Need a creative mixer for readers and authors? Go ask Alyce.
Alyce Boyd-Stewart, also known as A.B., is the owner of ABDebs Books and Gifts,
an independent bookstore in Knightdale, NC. She hosted an evening reception for
authors and book club representatives on 12 June at her store and provided a
tasty home-cooked meal for all of us. Representatives from five area book clubs
attended, as did a number of authors, including Alex Sokoloff and Diane
Chamberlain. A big Huzzah!to Alyce for the laid-back, cozy Southern evening.
On Thursday 22 May, I was the guest presenter at the monthly
meeting of the Upstate chapter of Sisters in Crime in Greenville, SC. I talked
about the lengths that mystery and suspense writers go through to ensure
accuracy in their books, recounted some of my experiences in living history and
reenacting, and discussed the vital impact of living history on my writing.
Because we're so firmly anchored in the (first-world)
twenty-first century, it's difficult for writers of historical fiction to get
inside the heads of characters who lived in the past. Even reading about it in
journals and letters may not cut it, especially with elements such as sensory
input. Somewhere along the research path, I believe writers must familiarize
themselves with what people living in the past might have experienced to
understand their clothing, politics, history, technology, mind set, and social
conventions. Reenacting has helped me tremendously with that. My essay on this
topic, "Living the History," was published recently in Mystery Readers International, Volume 23, No. 4, Winter 2007-08.
Left to right: Polly Iyer, Ellis Vidler, Suzanne Adair,
Linda Lovely. Upstate chapter's members are inquisitive and lively and have a
great sense of humor, evident in the fun banter that cropped up during my
presentation. Grasshopper appreciates the opportunity to speak before a SinC
chapter whose members are busy writing so well. Several in the chapter have
finaled in major contests. Many thanks to Upstate for inviting me.
Next up: a reception for book clubs and authors on 12 June.
Last Saturday evening at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, NC, I
attended the panel discussion "Podcasting, Blogs, and Self-Publishing: New
Ways to Reach Audiences with Your Book." View the entire discussion on YouTube here.
Stacey Cochran, who interviewed
my publisher and me about two months ago, moderated the panel. His guests were P.G.
Holyfield and Mur Lafferty, authors and podcasters, and Elisa Lorello, who
blogs about the craft and art of writing. (Left to right in the picture:
Stacey, P.G., Mur, and Elisa.)
Authors employ a variety of Internet technologies as
marketing strategies. With rising gas prices, many authors are increasing their
online presence. Mystery, suspense, and thriller authors are comfortable with
web sites and blogs. But podcasting is a newer technology, perhaps not so
familiar and a little daunting.
Check out the web sites for P.G. Holyfield (Murder at Avedon
Hill) and Mur Lafferty (Playing for Keeps). Notice that you need no device beyond your own computer to access and download their podcasts.
Podcasting is a form of self-publishing. Many traditionally
published authors are quick to presume that podcasters give away their works
and receive nothing. That presumption is inaccurate. Furthermore, podcasting
does have applications for authors who are published traditionally. In a future
blog entry, I hope to interview P.G. and Mur and dispel some of the myths
surrounding this technology.
Wow! Hard to believe it's been almost three months since I
blogged. That's pathetic, especially when I have so much to report.
Here's a portion of the bounty I
received after winning the Chocolate Challenge. My total word count for
February was over 74,000 words. I almost finished the first draft of book four
and was able to reach the plot point where the detective and his sidekick
(Lieutenant Michael Stoddard and Private Nick Spry) realize who the perpetrator
is and the motivation for the crime. It's all set for serious action and a
chase. Now if I could only block out the time to finish the draft — and select
a title for the book! Yes, I've been eating chocolate. I'm still eating chocolate.
There's so much chocolate to be eaten. Many thanks to the Guppies for sending
all the delicious dark chocolate and providing me with words of encouragement
along the way.
