Powered by 550 Horses, a Modern Mad Dash from Washington to Gettysburg

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

The famous American Civil War battle of Gettysburg took place over three days in the beginning of July in 1863. Readers don't often realize that the battle was really a part of a larger military campaign, an invasion of the north by Confederate rebel infantry and cavalry, and the campaign took place over a month, from early June to early July.

The modern adventure novel, Gettysburg Passage, can also be thought of as a brief "campaign" - or maybe better as a mad dash! Several characters, lead by Rick Reynolds, a high tech sales rep living near Washington, are forced to deal with shocking discovery, emerging danger and harrowing pursuit that relentlessly pushes them mysteriously towards Gettysburg. The novel covers a few action-packed days in the lives of Rick and his friends.

The Gettysburg battlefield is very close to America's capital - less than an hour if traffic's light. Nearly 150 years ago, the trip north took rebel forces weeks. But the men and women in Gettysburg Passage need only a few days to cover the very same ground - if they can keep from getting killed!

For several people in the novel, being able to jump into a 2011 Ford Shelby Cobra Mustang GT500, the offspring of a famous racer, might make the trip a little more brief. You see, the sleek, powerful muscle car is powered by 550 horses and doesn't stop for water, or to graze! But life can be perilous at 120 miles per hour and faster, especially when the bad guys are chasing you in a spectacularly fast Dodge Challenger.

To learn more about how some everyday people get sucked into trying to save modern civilization, while dodging a few bullets related to the Gettysburg Campaign, check out Gettysburg Passage by John Callahan, available from Amazon.com for $2.99.

Action, adventure, history, fantasy and a touch of science fiction, all in a fast-paced contemporary novel.

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7 Signs Your Boyfriend Is an Alien

Image via Wikipedia

This 7 tips are not gender specific and may easily apply to boyfriend or girlfriend ;-)

7.  He takes the bear's side of every argument.
6.  She can't explain that mysterious artifact hidden in the drawer next to the porn stash.
5.  Your soul mate has a weakness for weird weapons and can hit an archery target at 200 yards.
4.  She's not worried about money and suggests wild berries are suitable winter provender.
3.  He's on the run, perhaps stalked by a large, shadowy figure with hairy arms who may have wandered away from the Steelers practice squad.
2.  She's not alarmed when people dead for 100 years drop by the house for an urgent chat.
1. ...and here's the smoking gun: He thinks Bon Jovi is a French resaurant in Georgetown.

....many of these issues surface in my action and adventure, history, philosophy and a touch of fantasy novel, Gettysburg Passage, on sale from Amazon at $2.99....enjoy!!

tags: slightly eccentric writer living in the washington suburbs

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Washington, Gettysburg, the Black Sea and the Pontic-Caspian Steppe

Image via Wikipedia

Concerning my novel Gettysburg Passage, readers have told me that they quickly begin to get a feeling that the action-adventure story operates on several levels. On the easiest level, people living today around Washington, D.C., in the Northeast and in Paris, get caught up in what is to be done with a discovered historical artifact that my be immeasurably valuable. Obviously one could just bundle it up and go drop it off at the Smithsonian and be done with it. But we are talking adventure here with a dash of fantasy, and that option isn't desirable. So dealing with the artifact becomes a central driver in the plot.

But there are clues sprinkled liberally throughout that other forces are in play. In that spirit, I would like to briefly highlight an area of the world remote from the heavily forested eastern Seaboard of the U.S. I will then tie this discussion back to the completed first novel and other volumes to follow.

The Pontic-Caspian Steppe is a vast grasslands that is actually part of the great Eurasian Steppe. It stretches from Hungary in Europe around the Black Sea and Caspian Sea all the way to Mongolia. Steppes in general have cold winters and hot summers, are mostly flat, support trees only along streams and rivers and are dominated by plentiful grasses. The Pontic-Caspian Steppe resides in Asia closest to Europe and it here that researchers believe that humans used their inate intelligence to develop complex social organizations.

