The Character Names in Gennebar Rising

Several friends have asked how I came up with my character names.  I was not entirely consistent in my naming approach for all the characters, but I endeavored to make the names of most of the Gennebri characters sound at least vaguely Hebraic.  Most of the place names in Gennebar were chosen with the same idea in mind.  Similarly, the names of most of the Drenarian characters sound approximately Roman, but I even directly appropriated a couple of historically significant Roman names and re-purposed them.  Beyond that, I deliberately made many of the Gennebri names end with an “l” sound, (as in Arol, Lemuel, Dimacielle, Zemakiel, etc.), so as to lend them a kind of group consistency, as one might expect from the names in an actual real world culture.  Of course, some Gennebri characters’ names parallel actual biblical names in a recognizable way (e.g., Meshnab – Moses, Methasomol – Methuselah, Daviel – David, Gamleol – Gamaliel, etc.), but a few were special.

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August Publishing Update

The official release/book signing party for Gennebar Rising Part I: Awakenings is set for Saturday evening, October 7, 2017 in Pittsburgh.  The e-book and soft cover print editions will launch on Amazon shortly before then.  I expect to have a stack of hard cover collector editions to autograph and distribute to friends, relations and collaborators at the get-together.   Lots of my musician friends have been invited and we’ll have a great Old Time Music jam there.  I’ll be posting pictures afterwards, so watch this space!

The American Civil War Talk (CWT) Website

I am an active participant and a patron of the American Civil War Talk (CWT) website. CWT is a well-moderated message board featuring far-ranging, and often quite scholarly discussions and debates of both historical topics broadly related to the American Civil War, and even some current topics with their roots in the Civil War.  (Hey, some folks think the Civil War never ended!)

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Civil War Horology

New Book on the Way:

My new non-fiction book, The Appreciation and Authentication of Civil War Timepieces, has been peer reviewed and will be published by the NAWCC this Spring.  Once again, I will be using Saul Bottcher and Indiebooklauncher.com for assistance with production. The book discusses the types of watches that saw service during the American Civil War, and the prevalence of watches in the war, with an emphasis on watches (mostly American, and mostly on the Union side) that are identified to specific Civil War combatants.

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Upcoming Civil War Watch Exhibit at the NAWCC Museum

In the coming months, I will be adding content on the special exhibit on Civil War watches that I will be guest-curating at the NAWCC Headquarters Museum in Columbia, PA, beginning with a one-day scholarly seminar on July 6, 2019.

(July 6, 2019 will be the first Saturday after that year’s anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, which took place just about forty miles away, concluding on July 3, 1863.)

The 2002 NAWCC National Seminar, “Boston: Cradle of Industrial Watchmaking”

I had the honor of chairing and organizing the 2002 NAWCC National Seminar in Boxborough, Massachusetts, which was the first of two National Seminars I chaired. The Boxborough event assembled a list of leading scholars in the field to discuss the whys and wherefores of the origins of industrial watchmaking in the Greater Boston area beginning in the 1850’s. Beginning at that time, American watchmaking continued to define the state of the art in mass manufacturing technology for the better part of a century, on account of the large number of fine parts in a watch and the high precision required in their production.

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