Every May, Susan and I take a vacation, usually to the beach in North Carolina. This year is no exception. I’m sitting in a hotel room in Raleigh as I write this. I’m speaking to the Civil War Roundtable here tomorrow night, and then it’s on to Wilmington for the rest of the week. I have the Cape Fear CWRT on Thursday night, hosted by my good friend Chris Fonvielle.

The difference this year is that for only the second time in my nineteen-year career, I am taking two weeks off in one shot. When we leave Wilmington a week from today, instead of heading home, we’re off to a second week in the Outer Banks. We won’t be home …

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Last week, I posted about a law suit that had been filed by a blogger for criticizing the State of Maine and its marketing agency. In that post, I mentioned that I was so horrified by the filing of this sort of SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) suit against a blogger exercising his right of free speech that I was thinking about offer my legal services on a pro bono basis.

I decided to do so yesterday. In researching the suit and its status, I discovered that Lance Dutson, the blogger who was sued, was being represented by lawyers who are associated with The Media Bloggers Association, an advocacy group for bloggers. Here’s the mission statement for the …

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Apparently, there is justice in this world.

Today, Little Brown, the publisher of Kaavya Viswanathan’s novel, pulled the plug on the thing permanently after learning that Viswanathan had stolen from two other authors. “Little, Brown and Company will not be publishing a revised edition of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life by Kaavya Viswanathan, nor will we publish the second book under contract,” Michael Pietsch, Little Brown’s senior vice president and publisher, said in a statement.

It turns out that Visnawathan stole from the book version of The Princess Diaries by Megan Cabot and also from a book called Can You Keep a Secret? by Sophie Kinsella. Various accounts have reported the same kinds …

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Susan and I purchased this house in March 1995. It was built in 1968, and featured lots of lovely early Brady Bunch decor features such as olive green floor tile, harvest gold appliances, yellow bathroom fixtures, and lovely flocked wallpaper. We were only the third owners of the house (and still are, for that matter). The thing is that neither of us has ever liked this house. She thought I liked it, and I thought she liked it. Consequently, we decided to purchase this place even though we both hate it. The only things it had going for it are that it is located precisely halfway between Susan’s mother’s place and Susan’s grandmother’s place, and that it has a large …

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I first heard of the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry in 1992. I’ve been drawn to this regiment for years for a variety of reasons. One company of the Lancers–Company G–was raised in my home town, Reading, Pennsylvania. Also known as Rush’s Lancers, the regiment was named for its first commanding officer, Col. Richard H. Rush, a member of the legendary West Point Class of 1846. Rush was the grandson of Dr. Benjamin Rush, the patriot who signed the Declaration of Independence, and who founded Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. When I arrived at Dickinson as a freshman in August 1979, one of the first things I noticed was that the college was split into two campuses, including one named for Dr. …

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This is a quick follow-up to Wednesday’s post about plagiarism by the Harvard undergrad. It bears noting that her publisher, Little Brown, has done the right thing, and has pulled the book off the shelves until a revised edition can be brought out. Although Little Brown will take a bath on this, it did the honorable and correct thing, and I tip my hat to the people there who made this difficult decision. Megan McCafferty, the author whose work was plagiarized, has apparently decided that that is a sufficient remedy, and has elected not pursue further action against the plagiarist.

While I can certainly understand and appreciate that, I do wish that she had decided to pursue further action …

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Thanks to Andy MacIsaac for bringing this to my attention with the post on his blog today.

Apparently, a blogger in Maine has been served with a multimillion dollar Federal law suit for stating his personal opinion on his blog. The blogger criticized certain spending policies of the State of Maine in posts on his blog, and was sued for copyright infringement and for defamation. Fortunately, there are some talented lawyers out there who are going to defend him pro bono, as this sort of thing absolutely terrifies me.

It terrifies me on several levels.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution creates and protects the right of freedom of speech. Opinion has traditionally been protected pursuant …

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Sometimes, a writer has to know when to keep his or her mouth shut. In those instances, it’s better to stay silent and be mysterious.

Today is one of those days……

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In case anyone has been living under a stone the past few days, a nineteen-year-old Harvard student named Kaavya Viswanathan, who published her first novel–with a half million dollar advance– a few weeks ago. It turns out that she plagiarized quite a bit of it from two books by another author named Megan McCafferty. According to one article I read, there were nearly forty passages of her novel that were too close for comfort, and some that were verbatim.

Viswanathan appeared on Today this morning and claimed that it was unintentional, that she had read the two books several times in high school and that McCafferty’s words had imprinted themselves on her photographic memory. She claims that she was unaware …

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I saw the first review of my Monroe’s Crossroads book today. Because Savas-Beatie prepared bound galleys of the book for review purposes, the review actually was written before the book was released, as it was written for inclusion in the monthly mailer for the History Book Club. The book was chosen as an alternate selection of the month for the Club. William C. “Jack” Davis wrote it, and it was extremely flattering. In fact, I couldn’t have been more pleased with it if I had written it myself. That it came from someone of the stature of Jack Davis made it all the more exciting for me.

Im not a member of the HBC, so I had to work my …

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