Collaboration

Drew Wagenhoffer asked me if I would post some of my experiences in collaborating with other authors. Since it’s an interesting topic, I thought I would accommodate Drew’s request.

By way of background, I have had nine books published of which I am the sole author or editor. The tenth is about to go to the printer. I have had one book published of which I edited a journal that someone else compiled but did not have the expertise or resources to edit properly. I was asked to review this manuscript for publication by Brassey’s, saw the potential, but realized it needed a lot of work. When I made suggestions as to what needed to be done, the publisher asked me if I would undertake the process of editing and annotating the manuscript, and I agreed to do so. Considering that it never started out to be a collaboration, or even a project that I expected to undertake, it worked out quite well. Jean Husby, the compiler, pretty much let me have carte blanche with the editing and with maps and photos, so for all intents and purposes, it wasn’t really even much of a collaboration.

That leaves several other projects wherein active collaborations have taken place. The first, and longest-lived, was the biography of John Buford I’ve been working on with a friend. My friend is a terrific writer. However, he moves slowly, and he has young children and job that requires a lot of travel. Thus, while I’ve had a functional draft of my half together for a long time–it needs polishing, as it was written ten years ago, when my skills weren’t as honed as they are today–it’s been a LONG haul. I don’t talk about it much, as I get tired of answering the inevitable question of when it will be done. The answer is that I have no clue. And I don’t like saying that, so I avoid the topic. If my co-author wasn’t such a good friend and such a good writer, I would be pretty bitter about it. Now, I’m just kind of resigned to it.

Then came my regimental history of the Sixth Pennsylvania Cavalry. I had been working on gathering material for it for years. Then, I heard that Ed Longacre had proposed a history of the Lancers to Combined Books. Since I knew that there wouldn’t be a market for two new histories of this unit, I suggested a collaboration to Ed. The deal was that we would primarily use the trove of primary source material that I had accumulated, and I offered to take the more difficult half, covering up to and including Brandy Station (June 9, 1863). Once I was done, I would then ship the box of files to Ed, and he would do his half. I went ahead and wrote my half, and then waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, Ed informed me that due to other commitments, it was going to be another couple of years before he would have time to work on the thing, and said that out of fairness, he thought the right thing to do was to pull out of the project, so as not to hold me up. And with that, it was done. But it meant that I had to do the other half of the book, which I have since done, and it’s now nearly finished, subject to some final searching at the National Archives that is underway as I write this. There’s a trade-off here: on the plus side, the entire book now is done my way, to my standards. On the down side, I had to do the other half, which I hadn’t expected, and it actually proved more difficult to do the second half than did the first. Go figure.

So, those two experiences haven’t been so good. That now brings me to the current collaborations. The first one, with old friends Mike Nugent and J. D. Petruzzi, is a very tactical study of the retreat from Gettysburg. With that, we had very clear delineations of who was responsible for what as the primary author. Then, when those things were done, we circulated drafts among ourselves for input from the others. It worked out very well and went very easily. That book, which is part of Ironclad Publishing’s “The Discovering Civil War America Series”, will be published this year.

The other is the book on Stuart’s ride during the Gettysburg Campaign that I did with JD, and which will be published by Savas-Beatie in June. That one was a dream to do. First, and foremost, JD’s writing style is very, very similar to mine, so it makes blending our work together very easy. Second, it was easy to divide up the work, and we then gave each other input on each other’s work. Third, we have the ability to communicate, and it makes it easy to get over the rough spots. Fourth, neither of us has an ego about this stuff–you can’t be thin-skinned–so we can be blunt and honest with each other. It’s gone so well, in fact, that we have other collaborations in the works: a bio of Alfred Pleasonton, a volume on the Battle of Monocacy for “The Discovering Civil War America Series”, and one on Price’s Missouri Raid, also for the series. I enjoy working with JD a great deal.

I’m also working on a collaboration with Mark Smith and Wade Sokolosky, the authors of Ironclad’s new book on the Battle of Averasboro (which is supposed to ship from the printer today or tomorrow) on a study of the March 8-10, 1865 Battle of Wyse Fork, which is also sometimes known as the Second Battle of Kinston, NC. Mark and Wade will be the primary authors of this one, with some contribution from me. Talk about a neglected battle. 🙂 This one is still in the research phase, and I have yet to even visit the battlefield. That will happen some time this spring, as soon as we can identify a date that works for all of us (Mark has a new job after retiring from the Army, and Wade is a lieutenant colonel on active duty).

At the same time, I continue to do stuff on my own. The Dahlgren bio is strictly my work, and I’ve also signed a contract for a book on John Hunt Morgan’s 1863 Ohio and Indiana Raid that will be exclusively my work. For me, it’s all about finding the right mix.

I hope that answers your question, Drew.