Will iconic images recorded in the grooves of an ancient vase unite the Holy Land or rip it further apart?

THE VASE

A novel by Mark M. DeRobertis

Muhsin Muhabi is a Palestinian potter, descended from a long line of potters. His business is run from the same shop owned by his ancestors since the day his forebears moved to Nazareth. The region's conflict saw the death of his oldest son, and rogue terrorists are in the process of recruiting his youngest in their plot to assassinate the Pope and Israeli prime minister.

Professor Hiram Weiss is an art historian at Nazareth’s Bethel University. He is also a Shin Bet operative on special assignment. With the help of fellow agent, Captain Benny Mathias, he plans to destroy the gang responsible for the death of his wife and only child. He puts a bomb in the ancient vase he takes on loan from Muhsin’s Pottery Shop.

Mary Levin, the charming assistant to the director of Shin Bet, has lost a husband and most of her extended family to recurring wars and never-ending terrorism. She dedicates her life to the preservation of Israel, but to whom will she dedicate her heart? The brilliant professor from Bethel University? Or the gallant captain who now leads Kidon?

Harvey Holmes, the Sherlock of Haunted Houses, is a Hollywood TV host whose reality show just flopped. When a Lebanese restaurant owner requests his ghost-hunting services, he believes the opportunity will resurrect his career. All he has to do is exorcise the ghosts that are haunting the restaurant. It happens to be located right across the street from Muhsin’s Pottery Shop.




Saturday, February 10, 2024

The Beekeeper puts John Wick to Shame

Just saw the latest Jason Statham movie. The Beekeeper. My reaction? Move over John Wick. Adam Clay takes over. And move over Keanu Reeves. Jason Statham isn't just an actor like you. Jason Statham is the real deal. Look, I had already posted about how disappointed I was with the last two John Wick movies. Sure the first two had me buying in. But the last two, well, the last two plain sucked. John Wick became a pussy. Anyone could be a John Wick. But only Jason Statham can be an Adam Clay. The movie even had a female Beekeeper, hired to kill the original Beekeeper. And like in real life, the man prevailed, and it was no contest. And hey, I am not a sexist or a misogynist. I am a realist. Sure there are some women out there who can beat up some men out there. But when it comes to the BEST male fighters versus the BEST female fighters, it's not going to be a contest. And in this movie, that's the way it was. Adam Clay had no problem taking out the female Beekeeper. So, like in the John Wick movies, it's a world-building premise. In the John Wick movies, you had the fictional assassins in their fictional world with their codes of conduct and the markers and the Continental, et al. Beekeepers are a fictional society above the law, used when the law doesn't work. And that means these guys are the top of the top of the top in regards to fighting ability. And that's my cup of tea. Like my own character from Killer of Killers and Killer Eyes. The top fighter in the world is Trent Smith. In The Beekeeper, the Beekeepers are the best. The one flaw in this movie was that the female Beekeeper seemed to be a loose cannon type of character. Firing a minigun at anything moving in her effort to kill the other Beekeeper (which included innocent civilians) was a little over the top. Nevertheless, Adam Clay took her out, and in great fashion. Now I don't want to give the wrong impression. To avoid any misunderstands, I have said it over and over again, there is such a thing as STRONG female characters. But to prove you are a strong character doesn't mean you have to go around beating people up, or killing dozens of people, whether they deserve it or not. As a matter of indisputable fact, there is no woman in the world who can win a fight against Mike Tyson. All right? There is no woman in the world who can win a fight against Brock Lesnar, all right? All right. Bottom line? The Beekeeper is the best movie I've seen in a long time. Thank you Jason Statham.

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

The Vase - Revising to keep up with the times

I had originally written The Vase almost twenty years ago. I had used the electronic devices in the story that I was most familiar with at the time. Like iPods, earbuds, phonographs, and cameras that took traditional photos. But the years have passed and now I have a familiarity with the devices of today. Intead of iPods, it's all about iPhones. Instead of earbuds, it's all about AirPods. Instead of phonographs, it all about online listening platforms. (SoundCloud, Spotify, Pandora, etc...) Instead of traditional photos, it's all about apps on your laptop computer. So... I had a lot of revisions to do. I have to keep up with the times. But the story still holds. It's a great story.

