I hope you enjoy the book when you find it! Make sure you get the revised and expanded edition put out by by Samhain Publishing. :)

It’s interesting that you mention you don’t run across many people with your name. I literally pulled this name out of the air and since then there have been some amazing coincidences.

Like the time I got an email from Jared Beaudry. Yes, I almost fell out of my chair. LOL Then there was the time I was at a book signing and author David Beaudry came up to introduce himself. His book had a character in it named Ivey. :) Of course, we had to exchange books!

If you have trouble finding the book, please let me know!

I am from Charleston, SC and I don’t run into many other people with my last name, so this really jumped out at me. Add that to the fact that I LOVE anything paranormal or having to do with the War Between the States, and this book sounds right up my alley! It is going to be one of my “must finds” on Ebay or Barnes & Noble used! :-)

I can only imagine the expense you go to in order to dress the parts and travel to the sites. The thought of hauling a horse around would be more than I’d want to do either.

Some of the men in our unit have horses. They're an expense and a nuisance. If you're a ‘horse person' it's all worth it. I'm not a horse person.

We didn't have the money to afford the travel and the time off for Gettysburg; most movie companies pay reenactors as extras, Ted Turner did not. We had a friend who went and took his horse along. The horse was a lovely and well-behaved gray gelding, who ended up as a stand-in in some scenes for the horse that played General Lee's horse, Traveler. Mark bragged that his horse had more screen time than he did.

Those ‘magic moments' are a very tenuous thing; the moment you realize, ‘Wow, this is almost like being there,' you're not there anymore. I think one of the important factors in making it happen is the willing suspension of disbelief. Of course, most adults who dress up and play war have a pretty good imagination and are open to new and unusual experiences. Mostly I suspect it's serendipity: the surroundings, the people you're with, some magical combination that can't be reproduced at will.

Best example I can think of happened at a reenactment of the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee. The battle itself took place at the end of November; I think the reenactment was the first weekend in December. It was cold. I was wearing pretty much all the clothes I had brought and a wool cape wrapped around me. Several of us took a walk through the Confederate Infantry camps, late on Saturday night. Huge fire pits, dug deep out of the wind, men crowded around them talking and singing. Soldiers coming and going. We ran into a very cheerful group escorting Father Christmas, who was wearing a long fur-trimmed green robe and passing out plain white peppermint sticks. It wasn't till we were almost back at our camp, when we had to walk around a pickup truck parked where it shouldn't have been, that we realized we had been someplace else entirely – some other time entirely. Like waking up from a dream.

Yes, make the psycho a Virginian! Good idea. ;)

I’m glad you liked the book! I did indeed hear about the concept of the time bubble from CW re-enactors on the old Compuserve History Forum. I think it has a lot to do with the participants being very much “in the moment”, and when that happens – particularly with a large group of like-minded people – a tremendous amount of energy is raised and anything can happen. :)

Thanks for mentioning the re-release date for this book. Nearly 9 years after it was first published, I’m pleased to have the chance to put fresh eyes on the work and run it through another edit/re-write process. I will definitely rethink the “mad NC Confederate character”! Make him from SC? Hmmm… I have relatives there, too, as I was born a stone’s throw from the NC/SC state line in Robeson County. [grin] Maybe I’ll make him a Virginian. [wink]

Carolan

As far as the time bubble question, if you mean that moment when you are neither now nor then, when it could almost be real – then yes, it does happen. Not very often, but it happens.