Lunchtime on Saturday 1 March, I was one of
six authors at the Moveable Feast of Authors in Surf City, NC. Quarter Moon
Books sponsored the event, held at Indigo Marsh Restaurant. What's a moveable
feast? Well, booklovers purchase tickets in advance, are seated at six round
tables in a room of the restaurant, and receive the first course of their
lunches. An author sits at the
table with them. At the prompting of a bell, the next course is served, and
authors change tables. This allows about ten minutes for authors to talk with
folks at tables and answer questions. At this moveable feast, the high energy
level kept all authors on their toes. Afterwards, lines at the signing tables
were 6-7 people deep. A thrilling event. Many thanks to Lori Fisher (pictured
here with me at Indigo Marsh) of Quarter Moon Books for arranging a seamless
event.
For the Moveable Feast, author Mark de
Castrique, his wife, and I were housed at The Pink Palace, a lovely B&B
right on the beach at 1222 South Shore Drive. Friday evening, 29 February, I
took a break from the home stretch of the Chocolate Challenge to watch an
outstanding sunset with the de Castriques from the west porch of the house. Few
vacation sites I've visited offer views of both a good sunrise and a good sunset. The Pink
Palace is one.
March on the beach in North Carolina can be
downright cold, but the weekend I was there, the weather was mild. This
facilitated several invigorating walks on the sand. From what I saw, this
area of the beach is also good for shelling. During my years in Florida,
I collected many shells, so this trip to the seashore, I picked up stones worn
smooth and oval by the ocean, with interesting looking veins and speckles in
them.
Living in the city, I tend to forget how bright
the stars are away from the neon. Saturday night, skies were clear, availing me
of an awesome view of the Milky Way. But early Sunday morning, I received a
rare treat: sighting the planet Mercury over the Atlantic before dawn. Mercury
is so close to the sun that it never rises very high before the sunrise
obscures it. Tricky catching a glimpse of it at all. But here it is, the winged
messenger of the gods. (Look just above the vertical white line. Okay, I know that even T.A.P.S. would have trouble finding it, but trust me, it's there.)
Saturday night, I was invited to dinner by
Nancy Adcox, owner of Xanzia. I first met Nancy back in 2002, at the Raleigh
chapter of NAWBO, and helped her with instructions for her game "U R 2 Me." Nancy
and her husband gave up on city life a few years ago, ran away to Surf City, and
are renting a home three streets from the beach. Now there's a fantasy!
Understandably, they show no inclination to move back to the city. But I so
enjoyed catching up with Nancy and hope to see her on my next visit.
On Saturday 22 March, Dr. Christine Swager, Sheila Ingle,
and I appeared at Cowpens National Battlefield near Chesnee, SC as part of
National Women's History Month. We repeated our panel discussion from Camden's
Revolutionary War Field Days in 2007, "In the Army and at Home: Women and
Children of the Revolution." Historical cartographer John Robertson moderated the panel.
Stacey Cochran interviewed my publisher and me on Friday 28
March as part of his series, "The Artist's Craft," appearing on local television
in Raleigh, NC. We saw Stacey again on Sunday 30 March, when he interviewed us
at Pomegranate Books in Wilmington, NC for the Wilmington Write to Publish
group. Both times, the topic was the path to getting published and the craft of
writing. Many thanks to Stacey for those media opportunities.
After all the activity in March, April was quiet, enabling
me to complete another draft of Camp Follower. I also began editing the
gobbledygook I'd produced in February on the fourth book. By the way, the
purpose of an activity like the Chocolate Challenge isn't to produce quality
literature. It's to push an author through a draft. The eloquent flow of words
arrives in later.
Saturday 3 May I signed books at Moores Creek National
Battlefield near Currie, NC during their annual colonial trade fair. This was
my first visit to the site, and it's quite pretty.
Next up: a presentation for the Upstate chapter of Sisters
in Crime on 22 May.