Monday, January 8, 2024

Revising The Vase (Again)

With the horrid events of the current times, I believe The Vase is a more apt story than ever before. I seek no fortune and no fame, but it's a story that has everything to do with what is happening in Israel at the moment. For those of you who do not know, the story in The Vase, as it explains above is about the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. I may not be an Israeli, and I may not be a Palestinian, but that doesn't mean I can't write. I can. And I can come up with a very interesting story, which I have. The Vase. I will finish revising it, to make it a better-written book, and maybe, just maybe, I can get another agent. Years ago, when I had an agent, she was unwilling to work with a story that involved terrorists. Hopefully that's not the mindset of all agents. Let's see.

Saturday, October 21, 2023

John Wick Gets a Flat Tire and Runs Out of Gas

So I finally saw John Wick Chapter Four. I was very happy that Halle Berry had no part in it, but that didn't save it. Not for me. Because it was really just the same ol', same ol' all over again. And again. And again. And again. I mean how many fight scenes and over-the-top killings from start to finish can a person tolerate? I mean, talk about overkill. Literally AND figuratively. Killing, killing, and more killing. It was too much. And this is coming from a guy who wrote a book called Killer of Killers along with a sequel called Killer Eyes. (That would be me.)
So someone might ask, "Hey dude. Since you wrote a book called Killer of Killers, and it's about a dude who kills, how come you're criticizing a movie that features another dude who kills. Well, I might answer, "Because in my book, Killer of Killers, and in its sequel, Killer Eyes, there was a lot more than just non-stop scenes with non-stop killing going on. My books had plots, and a message, and morals, and love interests, which means romance, and strong friendships, and back-stories that tied everything together to forge a strong story-line, with several strong three dimensional characters.
Look. I really liked the first two John Wick movies. I was even a fan. But then, starting with Chapter 3, which they called John Wick Parabellum, and included the aforementioned Halle Berry, it was getting to be too much. Another word for it is gratuitous. Yes. Gratuitous violence, and gratuitous killing. It was just too much. It glutted the senses. It was as if it made killing to be ho hum and even boring. I already wrote that Halle Berry playing the part of a female John Wick reduced the significance of the John Wick character. He was no longer special. It was as if anyone, even a five foot two inch 110 pound, middle-aged woman could be a John Wick, which meant that ANYONE could be a John Wick. And that meant the John Wick Character was just another person that anyone could be.
In my books Killer of Killers and Killer Eyes, it was cleary demonstrated that the main character, Trent Smith, was the greatest martial artist in the world. And only one person can be the greatest something in the world. Plain and simple. And he only killed people who had already proven themselves to be murderers. In John Wick, the dude killed for "markers" and that meant he killed innocent people.
Nevertheless, I liked the first two movies. It should have ended with the third installment, without a Halle Berry role, and it should have been written in a way that satisfied the story, the premice and the characters. But they got a flat tire in the 3rd movie, and then in the 4th movie they plain ran out of gas. Oh well. It was fun, like I said, at first. But then, it wasn't anymore.

Thursday, September 21, 2023

Revised Volume 10 - Rockin' the Dark Side

Now that I have a distributor to place my music on the online platforms, I decided to redo my least favorite album. Volume 10 - Rockin' the Dark Side. It was my least favorite only because I felt that my singing on that album sucked more than any other album of mine. So I decided to go ahead and try to re-sing the songs. Every single one. I had done that before for Volume 3 - Rockin' the Hard Road. It had always been one of my favorites, but I just felt I could sing it better and I did. I had also revised some of the songs, as I had noted earlier on this blog. But with Volume 10 - Rockin' the Dark Side, it was only the singing that needed redoing. And while I was at it, I also revised some of the lyrics. But once I was in front of the mic, I had to sing some of those songs up to fifty times before I got a take that sounded right. Can you imagine that? As many as fifty times before I got a take that met my satisfaction. That's a lot of singing. The same song over and over again. And ten total songs. I wouldn't quit, though, because I really believe those songs are fantastic.
And with the success of Volume 10, I can procede to put more albums onto TuneCore for distribution. I had noted earlier that I only have Volumes 1 - 4 on there. Pretty soon I'll put up 5 - 10. I may want to re-sing Volumes 11 - 13. But it might not be possible because on some of those songs I hit notes that I can no longer hit. It's a shame. It takes a lot of effort for me to be able to sing some of my own songs. Sometimes I can do it and sometimes I can't. It remains to be seen. As for now, however, I can be content with Volume 10. It's on SounCloud and sounds great. Check it out.

