Wednesday, May 9, 2007

First Post!

Greetings from Texas! Inspired by some of my favorite Civil War blogs (Eric Wiitenberg, Andrew Wagenhoffer, Dimitri Rotov, etc...see the list), I've decided to start my own.

The purpose of the blog will be to:

a) provide an archive of my past "Medical Department" columns from The Civil War News, which I have been writing regularly since Fall 2000.

b) alerts on Civil War medicine in the news and previews of my upcoming columns

c) "shameless self-promotion" of my other writing projects, esp. my forthcoming book, Lincoln's Labels: America's Best Known Brands and the Civil War (Edinborough Press, Spring 2008)

d) advice for aspiring freelance historical writers

e) comments on postings at my favorite blogs

I certainly admire the commitment that Dimitri, Eric, and others show in daily postings; I'll try my best, but you can be sure that I won't go longer than a week.

You can learn more by clicking on "About Me"...I'll likely expand on this in my first few posts by describing how I became interested in the Civil War (medicine in particular) and freelance historical writing.

I look forward to your comments!

Jim

6 comments:

DW@CWBA said...

Welcome! Beyond the alliteration, the insertion of "Lincoln" into the title was an astute marketing move!

DW@CWBA said...

Your upcoming book title, that is.

Jim Schmidt said...

Drew,

Thanks for the kind welcome and the message about Lincoln!

The original working title of the book was "Union Labels" - you known...Union Army and brands (labels)...I thought it was pretty clever, but maybe too clever and confusing from a marketing standpoint.

While it's fun (and admittedly good marketing!) to have "Lincoln" in the title, a good part of the book actually deals w/ how these various companies and brands dealt with President Lincoln personally.

Jim

Brian Downey said...

Welcome to the blogosphere, Jim. Yours is a fascinating topic - I'm looking forward to catching up on your CWN articles, particularly. Good luck!

Jim Schmidt said...

Brian - Thanks! I'll post the first column tonight (from Sept 2000) and then will post at least one a week thereafter.

Jim

Don said...

Welcome to the blogosphere, Jim. As a novice to all of this, I'll be very interested in any advice for aspiring freelance historical writers.

I've really enjoyed the first few posts, but the comment seemed to fit best here.