Saturday, May 31, 2008

Book progress

Well, any planning is progress, right?

My wife and I spent some time this last memorial day looking at our plans for publishing the novel. I started out last year working to produce a homeschool curriculum to go along with the novel, believing that it would be the only way I could sell the novel. Being a critic of my own abilities and work, anything to enhance the marketability of the novel was gold in my book. But, as my wife and I have researched further into the homeschool market, fewer families are homeschooling past the junior high and high school ages, exactly the age group I was targeting.

What plans now? The owner of Gravitas Publications, a good friend and advisor to our own project gave us some good advice: get the novel edited and published first. The novel has been complete now for half a year, but the funds to get it professionally edited have been lacking. We have the money now, but I'm having second thoughts. Self publishing has been what we've wanted to do for many reasons, the biggest being more control over all of everything. But, is that enough? Another friend, owner of Precise Edit has given us a quote for the editing, but now that money is involved and a decision to make I find that I am pausing. We know that we want to have a professional edit done, but we now have to sink or swim based upon this choice.

But, my passion for history and to communicate it clearly has always lead me to research and read as much history as I can lay my hands on. I found that I was languishing a bit creatively as I tried to force writing more essays for the workbook into my schedule, essays that I've lacked passion for completing. The end result? I'm spending my weekends working on this blog and completing another project I lay aside to complete the novel, a screen play set in the battle for Crete in WWII and working on the workbook without a deadline hanging over my head.

Shiloh, that battle that has for a long time engaged my imagination and occupied so much research still lays before me, in maps, in books, and in notes that are so old now that the original ruled lines on the loose leafed pages have faded away. Notes on characters that have been abandoned and notes on regiments no longer utilized in the storyline. The battle lives on, thanks to reenacting and the NPS parks that preserve them. It lives on in history books and memoirs, newspaper and magazine articles. It lives on in my characters and my soggy memories of the 135th Shiloh reenactment in Tennessee that seemed doomed from the start. Hopefully, it will also live on in this blog.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

They Met at Shiloh


In 1987 I began researching for a novel I wanted to write about the civil war battle of Shiloh. I'd always been interested in this battle. It was like two different battles on two consecutive days. So went the dramatic turn of events that allowed Grant to salvage a defeat and turn it into a victory thanks to the arrival of Buell's Army of the Ohio and the death of the Army of Mississippi's commander, Albert Sidney Johnston early the first day. It had controversy, legend, sublime and poignant scenes and a casualty list that shocked the country.


I began formulating the story and amassing research but by my graduation from college in 1992 I'd only finished half of it. Too many characters and not enough experience in writing this sort of thing had me drift away from the work to other pursuits of finding a job and getting married. I kept the project in the back of my mind, however. By 1995 I found a local civil war unit and became a federal reenactor, adding to my knowledge of the civil war research on such mundane things as camp life, organization, battlefield tactics, and how a soldier carried himself while on campaign. I soon joined one of the early hardcore battalions, the Army of the Pacific and enjoyed many a time with these dedicated reenactors who taught me how to dig deep and portray a man of war in the Union army. Reenacting most of all helped prepare me for renewing my vision for finishing the novel, adding another dimension that I never would have been able to include had I not first been a reenactor.


Though the research allowed me to envision what it was that the ordinary soldier reported seeing and how he dealt with the horrors of combat, the living historian angle allowed me to catch glimpses I never would have found had my knowledge only been two dimensional. Armed then with experience in the field and more research I picked up my novel once again in 2000 and re-wrote it from the beginning, trimming down the characters, developing the story, and honing my vision for the final product.


I wanted to write something that did not attempt to compete with the histories that have already been written about the battle by historians more talented than I. I wanted to write something from the common soldier's perspective to reveal the rich nature of camp life and interaction between ones pards.


With this as a start, I'd like to over the next week delve into the debate about what happened with Lew Wallace's division encamped at Crump's Landing, a mere five miles away as the crow flies from Pittsburg Landing and why this has, to this day even, puzzled historians and enthusiasts alike.

Sunday, May 25, 2008

I know it has been several years since I've last posted on this blog. When I started it, I was just exploring the world of blogging and ran several in tandem but soon discovered how much work they were. At the time I was very busy with drama in my church ministry and at work and I struggled to find my voice.

I have since finished my fictional history novel on Shiloh and as my wife and I explore our avenues of publishing and bringing my passion for teaching people our rich heritage of history, free from as much political correctness and politics in general, I am endeavoring to begin this journey anew. Writing and researching the workbook curriculum to accompany my novel has renewed my love for research and teaching. There is a rich history of military and political questions to be explored regarding the Civil War battle of Shiloh and I've just begun to scratch the surface of what is out there.

This was formerly harder to accomplish as most of these treasure troves of personal correspondence and newspaper, magazine, and journal writings were sitting in thousands of archives scattered about the US. With the internet and the improvements in OCR scanning technology many of these writings are available for easy access and perusal. I've begun searching for articles written by the participants as I uncover controversy and questions of interpretation that are relevant in our current day.

In the coming weeks I'll be writing on some of these things and hopefully starting a dialogue with other historians and Civil War enthusiasts in hopes of creating awareness of Shiloh and talking about my journey in writing about Shiloh.

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