A Review of Three Women in Luxor

"Without fanfare, Richard Badalamente drops the reader into the lives of three women visiting Egypt, the events of the past infusing the stories with poignancy, awareness, and irony. Each story opens into a subtly awakening awareness: the clamor of Luxor as backdrop, the rising tension of unnamed events, and the shifting energies as the stories unfold to reveal characters from two very different cultures. Badalamente brings the stories along with a deft hand, dialogue and narrative alternating with a spareness that allows the reader to fully experience the nuance of humor and detail."

S. Moon, on Amazon.com

New Publication: Three Women in Luxor

I just published a collection of very short fiction, titled "Three Women in Luxor."

Elizabeth has come to Luxor at her husband Brian’s suggestion. He thought a vacation in an exotic place like Egypt would help them deal with the loss of their young daughter, Molly. Brian “dealt with” things. Elizabeth wasn’t sure she could. And certainly not here in Luxor, in the Valley of the Dead.

Sandra looked for love in all the wrong places. Here she was in Luxor, Egypt, hurrying to meet Khalid on the steps of the Winter Palace Hotel. She was about to get something she hadn’t bargained for; at least not yet.

Helen’s husband had been dead for a year, killed by an acronym, the deadly IED. Now here she was in another desert, Egypt, trying to start a formulaic new life. Trying to please the Army psychologist, who seemed so earnest. But what beckoned to her here in Luxor was not new life, but old death. And she found it welcoming.

Reviews of The Starving

If you like horror in the style of the fabled H.P. Lovecraft, check out The Starving. This short story puts an even more horrific spin on an already grim historical incident involving Captain John Smith, but Disney's Pocahontas this is not! Instead, it's a well-researched -- and imagined -- tale of gruesome and supernatural goings-on at Jamestown, told in the classic journal entry-style of Stoker or the aforementioned Lovecraft. Author Richard Badalamente knows both his history and his genre fiction, and this is a creepy, intelligent homage, finely calibrated and concluding on just the right note. Subtle, spooky fun for the discriminating lover of chills that sneak up in the night, teeth bared. Pull your feet up under the covers when you read. Frank Booth

If you want to get your bit of horror shiver along with your education try this short story "The Starving". Mr. Badalamente combines some good academics in using original journals as a source for some revelations about our forefathers at Jamestown during the winter of 1609-10, called "the time of starving" with some good story telling. If your're squeamish you might want to pass up this story as some of the detail reporting from our ancestors, although written under earlier spelling rules, is graphic. I'd say if you ever ate brains and eggs, you'd do ok with the read. Betty J. Roop

The Starving, by Richard Badalamente, is a short novel that draws the reader in quickly through the author's comfortable writing style and a story that incites the reader's interest from the start. Based on historical accounts and written in a journal style appropriate for the times, the novel transports the reader to this place and time and, for this reader, produced dual/competing feelings of horror and curiosity. I suspect that most readers -- like myself -- would really like to find out more about what really happened in 1609-1610 Jamestown! While this book is certainly not for children, I wouldn't be surprised if it could become popular with high school kids because of its incorporation of the spirit world into the story.... Who knows: In the process, the book might also generate an interest in anthropology and forensics! Frank L. Greitzer

Wow! What a story! "The Starving" is a haunting and scary story. It would be especially appropriate for Halloween, but It would be timely at any time one wants to read in the suspenseful style of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1840).

Those who know of the early colonial settlement that took place at Jamestown, Virginia, will find that its archeology, history, and physical anthropology ring true in "The Starving." The structure of the story is sound. The characters are engaging, except for the sadly vindictive ghost. But her pain and frustration are understandable. The narrative is certainly an interesting one, and it fits the horror of starvation. A once sweet and caring woman becomes a horrible, revengeful creature as a ghost.

Picking it up, I was fascinated with the story and stayed with it to the end. Its finale I fear might continue to haunt me. I am careful about my thoughts before going to sleep at night in the hope of positively, rather than negatively, influencing whatever dreams I might have. I do not want that ghost to visit me. But if she does, could we negotiate? I have full sympathy with her suffering. I have empathy!

Captain John Smith, and no doubt other Jamestown leaders, would seem to have had a lot for which to answer. Did the brutality of Smith's ethnocentrism in European-Indian relations lead to starvation? Why did he not do all he could to get along with the relevant American Indians - for food, if nothing else? Common sense seems to have been greatly lacking. It was scarce.

Read "The Starving"and be haunted. Read it and be frightened. Read it, and you may think of Edgar Allan Poe. That would not be surprising, as I have said. The Poe comparison is a tribute to the author of "The Starving," Richard Badalamente. Read it, and you will enjoy it because it certainly is a good, hair-raising read. Larry Van Horn, Ph.D., Cultural Anthropologist, Littleton, Colorado, USA

Art Imitates Life -- Again

In a confidential report to be presented to its governing board in March 2010, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will voice its concern that Iran is seeking to build a nuclear weapon. It’s unusual for the IAEA to be so blunt when it comes to the nuclear programs of its member states -- Iran became a member state in 1958.

Japanese lawyer and diplomat, Yukiya Amano, is the new Director General of the IAEA.

Iran's Safeguards Agreement came into effect in May 1974, under which Iran, as party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), agreed to declare its nuclear activities and allow inspections by IAEA inspectors.

Iran has violated its agreement and the subsidiary arrangements associated with it on a number of occasions that we know about. The most recent discovery was the enrichment facility being built near Qom on a mountaintop missile site of the former Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Construction on the secret facility probably started in mid-2006.