It is on this vast steppe that the seeds of ancient civilizations took root. Here tribesmen and women first cast up their gazes to the great sky God with chanted names strikingly like Deus and Zeus. The tribes first tamed horses (ekwos,equus/equestrian) and trained them for warfare, crafted the wheel for carts and chariots, made weapons like spears, swords, knives, bows and hammers. Livestock was gathered and grazed to form tribal and family wealth. Cereal grain seeds were collected for primitive farming. Most importantly, many modern languages used throughout the West and in India were first formed here. The language is called Proto-Indo-European. Many, many things valuable to us now were first conceived of on the Pontic-Caspian Steppe.

It is here on this vast steppe that tribes organized concepts of uplifting spirituality and social organization, and violent theories for vast warfare and plunder campaigns. And somehow, influences stretch back and bounce forth, from the spicy bog fires in camps along the Caspian Sea where storytellers chant to rapt listeners heroic poetry somehow influencing and being influenced by those frequenting the affluent and trendy pubs and restaurants of the western suburbs of modern Washington, D.C.

The journey begins in the novel Gettysburg Passage, available from Amazon and instantly downloadable to your Kindle or as a Kindle app on your iPad, iPhone, Android phone, Mac or PC. Please buy it, read it and review it today!

Hammurabi and new novel Gettysburg Passage

Image by carmen_seaby via Flickr

What does one of history's greatest law givers and a new action and adventure novel, Gettysburg Passage, have in common? Well, I'll get to that in a moment. First, the news.

News out of Haaretz.com in Israel: A small clay tablet has been discovered by archaeologists in Israel while escavating a site called Tel Hazor. The tablet is approximately 3,700 to 3,800 years old and has key words that remind experts of Hammurabi's famous law codex. The tablet uses Akkadian cuneiform, the international language of diplomacy during that ancient time. Here is a link to the Haaretz wire story:

http://bit.ly/94sYgv

Hammurabi was the sixth king of Babylon, considered the first king of the Babylonian Empire and the ruler of all of Mesopotamia. He is famous as the first law giver and his Hammurabian Code. Many experts believe that key laws and moral principles found in the Jewish Bible were strongly influenced by Hammurabi.


Was Hammurabi the first law giver? The first in recorded history to this date, yes. But what if there were earlier law givers? Maybe not kings, but influential "law clerks",  sojourners -- perhaps people on a quest to save a future Western civilization that had yet to significantly develop. What if these people "planted the seeds" that eventually influenced those who helped create Hammurabi's famous Code? And what if those influencers somehow had an insight into today's modern American society?

Well, I've given enough hints! The new novel, Gettysburg Passage, ISBN 978-0-615-39102-1 by John Callahan, will be published by Amazon in mid August. The plot deals with Americans who confront a series of mysterious events that may have some powerful relation to earlier civilizations, even pre-dating good old Hammurabi.

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The Civil War Ghosts of Blenheim House in Fairfax, VA

Fairfax, VA, just outside the Washington Beltway, was a bustling crossroads during the Civil War. Fairfax Courthouse, as it was called, was anchored by its stately courthouse, built in the early 1800s. About a mile northeast of this building was the Willcoxon family farm, 367 acres of rolling hills, streams, woods and prime agricultural land. Albert Willcoxon was a prominent northern Virginian and slave holder, but did not possess a great sense of timing. In the late 1850s he built a beautiful Greek Revival brick home on a hill with panaramic views from gently sloping hills. It was and is an impressive structure on impressive grounds, with twin fireplaces at each end, center doors front and rear for cross ventilation, sturdy pine floors and plenty of windows for ample interior light.  Just after completion, Virginia seceded from the Union. Located less than 15 miles from the federal capital, his exposed position must have been obvious. As early as July, 1861, Federal troops swarmed the area and the residents either fled or settled in for a nasty period of uncertainty and incivility. As it turned out, the Willcoxon farm, later called Blenheim House, because of its prime location became a centralized officers' quarters, hospital and camping ground for Federal forces and thousands of soldiers lived, visited or just passed through on the way to other postings and titanic battles both north and south of the area. Nearly every major "star" of the war in the eastern theater was familiar with these grounds. Today, the home is part of a Civil War Interpretive Center located at 3610 Old Lee Highway, Fairfax, VA, 22030, and is extremely close to my home and place of work. Did you know that local legend has it that many of those Yankee soldiers can still be found prowling the area on warm summer nights even now? The farmhouse must have made quite an impression on them if they would return today to play a game of chess or checkers, pick an apple, sniff a daisy blossom, brew some campfire coffee or just rest and hang out under one of the majestic oak trees. One of the plot elements of my new book, Gettysburg Passage, involves the unlikely sighting of such soldiers (starting further south, near Brandy Station, VA) by young professionals who don't have any particular interest in history or the Civil War. How would you react if you saw something like that while returning from Starbucks or the mall? Would you share it with your family and friends, or just store it away as something weird, embarrassing and unexplanable? Please let me know.

