my journey as a civil war novel writer

This is going to be a short entry. That Wednesday happened to be the only day during the holiday that I did not feel my best. And I count my blessings that it was only one day. It does mean that I don't do evenings anymore. After coming home and eating something I head straight to bed to rest up for the next day. And after coming home from holiday I need time to recuperate as well. Yet seeing fun things on holiday is extremely good for my mental health. Today we had Harper's Ferry on the program. A good choice as it was really round the corner from where we were and I am not the world's biggest fan of the place. I had been there before in 1994 and had actually skipped it on another trip when I happened to have a really bad day. Today my headache was not so bad that I had to skip as long as we took it easy. I can't even explain why I don't like Harper's ferry. The buildings are pretty and the nature surrounding it is stunning. And there is certainly plenty of his...

  Finally I was going back to Gettysburg. It had been nearly ten years. The last time had been during the 150th anniversary. That was cool. We walked Pickett's charge at the exact same time at the same day 150 years later and we saw a lot of the reenactments. For many years if I went to Gettysburg during the anniversary. It was great fun but it had some drawbacks as well. More expensive The town would be absolutely crowded So would the battlefield The humid heat of July could get to me In that regard a May visit was much nicer. We headed out in the morning and it was about 75 minutes drive from the airbnb to Gettysburg where we arrived around ten. As Koen had never been we decided to do the visitor centre first. I may not be making friends here but I am not a big fan of the new visitor centre. True, it gives a good overview of the whole civil war and the battle and it looks really slick. There lies the rub. I don't like slick. I much prefer the old one with its shelves full of ...

Monday morning we started the journey to what would be our travel hub for the next 10 days. But with one stop in between. Very good friends of mine live in Wilmington, Delaware and that was on the way for us with only a small detour. Google maps took us through the lovely countryside around Philadelphia to make it a very nice tour to Wilmington. I have known Larry and Louise for thirty years. When my passion for the civil war really started and I became interested in general Longstreet, I joined the Longstreet society. At the time they were looking for someone in the Netherlands who could try to find out in local archives if they could link were the general's dutch ancestors had come from. Mind you this was in the time that the internet had not been around long and was not the powerful search engine it is now. I asked where I could get some more information and they put me in touch with Larry in Louise. As it happens they would be visiting the Netherlands shortly so the first time ...

Thanks to the time difference we still woke up pretty early on the Sunday morning and much refreshed. My friend's aunt and uncle live in Berwyn which is just outside of Philadelphia and as we found out around the corner from Valley Forge. So why not cram in another bit of history today? Never mind it was supposed to be a day of rest and not doing much. As you will gather, that is not what I do on holidays. Holidays are for seeing as much as you can and crashing and resting is for later. In the morning we picked up our rental car at a local avis branch. [cheaper than doing it on the airport] Of course they did not have the car we selected in stock. We went for the cheapest smallest one and since americans don't really do small cars we were stuck with a Ford edge instead of fiesta. First they tried to give us a pick up truck but as that has no luggage space whatsoever we said no to it. Well legroom would not be a problem in our edge. 😉 First we had to get phones fixed. Modern re...

It had been ten years since my last visit to the US. Although I never see myself permanently living in another country there are a few places on earth that I really miss when I am not there. It doesn't happen often that I find a place like that and the feeling is not always consistent but it always comes back. And it makes me so happy to return to them. One such place is Glastonbury in the UK and another is Gettysburg in the US. There is something about Gettysburg that makes me feel at home. Weird for a battlefield I know. I also still consider myself a pacifist as well. Yet that place feels like home. It took a bit of planning and saving for this trip. My financial state is not what it was a few years ago and these days I have to make choices on what I do. I saved up for this trip for a few years and decided it was doable in the off season. May turned out to be perfect. Lovely weather but not the high prices for airplane and airb&b that you can get in July or August. Also imp...

As I am from Europe a fascination with the American civil war may not be the most logical thing. I grew up in the seventies and eighties and as we did not have that many tv channels then I devoured many American series on tv. And during those years many good historical series were made. I learned about history through watching tv. It was not until much late that I started reading books to verify that what I had learnt was the truth or learning the real truth. Series like Centennial and Roots remained with me throughout my life and made me cry at the injustice people inflict on each other. The civil war fascination really started with the blue and the gray and that was because my favourite actor during those days Gregory Peck had a small part in it. He played Abraham Lincoln. I was hooked.  When I had to chose a topic for my history paper in secondary school I did not have to think very long and picked the American civil war. I hit the library [no internet i...

So I finished the first draft of part of my novel. Now it comes to an important decision, am I writing only for myself or will I share it with others?  I have had a hard time lately with stress and I don't deal too well with negativity at the moment. If I share it with others and they don't like it would that hurt too much at the moment? And would people judge me for the subject of my story? A confederate general. Can we still write about his in these woke times?  I see the viewing of history is becoming problematic. The taking down of statues in the US is one example. Also thinking about people from history with today's knowledge. We judge people by our current standards. And that is a problem. Now I am not saying that there was not a problem in the 19th century. I am reading widely on the time period and I can't understand how one man can see another as inferior no better than an animal. Even then. That was wrong, insane. Slavery is insane. One person holding another ...