This week is shaping up to be a busy one for me, so please forgive the lack of posts. I'll try to share something worthwhile as time permits, but I have several commitments (none of them related to work), which will require my attention over the next few days. That said, I do have a couple things to share this morning...

First, one of the other contributing historians at The Free Lance-Star, Ned Harrison, wrote an excellent piece in this past Saturday’s Town & County on Confederate Gen. Josiah Gorgas, who established an arms industry in the South where none existed at the beginning of the Civil War. You can read it online over at the FLS website.

Second, our good friend Michael C. Hardy (another History Press author) recommended that I look at including an Index in my upcoming book on historical churches. This is an excellent idea, and will certainly add a heightened level of scholarship to this original piece. Unfortunately, I have ZERO familiarity with creating Indexes, and absolutely no idea where to begin. I’ve queried some of our fellow CW-authors (who have far more experience than me), and it appears that most of them have the Index included in their contract, which is ultimately handled by the publishers themselves. I don’t, nor do I have the finances to pay for an Index, so it looks like I’m going to have to compile it on my own. I’m not sure if this is something that is done concurrently as the book is being written, or towards the end of the process after the manuscript is completed.

Therefore, I am petitioning anyone out there with experience in creating Indexes to please drop me an email with any wisdom on the subject. Your tips would be greatly appreciated and I thank you in advance for your time and consideration. Email me here. (ADDED: Joe Avalon over at CWi turned me on to a great Indexing feature in MSWord. Thanks Joe! Now all I have to do is figure out which words to include.)

Hopefully I’ll have more time this week to post. Tomorrow morning we'll find out if child #4 is going to be a ballplayer, or a ballerina.