[3] After graduation, he initially pursued a career in music, both as a solo singer and as a member of a jazz vocal group, but gave it up after the time demands of pursuing music while also holding down a full-time day job began to threaten his relationship with his partner Greg Harvey.

[3] Blackbird, a prequel novel focusing on Rousseau's childhood, was published the following year and more strongly established Duplechan's reputation as an important writer of gay African-American fiction.

[3] Duplechan's next novel Captain Swing (1993) returned to Rousseau, and found him grieving the death of his boyfriend Keith in a car accident.

[3] After Captain Swing, Duplechan took a hiatus from writing for several years and returned to singing, founding an a cappella vocal group and participating in community choirs after the home he shared with Harvey was damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

In addition to his novels, his work has also been published in numerous anthologies, including Freedom in This Village: Twenty-Five Years of Black Gay Men's Writing (2005), The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered (2010) and Mighty Real: An Anthology of African American Same Gender Loving Writing (2011).