The Cameron Village Regional Library here in Raleigh, NC, is
one of forty libraries selected to host the traveling exhibit, Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World. The (free) exhibit is based
upon a larger (non-free) exhibition developed for the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary. It opened in town last Wednesday, but the
official kick-off was Friday evening 15 February, with music in the library's
atrium and snacks upstairs in the exhibit room. And, of course, a visit from Ben Franklin, who kissed my hand
when he found out that I write under a pen name, as he does.
Franklin was deftly portrayed by Art Yeaman, a performing
artist from Florida who has been doing Ben in excess of ten years and feels
"called" to the task. He
brought a kite with him and engaged children with the story of
Franklin's encounter with lightning. As
for the exhibit, it consists of six sections of freestanding panels that
showcase the many talents and interests of one of the country's most well-known
founders. Throughout the six weeks that
the library hosts the exhibit, patrons will hear from subject-matter experts on
topics such as fashions in Colonial America, diplomacy and social life in
Paris, and journalism and the free press. In period costume, my family and I will attend a Revolutionary tea party
on 9 March. What fun!
Meanwhile, I'm still writing away at the Chocolate Challenge
and added over 15,000 words to the first draft last week. That brought my total to more than 30,000
words. If I keep this up, I should have
most of the first draft finished by the end of the month.
While the third draft of Camp Follower is out with readers,
I'm engaged in the Chocolate Challenge during the month of February to assist
me in starting the first draft of the fourth book and then moving it forward.
The Chocolate Challenge is a sub-group of the Guppies, who
are, in turn, an online chapter of Sisters in Crime. From the description off
the Guppies Sub-Groups page:
Twice a year, the [Chocolate Challenge] group sets a
month-long writing/editing goal and the members cheer each other on. It's
motivation to get past the dreaded middle of your manuscript. Or a way to
kickstart a brand new project. Plus the most prolific Chocolate Challenger
could walk away with, what else, Chocolate!
The Chocolate Challenge is similar to National Novel Writing
Month, held in November each year, except that instead of a goal of 50,000
words, the Chocolate Challenge goal is usually 30,000 words for the month.
Editing counts as 300 words per hour. However, one of the goals of this
exercise is ditch your inner editor and just let the Muse rip loose on the
page, so I keep editing at a minimum.
In October 2005, I participated in the Chocolate Challenge,
contributed more than 40,000 words to the first draft of Camp Follower, and won
the Challenge. I received so much chocolate from all over the world that I ate
it for months afterwards, even taking into consideration that I shared it with
my family. I also participated in the February 2006 Challenge and added more
than 40,000 more words to Camp Follower. Another challenger took the chocolate
that time, and boy, was I glad, because I hadn't finished the October
chocolate.
I've never been a chocoholic, but I do enjoy a little dark
chocolate (in excess of 70% cocoa content) every now and then. Winning
chocolate isn't my motivation for entering this competition. I receive online
camaraderie in this solitary business of writing, a reason to keep slugging
away at a first draft. And I have an
even greater motivator now than I did back in late 2005, because I have a
publisher. What I accomplish this month puts me that much closer to another publishing contract. To me, that's far better than chocolate!
Total words written on book four as of Thursday night, 7
February: 15,340.
I've had my nose to the grindstone shaping the third draft of Camp Follower. Next month, I hope to bury myself in the first draft of the fourth book of this series. In the
meantime:
In December, The Blacksmith's Daughter received a favorable review from Reviewed By Liz.
Early this month, the book received a favorable review from Midwest Book Review.
And I sold through my advance for the book some time in December. Grasshopper is very grateful!
One goal of my author blog is to provide a forum where I
showcase the diversity and depth of talent that a novelist calls upon from
subject-matter experts. Today’s blog entry is first in a series of interviews
with one of the professionals who has helped me bring the 18th century alive in
my fiction.
