So long, 2012!

Well, it's been yet another wild year. I've been to some great places and met some great folks. Highlights include the trip to Hanover Court House in May participating in a tour led by Robert E. L. Krick, signing books with friend Sharyn McCrumb, speaking at Fort Fisher in June, speaking and signing at the Vance Birthplace in August, signing books in Gettysburg in October, and a host of other events across the board. Thanks for making my year great!

Next year is looking ever better. I'm hard at work on two new books: the first is currently entitled North Carolina Remembers Chancellorsville and will be published by Ten Roads Publishing. Like North Carolina Remembers Gettysburg, this new book on Chancellorsville will feature first-hand accounts written by Tar Heel soldiers about their experiences at the battle. A couple of the accounts were even written while the battle was still in progress.

Also in the works is Watauga County and the Civil War, which is being published later this year by the History Press, the same publisher that did Civil War Charlotte. I've been working on this project for 17 years, collecting information and first-hand accounts. I'm really looking forward to this project.

There are other announcements about other projects coming soon, including my paper proposal for the conference at Wake Forest later this year.

And, I plan to get back into posting the short blogs under the "Looking for NC's Civil War" title. I've really enjoyed these and I hope you have too. I'm going to dig more deeply , into my film stash, and do some scanning in the coming weeks.

So, I hope you had a great year - a year in which you got to explore some piece of North Carolina's Civil War history.