I wouldn't jump straight to the Smokys, but do as Eric suggested and find where your capital can be deployed efficiently.

Keep your job and don't deploy all that capital at once. 

Tax liens seem incredibly complex with rules and regulations and bidding etc and I can't see how an individual investor could really participate in any meaningful way (like trying to deploy $250K).

I'm not sure what your job is but I did a lot of deployments and you may not be able to manage three separate long term tenants on your first investment property.

My hesitation with STRs currently is that I am stationed in Norfolk, VA and have no real guarantee of how long (most likely 2 yrs but could get deployed anytime) I will be around to manage locally. 

@Everett E. with that capital deployment potential and the assumption that your getting by just fine without it and don't need the $ to live, I would suggest a different structure plan of reviewing it in TIME deployment vs USE deployment. 

I am a 43 year old veteran Army Military Police soldier with a deployment to both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Left the US for deployments and contracting jobs but other then that, I'm pretty confident with my knowledge on the area.

$1M to deploy quickly.

So, make sure that you play some other roles in the deal that justify your compensation.Second, if you're looking to bring funds into the LP and take a fee/profit off of the top, you might want to consider creating a fund of funds, raising LP capital into your fund, and then deploying that capital into this deal and other deals.The structure of your fund will dictate what's returned to your investors versus what you keep, and there will be no commingling of funds that will make taxes complicated.