The accidental Opera

I have mentioned before my challenges buying tickets for Georgian venues. It's a challenge finding out about things because there's a big word of mouth component here (and I don't really understand the words too well). Then there is the challenge of communicating at the box office (as I will explain).

I saw a poster for the Georgian Symphonetta hosting a dutch oboe-playing soloist. I fortunately also found an English language version of the same poster near the Tbilisi-State Conservatory. I went to the box office on Friday, to buy the ticket for Saturday night's performance. Well, having thought I achieved success, I looked down at my purchase...it was for an opera on Friday night. That night. I went back, and knowing that an exchange was beyond my communicative talents, I opted to buy another ticket. The box office lady clearly thought me daft, but I was successful. Two tickets...So what did I do with the opera ticket? Well, I went. No idea what it was, who wrote it, but it was Italian, and cute. I am calling it the Accidental Opera.

I also made it to the Symphonetta and saw the oboist perform his solo. Mozart, Bach, Gluck and Boyce. Good seats; I sat right behind the First Lady of Georgia. (Should have figured she might come, as she's dutch).

I can also report that I have put the Thanksgiving holiday to good use, and pushed well through the middle of the WIP. Sitting squarely at 56K words, it feels like when you're on an old wooden roller-coaster and you're clank-clank-clanking up to that first big drop, the first car is nosing over the edge, the last car just finished with the chain and you get that slowly-speeding-up-as-you-go-over-the-top feeling...knowing it's going to be a wind in your face, stomach-losing dash...that's what getting through the middle feels like.

Pushing through the middle

There are many tough spots when writing a novel. Getting started, feeling like you have the characters, the basic story arc, this takes a while but really isn't that tough. Getting over the 30K word hump is a bit of challenge because that's the point at which I feel the novel is really establishing the 'voice', I know the characters, I'm getting confident with where the story is going, the basic 'vibe' is there. Often I'll tweak and futz, and cut, and uncut, and recut, and reuncut, and reorder, and insert and delete, and change, and use the 'find' function alot to make sure idiosyncracies of dialog, or naming conventions are consistent, and...and......and at some point between 25K and 30K I'll say...yah, that's what I wanted.

Then there's the middle part (about 45K-55K) where I start to second-guess myself, I can see the tempo of the story (I like the vibe, but is there enough action, do I spend too much time on character or scene development, not enough? is Cooper's subplot too overdeveloped, etc) but I reevaluate if this is really what I was thinking about for the story arc in that brief flash of inspiration several month's to a year ago, and...well that's where I am now; pushing through the middle.

As you know (if you've been following the blog) I've taken an expatriate assignment managing a project in Tbilisi, Georgia and it's a bear of a job. Overseas, new area of business, trying to meet family obligations (I know wahhh...). But the reason I bring this up for this little essay is that I'm writing much more slowly than I did in my two previous novels, so this particular angst-ridden patch is telescoping on me.

But it's not all bad, spending more time with my inner-author-insecuritites has allowed me to spend more time with the characters too, and one of the things I have realized is that my bad guys really need a voice. I've struggled with this for a while because the alien's voice, or the alien itself maybe, comes across as a Lovecraftian villain, and this inherently conflicts with the more hardboiled/pulpy/sparse voice with which the rest of the novel speaks.

The military scifi novel features an expeditionary infantry battalion investigating a seeming natural disaster (series of meteor showers) on a colony world. The 'natural disaster' is actually an alien invasion and told from the POV of Salome (a colonist), Captain Vogel (a pilot) and Sergeant Cooper (a Grunt), with a few cameo POVs. The 'alien' invaders are based on Dictyostelium fruiting bodies, and through them I explore some of my thoughts on memes, identity, 'self' and the nature of conciousness (but don't worry- there's lots of gun-play, gallons of testosterone, a strong and independent female MC, a romantic triangle and not every body dies at the end, almost not everyone...). I've been strugling with how to convey the alien POV here in the middle of the book (see, stay with me, I usually have a point!), so I decided to include the enemy as a POV character...hey, it's a big step for me, I don't just give up my POV to any character that comes along with a winning smile and a catchy line.

Anyway, I think I've reached a compromise that works, but you, dear reader will have to be the judge.
I have also include for your amusement, a snapshot of my Tbilisi Gym.

Through a dark alley, down a rickty flight of stairs, in a moldy sub-basement, thousands of kilos of mismatched plates, dumbbells, kettlebells (measured in Pood), is my lifting heaven. These are the bench presses; two vertical pipes sunk into the concrete floor, welded rebar supports hammered into the wall, and bolts to rest the bar upon. Simplicity in form and function. Now all you have to do is pick the bar up off the pegs, lower it to your chest and put it back...many, many times.

And the tough part for me, right?

Yes, you guessed it... pushing through the middle part.

No really...

The second thing I have to say after I tell people I went to the ballet.
The Tbilisi Ballet put on a production of Minkus' Don Quixote at the Griboedov Theater. It was my first time at the Griboedov, lovely place, great dancers, I had never heard of Minkus before but most of the music I enjoyed.

The funnest part of the whole expedition was trying to buy the tickets. Once you know how, where the box office is, the hours of operation and how to communicate in pigeon Georgian for the purchase of 'erti tiketse, baletze, didi madloba' , it's a breeze. It took some doing, and the help of a Georgian coworker but I had it all worked out...until I got to the box office.