My guest is historical cartographer and fellow North
Carolinian John Robertson. I first met John in 2000 at Cowpens National
Battlefield in South Carolina. He gave
me my initial tour of the battlefield. (I’ve been back. The Battle of Cowpens
forms the climax of the third book of my series, Camp Follower.) John created the maps at the front of Paper Woman and The Blacksmith’s
Daughter. Cartography is a flexible science that reveals the interpretation and
perception of the mapmaker, and John’s maps, with their blend of old and new,
help establish a sense of place for my readers.
SA: Hi John, and thanks for chatting with me. The word
"mapmaker" conjures the image of a wizened fellow perched upon a
stool, applying pen and ink to parchment by candlelight. How does this differ
from the method you used to produce maps for Paper Woman and The Blacksmith's
Daughter?
JR: Wizened works. Think OziExplorer (GPS mapping software),
PhotoShop Elements, David Rumsey's Historical Maps (available online), my
Global Gazetteer, and prayers for a publisher who can think in 300 dpi.
SA: Ah, so software has encroached upon the pen-and-ink
mystique surrounding mapmaking. I'm curious about the award for lifetime
achievement in cartography that you received in November 2007 from the
organization Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution (SCAR). For what
project did you receive this award?
JR: The Global Gazetteer of the American Revolution that I
created. What I've attempted to do with this gazetteer is "marry the
geography with the history" and improve both in the process. The history
of the war, for example, gets rescued from a boring chronological list of facts
and takes its place in a 3-D world.
SA: It’s an impressive work. The image on the home page puts
into perspective that what Americans regard as the War of American Independence
in the thirteen original colonies was actually one part of a huge world war. A
widespread belief is that most of the Revolutionary War took place in the
Northern colonies. In fact, Paper Woman, with its setting in the Southern
theater, was originally rejected by several editors in New York because they didn't
believe enough of the war happened in the South to generate reader interest. So
I'm curious, after all your research, which colonies had the most battles and
skirmishes in this war?
JR: South Carolina, New York, and New Jersey. Almost all my
collaborators want to work on South Carolina or the South, so that is where I
work. However, someone recently gave me a tip for three New Jersey locations
that, upon further research, exploded into almost thirty actions! If I
ever find collaborators interested in working on New Jersey and New York, I
expect to get my eyes popped with the results.
SA: What inspired you to start the gazetteer? When did you
begin work on it? Is it completed?
JR: I read a Revolutionary War history book each week for
fourteen weeks while having a full-time job (secret is no TV or newspapers). I
finally figured out that the authors didn't tell/show you where battles were
because they didn't know. I set out to find the battle sites. I've worked at it
for eight or nine years, have found most of them, but will likely never finish.
Think of it as harnessed obsessive-compulsive disorder.
SA: With whom did you work on this project?
JR: Anybody I could get. Those helping the most have been
Jack Parker (writing a guide book for South Carolina Revolutionary War sites),
Patrick O'Kelley (writing a library on the Revolutionary War in the South), and
Charles Baxley (editor of the SCAR newsletter). There is a pattern there, and
that's o.k. by me.
SA: By "pattern," it sounds as though research for
your projects and those of your collaborators has been mutually beneficial.
JR: Yes. Whatever they are working on or plan to work on
benefits greatly and directly from what I do. When they help me, they gain full
permission to use my data in their projects. In the Comment column of the
gazetteer, I've included the initials of those who help supply information for
each entry.
SA: How might interested parties access your project?
JR: Online Library of the Southern Campaign of the
Revolutionary War, and Global Gazetteer of the American Revolution.
SA: Most cartographers also have a degree in geography. What
is your background in the two disciplines?
JR: I am an accidental cartographer. Friends writing books
knew no one knowing of more sites and asked me to make maps for their books.