Iran’s decades long nuclear weapons development efforts are the backdrop for my novel, The Lion and the Sun. The primary action takes place in 1994, when, believe it or not, we already knew a lot about Iran’s nuclear weapons sites. The latest revelations about the enrichment facility northeast of Qom are not really revelations at all. This was also a period when ‘loose nucs’ in the Former Soviet Union were an urgent concern of the US Intelligence Community. The action in The Lion and the Sun begins with the discovery that a plutonium pit, the key component of a nuclear warhead, is missing from a Russian weapons lab.

There are flash backs in the novel to 1978-79, when the novel’s protagonist, Daniel Conte, a CIA operative, was working under cover as a member of a US Military Assistance Advisory Group. He was lucky to escape being taken hostage during the takeover of the American Embassy by Iranian militants. Not everyone was so lucky, including a young woman Conte recruited as an intelligence asset and with whom he was having an affair. Conte is haunted by the incident.

An epilogue brings the story up to 2008, when Conte discovers the fate of an MI6 agent with whom he worked to thwart the terrorist plot to obtain the nuclear weapons component.

Although on its surface, The Lion and the Sun is a story about espionage, it is really the story about a person beginning to question the sacrifices he’s made in the name of duty, honor, country. It is a story of intrigue, betrayal, and regret set against the threat of nuclear terrorism. It is a story that could be taken from today’s headlines, if only one could read between the lines.

The Starving Published on Kindle

Cover for The Starving,
from a photo I took in the Everglades

I've written previously about my short story, "The Starving," and my attempts to have it published. I finally took the matter into my own hands and self-published using Amazon.com's Digital Text Platform (DTP).

My journey to publishing on DTP started with receiving a Kindle-2 for Christmas last year (it seems like only yesterday that it was 2009). I really like the device, and find reading on it better in many ways than reading a hard cover or paperback book. One big advantage is that you don't have to hold pages open, so you can sit and eat lunch and read -- "look ma, no hands!" Of course the main advantage is being able to carry thousands of books around with you wherever you go -- books you buy much cheaper. This can be a big deal for folks like Peace Corps Volunteers, missionaries, foreign service workers, and the cruising class.

You can read a good critique of the Kindle -2 in the Linux Journal.

Publishing on DPT is covered well on Amazon.com's web site here. Obviously, you have to have an Amazon.com account. Anyone who has purchased a book or anything else (e.g., a Kindle) through Amazon.com already has one. It helps to know a little HTML, but since DTP converts your files to HTML and lets you preview the result before publishing, it's not a big issue.

Go ahead, try it!

Rattlesnake Mountain

Rattlesnake Mountain from the Yakima River Delta, Washington, January 22, 2010

Engineer's Arrest Exposes US Pursuit of Iranians

Iran's Nuclear Sites, from NTI

In an earlier post I discussed my novel, The Lion and the Sun, which deals with nuclear smuggling and Iran's drive towards the development of nuclear weapons. The plot includes material about the illegal transfer of weapons technology. The following story by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, filed at 8:20 a.m. ET, January 22, 2010, details an actual case concerning such technology transfer. I have summarized it below.

PARIS (AP) -- The Iranian engineer flew to Paris with his wife, intending to see the Eiffel Tower and other tourist sites. Instead, he was arrested at the airport under a U.S. warrant -- suspected of evading export controls to buy U.S. technology for Iran's military.

The case of Majid Kakavand, accused of purchasing American electronics online and routing it to Iran via Malaysia, has shed light on increasing U.S. attempts to crack down on people outside American borders suspected of illegally buying U.S. supplies for Iran military programs.

The case is also pushing the justice system in France, which has grown increasingly tough on Iran's nuclear ambitions but also has trade and oil interests in the country, toward a stand that could have deep diplomatic and economic repercussions.

Kakavand's future could be decided at a Feb. 17 Paris hearing on whether to extradite him to the United States.

Iran's government spoke out about the case for the first time this week, accusing France of linking Kakavand's fate to that of a young French academic on trial in Iran. It says Kakavand is innocent and suggests he is being used as a bargaining chip in the diplomatic tug-of-war over 24-year-old Clotilde Reiss.

The United States says Kakavand, 37, and two colleagues ordered U.S. electronics -- including capacitors, inductors, resistors, sensors and connectors -- and had them shipped to Malaysia, from which they were dispatched to Iran without export licenses required by U.S. authorities.

Documents filed in the U.S. District Court in Northern California said they had set up a company called Evertop Services in Malaysia that dispatched the goods to its two main customers, Iran Electronics Industries and Iran Communication Industries.

Both companies ''were designated in 2008 by the United States for their role in Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile program,'' according to a summary of the case from the Department of Justice.

Kakavand is accused of conspiracy to export to an embargoed country, money laundering, smuggling goods and other counts.

Kakavand's lawyer acknowledges the company sold merchandise to the IEI and ICI, as they are known. But she denies he has any other ties to the Iranian military or nuclear industries. ''In trade, you purchase, you resell -- it's a normal trade act,'' lawyer Diane Francois said.

In many cases, suspects accused of violating the U.S. embargo on Iran have been apprehended in the United States. But some, including Kakavand and a man taken into custody in Germany last week, have been nabbed overseas. Kakavand has never set foot in the United States, his lawyer said -- all his U.S. business dealings were conducted via e-mail.

France under outspoken President Nicolas Sarkozy has helped lead Western efforts over the past two years to rein in Iran's nuclear program, which the U.S. and its allies suspect aims to produce weapons. Iran says the program is for peaceful energy production.

Iran released a list earlier this month of 11 Iranians it says are being held in the United States -- including a nuclear scientist who disappeared in Saudi Arabia and a former Defense Ministry official who vanished in Turkey.

The list also includes an Iranian arrested in Canada on charges of trying to obtain nuclear technology, as well as an Iranian who was arrested in the Caucasus nation of Georgia, handed over to the United States and convicted in a U.S. court in December on charges of plotting to ship sensitive U.S. military technology to Iran.