in reality/string theory). I also wanted to bring in some AU themes, but in the other world, using the premise that my parallel world mimicks/mirrors our world so after WWI breaks out my characters are attempting to stop similar circumstances before a war breaks out there.
I did a ton of research on circus history for the writing, as well a the pre WWI era (it was kind of sad- they were incredibly hopeful just before the Great War
. It was super interesting, but I've been a bit bummed at the reception from my first batch of queries- 100% form rejections. So I'm going to go back to the drawing board and revise my query and get some feedback on SYW here. I had to take a break though, because it made me too sad