Promoted

I just heard yesterday from my Reserve Commander that I was selected for promotion from LTC (05) to Colonel (06)in the Army Reserve. This is sort of a big deal, and the selection rate this year was down in the one selected for five who went before for promotion board. Slim pickens for promotion as we reshape the force,pull our soldiers back from ten hard years of war, redefine our National Security objectives and how the Army can support that on a smaller budget.
Glad to Still be a part of it, and it's a daunting challenge in my new rank.

Gonio and the Black Sea

We traveled to the Georgian Black Sea Coastal towns of Kobaleti and Batumi this past weekend. Batumi is the summer destination of choice in Georgia, and the place really hops from the beginning of July through the beginning of September; jazz festival, operas, Sting even came thi year. October though, is pretty quiet. Batumi is in the Adjara region of Georgia, a contested peice of property for the past few thousand years, from Colchis to Rome, to Byzantium, to Georgia, to Ottoman Turkey, to Russia, and finally back to Georgia (and those are only the big players, there have been numerous small land grabs).

Lovely place with an entertaining mish-mash of architectural styles.

I mention Colchis, most people don't realize that the destination of Jason and the Argonauts was the faraway land of Colchis, and the quest for the golden fleece. That was Georgia. There are regions in Georgia where one still pans for gold by laying a weighted-down sheep fleece out in a bend in the river, the gold flakes gather in the wool, and the panner dries and burns the fleece, sifting the gold from the ash. There is some contention that this is the source of the golden fleece myth. Batumi has embraced this and erected a statue to Medea (the colchis princess that helped Jason out).

No visit to Adjara is complete without a trip to Gonio. This is a remarkably intact Roman fortress, circa 50AD. It was established here around the same time the Apostle Andrew was preaching the gospel in the west of Georgia. Also alleged to be the site of the martyrdom and burial of the apostle Mathias (Judas' replacement) though every Georgian I asked said it wasn't true, he was killed north, probably in Abkazia...

I really enjoyed the fortress. They have a very nice little museum with artifacts from Colchis, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman occupants. The archeological excavations have been ongoing for about 15 years, though not much before. During the Soviet occupation the grounds of the fortress were a tangerine orchard! This in spite of the fact that Henrich Schleimann (the guy who found Troy) did some intial digs back in the 19th century.

Another cool fact about Gonio (not found in wikipedia- for shame) is that it used to be named after Apsyrtus, the brother of Medea. As local legend has it, this is the spot where the peices of his body were brought to be buried (after Jason killed the poor guy, chopped him into pieces and threw his body into the sea- making poor king Aeetes of Colchis have to stop in pursuit of his treasure and wayward daughter to bury the guy. When told from the the other side, Jason seems more like a thug and pirate than a hero, doesn't he?).

The border for turkey (last picture) is another ten minute south and west past Gonio. Georgian's can go across easily (there's a slow line) but Americans need a visa that they can get at the border. Comin gth eother way were hundreds of turkish trucks, shipping goods all over Georgia.

New Review & Interview

A new review of Succumbing to Gravity is out on the LL Book Review(Review number 245)by Carrie Hunt.

I think she liked it, ending her review with "So if you haven’t read this, you need to, and let’s see if you read the last line of the book and yell: “F#@k Yeah!” like I did."

Carrie is a talented author in her own right (write? HA! I kill me...) and also does book reviews on the side for LL Book Reviews(on her own website as well). She asked me to do an interview and I was happy to do so. It's right here.

Uplistsikhe

Another weekend in Georgia and another outing.
This trip was to Uplistsikhe the 'castle of God', about an hour to the west of Tblisi, Georgia.

The site is carved into the rocks above the Mtkvari River that flows through Tblisi and has been occupied since 'olden times'.
At one point the capital of Iberia (old georgia, not spain) was located here, and it was abandoned for the last time after Tamerlane swept through Georgia in the 14th Century... olden times indeed.
To the right is an example of the carvings on a stylized ceiling.

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..