Hey all, well I just finished my first year teaching and it was an incredible experience. I have been completely swamped lately with work for school, getting updates and other stuff to my publisher, and working with a Photo Journalist who was in Iraq a couple of years ago on a screenplay based on his experiences. We just recently finished it and sent it to the potential director for his feedback. This project has been very time consuming and also very draining, but I am happy I did it. I think it has a decent shot at being made into a film. We’ll see. So I wanted to let ya’ll know why I have not been posting the same amount of posts.
Manuscript Update: I ended up a few weeks ago rewriting the preface for my manuscript. I also, as some of you know, came across a series of letters recently written by several members of the 11th Wisconsin (the regiment I wrote about) on ebay that were previously unknown. I had to win two auctions for some of them and then found out there were another dozen or so. I had to negotiate with the collector/dealer to delay his listing them and get photocopies of the letters. After a week or so of talks I ended up paying a $200 deposit for the photocopies with a promise to send another $500 to him by July and he would not auction the letters and send them to me at that time. It was a pretty steep price, but what else can I do? You know how I feel about history (primarily letters and diaries) being sold on ebay.
So I have those letters and am now in the middle of transcribing them and there is some good content. I am hopeful I will be able to include these 14 or so letters in the manuscript. I plan on posting in a day or so with some of the highlights from these letters. Once again, I don’t hoard history and/or jealously protect it so no one else can see it…
Anyway, sorry for my lack of posts lately, it was not intentional.
Cheers!
Hi Chris – Sounds like life is good. But: It takes careful reading, but what I infer is that you paid the dealer $200 for xerox copies, and in the future (for $500 more) he’ll sell you the rest of the collection. Is this correct? So the damage is $700 plus what you already spent buying the letters piece-meal. Query: have you purchased copyright with such transactions? or does that lie with descendants (if any)?
I note in your link to the “Fort Blakeley” materials that it’s sometimes misspelled ; it’s Blakely.
No I will get the actual letters at that time. The deposit got me the copies and his delaying his auction so I could come up with the rest and then get the actual letters from him. Also, you bring up a point worth discussion. Copyrights, a Civil War letter written in 1860s (whatever) cannot be copyrighted. It does not fall under the guidelines, whatever, of the 1924 copyright laws. At least that is how it has been explained to me… would be interested if Eric might chime in on this… don’t know if he even visits here that often.
I don’t know is mis-spelled is the correct terminology as it has been referred to as Blakely many times and by historians. I think it is a North and South reference.
Chris