I hear you. Writing articles allows me to tackle projects of interest that are not long enough to warrant a book-length treatment. They enable me to deal with a single subject in depth.

That’s an interesting insight about Stuart’s march. We tried to address the wear and tear on the horses in our work, and I hope we succeeded.

Eric

I did, in fact, make that decision. For me, it was a function of taking on a challenge and taking this Civil War writing addiction of mine to the next level. In many ways, I find writing books more rewarding because the pay-off at the end (no, not monetary, although that helps) is bigger and better, and there’s nothing like seeing your name on the spine of a book.

I do find that my projects tend to be mutually exclusive; with my incredibly short attention span, I can’t afford to be distracted like that. I try to work a project to completion and then move on. Right now, I’m waiting for feedback from a handful of readers on my Dahlgren manuscript, so I’m using that down time to write this article.

Eric

On a side note, I spent Veterans Day at the MOC w/ my friends from the Lee’s Lts. group (I posted some pics over on my blog) and I was discussing your latest book “Plenty Of Blame” with General Stuart (Bill Frueh). He told me that he and a group including John Hunt Morgan (Bill Nordan) did a 60 mile ride in Ohio (I believe), and that they and the horses were completely exhausted at the end. He could not imagine physically riding the actual distances covered by Stuart, and surmised that they had to be riding from sun up to sundown in order to cover hundreds of miles. He tipped his hat to the real troopers and horses. I think we all do after reading your book.

Haven’t posted in a while but your comments made me curious.
A couple of questions: 1) Did you make a concious decision to focus on books and stay away from articles? 2) Do you find that the two efforts are mutually exlusive? I would think the massive amount of research and writing involved in preparing a book manuscript would preclude any other serious research and writing effort. For instance, I cannot imagine writing two books at one time, or for that matter, a book and an article, unless the article was a short piece derived from research for the book. Then again, I generally like to finish one thing before moving on to the next; I know that’s a matter of personal preference. Just curious. Look forward to the articles.

Randy