Last night’s talk at Spotsylvania Presbyterian could not have gone better. I had a great turnout and was very pleased to see audience members from all the churches that I was speaking on. In retrospect I did go too long. 90 minutes is a bit much, but I wanted to give equal time to each congregation. I also did a rather lengthy introduction on the origins of Fredericksburg, as well as the complex issue of slavery and the multiple perspectives of the Civil War and how they vary. This of course coincided with the edits that are being done to the book. Lesson learned: cut it to 60 minutes. I did have a few people walk out at the hour mark.

Because I spoke so long, the Q&A was cut short, but I had some great discussion at the reception and book signing that followed. I sold an entire case of The Southern Cross and distributed most of my handouts for the Houses of the Holy too. Some local heritage folks asked if I could possibly do additional programs on this subject in the future. I am hoping that the buzz over the book project and this presentation will enable me to do a walking tour of the churches in Old Town. The program I am envisioning will be titled Footsteps In Faith Under Fire and would give me an opportunity to present these houses of worship ‘in person.’ Although I would not consider myself to be an expert in this subject by any means, I am working on it and could see this topic possibly becoming a specialty of mine.

I will be posting the usual transcripts of this talk over on my website in the next week along with a few photos of the event. I do want to thank the members of the Adult Ministry Team at Spotsylvania Presbyterian, all those in attendance, and especially my mother and father who drove 5 hours to see me talk. My next event will be at the Fredericksburg Civil War Roundtable (Mary Washington University Alumni Center) where I will speak about Sgt. Richard Rowland Kirkland, The Angel of Marye’s Heights. Details to come.

On a side note my latest book review will be running in the Free Lance-Star’s Town & County section on Saturday. It’s for a great new book by Jeff Toalson titled No Soap, No Pay, Diarrhea, Dysentery & Desertion: A Composite Diary of the Last 16 Months of the Confederacy from 1864 to 1865. I’ll post a link when it’s up.

Also, I was just informed that my Civil War devotional spots are now running on 89.5 Bluegrass FM 3x's a day. The response has been good and they are getting frequent pledges by using copies of the The Southern Cross that we donated as listener rewards. In fact, nearly half the books are gone after 2 weeks. I will be getting digital audio files next week to link on my website. Stay tuned.