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 12, 2020

Volume 7 - Rockin' the Dream

 


After Volume 6 was completed, still no writer's block was setting in. The music was still pouring out. And all original tunes. I had just completed what I considered some of the best music I had ever written, but great music was sill coming out of me. The next song, which is the first song on Volume 7, was so great, I might have even called it a masterpiece. But that category was reserved for only two songs that my friend and I had agreed upon years before. And ever since those days, (which date back to the seventies,) no other song had qualified. 

I might have nominated a song or two since then, but again, my friend would need to second those nominations and we are no longer in touch. Doesn't matter. No one needs another opinion to believe for himself or herself what song is a masterpiece. And for me, the song Dream qualifies. I believed it when I was composing the song. And I still do. I put in lyrics that are reminiscent of Martin Luther King's famous speech. Thus the name Dream. And I named the entire album after that song.

And needless to say, the entire album is great. Once again, every single song is nothing less than a great song. So it's one of my favorite albums to date. But, again, I have a lot of favorites, and this album is most definitely one of them. The playlist is as follows:

Dream
Hollow
Tall Tale
Want to Run
Give It Up
Remember
The Real Thing
On a Roll
In the Future

That number of songs is not an error. This album is the only album I put together that only contains nine songs. It's because when I originally wrote the songs, they were all very long. And because I was at first putting these albums on a 60 minute cassette tape, I was keeping the total running time to that. So when the nine songs totaled 60 minutes I left it at that.

But when I came back to my music recently to revise all my songs, I have rearranged several, and I made most of them much shorter. Some quite literally are half as long as they used to be. So now the total running time for the album is 39 minutes and some seconds. Which now ranks it to be the shortest running time of all my albums. But that's the reason why.

No matter. It's 39 minutes of fantastic music. And the singing? Well, I'll never pretend I can sing. I've said that time and again. But at least it's not bad. Which is the best I might ever hope for. I look at it this way: as long as I can carry a tune and sing in key. And I do.
 

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