A Writer's Vacation

Writer’s Market sent out an email asking what writer’s do for a vacation. I’m sure he will get a variety of answers. Mine is to do research, especially in reference to a particular manuscript I’m working on or plan to do in the near future.

A few months ago I was on Bald Head Island with my girlfriends, the Broad Strokes. We’re all artists and close friends, who planned this long, 5-day Thursday through Monday "weekend" for months. A week didn’t go past us all winter when we didn’t talk about it. What we were going to do, what foods we would bring and who was going to cook which meals and when, were discussed. Clothes. Bathing suits. Evening entertainments. People we would be meeting. Howling at the moon. Beach walks and golf cart rides. We had our time fully packed, no time would be wasted. Every moment counted. Our female bonding would strengthen.

Ten days before we were to leave, I received a notice about a Landmarks Conference of the Revolutionary War being held Thursday through Saturday in Walterboro, South Carolina relating to my guy, Major Thomas Fraser. It included where he walked, rode, and fought. Yikes! What a dilemma.

I pleaded with my girlfriends to not be angry with me. I HAD to go. I’m a writer. I HAD to be there, to see Major Fraser charging down the dirt road in battle. I HAD to hear the whinny of the horses, the clanging of the swords clashing against each other in life claiming battle.

Because they are true friends, they released me for Friday and Saturday; sent me on my way to do what I HAD to do. A writer’s vacation.

Rev War Books, Reading & Researching

Further researching for Major Fraser’s took me to the E-Zine of Southern Campaigns of the Revolutionary War, by Charles B. Baxley, editor & publisher. (http://southerncampaign.org/mag.php) There I found articles by various writers with keen interest in this area of history. Devotees are still reading the tons of archived papers and journals that lay in repositories nearly forgotten. Often an unpublished skirmish or a battle seen through the eyes of another soldier or militia man will discover facts unknown. Women also kept diaries that reveal important details.

The Diary of the American War, A Hessian Journal by Captain Johann Ewald, edited by Joseph P. Tustin is a book I kept close to me because he describes the terrain, the attitudes of the non-military locals as well as the battles and drew maps. He served in both the northern and southern campaigns. His personal touch to a war fought by a hired army from a foreign land adds an extra something to the story. Jim Piecuch writes of accounts from both sides of the military in his The Battle of Camden and his Blood Be Upon Your Head. Reading for research just carries me from one book to another to another, etc. Isn’t life great?