Fun with Yeast

People have hobbies, right? Mine include reading (and writing) fiction, weight lifting, running, sheep farming, I used to do a little martial arts and archery and have tried (unsuccessfully) to play the viola. Oh and anything my kids want to do becomes an immediate superseding interest.

Well, an expatriate friend of mine in Georgia (shout out David) was a big fan of homebrewing. I'm a beer fan, and a scientist, and I've used yeast (for a yeast two-hybrid experiment- a little different than brewing, but still, unicellular fungi are unicellular fungi, right?). So when he wanted to try to brew some good American style ales in Georgia, I was in. A few batches and I felt I could give it a go after I got back to the states. And I did. I named the concoction Gladiator IPA (for the battle I had to engage in with the equipment, and it's loaded on Hopville ). So far, so good. No contamination, yeast seems to be bubbling. I racked and am dry-hopping now while I run back to Georgia for some meetings.

And here is the wort before (left) and after (right)
primary fermentation. Right now it's a bit too bitter..yeah, even for me, but hoping it mellows a bit.

Who knew something so tasty could be so nasty looking?

Fun with yeast!

B&N

Outside the Wire is now available Barnes and Noble!
It's almost viral!

OTW Review

Outside the Wire received its first review (HERE).

"This author has a natural talent to weave words into descriptive stories ... the style of writing with details keeps the reader's interest ... savor each word knowing the tale will end too soon."

And Sue Mahoney was kind enough to post this to Amazon and Smashwords as well! Thanks Sue.

Made it!

Lot's to reflect in my year+ as an American Expat* in Georgia. For now, though sad to be separated from my friends and colleagues, but I am just happy to be back on the farm. My 15 year old did an excellent job keeping the place going during the intervals between my too infrequent visits.

I also need to confess an infidelity. Yes, I cheated on my military scifi work in progress (WIP). I not only outlined, but actually started a weird western novella. I know, terrible.

*In Barcelona an Argentinian guest worker said she didn't like it that citizens of the USA referred to themselves as Americans (after asking my nationality). So my questions to her were; 1) what other country includes the word 'America' in their name (It sounds stupid to say united-statesian) and 2)what country did you, Argentine guest worker lady, and everyone else think that I meant when I said American? I didn't think I was being continent insensitive...

Outside the Wire on iTunes

Outside the Wire is available on iTunes (Free)

So any of you viewing this blog on an iPad can click your way to 30,000 words of bountiful entertainment.
(Be careful, it's scarey!)

Coming Home

I face the end of expatriate assignment in the FSU country of Georgia, as one might expect, with mixed emotions. I have made a great number of good friends here, I've experienced a rich and charming culture, I've been introduced to foods I didn't know that I couldn't live without, I've racked up a metric tonne of frequent flier miles, and learned a great deal about myself, the International business environment and the world in which we live in a way that I could never have done had it not been for these experiences.
With all that said, it's been a rewarding but also very tough thirteen months. Particularly on the family that I alternatively drug across nine time zones and abandoned to their own fate over the past year. I could not have done it this were my wife and children not possessed of a positive, adventurous and expeditionary disposition. Or set of dispositions, I suppose. So thanks to you, my family.

Back to the states on Thursday! Four days and a wakeup! I'll not be leaving the project, but rather managing it from the states, with regular site visits. It's a tough trip, but I'll be able to put the time in at home that I need to,

SO what do I need to do at home? Well, first kid stuff. Scouts, soccer practice, Karate practice. Next I have a million differed maintenance farm chores that have built up and are all now waiting for me. Trees, a garden and Hops that need planting, sheep that need all kinds of things. A son and daughter that may run this little race in the fall with me that we need to prepare for. A new Army job (remember I'm a colonel in the reserves) to in-process and learn. Little things like that. And, no, the Word Count meter on the WIP isn't broken, it's stalled out for the near term. But more about that later, right now I have packing to do!

Gudauri

The Caucasus Mountains are an impressive sight up close. This weekend I had the opportunity to tag along on a ski trip. (No, I didn't ski. I am better suited to clumsy sports where something heavy is picked up and bone breaking at high velocity is less likely.)

But I did partake of the Georgian tradition of the 'Supra', the excesses of great food, and the succession of toasts, and great camaraderie. (Georgians really are the best hosts I've ever met).

But the mountains are very impressive. We went to 'Gudauri'. Decades ago it was a bend in the road on the old Russian Military Highway. But over the past 20 years of independence, it's been developed as a ski resort . Panoramic vistas, lots of locals and a few dozen intrepid multi-national skiers (Americans, Brit's, Ukrainians, and some people I knew weren't Georgian, but couldn't figure out). The lift tickets were 30 Gel (about $20) for the day. Now that's super cheap by US standards, for such impressive slopes, but you have to get here, which is no easy task. And of course there is the Georgian tradition of queuing, which takes some getting used to, but overall, a worthy destination.
Oh, and it wouldn't do justice to the country to leave out a Georgian church. The one in this picture is perched on the lip of the gorge, maybe 2500 foot drop, just on the other side.

