Once I had an end, I found a better beginning.  

I vividly recall how relieved I was to have the first draft completed. I reviewed it one more time and decided to add a bit more detail to the first chapter. Discovery Under Fire was supposed to open with a firefight between members of the Iraqi National Police Force and Sadaam’s Hussein’s diehard military remnants. Media reports referred to this part of the Iraq War as the battle of Fallujah. What harm could there be if I googled The Battle of Fallujah and spiced up my account with media details of the battle? Googling changed everything. Googling solved a big plot problem. No where had I described how the sacred scroll came to be in a Fallujah geniza. 

 The Battle of Fallujah 2009, was not the only combat in history known as The Battle of Fallujah. In May of 1941, Fallujah was the site of a British Air Force bombing campaign against Iraqi insurgents, who had aligned their efforts to rid Iraq of British influence, with Nazi Germany’s quest for Middle Eastern oil.  To counter the insurgency, located around Fallujah, the British Air Force heavily bombed the area. The flash of inspiration was nearly instantaneous. I imagined the Ezra scroll, preserved by the Jews of Fallujah for more than 2,500 years, being buried under the rubble of the Fallujah synagogue, awaiting its discovery for another 68 years.  

Mark L. Shook