Wednesday, August 2, 2023

My Music to be Distributed

I have noted the last couple years, that I have put my creative writing on the back burner in favor of creating original music. In fact, I had been a song writer long before I wrote novels. It's true I had written a few stories in my younger days, but not to the degree that I had been writing music. Ultimately, it was all about technology for me. When I was a young teen, I was writing music on my parents' upright piano. I had no means to record those songs, so the songs that I kept playing into adulthood were the ones I remembered. And when the technology caught up to me, I recorded some of them on a cassette tape. But then when the technology continued to catch up to me, e.g. computers and word processors, I was inspired to write novels, and I did. Five of them, with two more on hold. After that had played out, I decided to go back to writing music, because, yes, the technology continued to catch up with me. I bought more pianos, the electronic kind, which were great for writing music. And I did. I wrote 145 songs, or the equivalent of 14 albums, and they are all listed on the right margin of this blog. Those links will take you to SoundCloud where all of my music can be found. But there are so many more platforms, I've learned, other than SoundCloud. There's Spotify, and other more common ones, like You Tube, and more. But I learned you have to have a distributor to get your songs on many of those and there are plenty of distributors. I opted for TuneCore, and my first four albums are distributed now.
I've also learned that for ditribution, some of the platforms do not want volume numbers listed as part of the text on the cover artwork. SoundCloud didn't care, but since I am getting my albums on all platforms now, I went ahead and deleted the volume numbers from the titles of the albums as you can see on these images.
If anyone has any inkling to hear my music, (which is great music if you like Alternative Rock,) then you no longer will be limited to SoundCloud to hear it. You can go to any other music platform, now, and my music will be there. Within the next couple of weeks, I plan on having all fourteen of my albums live on all of the online music platforms. I hope you can enjoy the music as much as I have.

Sunday, July 16, 2023

Blacklist - Suicide by Bull? WTF?

 All good things...as they say. But the end to The Blacklist was, for me, at least, disappointing. I was very happy with the writing up until the very last scene of the very last episode. Agent Ressler finds the dead body of Red Reddington in a field. He had been gored by a bull. So, yeah, like WTF?

In the show, Red had entered into a bull's corral, whether by accident or deliberately, (the writing did not make it clear.) But what was clear is that when Red faced off with the bull, he made no effort to vacate the area. He just stood there and waited for the bull to gore him. Actually, the bull seemed to be giving Red a chance to leave. But he didn't. And the last thing we saw in that scene was the bull beginning its charge. So, yeah. I've heard of suicide by cops, but this was on another level.

And, as I said, the final scene of the series is Ressler finding Red's gored and bloodied body. And very dead. A very anticlimactic ending, imo. We did have a eulogy of sorts, for Red, shortly before that, from the bed-ridden Dembe, which was fitting. However, for me, anyway, it would have been better writing if the camera never showed the dead body of Red. After the "bull" scene, I think it would have been better if Red was never seen again, alive or dead, by Ressler or anyone else. 

And if Ressler had never found the body of Red, then the audience could have fantasized that Red was living out the rest of his days somewhere with that very nice Cuban woman which the writers had established was very willing to do so. (You know, the younger sister of his former girlfriend.) Btw, about that. How was it that Red hooked up with his former girlfriend's little sister? That was never explained. Some people would call it lazy writing. But I digress.

A great character like Red Reddington, like Conan, should never be shown killed or dead. That's not to say he can't get killed. It just shouldn't be shown. It's what I didn't like about the final Daniel Craig Bond movie. Well, they really didn't show him killed, did they? (Nor did they show his dead body.) Okay, then, it is one of the major criticisms I have of the Star Trek movies because they did show Captain Kirk killed and even buried. (I hated all those movies.)

And yes, I do place the character of Red Reddington up there with my all-time favorite characters, which include Conan, James Bond, and Captain Kirk. Yes, indeed. Red belongs. 

One last comment. I never got my wish for the show to provide a definitive statement that Red was the biological father of Lizzy Keen. Although the writers were kind enough to put in the dialogue that he was the grandfather of Lizzy's daughter. I suppose that will have to do.