Bednieri Tblisoba

This past weekend the Tblisoba, or city celebration for Tblisi. The 32nd annual celebration of the city's founding some 1500 years ago. Man, but that's old.
The weather was great and the city puts on a nice street festival. Something decidedly different from what you will find in the states.
I also pushed over the 50% mark on my WIP (45K words). Yay. This working thing really has been cutting into my writing, I must say...

End of an era

In 2007 the US Army entered into a contract with Rosetta Stone to provide distance learning of language to service members. As a Reserve officer I was entitled. But they cut the contract 24 September, 2011, so no more 'djevochka yest yabloko' or 'velosiped imyeet chernyi tsvet'...with the catchy little 'bing' if you got it right, for me. But it means I'll have more time to write if I'm not trying to figure out that the cyrillic C is an english S, and all those gender specific russian language thingees, right?
Bummer.

Tblisi Symphony

You can tell how busy work is by how frequently I post. Work itself is actually pretty steady (busy), it's the overflow (work taken home) that really cuts into Blog and (break-out) novel writing. I did push over 43,000 words last weekend, but mostly revisions and only a few hundred words of new text.
I did take the evening off to go to the Symphony. Contrary to popular belief, I am not JUST a knuckle-dragging manly man. I had to cut the after-work trip to my old-dungeony-Russian Gym short though, and endure the ridicule of my fellow knuckle-dragging gym inhabiting troglodyte buddies (the English speaking ones, the Russian and Georgian only speakers I couldn't understand their ridicule) in order to go, but it was worth it.
The Tblisi Opera and Ballet State Theater Symphony Orchestra did a lovely job, and the venue, the Grand Hall of the Tbilisi State Conservatory was a big and stately old building.

Horror Fiction Review, Review

A new review of GOB on the horror fiction review was posted.
Read it HERE. (it's a September 2011 review).

Colleen Wanglund reviewed calling 'an excellent story'...and 'a character study worth reading'.
Doesn't that make you want to zip on over to amazon and buy a copy?)

GOB Review

Chizine posted a new review of Gift of the Bouda, by Stephen Studach (the review is by steve, the book is by me...).

Postitive but fair, a good read that would make a good B movie (if B movie were good, which they can be). Pretty much what I envisioned it as; a pulpy noir tale (but a little deeper, and a little better researched, I would hope) of monsters, and the men they become.

You can read it here.

He also had me do an interview, you can read that here.

Soccer Match

This weekend I attended the Soccer (football) match here in Tbilisi between Georgia and Latvia. (Unfortunately Georgia lost 1 to zero- boo).

It was a great match, the Georgian's dominated but a head-in from a Latvian corner kick made the difference. Georgians take their football pretty serious (as do most Europeans, South and Central Americans, Asians..well most people that aren't from the US.


I've included photos of the stadium in daylight, the opening ceremonies and me at a tense moment.
Work on the NIP continues at a blistering pace, I know, why am I going to soccer matches when I should be writing? Ummmm...background..

St. Anton's Monastery

For those of you that weren't aware, the Country of Georgia is a largely Christian nation. Their Christian traditions date back to proselytizing by the apostle Andrew in the west of Georgia in the first century. But the large scale conversion (as best I tell) came from a number of missionaries from Cappadocia (a region in Turkey where early Chrisitans fled Roman persecution). The most important of which was Saint Nino who converted the then Pagan Queen Nana and King Mirian the third, in the fourth century (see my blog post from April 2011 about the trip to Ninosminda).

There was another large group of Cappodocians who came to Georgia in the sixth century to expand Chrisitanity, found churches and monasteries, all lead by St. John of Zedazeni (with Saints; Anton, David, Shio, Ise, Joseph, Zenon, Abibos, Stephan, Isidoros, Piros, Michael and Tadeoz). Most of the interesting old things to see in Georgia are tied to their Christian heritage, and it has regained support as Nationalism in Georgia also seems to be tied to their faith tradition. So, it was to the monastery founded by Saint Anton of Martkopi that I visited this weekend.

Gorgeous location in the mountains about 1/2 hour from Tbilisi, fabulous vistas (but as it was a cloudy, rainey day so I didn't take any pictures of that). We saw St. Anton's grave in the small church, attended the consecration of a man in the church building where the relics were kept (Gvtaeba), and were fervently prosyletized in Georgian by one of the monks. Dissapointed when he discovered I was not 'orthodoxy', but rather presbyterian, which he somehow assumed was like the 'baptisyists'-not exactly, but I couldn't explain the nuances of the calvinist reformation and the ninteenth century great awakening in my pigeon Georgian.

Finally he found this delightful old monk who spoke much more English than I spoke Georgian, and he wanted to convey two things: first, God is love. That one was easy. Second, he struggled with a rendition of the 10 edicts, of doing wrong and one is not better nor is it worse than another. It took a few rounds of back and forth, but I finally said, "Do you mean that in the eyes of God, all sin is equal?" (A very basic Chrisitian precept). He almost fell over, "You have heard of this?" We went on to talk about a few small points of the congress of Nicea, religion in general and faith, the primacy of grace (although, I don't think I sold him on this one). I certainly did my part to dispel the notion that American Chrisitanity is populated by a boatload of snake charming folks who don't actually read the bible.

A nifty tweaking

Sheila Merritt posted a Review of GOB on the site Hellnotes.

Click here: Hellnotes Review to have all your questions answered.

Roadtrip

My WIP is still in progress. I spent much of the past (busy) month picking over edits, rewriting scenes, basically getting it to where I wanted it to be with a total of 1 month worked and 400 words added.

After a Saturday morning run, a trip to the gym (I joined a very old-school Russian Style Gym here in Tbilisi...I am getting pretty good at estimating the weights: "100 kilos, umm...it's heavy, umm...like 220 pounds"...see, pretty good), and a few hours on my NIP, I went on a roadtrip to Kojori, about 1/2 hour from Tbilisi.

Kojori is the site of a Medieval Fortress, a battle between Georgian Nationalists and Soviet invaders (circa 1921), and a pleasant mountain get away from the hustle bustle and smog of the Big City.

The Fortress is to the right. A very impressive location, built right into the rock. It might be difficult to see, but there is a winding, rusted, and partly fallen down staircase that leads to the entrance (covered by a 'murder hole' in the castle entry).

The stairs were in a sad state of disrepair, and required a little effort to negotiate. Missing treads, sheer cliffs, it was awesome, but no where near OSHA approved. Most of the treads seemed to have broken at the weld points, so I carefully tested before I went up.

From the top of the castle the views were phenomenal. In many ways the topgraphy and climate of this part of Georgia remind me of the foothills of California (think Placerville, not Santa Barbara).

We met a young Georgian butcher on a bird watching trip at the top of the fortress. Like most people we meet he was hospitible and engaging and he told us a little of the history of the fortress in halting english (which was an order of magnitude better than my pigeon Cartoli). We also heard a howling in the distance that sounded a bit like a warbly coyote bark and a dog howl to me. After a bit of back and forth, searching for the word, he told us the howling was from the Jackals. Hmmmm...might be a story in there?

Book Give Away at Good reads

I know how much you all really want a copy of one of my novels. And I know it's soooo hard to go to Amazon and get one, so the good people at Goodreads.com are sponsoring a book Give away for STG and GOB.

(Enter early, enter often!!