Speak of a "leap of faith!" Maps have always intrigued me. There is a
yellowed book nearby, The Round Earth on Flat Paper, by The National Geographic
Society, that I have owned since 1954. I have worked with computers since
Microsoft was spelled "Micro Soft" (1982) and have made them do a
little bit of everything. OziExplorer helped with GPS work, site locations,
projections, and map data. Graphic software with layers was essential, and I
started with Adobe Photo Deluxe, version one. I only do maps where I know the
history.
SA: You work at Cowpens National Battlefield as an
interpretive guide. What do you do as an interpretive guide?
JR: Mostly, I have fun. All day long, I get to ask people
where they are from, and four times out of five, I can associate their point of
origin anywhere on earth to the Revolutionary War, including an Iraqi from
Sweden. Although I am rarely put to the test, I could present continuously for
four hours, without notes and without repetition, on the Revolutionary War at
Cowpens and worldwide. Passionate, I suppose, is the operative word.
SA: By the way, folks, John's definition of "have
fun" means that he gives a fascinating walking tour of the Cowpens battle
site, detailing where and when different tactics were deployed during the
battle. In the South, people are more familiar with the Civil War. Why does the
Revolutionary War interest you, John?
JR: Like most, I had assumed that the Revolutionary War was
small and simple. It was startling to discover that it was very long, huge, and
immensely complex, and the history provided us was scant, distorted and
garbled. I have found Revolutionary War action sites on every continent
other than Antarctica and Australia, every modern state east of the Mississippi,
and three west of the Mississippi. It is incredible what some of these people
did with sheer brainpower, what great distances they traveled, and with so few
resources to work by our standards. Having read British fighting sail for at
least forty years, and owning many books by authors such as C.S. Forester,
Alexander Kent, Patrick O'Brian, and C. Northcote Parkinson, I was
well-conditioned to study the war even-handedly from both sides — the only way
any war can be understood. Most of what determines the outcome of such a war
does not happen on a battlefield.
SA: Which non-fiction books about the war are your
favorites?
JR: The War of American Independence, by Don Higginbotham,
an American, and The War for America, 1775-1783, by Piers Mackesy, a Brit. These books go into every aspect of the factors that
determined the outcome of the war, such as economics, politics, transportation,
and inter-service rivalries. The books, laid side by side, do not contradict
each other, they complement each other. Higginbotham's book is the only one I
have ever found that deals with "the armed populace" with which
Britain had to contend, wherever they went.
SA: Hmm, I have both of those books in my personal library.
I'm almost certain some fellow with a love of maps at Cowpens recommended them
to me back in 2000. Again, thanks for being my guest today, John.
Thanks also to Heather Good Gruber, who supplied me with
general information on cartography.
Betty Savage invited me to a luncheon meeting of The Page
Turners book club in her home Thursday 15 November. She served Sangria and hors
d’oeuvres before we adjourned to the dining room for a repast of turkey and
mango sauce, squash stuffed with spinach, black bean cakes, baked sweet
potatoes and apples, greens with citrus vinaigrette, and warm date-nut cake
with vanilla bean ice cream. Martha Stewart ought to take culinary lessons from
Betty.
In advance I emailed a list of potential discussion
questions for Paper Woman. The group used some of those questions and came up
with several savvy questions of their own. For example, they asked me about 18th-century
social customs in comparison to 21st-century customs. Betty read The
Blacksmith’s Daughter and just finished re-reading Paper Woman before the
meeting and recommended The Blacksmith’s Daughter to everyone. Her second time
through Paper Woman, she was more attuned to the relationship between Sophie
and Mathias. During her first reading, she had been focused on learning about
the American Revolution from my fiction — specifically aspects of the American
Revolution that aren’t taught in high school history texts.
Everyone at the meeting commented some variation of, “What
you taught me about the Revolutionary War is so different from what I learned
in high school history.” Most American history classes don’t emphasize the
interests of the Native Americans, Spaniards, and Dutch in the War of Independence.