And no, I got a lot of work for work done, but nothing on the NIP.

The electronic anthology seems to be doing okay. So far.

Amazon too

Outside the Wire is Available (click on 'Available') on Amazon for 99c!

Now remember this collection was meant to be my own little anthological experiment in electronic publishing. It's been a little bit of a pain to work through, but not impossible, and if you follow the guides that are out there, straight forward. The hardest part of this experiment was of course writing well. (Which I hope that you think I have done, if you have read my 'stuff'). Then there was putting it together into a format that won't end up 'jacked up' on an e-reader ( 'jacked up' you see is the technical term for the default condition of documents typed out in word without disabling all of those helpful auto-functions, like tabbing and spill-czecking). The cover art was a picture I took at the Tbilisi zoo and had a fellow who knew what he was doing edit it into a cover image in order to make the whole affair look professional. Oh, and a little patience too, that was important.

I loaded the anthology to smashwords (where you can download it for free) and from there it is supposed to be made available on all e-reader formats except Amazon , and lets face it Amazon is the 800 pound gorilla of ebook publishing, so you have to do that one. The only challenge with Amazon online publishing was that I couldn't make the book free initially. So I loaded OTW for the lowest price I could- .99c.

Remember, I have alreay been paid for all these stories once, and it is only a 30K word collection, so I didn't feel like I needed to make any money on this. OTW is an experiment in online publishing, but it is also meant to collect all of the stories that are already out there in one spot and advertise my work to people who haven't seen it.

Before I could get the price dropped to zero on Amazon, I even sold a few copies. It also appears to have knocked my two novels, STG and GOB off the peg, selling a few copies of both the paperback and kindle versions on Amazon.

So there you go. Experiment was a success. One more step forward in my plans for world domination and becoming a legitimate pulp-fiction genre writer...

Available Now

My epubbed anthology is now available at Smashwords (Click Here). I promised that you would love the price, and I hope you will; it's free. I figure that I was already paid once for each of these stories (three times for one of them), and it didn't cost anything but time to put this together (and the cover image), so I thought I would pass the savings on to you. (If you really, really want to pay something, put an extra fiver on the plate on Sunday, or stuff it in one of those boxes that charities leave at the counter of stores, say thanks for the book and pretend it was to me. )

I mentioned in previous posts about the changes in the publishing industry, self-publishing, electronic publishing, etc, so I wanted I to see how it worked. Outside the Wire is my contribution to the movement.

Smashwords (my profile) seems to be a great venue for those that want to publish, but as I have said, there are many many works of varying quality.

Another online community that I have found which is a good outlet for authors is Goodreads (my profile). It's also a great place for people that are interested in books, especially genre fiction, and connect with others with similar interests.

So my next step is to figure out how to get it on Amazon...

Barcelona

January 24th is an epic day in my household. (And by Epic, I mean that I had better treat it epically or there may repercussions.)

My anniversary!

Okay it's also my wife's anniversary too.

This past 24th marked 25 years of blissful matrimony. I say 'mostly' tongue in cheekily as we've been through a lot together and there have been with us, as with everyone else that marks this silver milestone, many ups and a few downs; we have walked side by side raising four wonderful children, having twelve or so changes of residences over five states (and 2 countries), six churches, college, graduate school, postdoc, Houston (need I say more), attack helicopter flying. deployment to the war in Iraq, nursing school, family (hers and mine), farm chores, all of this with the day-to-day effort of growing together and not apart.

Friends and aquantances often ask how me have managed to 'Make It' to having a good marriage. I try not to laugh when they ask. You see, I don't think we've 'made it' because it isn't over, right? It's like asking a fit person how they 'made it' . They haven't made it to 'being fit' they 'are fit', and the minute they stop working on it is the minute they will begin to atrophy and soon will no longer be fit. Fitness is a state of being, not a goal with a beginning middle and end. Our marriage is like that. We didn't make it to having a good marriage, we are having a good marriage. It is something we continually work on, together, and the minute we stop working on it, it will begin to atrophy and soon will no longer be good.

So how do I commemorate twenty-five years of working together? Well, this year it was Barcelona! (being in Tbilisi and my wife in the US, it was the nicest midway point I could find). It is a lovely place. I highly recommend it. When we got there the weather was lovely, the scenery is lovely, the food great, great museums, arts. I would go back in a heartbeat, and long before Paris..just sayin'.

We started the actual day watching the sunrise over the Mediterranean. Then a starbucks (I really miss starbucks in Georgia) and then went to the Sagrada Familia. A lovely cathedral dedicated to the Holy Family, designed by the architect Goudi. Really awe-inspiring, and I thought an appropriate place for an anniversary. We found a bar with a real American IPA (also very missed in Tbilisi) and ended the day with a fabulous paella.

So, to my wife Kelly, thank you for twenty-five Wonderful years!

(That's her in the scale model of the cathedral arches- isn't she cute?)