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.




Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Entering Contest

I talked about that writing contest on Nathan Bransford's blog yesterday. I think I'll enter it. Not for any prize or even a chance of winning, which I put at near zero. But for the fun of it.

I mean if you can't write for fun, then maybe you shouldn't be writing. I've had a lot of fun doing a lot of things during my life. From all kinds of different sports to art, painting and drawing, sculpture, playing music, composing songs, sheesh, the list goes on.

And I can truly say I never earned any significant amount of money doing any of it. So now it's writing. Maybe I'll earn some money at that, but who really knows at this point. Time is going by so slowly since I signed that contract with Cogito, that it will probably be an eternity before I see my debut novel, THE VASE, in print.

That's OK. In the meantime, I'll just keep having fun writing. So I took the afternoon off from my WIP, and wrote an entirely new scene for the contest. The contest guidelines limit the piece to a mere 350 words. But I think that's just about right.

I know I was thinking about cutting and pasting an excerpt from one of my stories, but I decided against it and wrote something that is completely unlike anything I've written before. It had to be humorous. And so here's hoping I did a good job.

Perhaps tomorrow's post will be that sample. I'll see how it reads and if I still like it, I'll enter it into the contest and put it on my blog.

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