Texts also don’t discuss the impact of neutrals, who comprised almost half the
population in America at the time of the war. Instead, the war looks like a
static portrait of patriots squared off with redcoats with a few French here
and there. This black-and-white view obscures the fact that our “revolution”
was just one small part of a global war. Britain was stretched all over the
world, growing its empire. Other entities or countries had interests in halting
or aiding the spread of that empire. Put in perspective, Britain didn’t lose
the American War. It pulled out, divested itself of what was, at the time, a
huge drain of money, so it could focus on the empire.
The Page Turners complimented me on my ability to make the time
period and the characters come alive and interest them. One of my goals for
this series is to interest readers enough that they’ll research on
their own and discover the fascinating stories that have been
omitted from high school history, details that add so much dimension to our understanding
of the war.
Friends of the Library have incorporated “Tea With the
Author” once a month into the programming at the Chapel Hill Library. Starbucks
donates coffee and tea, served on china, and the addition of Pepperidge Farm
specialty cookies makes for a relaxing, civilized afternoon. Almost never do I
pass up a cup of well-brewed afternoon tea! It was my pleasure to speak before
library patrons on Friday 16 November.
These folks wanted to know all about reenacting — for
example, what reenactors cook for breakfast, lunch, and dinner when they’re on
site for the weekend. The object of living history is to create the appearance
of a moment in the past, so you select foods that would have been available
during that time. Many reenactors include foods such as bacon, grits,
johnnycakes, and drop biscuits for breakfast. Lunch and dinner look similar:
stew or bean soup with root veggies, perhaps, or a roasted chicken or ham, with
fruit, cheese, and bread or rice. (Check out the von Bose lunch menu in my
previous entry.) Beverages include coffee, hot chocolate, tea, water, wine,
beer, and other spirits. Plates, bowls, and mugs are usually made of wood,
ceramic, or pewter-look metal. Reenactors are creative at hiding or
camouflaging candy bars, sodas, tin cans, plastic, and coolers.
Grasshopper is grateful to Betty Savage for the invitation
to lunch with The Page Turners, and also to Eunice Brock and the Friends of the
Library at Chapel Hill.
Next up: holiday booksignings at Books a Million in
Wilmington, NC.
Saturday morning, 3 November, our panel discussion “
In the Army and at Home: Women and Children of the Revolution” was well
attended. (From left to right: Dr. Christine Swager, Sheila Ingle, and me.) This
was my first opportunity to moderate a panel. Our discussion of the challenges
faced by women and children during the war was framed by three questions.
What challenges were faced by women and children who stayed
at home after their soldiers went to war? We think of frontier work as “sunup
to sundown,” but the impact of no electricity was that residents of the
frontier worked from before sunup to after sundown to accomplish tasks such as
livestock slaughter and food preservation. Women and children had the greatest
responsibility for those tasks. Chris’s fiction (Black Crows and White Cockades
and If Ever Your Country Needs You) delves into duties of women and children at
home during the war, as does Sheila’s Courageous Kate. Women and children often
acted as spies and messengers, and Chris and Sheila’s books show them in these
capacities, too. Vicious clan warfare characterized the Southern theater. Anyone who
stayed behind could be brutalized or murdered by a rival clan that passed the
action off as general warfare. In my second book, The Blacksmith’s Daughter, a
scene with two rival clans ends in their extermination of each other. The
bottom line was that staying at home didn’t guarantee inaction or safety.
What challenges were faced by women and children who
followed their soldiers, as opposed to those who stayed at home? Although the
term “camp follower” has become synonymous with “prostitute,” most camp
followers were relatives or servants of soldiers, or they were merchants or
artisans, all acting in a supportive capacity for the combatants. Camp
followers were subject to army rules and discipline. For example, a woman or
child who stole could be flogged or forced to leave camp. Family members in
some units drew partial rations, but most who weren’t of nobility had to work
for meager wages to supplement their rations. Women assisted at the hospital,
laundered, cooked, and mended. Children fetched water and firewood and ran
other errands. Women and children were also engaged on the battlefield, sometimes
as combatants who faced the same dangers as soldiers. And camp followers
endured the same conditions as soldiers: starvation, extremes of weather,
rugged terrain, disease, predators. In the third book of my series, Camp
Follower, scheduled for a Fall 2008 release, I depict the harsh life of those
who followed the army.
