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.




Thursday, October 29, 2020

Catalog Complete


Volumes 2 and 3 are now up and ready to go on SoundCloud. And you can click on them on the sidebar if you care to. The music is great if I say so myself. My only regret is that I am not a singer. Nevertheless, the music is complete. It would be a dream come true if I had a real band and a real singer performing this music. But alas...

I was in a rock band years ago. It was a real rock band, with two guitarists, a bass player a drummer and a real singer. I was on the keyboards, of course, using an old-fashioned Vox Jaguar electric organ, and an upright piano.

But it worked. Unfortunately, my music writing at the time was in its infancy. I was only a teenager, and during that period of my life I had just begun writing my own songs. And I will admit even now, some of those songs were pretty darn good, even for a fourteen year old. (Which is when I wrote my first song.)

And during my teen years, I had written a small collection of songs, most of which I still remember. They are recorded on a cassette tape somewhere. Eventually I'll put  this collection of songs on another CD and call it Volume One - Rockin' the First Steps. They number about sixteen songs, which I wrote over a ten year period. From age 14 to about age 24. 

By then the band had dissolved and I focused on fine art instead of performing art. It wasn't until I was over forty when I went back to writing music again. I have chronicled what happened on this blog. To reiterate, it was after my fifth novel had been completed and published, I just got the music bug again.

So I bought new keyboards and got busy. And in the next three years or so, I wrote 120 more songs, which I put on volumes 2 through 13 and can be heard even now on SoundCloud.

I may get busy on my Volume 1 songs soon. But I'm getting back into my novels right now. I'm revising John Dunn; Heart of a Zulu and hoping to find representation or another publisher. I think that novel has the most potential, because it's a true story. And true stories are even better than fiction.

That's what I think anyway. We'll see how that goes. 

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