The little old lady at the counter was not impressed. I even tried my winning smile. Nada. She rebuffed my feeble georgian-ticket-purchasing overture and raged at me in staccato Russian..'Ar vitsi rusuli' (I don't know russian) I pleaded. Again, the same Russian sentence, but slower and louder (see it's not just we Americans who feel that if you speak your native tongue slow enough and loud enough to people who don't speak your language they will suddenly understand you).

I caught a single word in the phrase; 'djevichka'. 'Djevichka?' I said. "GoGo?' (Georgian for Djevichka) and she nodded, 'Da..russian..russian..russian..djeveichka..russian..' finger wag from outside to inside. Ah...I was getting it, 'Gogo modis?' (the girl is coming) with finger point. 'Da' said she, and shook her head at me like I needed an entrance application to a state program for the feeble minded.

Well, I waited patiently and sure enough, the djevichka/gogo/girl came in and saved me from mission failure. When I got back to the office, one of my coworkers had let me a text that he wanted me to pick up 2 tickets for him as well. The next day I went back, and getting the tickets was almost a breeze.

As I said the ballet was enjoyable, Dato and Nato and I went to the Marriott had we two boys had no desire for white wine spritzers (proof that we weren't panziefied by the experience). But just to be sure I spent an extra hour working on one-rep max bench press at the Gym the next morning. You can't take chances with these things.

Things you take for granted

There are many things I took for granted when I lived in the states. I have a very long list. But the one today is 'US Post Offices'. I know, post offices you ask? The institution that inspired the term 'going postal'? Those? Well, yes, you see the US system is Nirvana compared to our Georgian Postal service.

The first time I went to the main Tbilisi Post Office was in response to a little slip of paper that showed up on my desk. All in Georgian script, now I could puzzle out how to say many of the printed words (the handwritten Georgian- no way) but I was no closer to understanding what it meant than I was when I first picked it up. Defeated, I asked one of my Georgian staff.

"You have a package at the post office," she said.

I broke out into a cold sweat. A Georgian post office! I hadn't know there was such a thing. A few days of looking at the little slip of paper, steeling my courage, girding my loins, doing my daily affirmations, and I was ready. I found a cabby with reasonably good english (as my Georgian can get me most common menu items, the check, directions to the water closet, and pleasantries in an elevator, it is NOT up to wrangling a package from a post Soviet civil servant).

After dodging in and out of traffic, up and down small alley ways and side streets, we made it.

It was a mad house.

One thing to know about living in Georgia is that you realize lines are primarily a western covention. Here they understand there's a place you want to end up, and there's the place you start, but all those people milling about between you and the front- who are they?

I eventually made it to the front of the line and proudly handed my slip of squiggly line paper to the four young women sitting on folding chairs, I was rewarded with a postit note with a number on it and a finger pointing me to another line (to pay the 15 lari to get the package out of hock). I went through a confusion of line negotiating, gave my money, got my receipt and a finger pointed me back to the first line. Another shuffle, block, shuffle and I got back to the front of line one, gave a different one of the four girls sitting on a folding chair my receipt and was handed a slip of paper for my trouble ... and sent to another line. Patiently I waited and finally a little old man showed up with a santa sack full of packages over his shoulder. He dug through the bag and I was rewarded with my mail.

All in all, only an hour of my life and a lesson in how postal delivery is done 8,000miles from home. And what did I get for my troubles? Our US-based Company President had mailed 10 pounds of Peet's Coffee! (Georgian Coffee isn't really that good. They really like Nescafe...).

Well today, a Georgian postal neophyte no longer, I received another little slip of paper. No fear. No anxiety. I sprang into action, negotiated the mean streets and alley ways of Tbilisi, and was in and out of the post office in fifteen minutes. And what did I get for my trouble? Seven kilos, two hundred grams of Oreo cookies (no Oreos in Georgia either).

And it only cost me ten lari, a 'didi madloba', and a smile. (Smiles work here too).

Thanks Steve, I'm almost down from post double-stuft sugar high...

The season

I think I mentioned that the Tbilisi Opera season is in full swing here in Georgia. There's a performance of some kind almost every weekend. Last Weekend I drug some friends with me to see the Tbilisi State Opera and Ballet Theater Symphony play a few Mozart Pieces, the internationaly renowned Turkish pianist, Zeynep Ucbasaran, played one of the piano concertos. It was pretty cool.
This weekend we fast forwarded some fifty odd years where the same symphony presented Verdi's Attila. They did the whole opera, with glass-shattering singers and all, but presented as a stage rehersal (no props, no running around the stage, just standing there and belting it out). It was pretty cool. Later this month we have the Don Quiote and Gizelle ballets.

I will now provide you all with a cogent post comparing and contrasting the late Baroque to the mid-Romantic periods in classical music... nah, I don't know anything about about any of that. (And though it doesn't stop most people..politicians, critics, etc, from writing I try to stick with what I know).

On the WIP front, I was struggling with a turning point in my mil sci fi story. Struggling for me means I end up not trying as hard to carve out writing time, and hence, slow progress. If you've been keeping track about 3000 words in the past 10 weeks (more or less). Pathetic. Ah...but I pushed through the transition for the characters and am now driving through. Yay.

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...