Huge hoard of Roman coins found on Somerset, UK farm

As you may have seen recently on several news portals, a hobbyist in England found a huge cache of ancient Roman coins buried in a farmer's field. The find is valued at a $1 million and probably represented the life savings of an entire Roman-era town. Why was the treasure buried? Scientists really don't know. Recent engineering studies have shown that most evidence of our current civilization would almost completely disappear within a few centuries if we faced some sort of catastrophic societal failure. Yet as we dig, we continue to find tantalizing, surprising and amazing clues of how people lived long, long ago. Could there be lost, yet advanced civilizations from our past that are yet to be discovered? Why not? As time goes on, we learn more and more about our amazing ancestors and how they surmounted incredible obstacles to advance their way of life. A link to the news story about the coin find follows, from the Guardian, UK. The image is from Freefoto.com.

This is John Callahan, and many of these issues are addressed in my new novel, Gettysburg Passage, soon to be published by Amazon. A brief summary of this modern, action and adventure book can be found further down on this blog. I invite your interest and dialog.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jul/08/hoard-roman-coins-somerset

10,000-Year-Old Hunting Weapon

http://www.physorg.com/news197039147.html

A University of Colorado researcher recently found a 10,000 year old dart that had been frozen in the ice sheet at Yellowstone National Park. As glaciers continued to recede around the world, exciting new achaeological finds will become the norm. Who knows what will be found next, perhaps evidence of lost, advanced civilizations? In The Lord of the Rings, it was understood that kingdoms rose and fell, civilizations soared and crashed and always something new came along to replace what stood. It has been a familiar theme in literature. In my new ebook, Gettysburg Passage, by John Callahan, a link to a mighty past civilization is found on the grounds of a Washington, D.C. homeless shelter. Details on the novel's availability will be found on this blog soon.

photo courtesy of http://www.freefoto.com/

Time Travel and Physics

In the new book, Gettysburg Passage, several shifts in time are crucial to development of the plot and an evolution of the characters. In the story linked to below from Physics Today from 2006, a professor predicts time travel within the decade. Interestingly, he believes each instance of time travel will create a parallel universe so that you do not confront "The Grandfather Paradox" which was the basis for The Terminator movies.

http://www.physorg.com/news63371210.html

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Quick Novel Summary

A handyman stumbles on a piece of junk in the yard of a Washington, D.C. homeless shelter and, finding it interesting, turns it over to a priest who manages the agency. Later the priest, not interested at first, does a quick Internet search and is stunned. Could this discard -- a royal mace or short staff, maybe a museum shop replica -- be related to a controversial archeological find unearthed in Syria, a relic that mysteriously attracts thousands of pilgrims seeking miraculous cures?

A few weeks earlier, a group of young D.C. professionals meet in Virginia hunt country to celebrate a birthday. It is a typical champagne-drenched get together until a late night incident spoils the party. On a moonlit walk near Culpepper, VA they have a murky sighting of men on horses, thousands of them in the distance, parading in massive clouds of dust and martial music. The experience is too earthy and massive to dismiss, but they can't agree on what they have just seen. Frightened, and realizing the experience cannot be explained, they agree to forget it.

But it is not so easy to ignore or escape a hidden world that is closing in on the principal character, Rick Reynolds, and his friends, and in the days ahead, that world, the ancient mace and the soldiers participating in America's most epic historical battle will come together on a hill, a passage, near Gettysburg, Pennsylvia.