How did the women and children who followed the army attempt
to keep the family unit together? Women from the nobility and upper class
journaled about bringing their children along and joining their husbands at an
army’s winter camp. They left us charming stories about feasts, dances,
socials, and teas. But for camp followers from the middle and lower classes,
life was harsh. These people struggled to redefine “normalcy” in a constantly changing
environment, with little privacy, in the midst of disease and hunger. The
emotional stress on families must have been incredible, particularly when a
family member died. Widows, for example, were given a brief window of time to
grieve before they were expected to find another husband. If they did not, they
had to leave camp, because armies had no means of dealing with the liability of
unattached women and their children.
The audience developed the topic further with excellent
questions such as the following:
How young were boys recruited into the army? This
depended upon the unit. In the British Army, boys entered around age eleven or
twelve and were used in the capacities of musicians and messengers until they
were older teens. (The lad pictured to the left is my unit's musician.) One responsibility of a musician was to flog
disobedient soldiers. A trained regular was an investment, so the army didn’t
want to kill a disobedient soldier — just discourage him from repeating his
crime. Soldiers often received penalties of several hundred lashes, and since
boys didn’t have the upper body strength of men, they flogged the men. In
contrast, militia units recruited boys as young as eight years old and allowed
them to fire muskets. Many of these boys were from the backcountry and could
shoot game animals. Throughout history, boys have joined adults on the front
line. Even today in countries like Iraq and Burma, we find boys on the
battlefield.
Were women actually soldiers on the battlefield?
Traditionally, Deborah Samson was the only woman during the Revolutionary War
who successfully disguised herself as a man and fought in battles. But Leslie
Sackrison, author of Awesome Women (published earlier this year), has
discovered records of several other women who disguised themselves as men and
fought on the battlefield. Numerous stories exist of women, dressed as women,
who fought beside men. Sometimes these women picked up the weapons of their
dead or dying husbands, continued fighting, and received injuries.
All in all, this was a fun, informative panel. We look
forward to working with Joanna Craig at Camden again.
Due to
commitments on Sunday back at home, we left Camden right after the battle
reenactment and were unable to participate in the Guy Fawkes festivities that
night. Since I was on site a scant six hours, I spent my time outside the panel
and battle strolling the site and talking with other reenactors — something
I’ve not had enough time to do while promoting my books.
Reenactors are
some of the most hospitable folks I’ve ever met. The ladies of the Grenadier
Companie, Infantrie Regiment von Bose had made huge pots of split pea soup and
lentil stew for their unit’s lunch. When my family and I visited their site,
they pulled out extra bowls and spoons and fed us lunch, too.
Two shots of
the von Bose company in action at Saturday’s battle reenactment. The unit is
dedicated to the accurate portrayal of the typical German soldier as he
appeared during the American War of Independence.
To the left, a picture of my unit, the
33rd Light Company of Foot, preparing for battle. In the background, the Kershaw-Cornwallis house, rebuilt to its original 18th-century specifications after it was destroyed in a fire decades ago. During the British occupation of Camden prior to the famous battle, the patriot owner, Joseph Kershaw, was forced to give up his house. Charles Lord Cornwallis stayed there for awhile when he was in the area.
A big Huzzah! for the ladies of von Bose (delicious lunch!), and also for Joanna Craig for allowing me the
opportunity to participate on the panel and sell more copies of my books.
Next up: luncheon (guest of honor) with the Page Turners’
book club in Raleigh, NC on 15 November, and a presentation at the public
library in Chapel Hill, NC on 16 November.